As The Dust Settles . . .

The election of 2024 is a bit farther in the past now, enough to look more deeply into the causes of the Democrats' presidential loss than the superficial snap analyses could - analyses that many people, including myself, have made.  And the Democratic Party looks even more pathetic than in 2016, the last time Donald Trump defeated a female presidential candidate with a running mate named Tim.

Despite President Biden's best efforts to put a more progressive agenda forward, and despite some successes in that sphere, the Democrats have remained the party of corporate donors and political correctness, with an agenda more tuned toward businessmen like Mark Cuban and toward the idea that the best way to advance racial justice is to paint BLACK LIVES MATTER on city streets and rename streets for Martin Luther King, Jr.  ("Yo, when you're on Martin Lither King, you know you're in the worst part of town!" - Chris Rock)  The Democrats, in becoming the party of French wine and French cheese, have forsaken the working class, a population more likely to consume French toast and French fries.  Rather than advance the interests of a working class comprised of white, black, and Hispanic people, the Democrats pay lip service to working-class interests while pursuing niche issues that appeal to particular demographics - voting rights and reparations for black voters, immigration for Hispanic voters, etc.  Sometimes I have to ask myself if the Democratic policy toward child care is aimed less toward blue-collar moms who have jobs and more toward white-collar suburban families who have careers.

The problem isn't Joe Biden.  Heck, Bernie Sanders was one of his biggest allies, and without his help, Biden wouldn't have gotten as far as he did in pursuing an agenda that included infrastructure, the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices, the CHIPS Act, incentives for green energy, and pro-labor strike mediation.  The problem is with the rest of the party, be it Joe Manchin standing in the way of the Build Back Better program or Krysten Sinema blocking voting rights legislation.  The result was incremental rather than sweeping change.  Calling Biden the most activist Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson is an accurate assessment, but considering the track records of the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations, the bar wasn't exactly set very high.   

Kamala Harris, in running to be Biden's successor, undoubtedly would have made the effort to continue the progress begun under Biden, but it would have continued to be measured in inches rather than miles.  (Certainly not in centimeters or kilometers; even the most rabid progressive activist would consider the metric system un-American.)  With Biden gone and Harris defeated, Sanders, looking at what's left, now knows that reforming the Democratic Party is likely a lost cause.  He's already said so, blaming Harris's loss to Trump on the party being captive to corporate interests and offering an agenda that does not mention policies like universal health care or a minimum wage increase.  

I agree.  And, it turns out, I agreed all along.  Remember, I cast my vote for Harris unenthusiastically, because, as I wrote here on the penultimate weekend before the election, I didn't expect much to change.  I reiterated that point two days before the election.  But change is exactly what people wanted, even if it meant going back to a former President who is a convicted felon, and that is what they ultimately voted for.  And Harris, for all of her political talents, may have contributed to her own electoral demise by saying she couldn't conceive of doing anything different than Biden in her own administration. 

And while it is true that many people voted for Trump because they couldn't stomach the idea of a black female President with a Jewish husband, many people who are not racist or sexist voted for Trump because they didn't see anything for them in the Democratic agenda.

With the election over and three House elections still to be called, the dust of the 2024 campaign is quietly settling.  But come January - or maybe even now, given Trump's lightning-speed Cabinet appointments - expect more dust to be stirred up.  

Not just by Trump, but by Sanders, who's talking about doing what progressives should have done in 2017 - starting a new party.