Blaming racism, sexism, homophobia, Christian fundamentalism, migrants and Latinos for Donald Trump’s decisive victory over Kamala Harris in the presidential election must certainly relieve a lot of the pain and disappointment for those who consider themselves loyal Democrats. He’s beaten them twice already and this time it wasn’t even close.
But, that’s not what happened. What really happened in this election is far more troublesome.
The vast majority of poor and working class voters in the United States decided they’d had enough of being nickel-and-dimed by the healthcare industry, the housing industry, the food industry, the government and anything else that is intended to sustain life, while the Democratic Party sat back, twiddled its thumbs and felt sorry for them. So rather than vote for another four years of empathy while they starved, they decided to vote for the candidate that is more likely to let the whole system go to hell.
Trump is already testing Congress and daring Republicans to oppose him
Until last week, Democratic Party retained the loyalty of the working classes with the bells and whistles of identity politics. The party persuaded them for years that it is all that stands between them and persecution on the basis of gender, skin color, sexual persuasion and the right to do whatever they wanted with their bodies. No matter what group they identified with, they could always count on the Democratic Party to have a place under its big umbrella for them to scream and rant about being marginalized by the rest of society.
Republicans win 218 US House seats, giving Donald Trump and the party control of government
Though it is not unheard of, voting to tear the whole system apart and start all over from scratch is extremely rare, especially in the United States, where that particular option is never offered at the ballot box because it just might win. Donald Trump provided the next best option. His vulgar behavior actually worked in his favor in that it at least held the promise of a societal breakdown. The Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media completely misread these signals (again) and chose instead to pursue what election strategist David Axelrod called the “smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated” vote and assumed that the poor would simply follow in lock step because, let’s face it, where else are they going to go? Well, surprise surprise, they found another outlet for their frustration.
1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target
Democrats who cynically say, “Don’t worry, they’ll come scurrying back the next time,” fail to grasp the gravity of the situation. There may not be a next time. Not only are these wayward voters unlikely to return any time soon, now that they have broken through the wall of Democratic duplicity, their numbers could very well increase.
As he fills his new administration, Trump values loyalty above all else
It takes a lot of courage for low and no-income voters to intentionally choose the greater of two evils. It says that they would rather risk losing it all than live under a Democratic regime that chips away at what little they have left to fund the slaughter of innocent children in Palestine. No amount of mainstream media hatchet jobs can disguise those optics.
Given this trend, it probably behooves the Democratic Party to pivot sharply to the left and become a true alternative to the status quo rather than a cheap imitation of it — closet Republicans with empathy. As a very wise woman once told me, “They only want you when they need somebody to feel sorry for; but empathy don’t pay the bills or put food in your stomach.”
David Medina is a former editorial writer for the Hartford Courant.
