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Home » Will the Democrats ever understand what happened in this election?

Will the Democrats ever understand what happened in this election?

The New Neo Posted on by

Or will they continue to lie to themselves that Trump’s win was due to sexism and racism, despite the fact that Trump increased his share of votes from all minority groups?

Although Democrats exhibit a few glimmerings here and there of actual understanding, I just don’t think it’s widespread. And besides, because Democrats have built their entire pitch for many years on identity politics and abortion and fear of the right, what alternative pitches do they have? If they faced the bankruptcy of their ideas, it would require an entire overhaul.

Then again, it’s sobering that Harris didn’t lose by sixty points, as she should have. She was that poor a candidate. However, the MSM probably accounted for much of her support, because the way they frame the news still matters to a significant number of people. There’s also habit – it’s hard to vote for a Republican when you’ve only voted for Democrats for your entire life. Take it from me. And Donald Trump is strong stuff for an entry-level vote.

Comments

Will the Democrats ever understand what happened in this election? — 59 Comments

  3. Would be wise for the REPs to get over the gloating and focus on these upcoming four short years.

    DEMs have been kicking REPs buttocks for decades—rather easily, in fact—and they will quickly recover just like they did with the Gore then Hillary losses.

    Fortunately for REPs (AKA ‘Blind Luck’), the DEMs bench is pretty much empty, except for some pathetic scrubs and Newsom the water-boy…what must they be thinking when they look over at the REPs bench! 🙂

  4. “Will the Democrats ever understand…?”

    NO.
    It’s always far more easy to blame others. And much, much more satisfying.
    (Besides, who needs an OODA loop if you have—or think you have, or believe you deserve to have—ALL THE POWER.)

    Next question.

  5. The twin corrupters of the minds of the modern Democrat party are Barrack Obama and Social Media. A large portion of the Democrats have become derranged and deluded in their thinking and have lost touch with reality. In particular with regards to topics like immigration, crime, and whether it’s sensible to allow biological men to compete in women’s sports or children to have sex changes, they no longer appear to subscribe to anything that resembles common sense.

    These viewpoints are by no means shared by all Democrats. They may not even be a majority in some cases, but even amongst those that don’t think it’s a good idea to have an essentially wide open border or for criminals to suffer no lasting consequences, they’re often willing to disbelieve or downplay or remain ignorant of their own party’s stances on such issues. They delude themselves or dismiss what they interpret as FoxNews lies or whatever.

    However, I think this election is a start, if for no other reason than that it may force some of them to really reexamine the reasons they lost. And in that process, they may be forced to learn or accept certain truths. It won’t happen over night. In the coming days and weeks it’s likely that they’ll continue to point fingers and deny their own failings.

  6. I would note that Democrats have been sufficiently dumbfounded that they aren’t rioting in major cities or going underground to build bombs.

    At least I don’t think they are.

    Not yet anyway.

  7. “The twin corrupters…”

    Indeed, but I would definitely add the CORRUPT MEDIA to that august list…

  8. Will the Democrats ever understand what happened in this election?

    Well…let’s hope not.

  9. On the more positive side I think most Democrats understand Trump isn’t Literally Hitler and they never really believed Defund the Police, All Whites are Racists, and Men can be Women.

    It was good for pleasing the Woke Folks and being cooler than the Squares, but most Democrats can shed that skin without too much trouble and get back to being competitive in US politics.

  10. “Will the Democrats ever understand what happened in this election?”

    At a certain level, they can’t avoid being confronted with the reality of the loss, and its practical effect on the levers of power.

    But on a spiritual, philosophical level, no – there are too many foundational things that they cannot afford to accept and acknowledge, without losing the whole lucrative gig. They’ll just come up with a new set of shiny ideas to work the marks for the next election.

    And that’s 2 years away, sports fans, not 4.

  12. One way to express my thought is what others have said. They lost touch with reality.

    Another way is to say it is that they’ve become caught up in complex and pervasive system of lies that operates of many levels. I think many people in the middle of the power structure (not just the electorate) buy into many of those lies. And they are dismissive of the significance of those limited things that they know to be lies.

    I imagine each individual power player thinks they have a good idea which things are true and correct and which are the lies and spin. And such an individual believes all their compatriots have the exact same understanding. But said compatriot perhaps breaks down the truth/lies splits rather differently. So it’s a complete mess.

  13. This article has links to several articles discussing the question. Hot Air:Have Dems Finally Started to Get the Message?

    huxley

    On the more positive side I think most Democrats understand Trump isn’t Literally Hitler and they never really believed Defund the Police, All Whites are Racists, and Men can be Women.

    The next time I have a phone conversation with a NYC yellow-dog Democrat cousin, I am going to end the conversation by saying that I have to hang up to get to an American Nazi Party meeting. Or would that be a Klan meeting? 🙂

  14. Gringo, tell him that you have to get to that Nazi meeting at the Temple where your Jewish Nazi friends worship.

    Jewish Nazis. Brought to us by the deranged LeftProgs.

  15. The NPA are now emboldened to share their wisdom on what is best for Republicans and the country. Talk about coattails.

  16. David Davies:
    Gringo, tell him that you have to get to that Nazi meeting at the Temple where your Jewish Nazi friends worship.

    Coincidentally, I am having a pre-Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday with some Jewish friends. Everyone brings some food. I am bringing my grandmother’s apple cobbler. Their late brother moved to Israel decades ago, and his 22 year old son, whom I have met here in the States, has served in the IDF in Gaza and in the north.

  17. Articles out about Newsom and other govs are gearing up for war with Trump. And they actually express it in terms of war. CW2 has receded a bit with the election, but I doubt the Ds are really conceding anything. Maybe we get lucky and California actually secedes.

  18. The Democrats, for the most part, will not ever understand what happened in this election because they still don’t really understand what happened in 2016.
    They also really think Joe Biden won completely fairly in the most safe and secure election ever.

    They have no foundation of reality on which to build an understanding.

  19. “it’s sobering that Harris didn’t lose by sixty points, as she should have. She was that poor a candidate. However, the MSM probably accounted for much of her support, because the way they frame the news still matters to a significant number of people.”

    Yes. Happily, those on the left are in demographic decline. And the mass media now has a big target firmly planted on their back.

    “After Trump’s Victory, There Can Be No Unity Without A Reckoning”
    https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/07/after-trumps-victory-there-can-be-no-unity-without-a-reckoning/

    Forgiveness requires repentance and repentance starts with acknowledgement of having sinned. Lying, cheating, bearing false witness, etc. are sinful behaviors, as they are offenses against civil-ization. Absent civilization, tribalism’s “might makes right” reigns supreme.

  20. The consultants got fat, lazy, and tired. Most of them weren’t that good to begin with. Too many got there through the girl power network and can’t think for themselves. The Democrats are waiting for their next barbarian Carville to knock heads together — or for the Republicans to make mistakes that turn the voters against them.

  21. Like Neo has said all along, a mind is a difficult thing to change. Liberalism/leftism is akin to a religion for so many of its adherents, and they have so much of their identities as Good Persons ™ and Smart Persons ™ wrapped up in it.

  22. This is the beginning of a generational change. Probably multi-generational. Review the history: Cleveland broke the Republican wall. Teddy was the first Progressive President. After an interlude we got Wilson. Coolidge was an aberration. Hoover sealed the deal and FDR made the USA democrat for many years. Took about 45 years for that change. Goldwater comes along in 1964 and shocks the East-Coast Rockefeller Republicans. Reagan in 1980. Trump in 2016. Along with that we’ve seen a steady advance of solid red states (governor, senators and most Reps) and a steady retreat of blue states. The next swing states are blue states that turned purple in this election. 3 states turned from purple to solid red. JD Vance should win the next presidential election. And 3 more states will go solid red.

  23. Even in the midst of election night anxieties, I laughed when I heard Kellyanne Conway on Fox matter of factly state that the Donald was “not an indoor cat”.

    Leaving behind the dogmatic religious beliefs I held for the first 50 years of my life was hard to do, so much so that I can imagine how difficult it might be for a life long democart to not only switch parties, but vote for Trump. I was initially surprised by the amount of votes cast for Kamala. And that started me wondering in retrospect how much larger the divide between them might have been had Trump spent the amount of money her campaign spent AND had media fawning over him, easing his path and standing behind him 24/7 the way she did? Given the amount of support withheld and missing for Trump, the win he managed to secure and the mandate he received now seems even more phenomenal that it first appeared when I saw the popular vote coming in.

  24. Returning to the Hollywood death watch I’m noticing that some of the most TDS celebrities — Robert DeNiro, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar — are losing multimillion dollar deals they were working on.

    Partly they are old and past their sell-by, partly they are negotiating too hard and overestimating their bargaining position, and partly their TDS public pronouncements are bad publicity for the studios.

    These people are singing from the Disney hymnbook. All criticism of wokeness is due to audience toxicity and it needs to stop now.

    A sea change is happening. Funny what losing millions and billions of dollars will do.

    Here’s Critical Drinker lobbing his latest hand grenade:

    –Critical Drinker, “Dear Hollywood Celebrities, Nobody Cares”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMMwzve-Omc

  25. @ physicsguy > “Articles out about Newsom and other govs are gearing up for war with Trump.”

    There has been a lot of discussion about how to treat Democrats going forward, and my position is that we do have to make a difference between the deluded voters and the leadership.

    For the former, that depends on your personal relationships, but winners should be gracious and magnanimous. Forgiveness is a personal matter, but vengeance on a personal level is IMO counter-productive to winning friends and influencing people effectively.

    For the leadership: prosecute any and all past incidents of actual law-breaking; even if conservatives don’t like the laws / regulations put in place by the Democrats over their decades of government control, they should be required to abide by them.

    Then the worst ones should be repealed.

    @ Geoffrey > “Absent civilization, tribalism’s “might makes right” reigns supreme.”

    We’ve had a taste of what government-promoted tribalism produces.
    It’s taken centuries to subdue that in America, and the West in general, and if isn’t ended now, there will eventually come a point of no return.
    (Insert Book of Mormon reference here; IYKYK)

    For any Democrat leaders doubling down on illegal acts (which includes opposition to the duly-elected government, so they tell us): no quarter in war, no mercy in defeat.

    Without a severe punishment, they will just go back to their destructive ways, and continue to call good evil, and evil good.

  27. I was sure that this was a Babylon Bee headline, but it’s Mark Hemingway.

    https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/08/kamala-harris-quoted-one-of-hitlers-favorite-writers-in-her-concession-speech/

    Kamala’s trademark rhetoric, dissected by Hemingway: “There’s an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.”

    The probability that Harris or her writers knew the origin of her starry-night quote approaches zero, but that doesn’t lessen the schadenfreude of Mark’s conclusion.

    The quote eventually goes back to historian Thomas Carlyle, and the last thing Goebbels read to Hitler before his suicide was a portion of Carlyle’s biography of Frederick the Great.

    That may be the same kind of “guilt by association” that the Left practices, but I believe in the custom of hoisting politicians with their own petards.

    The post is a nice example of what real journalists do for a living.

  28. “Will the Democrats ever understand what happened in this election?”

    I’ll admit to having some curiosity, but it wasn’t my train wreck, so there are limits to how much I can stand to read from the Democrat’s propaganda machine.

    After an hour or so, the only reasonable Democrat I found was Ruy Teixeira, who writes a substack newsletter called “The Liberal Patriot.” Yesterday, he published an essay entitled “The Shattering of the Democratic Coalition” (https://substack.com/home/post/p-151307492).

    Teixeira reviews the demographic trends revealed by AP VoteCast data. To Republicans and Conservatives, the data will be familiar. To most Democrats, the data will be hard to swallow. Teixeira then proposes a list of new principles that Democrats must embrace, if they want voters to listen to Democrats and take them seriously.

    Here are a few of these new principles:

    “Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.

    America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.

    Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.

    Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.

    No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.”

    etc., etc., etc.

    Teixera’s list goes on in this vein. To me this sounds like an impossible fantasy. It would mean rejecting American Marxism, the foundation of the contemporary Democratic party. I think it’s far more likely that the Democrats change very little, look for better candidates, and run against Trump’s inevitable mistakes and bad luck. In doing so, they may become even more hysterical and more violent.

  29. Another “no” to Neo’s question.
    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/presidential/3224483/tim-walz-concession-speech-hard-to-understand-loss/

    However, Walz did do a little introspection, at least publicly.

    For Walz, his 3 1/2-month campaign with Harris taught him that voters sought “security” but in broader terms than Trump’s foreign policy, immigration, and other national security policies.

    “They want to feel like their life is built on a solid foundation that won’t collapse under them if the wind blows the wrong way or something happens,” the governor said. “People want an opportunity where they feel like they can get ahead, not just settling to get by.”

    He added, “And I think most of all, and you saw it in a very deep way, people want freedom to live their lives the way they want to live them.”

    Walz acknowledged the need to swallow his “pride” after Trump is on track to sweep all seven battleground states and Republicans regained control of the Senate and likely retain their majority in the House. In Minnesota, Democrats control the Senate, but the House majority remains undecided.

    “I think sometimes we can be quick to judge people who don’t agree with us, to assume that they act out of cruelty, or fear, or self-interest,” Walz said. “I don’t think that kind of judgment is helpful right now, and I don’t think it’s right.”

    He continued, “I think we ought to swallow, and this is me in this as, I’m speaking about myself, swallow a little bit of pride and look a little harder to find common ground with our neighbors who didn’t vote like we did in this election.”

    That would be a welcome change, but I don’t think he will have many takers on that counsel, in the world of politics and media.
    Hopefully, those with left-voting friends and relations will be able to mend some rifts, if they will actually look at what Trump does and not what the Regime Media claims.

  30. Cornflour:

    Thanks for the Texiera link and quotes.

    He’s an interesting fellow. He wrote the book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority” (2002), which argued that demographic trends would guarantee Democrats would inevitably outnumber Republicans. The book electrified Democrats. Obama partly rode the wave of that optimism. It was some of the basis for Democrats eschewing compromise for doubling-down.

    However, Texeira is an old-school liberal Democrat. He saw the radical left take over the party, realized that wasn’t right and that it was hurting America and Democrat Party. He is now working at AEI, a conservative think tank.

    His heart is still with the D party. His mission now appears to be talking Democrats off the ledge.

    I don’t think Texeira is necessarily wrong. I believe that most Democrats aren’t committed to American Marxism. These Democrats have been hijacked and after this election, they may take the opportunity to regain control of their party. It is in their interest.

  31. J. E. Dyer wrote this before the election, but I think it bears on the topic of Neo’s post. Make any necessary grammatical tense substitutions to make it applicable post-Trump-victory. Excerpt follows a prologue describing her own voting experience.

    https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2024/11/04/here-it-comes-election-day-2024/

    This year’s election, 2024, truly is the one that will determine whether we keep our Republic. There’s no margin left. The Biden administration has already clarified for us what a Harris administration would be prepared to do to gut America’s national security; destroy our American culture of openness, civic order, and the rule of law; mock and undermine the people’s vision of equality before the law and equality of every person’s dignity and value; and suppress our God-given rights as enshrined in the Constitution.

    We already know that the legacy media would facilitate a Harris administration’s career down that path.
    …
    All the tropes of tyranny and collectivism from the overburdened 20th century are settling in around us.

    We could go on and on, but readers know the list well enough already. Trump, meanwhile, has broken the mold of ideologically pristine and consistent “conservatism” as Republicans have conceived it since Reagan’s seminal speeches began in the 1960s. He’s got a motley crew of non-Reaganites (RFK, Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, etc.) campaigning for him. Trump is probably the closest of them to an old-school Republican, and he’s not all that close. I get why some voters remain too peeved to vote, due to losing the attention to ordered philosophy that characterized the Republicans’ ideal – though not the actual reality of their governance – over the last half-century.

    There’s a lot out there disintegrating and evanescing for both major parties. I can’t help the Democrats. I know Republicans are due a major reset at this point.

    But there’s also an election due according to our Constitution, and there will be no timeouts from its effects. If Harris wins, or can be represented as winning with enough stonewalling and ridicule of eyewitness objections to election irregularities, the transition period won’t even be a lame-duck hiatus. Mercy for the political opponents of the Left will be at an immediate end.

    I don’t now how to put it any more plainly. This is the last chance we’re going to have to avoid the loss of the Republic that we can’t come back from without coming back ugly. Either vote to keep the Republic – Trump – or lose it.
    …
    Christians and Jews may differ on who the figure in question is, but we both understand the point: I’m not electing a Messiah. I already have one. Whether he hasn’t shown up yet (Jews) or made his first appearance 2,000 years ago (Christians), we’re not confused about the difference between his role and that of the president of the United States.

    Trump is nobody’s idea of the Messiah. But getting sanctimonious about Trump would leave no one able to vote for Harris – or frankly any other candidate – either.

    [AF: IOW, the Democrats haven’t fielded someone of superior moral character, despite the effusive praises from the Left and the Never-Trumpers; sauce for the gander, sauce for the goose.]

    Trump is the one, meanwhile, who didn’t make the slightest move to smother the Republic to death in his first term, and won’t do it in a second term either.

    That’s government’s proper place in our thinking. It’s not the guarantor of our virtue. It’s the guarantor of our Republic. That’s all it can be. But if it’s not that, everything in this fallen world will immediately descend on our personal virtue through an open door, to attack and destroy it.

    Biden and by imputation Harris have spent nearly four years turning the circumstances of the human world – economy, national security and sovereignty, the meaning and integrity of law, community peace and order, our sentiments about each other – against their own American people. Thinking Harris will back off on that agenda if she’s elected is the most unfounded idea anyone can start with. It’s inexplicable to think that way.

    It’s also inexplicable to think that they will give up the effort because of this setback.
    That’s been made clear in the responses to Trump’s close-enough-to-landslide win.

  32. It’s also inexplicable to think that they will give up the effort because of this setback.

    AesopFan:

    Certainly the Democrat Vanguard is not giving up.

    But the momentum is on our side for now. From what I can tell there is a large cultural shift underway supporting us.

    What if they gave a leftist revolution and nobody came?

  33. @ huxley, Cornflour in re Texiera: he’s been one of the few sane Democrats lately.
    When he “argued that demographic trends would guarantee Democrats would inevitably outnumber Republicans” he was looking at an organic process driven by leftist control of education (K-PhD) and the success of the regime media in demonizing Republicans.

    Had the Democrat/Marxists left that process alone, he may well have been correct.
    By trying to force a faster trend with some of their policies and actions, they created a backlash that may have set back, but not ended, the trend.

    One example is the deliberate importation and financial support of illegal immigrants, to the detriment of American citizens often of Hispanic and black communities. That demographic shifted Right in large numbers.

    Ditto for other demographics, including (oddly enough) gay & lesbian voters marginalized by the emphasis on trans rights — the masks came off and the public got a look at where their trendline was headed, and they didn’t like it.

  34. Another Democrat understands.
    Via Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.

    https://instapundit.com/683287/
    SHE’S RIGHT, I HOPE THEY DON’T LISTEN TO HER.

    Democratic Strategist shocks CNN with brutal truth about her party:
    “We are not the party of common sense… stop with the virtue signaling and speak to people like they’re normal.” pic.twitter.com/uoaMmrn78d
    — MRC NewsBusters (@newsbusters) November 8, 2024
    ************

    The linked tweet transcribes a video, and has some typos [corrected], paragraphing added:
    https://x.com/CurtisHouck/status/1854568993689833774

    Wow. BRUTAL words for her fellow liberals from Democratic strategist
    @JulieRoginsky on CNN:

    “I’m going to speak some hard truths…We are not be [the] party of common sense, which is the message the voters sent to us…When we address Latino voters…as Latinx, for instance, b/c that’s the politically correct thing to do, it makes them think we don’t even live in the same planet as they do.

    When we are too afraid to say that, hey, college kids, if you’re trashing the campus of Columbia University b/c you’re unhappy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that is unacceptable.

    But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we do not know what to say when normal people look at that and say, wait a second. I send my kids to college so they can learn, not so they can burn buildings and trash lawns, right? And so on and so forth.

    When we put pronouns after names and say she/her as opposed to saying, you know what, if I call you by the wrong pronoun, call me out. I am sorry. I won’t do it again. But stop with the virtue signaling and speak to people like they’re normal.

    There is nothing that I’m going to say to Shermichael that I’m not going to say to your [you] or I’m not going to say to somebody else. I speak the same language to everybody. But that’s not what Democrats do. We constantly try to parse out different ways of speaking because our focus groups or polling shows that so-and-so appeals to such and such.

    That’s not how normal people think. It is not common sense and we need to start being the part of common sense again.

    Joe Biden is not responsible for that, neither is Kamala Harris.
    [AF: they are symptoms, not causes]

    That is a problem that Democrats have had for years. I’ve been banging the drum on this for I don’t know how — probably ten years on this. We need to get back to being the party of common sense [so] that people look at us and say we understand you. We appreciate what you say because you speak our language.

    And, until we do that, we should stop blaming other people for our own mistakes.”

  35. Back to Teixeira: his New Democrat Manifesto is great, and I would hope the party would take it up, but look carefully at how he introduced it:

    “As they do so, here’s an idea to start with: have every Democrat ostentatiously say they subscribe to the following principles. These principles would signal to normie voters, particularly working-class voters of all races, that Democrats’ values and priorities are not so different from theirs. That’s a prerequisite for getting these voters to listen to Democrats’ pitch and take it seriously.”

    He did NOT tell them to actually live up to those principles; although, in fairness, I think that’s what he intended (see his final paragraph), you have to be clear about that with a party whose leaders tell lies for a living.
    ***************
    His top commenters reflect the same wariness.

    Vicky & Dan
    These are good principles.

    Republicans believe in most or all of them. And people trust Republicans to adhere to them.

    Plus, they miss something that’s critical: “Progressives” now own the Democratic Party and they are folks who enjoy their special status and who are convinced they are “right” (which is more important to them psychologically than is winning).

    Like (67)
    **********

    Ronda Ross Ronda’s Substack Nov 7

    Great points, but until Dems purge the term “uneducated” from their vernacular, they will never again be a coalition of much, but college graduates. Many, way too impressed with their C averages, in Gender Studies. Everyone is educated in something. Even a medical degree is of limited use , when your car breaks down or the heating system bites the dust, during a blizzard. If Dems cannot manage to respect everyone, who makes the US economy possible, Reps are going to have a good run.

    The outright distain, many Dems have for the people, lacking sheepskins,, can no longer be denied, and it begins at the top. Listening to the Obamas, with their $75 million dollar real estate portfolio, label, lower and middle class voters, racist or misogynistic, if they refuse to support the person that made voter’s lives, $13K a year, more expensive, was a new low in US politics. 1/2 of US families live on $75K, or less a year. Of that group, 40% live on, less than $45K a year. They are irredeemable, If they refuse to ask for more inflation, and millions more unvetted migrants, to flood their already failing schools?

    Along with losing the phrase “uneducated”, the party must stop, actively making the lives of middle and lower earners worse. Dem policies did not just fail to improve the lives of lower and middle earning Americans, Dem polices made their living standards worse. They are poorer, less safe, and already failing schools, are now overflowing with new students, in need of special assistance. Imagine how the parents at the most exclusive US private schools would react, if suddenly, student numbers increased by 25%, and new students were unable to speak English, or lacked any previous formal education.

    Dems, literally, removed even the little luxuries, lower earners enjoy. It might be a monthly trip to a McDonalds, a long drive to visit Grandma, summer day camp, or a very modest vacation. Dems took all that away, without a thought, and expected voters to say thank you, and ask for more? Along with a change in language, Dems need to acquire humility and empathy or be prepared, for a very long political winter.

  36. It looks like that second commenter read Ruy’s book.

    This is the introduction to the post, which is a worthwhile read, although I do have some caveats, and IMO the authors are flat-out wrong in some of their assertions.

    https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/where-have-all-the-democrats-gone-102
    A critical book for understanding yesterday’s election results.

    Editor’s note: Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election fair and square—and decisively. For those looking for answers to yesterday’s massive victory, TLP has four years of posts warning Democrats about the dangers of their party brand, agenda, and reliance on college-educated rather than working-class voters.

    As we sift through election results and survey findings from yesterday, I direct you to this piece by John B. Judis and TLP co-founder Ruy Teixeira published exactly one year ago. It’s excerpted from their excellent—and prescient—book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, which is out in paperback today.

    If you didn’t read the book last year, it should definitely be on your list for the end of this one. Much more to come on Election 2024 from TLP analysts and guest contributors over the coming days and weeks.

    John Halpin, executive editor of The Liberal Patriot

  37. A pair of posts from Hot Air about Democrats reacting to the election of Trump:

    One of them sort of understands, and raises a new consideration I had not seen elsewhere; the other doesn’t understand — or doesn’t want to admit that they do.

    https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/11/08/barro-democrats-have-a-blue-state-governing-problem-n3796832

    Josh Barro has a really good story up at the Atlantic today titled “Democrats Made Too Many Promises.” Barro is a Democrat and definitely not a fan of Trump but the point of his piece is that even though he’s not happy Trump won on a personal level, he believes Democrats deserved to lose. What follows is a long list of broken promises Democratic governors and mayors have made to their voters over the past several years.
    …
    There’s only so much fundamental failure people, even progressive voters, are willing to take.

    So yes, even if you don’t like Trump you have to admit that Democrats, including Kamala Harris, deserved to lose.

    IMO, what is worse is the number of promises the Democrats implemented, after persuading the voters that they would be a Good Thing.
    If you look closely, you end up with the same list of disasters that Barro cites.
    Democrats voted themselves into the hole they now want Republicans to pull them out of.

    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/11/08/kennedy-school-we-cant-remain-nonpartisan-as-if-they-were-n3796830

    Did you know that Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government was “nonpartisan?”

    I sure didn’t. I knew that they pretended they were, and gave cover to liberals and some moderates who wanted to use a “nonpartisan” platform to present themselves as nonpartisan “experts” who could be trusted because they were beyond politics.

    But I never really imagined that The Kennedy School was anything but a liberal bastion and a credentialing organization for the transnationalists.

    So now the Kennedy School is going to take off the nonpartisan gloves and openly advocate against Trump and the Republicans, because they have to Save Our Democracy.

    This is the face of academia today.

  38. David Strom lays it on the line.
    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/11/07/suddenly-trump-isnt-hitler-and-maga-voters-are-their-neighbors-again-n3796782

    Whatever you see on social media, on TV, and in cultural elite circles, at least half of Democrats and likely many more know that Trump is not Hitler and that his voters are not Nazis.

    While it is difficult to forgive their tolerance for the elites spewing this bile, I believe that a sizable number (10%? 20%?) will be hoping for reconciliation and mostly civil discussion. Many may even embrace, if not MAGA (not gonna happen), their fellow citizens again.

    Not so with the transnational elite and those who identify with them. The climate cultists (I don’t mean people who are worried about climate change, but rather the fanatics), the alphabet fanatics, the left-wing media, academia, and the AWFLs will continue to hate us.

    It is striking, though, that there is a large class of politicians and commentators who have suddenly changed their tune. The campaign operatives, the Bidens and the Harrises, and the grifters who will want to lobby the new administration have suddenly embraced a peaceful and civil transfer of power to…literally Hitler.

    Trump may be Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, but suddenly that is OK.

    [Statements by Harris & Biden]
    …
    To say the least, Joe Biden is not smiling ear-to-ear because he is turning the country over to a man he expects will round up his enemies with Seal Team Six and execute them. There will be no internment camps, no forced pregnancies, no Handmaid’s Tale, or any other such nonsense.

    Of course, they always knew this. They engaged in one of the most despicable psychological operations in American history. They called us deplorable, garbage, Nazis, grandma killers, racists, misogynists, and ever vile name in the book. Many in academia, the public schools, and the media are still saying these things, but the people who did the most to perpetrate the hoaxes are walking back their warnings.
    …
    They are doing this for a simple reason: their brainwashing didn’t work on enough people, and they need their votes the next go-round. They are trying to build up goodwill so they can try to brainwash more people next time.

    One of our jobs is to reach out to those who are open to our message–not just because it will be good for our movement, our country, and build our coalition–but because saving souls is, as the Jews say, a “mitzvah.”

    On the other hand, the very people walking back their vile slanders remain the enemy. They don’t appear to be gracious because they are gracious; they are doing it strategically–for the same reason they hurled their calumnies at us. They seek power. They want to dominate us.

    You don’t deploy slurs like “Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini” or call people “garbage” as normal political rhetoric. You don’t call concerned parents “domestic terrorists” out of good intentions. You don’t prosecute your opponents out of good will.

    I am willing to embrace ordinary, decent Democrats and welcome them into the coalition. I want the cynical manipulators to burn in hell as they deserve.

    In my understanding, “hell” is living for eternity in the kind of world you inflicted on everyone else out of pride, greed, or whatever was your goal and rationale; surrounded by people with the same moral deficiencies; and excruciatingly aware that you could have made choices that would have fit you to live in a better world, but that now it is too late.

  39. An interesting point by a commenter on Strom’s post:
    Sarcastic Frog a day ago
    For all of the inflammatory rhetoric spewed from the Left during the campaign; and the wailing and hand-wringing after, I have a little bit of respect for those individuals. They’re staying true to what they think/believe.
    The sycophantic media and politicians, who poured rhetorical gasoline on the fire on a daily basis, now expecting us to fall for their “hey, we weren’t serious about all that” gaslighting: they’re the ones we need to be on guard against, Right, Left, or in the middle.

  40. More Democrats who didn’t get the memo from the election.
    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/11/08/new-pentagon-officials-are-already-conspiring-against-donald-trump-n2181754

    Keep in mind, all of this nonsense is couched under the guise of refusing “illegal orders,” but there is no evidence Trump has any intention of giving one. Instead, what we are seeing is a repeat of the same garbage we saw during his first term. The bureaucracy feels threatened, and it is now preparing to fight a war from within the deepest realms of the federal government.

    That can’t be allowed to happen this time. Every top leader at every agency needs to be fired, with few exceptions. The entire government workforce, at least within the Beltway, is a left-wing cesspool that needs to be drained. No one should be safe, and the protective bubble they’ve built around themselves must be punctured. Federal employees are not more virtuous than private sector employees, and they shouldn’t be treated as such.

  41. Referring back to the post by Strom at Hot Air:
    https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/11/08/charlamagnes-eyes-were-opened-n2181731

    “Don’t y’all find it strange that now that he’s won, they’re not calling him a threat to democracy? They’re not calling him a fascist. I mean, damn…On Monday they were just calling him that. I would think that, if you really believe that, then somebody’s speech would be about how America effed up and how things are about to be really bad..It just makes you wonder how much of it did they really believe, or how much of it was just politics. That’s all.”

    Exactly. It is strange, because they never believed it. That’s the point. They were just whipping up fear and hatred for votes. They were diminishing the real evil of the Nazis by comparing their political opponents to Nazis who killed millions of people. That’s insane and mainstream media went along with it.

    Now that he’s wondering about that, maybe he can wonder about all the other lies that they have been feeding him and others for so long. This is just the tip of the spear. But I will hand it to Charlamagne that he is at least willing to raise such questions and it might get others on the left thinking too, although of course it’s been there to see all along. He’s saying it now, he could have said it before.

  42. It’s hard to understand something when your job depends on not understanding it.

    https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/11/08/nancy-pelosi-accidentally-illustrates-why-kamala-harris-and-democrats-lost-n2181746

    The conversation turned to the other reasons why Democrats were so handily defeated by Trump. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) indicated that their defeat stemmed from the hyperfocus on identity politics rather than honing in on the economy, a top priority for voters.

    However, Pelosi rejected this assessment, saying that she does not “respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working-class families.”

    Instead, cultural issues were more to blame for Democrats’ losses among working-class voters, according to Pelosi. “Guns, God and gays — that’s the way they say it,” she said, “Guns, that’s an issue; gays, that’s an issue, and now they’re making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman’s right to choose.”

    It is amazing that Pelosi, who has been in Congress since shortly after the Revolutionary War, still does not get it. She believes Democrats lost because of culture war issues, when this is clearly secondary.

    Nobody is thinking about abortion, transgender individuals, and homosexuality when they are struggling to afford groceries and gas. Moreover, it is as if she doesn’t understand the impact that immigration, crime, education, inflation, and other problems have had on the populace.

    Pelosi’s lack of insight actually illustrates why Harris lost. Democrats are clearly out of touch with average Americans. Until they realize this, they had better get used to losing.

  44. It kinda roots back to your “a mind is hard to change”. Their policies are the problem, they’ll never repudiate them, after all that IS them.

  45. I don’t know how to interpret election results, bar that one set of office holders exits and one enters.
    ==
    People vote Democratic for a variety of reasons, some of them random. Partisan Democrats have a particular self-understanding and a menu of resentments which drive them. The program of the Democratic Party such as it is is to injure social segments they despise. You can find a wonk here or there (one thinks of Harold Pollack or the late Mark Kleiman) who has policy goals which do not involve institutional corruption and abuse of others. You can find dissenters within the Democratic Party who do (Bari Weiss, Alan Dershowitz, Jonathan Turley). You can find members of the old guard who pretend the reality is something other than what it is (Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, or Gary Hart). Well, you can find them. NB, the Democratic Party is the default choice for the professional-managerial stratum in this country. The Democratic Party is a manifestation of their hostility to the rest of society.
    ==
    I’m a dissenter in my own family. I cannot be bothered with arguments. See G.K. Chesterton: you cannot reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into (and, in any case, I haven’t the patience).

  46. It kinda roots back to your “a mind is hard to change”. Their policies are the problem, they’ll never repudiate them, after all that IS them.
    ==
    You’d think 12 million randos traipsing over the southern border is something they would find distressing. They don’t.

  47. Hate and fear are the 2 tools in the Democrat arsenal–leveled at Trump who was “Hitler,” and a “threat to democracy”.
    Ignorance was utilized in drumming up the one issue they would actually speak to–abortion. And in this they utilized their 2 tools, never addressing the fact that abortion law was remanded to the States. They are the ones that wanted a Federal rule, not Trump. Classic projection. Hate, fear and lies–the triumvirate of our political adversaries. Love, courage and truth–the antidote.

  49. the dog food was really bad, the so called inflation reduction act, didn’t work, the fear toxin didn’t work, (re batman origin,) the squirrels of tony hincliffe, the expensive circus performers they didn’t work, 20 million dollars, 100,000 for the phony call me daddy set, other grifts will emerge as time goes by

    Obama could pull it off in 2008, because of the convenient crash, because of a moribund candidate, who shanked the one who was all in on defending the ideals of nation, the ubiquitous social media, and the journolist and the guilt factor, there was the novelty,

    the journolist and the social media cave was still operating in 2012,
    plus romney was another candidate,
    which yeats might have noted he didn’t have the killer instinct

    with Biden who was Obamas third term, they pushed everything they couldn’t get away with, with the specter of democracy, after four years of this, well that boat has sunk, been refloated, and sunk again, from bensonhurst to oakland the lesson has been learned,

  50. oakland discarded it’s mayor and da, part of the wave that scuttled gascon and brought some sanity with proposition 36

    the remarkable degree of disrespect and contempt that they showed, in this cycle, with all the real stakes we faced, which were dismissed by the candidate, her mumenchantz band of surrogates,

    in the latino community, the mumbling bad bunny, nicki jams and co, ricky martin was among the worst, he tried to crowd into a clown show at the Times with lin Miranda, all agrieved over dishonored puerto rico, the less said about Cardi B, the better, specially in a family-oriented blog, except to say her ridiculous phoned in responses

    the legacy media, what Rush might call the state run media, is certainly dead or moribund, so now they seek to tell us what we witnessed with our own eyes,

    the so called Avengers got back together, and it was a pitiful affair, Robert Downey found the real Tony Stark in Elon Musk too intimidating I suppose

    all of this glamour as they would describe in fantasy terms did not do the trick

    so the reality sets in, the princes of doha, understand what the new rules of the game are, and are sending Meshaal and co, an eviction notice,

    the EU might be coming to grips with the new reality, I tend to doubt it, maybe the Ministry of Truth in the UK might be persuaded to dial it back some

    but the tasks ahead are herculean, even for this force of nature, to make the crashing waves of inflation, to restore our energy balance to purge the deep state,

  51. you cannot reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into

    Perpetually on my to-do list to read more Chesterton. I really gotta get on that.

  52. Honestly, I think we’re seeing signs that they overplayed their hand in 2020-2021 with their push to cram DEI down everyone’s throats. They lost their most effective weapon against their opponents – the assumption that the Republican Party is “racist.” With minorities voting Republican in far greater numbers this year, that tactic is surely no longer working with vast swathes of the population. I think they went too far over the past decade and especially in the past four years with their identity politics, to the point where a lot of people stopped caring about being called “racist” (and xenophobic, bigoted, etc.). I optimistically think we’ve reached a point where a critical mass of people are not fazed by those insults. How are libs/progressives/leftists going to recover from that? It’ll be interesting to watch.

  53. Marisa wrote “Liberalism/leftism is akin to a religion for so many of its adherents, and they have so much of their identities as Good Persons ™ and Smart Persons ™ wrapped up in it.”

    This sums it up for me as well. To think they are reflective enough to abandon their very identities . . . very few will even contemplate the idea.

    And for many my age (70) and older, the Republican Party is still the party of Nixon and Reagan. They would rather die than be associated in any way with the Rep Party.

    I also find it so interesting that this cohort would never set foot in a Walmart. Yet they fancy themselves, still, as the champions of the downtrodden. But now, it’s as long as they’re not white.

    If you told them they’re now the status quo, they would recoil in horror at the thought.

  54. M Williams
    Yet they fancy themselves, still, as the champions of the downtrodden. But now, it’s as long as they’re not white.

    Correction:Yet they fancy themselves, still, as the champions of the downtrodden. But now, it’s as long as they’re not white and do not vote Republican.

    Marisa wrote “Liberalism/leftism is akin to a religion for so many of its adherents, and they have so much of their identities as Good Persons ™ and Smart Persons ™ wrapped up in it.”

    Yes, yes, yes. Bear in mind that “liberalism” changes with the wind. Who was talking about trans people twenty years ago? It is not so much “Liberalism” as it is “the ‘Liberal’ narrative de jour.”

    Most of us who read and comment here, like our host, are old geezers. How can we get younger people to look at this blog?

  55. @ Gringo > “How can we get younger people to look at this blog?”

    Maybe we could get Joe Rogan to interview her.

    She’s actually pretty well known in the Right Wing Blogosphere, and I think he might be interested in her wide range (from ballet to psychology) and deep analyses.

    Anybody here know Joe?

  56. “…Nobody is thinking about abortion, transgender individuals, and homosexuality when they are struggling to afford groceries and gas…”
    I’m old enough to remember when most people never thought very much about those issues; when I first started voting, and for roughly two hundred years before that, there was no official federal policy on any of them. Probably the majority of voters opposed all three, but didn’t think that they were important enough to pass federal laws about them.
    It was the left who decided that these were important issues, because they needed something to campaign on. Now they’re complaining about losing a Culture War that they started in the first place.

  57. and for roughly two hundred years before that, there was no official federal policy on any of them.
    ==
    I think from about 1917 if not earlier sodomy was grounds for discharge from the service. There were some policies in re federal employment.

  58. Art Deco,
    They survived a Civil War where they were effectively traitors, they will survive this, but what they cannot survive is being boring, stale, and so last century.

  59. Re: Hochul, Whitmer, Pritziker, Newsome saying they will protect “our” illegals. Starting Jan 21, no federal aid. None.

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