I could be wrong, but maybe Joe’s moral platitude of “we are in a fight for the soul of our nation” doesn’t quite ring true to the good old American ear. Maybe it shouldn’t be the rally cry to bring our hungry masses into the Democratic tent. And again, I can be wrong, I also don’t think the dark tenor can be just swapped out with Kamala’s “bringing the joy back.”
Because—-
Something can be true, the warnings can be real, the fight against a fascist threat can be on the horizon, but that doesn’t mean it should be the vanguard in the narrative war. And it certainly doesn’t mean you got to say that shit, over and over.
Especially not when you want to court people in Peoria. Or Erie, PA. Who last I checked are still the ones you need if you want to carry the electoral college, that racist hold over of a feudal age built on “the original compromise”, to 270. And most people in Peoria or Erie don’t give a fuck about anything leftist coastal elites worry their heads about. They simply don’t have energy, interest, or time.
So we lost. Big time. And what did we lose? Too early to tell. But it seems like it could be a heck of a lot. But before we disasterbate. Lets assess. As my friend Paul Z says, after we finish mourning, we must assess, then resist.
From my assessment, I believe the most important question we should be demanding our party bosses ask themselves is not why did we lose this, but HOW did we lose it?
I’m not a numbers analyst, so I will leave the data and charts to the experts. Besides, those numbers are only a lagging indicator and consequence of something else.
And what is that something else that is always the first domino to fall?
The rejection or acceptance of a narrative. A story.
We lost the narrative. Or rather - we gave it away. Fumbled it! No, to say we fumbled it is to give the fumbler dignity. What we really did is leave that shit on the bench so it could be stolen while we were busy correcting each other and talking about our feelings and fears and calling the other side Nazis. Then, when we turned around to look for our lost narrative when we needed it, it was gone. And it was too late.
We didn’t pay enough attention to what the numbers were saying. About what James Carville warned us about. Woke-ness. And believe me, that is all the other side focused on. In battle, you exploit where your opponent is most vulnerable.
Sure, it didn’t hurt when we called people dumb, near sighted, racist, misogynistic, simple, foolish, backwards, unsympathetic, evil, even worse and so on. It was our moral superiority that buried us. Moral superiority never wins. Common sense bull shit you can put on a bumper sticker always does.
So, by the time we woke Joe from his nap and got around to giving Kamala the chance, she was suddenly speaking of Joy and finally we had something, but by then it was too late.
Most battles are lost long before they are fought.
We forgot the very people upon whom you cannot win the election. We forgot about Peoria. The basic math. It is a numbers game and we lost it.
And how? Well, let me start with me and how I started to drift. I am a long time activist, socialist, engaged dem and even I was sick of the AI driven tech bugging me, filling me with doom texts and fear, as if they were a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was disengaging because I was sick of the invasion. I still voted and really believed in Kamala and Tim as incredible leaders, but I am talking about campaigning, not governing.
Maybe the endless robocalls and non stop emails only helped make us tune out. Even John Stewart talked about “canvassing” as just a waste. It does not matter how much you canvass if the message you canvass with is not landing.
Also — no one was invited to engage. The machine took that courtship for granted and invaded our privacy.
No one stopped and out of respect asked the invisible classes, hey, we see you, we know you are hurting, we know you feel left behind, what can we do to help? To earn your trust back. You are our priority. We are listening. We took these people for granted.
Lets stop at look at that and see how maybe this taking people for granted, not asking for people to see if they would like to get engaged is the very principle that cost us this election. We just assumed that certain demographics who aren’t really seeing their lives improved ( people of various races would stand with us, because they always had). And then the democratic machine exacerbated this problem by bombarding them with messages that didn’t really address them specifically. They felt talked to rather than engaged with.
What else? Maybe the concerts with Beyonce and Bruce only made the farm belt, and the rust belt, and the people struggling to survive in mid west, or mid sized, east coast cities feel alienated. These star studded affairs only played right into the coastal elite image that is parroted by the other side and fed on repeat on Fox News. We basically did the work for Trump. He didn’t even have to campaign. In fact, stopped. And danced to the Village People. It had metastasized. We were doomed.
Because we lost control of the narrative.
And then we made the critical error, the enlightened left always makes. We tried to show our work like it was a math test. People don’t need to know if you have a plan, they don’t want you to explain the plan to them. They don’t need to hear the numbers, what their tax cut is going to be, because people don’t vote with their minds, but from their feelings and fears. They want something simple. Like — I don’t know. She broke it. I’ll fix it.
Doomed.
So when you mix in America’s toxic refusal to elect a woman, let alone a woman of color, because we are a backwood boys club of fear, and then anoint an extremely competent public servant who can see both sides of every issue, to her own fault, at the last minute after three years of unpopularity - a monkey could have won. And maybe we wish we had one now on the Republican ticket. Because a monkey would probably do better that the felon.
See, now is the time we can call that prick what he is, because it’s been decided and we are the enraged minority. But you don’t lead with that fear and Nazi shit during a general election!! Call him that now all you want though. By all means, scream into the abyss and wind.
And let me be clear, I am not saying all the issues and protections and real deal things that effect people who are truly vulnerable doesn’t matter. QUITE THE OPPOSITE!!!! It very much matters! It matters so much that is why you can’t lead with it! It is at the core of what matters. But here is the trick of politics. You can’t say it. Because- unfortunately - a lot of people - the ones you need to get the numbers over the starting line - the ones in Peoria - don’t want to hear it. Sadly.
I knew we lost when I saw the ad: She is for they them and Trump is for you. It was a catch phrase of evil simplicity that weaponized the hot button issue that carried that asshole over the line. All that was left to do was broadcast that utter bullshit between offensive drives of the Green Bay Packers, and Philadelphia Eagles, and Cleveland Browns, and Cincinnati Bengals, and Carolina Panthers. Seeing a trend there?
I remember seeing his ads next to hers. And I knew we were fucked. Because her ads, the ones that cost a billion dollars didn’t appeal to the core reptilian brain.
I’m sorry. It is that simple. No matter how many of us live in Boston, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, Portland and LA - we are not enough.
Do the fucking math.
But no one wants to do that math because we think people care about principles and issues and school lunches. They don’t. The majority of us are desperate and alone and afraid. And that is the very condition that creates awful unspeakable and undeniable disaster economics and eventually - demagogues.
And it is not just an American Problem. Look at Europe in this winter of rollback.
So we distracted ourselves, again, lost the narrative that the unity of our historic coalition demands possession of to thread the stacked deck of the electoral college. We didn’t play our hand right. And trust me, I know the stakes of this game are indeed existential. I know that protection for transgender rights and abortion and ACA and the whole department of education - and the status of undocumented people are on the table. But the frightened and aggrieved and hurting average white American didn’t want to hear that.
In essence, we were shit poker players. And not ruthless enough in our assessment. The end result? We took the bait, went all in, and got fucked. Or to put it in boxing terms, we lead with the chin and got knocked the fuck out.
Yes. You should feel betrayed. But by the democratic machine. Fuck the other guys, they aren’t worth our ire and we can’t do anything about their inner machinations. But we can send a message to our own. We need to strategize and not moralize. Something the other side never mixes up.
You cannot carry a general election and talk about more than one elective issue. None of this is new. Lao Tsu said a thousand years ago or whatever. Don’t tell the enemy your fucking plans!! Or they will use them against you .