The colossal failure of Kamala Harris
Table of contents
I didn't think Donald Trump was going to win to this election.
I knew that Kamala was a weak candidate, I'd said it all along. But I thought that the down ballot would save her. North Carolina, for instance, was going to vote for a Democratic governor. Arizona & Nevada were going to legalize abortion. And they all did, but those victories didn't translate to Kamala winning those swing states. Or any other swing state, for that matter. Or even the popular vote. It was a pretty stunning, unexpectedly lopsided loss.
And because I agree with the consensus that a Trump presidency is dangerous for a large portion of the country, I'm all the more furious that the Democrats would run such a weak candidate against him. In my view, the Democrats put us in this position by trying to maintain a status quo that the electorate roundly rejected.
Many others, though, are angry at the electorate itself.
A common reaction that I'm seeing to Trump's win is anger towards or fear of 50% of the country (based on Trump's vote share). "They must all be sexists. They must all be homophobic or transphobic or racist." But this logic is questionable at best.
A word about your neighbors
If we want to know about the views of Americans, we have polling data on all the issues. 85% of Americans, for instance, believe abortions should be legal under at least some circumstances. And the election results track with that data. For example, 82% of Nevada's voting-age population are registered to vote. 70% of registered voters turned out for the 2024 election. And 35.8% of them voted against legalizing abortion. That's ~20% of a swing state, which is around what you'd expect.
Trump, on the other hand, received 50.6% of the vote, or 29% of the voting-age population of Nevada. So while it stands to reason that nearly all Nevadans motivated enough to vote against the legalization of abortion did vote for Trump, it's not the case that everyone who voted for Trump is against access to abortion. Nearly 1 in 3 voted against that expectation.
We also know that 69% of Americans support gay marriage. 62% are against banning gender confirmation surgery for minors. Over 70% support a ceasefire in Gaza. And Fox News's own 2020 exit polling showed that 72% of voters support Medicare For All. So it's a mistake to believe that this election shows us something new and terrible about the views of Americans. That analysis makes us unnecessarily fearful of one another, but it also makes bigots believe that their fringe beliefs are shared by many more people than they actually are. And the last thing we ought to is to empower racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, or any other type of bigot by implying that their beliefs are shared by anyone but a backwards minority of reactionaries.
But if the data is so clear, then why isn't this view presented in mainstream political media coverage?
Well, if Democrats can make their constituents fearful enough of Republicans--and Republican voters in particular--then they don't have to run on popular policies. And when they lose, no matter how badly, they can scapegoat Republican voters rather than answering for their own failures. To wit, no Democratic congressional leader is facing a challenge, even after this historically bad performance in the election. They rely on the scapegoating to retain their power.
But just because 81% of Democrats turned up at the polls to save democracy, that does not necessarily mean that 81% of Republicans turned up to destroy it. Because 89% of Republicans cast their vote in support of harsher immigration laws, it does not mean that 89% of Democrats voted for open borders. Because 76% of Democrats cast their vote against women's autonomy being further criminalized, this does not mean that the same percentage of Republicans voted for criminalizing women's health care. At the end of the day, we have to contend with the fact that Trump gained vote share with a number of marginalized groups, specifically black & Hispanic men, & it's unlikely that they're bigoted toward themselves.
Instead, it's far more likely that they simply voted against their own interests & beliefs.
The duopoly problem
Truth be told, everyone votes against their own interests & beliefs when they participate in a 2-party political system. Consider that 70% of Americans believe that marijuana should be legal. But it remains illegal because the alcohol & tobacco lobbies have captured politicians. That means that hundreds of thousands, disproportionately young minority men, are arrested each year to protect the profits of a handful of companies. And yet, statistically, Democratic voters do not support these arrests or the abuse of policing that comes along with them. But the Democratic Party has no interest in enshrining a federal right to marijuana possession despite the fact that it would be wildly popular among voters, reduce the cost of policing, introduce a flood of tax revenue to municipalities, & reduce the strain on the courts & prisons.
The Democratic Party also refuses to support an arms embargo on Israel, despite a majority of Democratic voters believing that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. Instead, they're captured by the America Israel Political Action Committee & the hundreds of millions of dollars they contribute to the Democratic Party each year. But still, voting Democrat does not mean endorsing the death to the tens of thousands of Gazans, despite the Party's endorsement of these deaths.
Just the same, one can be against banning abortions & still vote Republican. The voters' interests are known on the economy, on immigration policy, on spending on overseas wars, & any other policy category. It's the special interest groups like the Christian Nationalists who are lobbying for the deeply unpopular policies. And it's these special interests who are the ones who hate women, not the average Republican voter.
At the end of the day, we're all simply trying to navigate a system with limited choices, knowing that people will suffer under capitalism regardless of which party we vote for. Our outrage, then, should be directed at the institutions: the politicians & the special interest groups.
What we're enduring is a crisis of democracy where the majority of us feel like we have no good choices & very little control over the behavior of the party we support, a phenomenon confirmed by the consistently low favorability ratings of presidential candidates.
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Of course, this is not to say that voters don't bear responsibility for their votes. There is a hypothetical world where we all collectively decide that we're done with corporate political parties that cater to special interests, & we all vote for a third party candidate who runs on a platform that reflects the wants of the electorate. To the degree that we did not do that, we do owe an explanation to Palestine, to women, to the black & Hispanic & LGBTQ+ communities, & anyone else aversely affected by the choices of elected American politicians. And the explanation is... we just don't believe in ourselves--or each other--enough to exercise that level of personal responsibility with our votes.
The least we can do, then, is recognize the bigoted views that have captured certain politicians via special interest groups as what they are: minority views. And push back against them as if the vast majority of Americans disagree because the vast majority of Americans DO disagree. Just because 250,000 swing voters in Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania (<1% of the country) voted for Trump instead of Kamala does not mean that sexism or racism or homophobia or transphobia is suddenly ok. Nor should we fear that those are suddenly majority views.
Still, we never should've been put in this situation to begin with.
In September 2016, I saw the first solid evidence that Trump could beat Hillary Clinton. Nate Cohn of the NY Times had posted some census data that said year-over-year change in real median income in rural America was down 2%. This may not seem like a statistically meaningful number, 2% is more or less stagnancy. But it was put in sharp relief as Obama touted historic job growth in the wake of the Great Recession while campaigning for Hillary. The problem was that these jobs were almost exclusively concentrated in urban communities, showing how broad statistics can sometimes conflict with the lived experiences of voters. Indeed, rural Americans were the only group still suffering in 2016 after Obama bailed out the banks for the recklessness that led to a near global economic collapse. The banks were too big to fail. And Rural Americans were too small to be counted. They were left out of the slow recovery & they expressed their feelings in November, choosing Trump over Hillary. Places like Howard County, Iowa swung 41 points from Obama to Trump.
To understand that type of dramatic swing, it's important to understand what Obama represented. When he launched his campaign, America was deep into George W Bush's second term, exhausted by a pointless War on Terror & renewed debates about the ethics of torture that should've ended decades before. The mortgage crisis had struck, hitting home owners first. And people were losing their homes & their jobs, then later their retirement savings when the stock market began to crater. The nation was in shock & Obama--a self-styled "community organizer" from Chicago--offered Hope & Change. Americans were learning that the social safety net had been gutted under Bill Clinton, & wanted a new direction for the country. And Obama was promising to be an FDR-type figure, offering a New Deal for the 21st century. Voters handed Obama the keys to the White House along with a majority in the House & Senate, however slim, expecting a new dawn for our country.
But this new dawn would not arrive. Obama immediately dropped his support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would've codified Roe vs Wade as law. He continued Bush's illegal wars in the Middle East, ultimately increasing drone strikes tenfold. But worst of all, electorally, he abandoned the evicted home owners whose suffering had led to his election. He signed a $700 billion recovery act, but most of it went straight to the banks. Essentially, the government issued loans to pay everyone's delinquent mortgages, but the home owners got evicted & the banks got to keep the homes. Had the loans gone directly to the homeowners, that money would've still made its way to the banks but the 10 million Americans who lost their homes would've instead been allowed to keep them.
Even the Affordable Care Act, the main policy achievement of his presidency, ended up being a watered down imitation of the plan he campaigned on, written by lobbyists to ensure that the healthcare profiteering continued long after his presidency ended. Barack Obama the President, it turns out, only vaguely resembled Barack Obama the Candidate.
It's hard to describe how much political capital Obama burned through during his 8 years in office. He continued to get by on charisma, ending his tenure with a 58% approval rating. But the 41 point swing in Howard County suggests that Americans--and specifically rural Americans--had been deeply burned by Obama's "Yes we can" rhetoric & "No we can't" governance. The new demand from voters was for substantiation of campaign promises. And when 2016 rolled around, Hillary Clinton did little in that regard, running on entitlement, & so the country voted for Donald Trump instead. Or, at least, enough voters to win the Electoral College, essentially saying, "Just give us a a tax cut & we'll make our own way." There was no faith that their lives would improve under a Hillary Clinton White House.
Fool me once, shame on me
In this post-Obama era where voters are far more skeptical, a politician like Kamala Harris doesn't have broad enough appeal to win a national election. Not primarily because she's a woman. Or because she's black. But primarily because her only message is that things are ok but could be slightly better so long as we just avoid electing Donald Trump. What she didn't foresee was that by taking on Biden's baggage & focusing almost exclusively on Trump & hypothetical fallout, she would give voters the sense that she did not recognize their current struggles.
Trump was re-elected because he speaks the language of the aggrieved. He says that things aren't ok. He rarely has a solution for the working class's woes, & in fact many of his policies will exacerbate their problems. But it's impossible to understate how much simply acknowledging the struggles of the working class will get you in 2024. Indeed, every state except for Washington & Utah moved to the right this election. The average voter ran from Kamala's defense of the status quo & toward Trump's call for change.
So broad was this re-alignment that it makes it tough to scapegoat the left wing of the party, as Democrats are wont to do. Kamala's status quo messaging was so unappealing, in fact, that a Republican candidate won the popular vote for just the 3rd time since 1988, & the first non-Bush to do so in four decades.
This should come as no surprise, as Kamala was the first candidate to bow out of the 2020 Democratic primary. Even then, she had trouble defining why anyone should vote for her to be president. She moved from far left to center-right over the course of just a few short months. She began the primary as a co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders's Medicare For All bill, then introduced her own plan in response to pushback from wealthy donors, providing a larger role for private insurers. But by the time she was selected as Biden's VP, she'd basically abandoned the idea of a major healthcare reform entirely. Likewise, she walked back or muted her statements in support of the trans community, her position on reducing police funding, & her passionate call for immigration reform. She pivoted from calling for a complete overhaul of ICE to famously issuing a stern warning as VP to Guatemalan asylum seekers traveling toward the southern border: "Do not come. Do not come."
Obama may have understood that Kamala's inability to define herself would be a liability on the campaign trail when he called for an open convention shortly after he helped to orchestrate Joe Biden's exit from the race. Or he may have simply understood that Vice Presidents, like the flailing, deteriorating Biden, make for bad presidential candidates.
The electorate doesn't often rally around a candidate who is chosen through the VP vetting process. Vice Presidents, after all, are primarily chosen to superficially make up for the shortcomings of the ticket lead. And Kamala is just one in a long line of VP failures across both parties. Biden? A disgraced one-term president, who won exclusively on the anti-Trump vote. Al Gore? Lost (technically) to the bumbling George W Bush. George H.W. Bush? Won a war in record time & couldn't get re-elected. Gerald Ford? One term, lost to fellow one-termer Jimmy Carter. VPs are not chosen by the Party electorate, they're typically forced on us by Leadership in a desperate attempt to extend a popular president's administration to a third term. You have to go back to 1965 to find a VP who won re-election as a president, & Lyndon B Johnson ascended to the Oval Office under... unique circumstances.
But Kamala wasn't emerging from beneath a wildly popular 2-term president, like George H.W. Bush or even Al Gore. She was in fact crawling out from underneath the wreckage of another VP's disaster re-election campaign.
The voters didn't choose Kamala. Not during the 2020 or the 2024 primary (to the extent that there was one). She simply claimed the nomination by negotiating agreements with Biden's electors behind closed doors. And the party's electorate was meant to back her simply on the basis of her not being Joseph R Biden--who was deteriorating before our eyes--or Donald J Trump, convicted felon & famous sex pest.
By no agreed upon definition, therefore, did she even vaguely resemble a "good candidate."
And yet there was a broad sense (even by me) that because Roe v Wade had been overturned, women would turn up in higher numbers to elect Kamala. After all, Trump was a deeply unpopular one-term president. And outside of Grover Cleveland in 1893, presidents don't win non-consecutive terms. All of the conditions were ripe for Kamala, despite herself, to be lifted up like some kind of political Rudy past our one and only twice-impeached former commander-in-chief. Just as she inherited the presidential nominee, many assumed she would inherit the West Wing.
If only.
Apparently we all underestimated just how little trust anyone had that Kamala would make their life better. And I get it. She was a prosecutor, & who likes prosecutors? Her social circle is the Bay Area tech & law elites, which is double gross. The way she speaks is unnervingly unnatural. And she demonstrably has no personal convictions; she'll claim to support whatever cause she believes will further her political career.
This is evinced by her media buys in the final weeks of the race. She simultaneously ran seemingly pro-Israel tv ads aimed at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania & seemingly pro-Palestinian ads aimed at Arab voters in Michigan. Turns out you don't win elections by just telling people what you think they want to hear.
She lost both Pennsylvania & Michigan.
If we could turn back the clock, there's a moment when Kamala might have been able to win this election. It was in March of 2021, when Bernie Sanders, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, was trying to get the minimum wage raised from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour as a part of $2 trillion stimulus relief package. The senate parliamentarian ruled that the increase could not be passed through the reconciliation process (wherein the House & Senate versions of the bill are reconciled into one final piece of legislation). But Kamala, as the Head of the Senate, has the power to overrule the parliamentarian. Joe Biden, assumedly in a lost cause bid to foster cooperation with Republicans, directed Kamala not to overrule the parliamentarian. But as Head of the Senate, Kamala is free to act independently of Biden, just as Vice President Pence did when President Trump asked him not to certify the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.
Had Kamala defied Biden & overruled the parliamentarian (as Biden regularly defied Barack Obama on issues like Israel), she would've been considered a working class hero. And when she's asked a softball question on the View like, "What would you have done differently than President Biden during the last 4 years?" she could say, "Well, I'll tell you what I DID do differently... I overruled the Senate parliamentarian & raised the minimum wage despite Joe's objections."
But that is not Kamala. Kamala is not a working class hero. She's not a woman of conviction. She's a cop, a functional extension of the ruling body. She's a Bay Area Elite. And her political career is now over, having never made it past the VP residence at the Naval Observatory.
The world's smallest violin plays on.
The cult of personality
The central focus of Kamala's campaign seemed to be developing a second-rate, Obama-style cult of personality through which to sell the status quo to the American people. This wasn't a campaign about change. It was about Her. And it was about Him. Good versus evil. Light versus darkness. It was about what the candidates represented, not what they would do for their constituents.
And this worked with Americans who weren't burned by Obama's slow economic recovery or hit so hard by pandemic inflation. For those who had the good fortune of being insulated from the day-to-day hardships of late stage capitalism, the ideological framing of the election made sense.
REM singer Michael Stipe, for instance, took to Instagram to recount a truly unhinged story about seeing Kamala & first gentleman Doug Emhoff years ago in a Manhattan restaurant, dumbstruck by how utterly in love they seemed to be as they shared a burger. Just a day later, it was reported that an ex-girlfriend dumped Emhoff after he slapped her in the face when he thought she was flirting with a valet during a trip to southern France. This reportedly took place during his divorce from his first wife after he cheated on her by impregnating his child's school teacher.
The idea was that Kamala somehow represented the best of us, able to feel more deeply & love more truly than you or I. She & her family & her team were superheroes, here to save democracy for us all. Beyoncé & Oprah & Taylor Swift--all beneficiaries of the wealth inequality in America--voiced their unreserved support.
Indeed, Kamala was so universally beloved, her campaign would have you believe, that she gained the endorsement of--checks notes--Republican Liz & Dick Cheney. Democratic elites pilloried Bernie Sanders for promoting a Joe Rogan endorsement in 2020, but here was Kamala, referring to the architect of the illegal invasion of Iraq, noted war criminal & staunch efender of waterboarding as a patriot for "putting country above party" & endorsing her campaign.
It's hard to imagine who this was supposed to appeal to. The Bush administration left office with a 26% approval rating, scarred by Dick's middle east misadventures, & Liz lost her House seat in a primary challenge by almost 38 points. But the campaign was so drunk on the idea of her universal appeal that this failed to register.
But this move was more than simply ineffective. The Bush/Cheney administration famously won the 2000 election when the Supreme Court stepped in & stopped a recount in Florida that may have delivered the race to Gore/Lieberman. This chaotic sequence of events was kicked off by the Brooks Brothers Riot, where Republican operatives descended on a polling place in Miami, FL with the goal of disrupting the recount. The Bush/Cheney campaign, in other words, wrote the playbook Trump used to try & steal the 2020 election after losing to Biden. So referring to Dick Cheney as a patriot really undermines the accusation that Trump is a threat to democracy.
In the late days of the campaign, Harris also sent former president Bill Clinton to Michigan to lecture Arab voters on why they should not just vote for Harris, but should empathize with Israel because of the October 7 attacks. In addition to being completely tone deaf & on the wrong side of history, Clinton is, of course, also a well-documented friend of Jeffrey Epstein & also has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated solely to listing the sexual assault allegations leveled against him. These were two of the the campaign's main arguments against Trump--that he was dangerous to women & associated to Epstein--undermined by her & the broader Democratic Party's unwillingness to cut ties with this creep.
It's as if the Harris campaign was completely detached from reality for large stretches of the race.
At a campaign stop alongside Kamala running mate Tim Walz, former presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar described a psychotic fever dream in which Dick Cheney & Bernie Sanders ride across the midwest on a Kamala campaign bus, holding a sign together that says "Brat Fall." (A Charli XCX reference.)
Bernie, I'm convinced, would not be participate in such a photo op. In fact, he had very pointed words after the votes were counted.
She co-opted Chappell Roan's Femininomenon for her campaign, despite Chappell's refusal to endorse the campaign. She mimicked Roan's camo hats. Her supporters planted nonsensical yard signs with encoded messages like "Grab him by the ballot | Dogs for Harris/Walz" or "Harris/Walz, Obviously." It was a campaign in large part utterly indecipherable to the average working voter, coasting almost exclusively on vibes.
Trump supporters, meanwhile, planted signs with straightforward messages like "Trump Low Prices | Kamala High prices."
And before we continue, yes, I can hear you. "But Trump is so much worse!" Agreed, so much worse. Objectively. But, again, it's impossible to understate how much simply acknowledging the struggles of the working class will get you in 2024. Trump's rallies consist of him listing off perceived or imagined or even deserved slights, but a large portion of the working class relate because they, too, feel slighted. After all, the federal minimum wage hasn't been raised since 2009! And Kamala could've been the person to do it.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose Bronx/Queens, NY district swung 23 points toward Trump compared to 2020, described this on Joy Reid's show after the election. "Democrats very often in their messaging speak in terms & in concepts, not in the second person: 'I care about you.' And political races are not about one candidate versus another candidate... it is a race to convince a person who cares about you more." AOC, who exists on the left flank of the Democratic Party, trailed behind Biden by 5.5 points in 2020. In 2024, led Kamala by 4 points. And the voters who voted for both AOC & Trump gave the same reasoning: that both she & he convincingly expressed that they care about the working class.
In the days after the election, some stunned Democrats dutifully if resentfully listed the Biden/Harris administration's economic accomplishments: the Build Back Better framework created jobs, wages outpaced inflation, unemployment is low, some student loan debt was forgiven, etc. And yet, as was the case when Hilary ran in 2016, boasting about these relative successes sends the message to voters that simply maintaining the status quo should be enough, implying that the long term cost of rent & real estate, automobiles, health care, college, etc. outpacing wage growth aren't major issues worth addressing. Just be glad things aren't worse, they say.
Some COVID-era programs like the Child Tax Credit expansion or student loan payment pause weren't just relief from pandemic-caused economic stressors. Not to voters, anyhow. They gave a brief taste of what a government that centers the wellbeing of its people actually feels like. The Child Tax Credit expansion alone reduced child poverty to a historically low of 5.2% in 2021. The Democrats then allowing this to expire increased child poverty to 12.4% in 2022. This felt to the working voters who benefited from this program like a tacit endorsement of a return to a status quo that is simply not working for many Americans. And they're not wrong to think so.
This was not an election about solutions. Neither candidate offered many, anyhow. It was an election about grievances. It was about the difficulty of living under the increased prices of goods & services while wealth inequality continues to spiral out of control. It was about the ever-growing power of corporations over our daily lives under neoliberal capitalism. It was about the unfair cost of housing & education & healthcare.
And Kamala's campaign--just like Hillary's before--did not acknowledge the scope or gravity of these problems, never mind meaningfully addressing them. Trump, for his part, at least acknowledged them.
But by simply responding to the tone of Trump's campaign, voters have likely cast a vote against their own interests. Trump's tariff plan, for instance, didn't work last time. When he imposed tariffs on Chinese appliances, US washing machine manufacturers simply raised the prices of their own machines to match the price of Chinese machines, increasing their margins & increasing costs for consumers across the board.
Trump's plan to turn Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin into the "Silicon Valley of the Midwest" has turned into a giant tax grift on the part of Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. Initially promising the creation of 50,000 jobs & the investment of billions into a state of the art manufacturing facility, Foxconn was granted billions in tax subsidies only to downsize the project to a $672 million investment, creating only 1,454 jobs. So much for Trump's so-called "Eighth Wonder of the World."
Economists believe his economic plans could actually cost working families thousands of dollars per year. Which is not surprising, coming from a man whose companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy six times. But it's also not irrational for working voters to deeply distrust economists like Larry Summers--an economic advisor to Obama during the Great Recession--who have shaped a society now largely defined by economic inequality.
A new age of American populism
Even institutionalists are beginning to recognize that the Obama-era of charismatic status quo defenders is over. Former Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki concluded that, "There was an over listening to and an over lifting up of people who left Trump, not people who left the Democratic Party...The people who left Trump...that is not the winning coalition." Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau observed that the politicians who are popular now are "a little rough around the edges," "don't seem like they come from Washington," can address the "deep distrust of institutions" through connecting with voters, & have a story to tell about the economy & can consistently stay on message.
It shouldn't be surprising that this all sounds a lot like a Bernie campaign.
According to Favreau, Biden tried to stay in the race even when his internal polling suggested that the campaign could lose as many as 400 electoral college votes. That would've been a landslide not seen since the Reagan/Bush era, when neoconservatives spent 12 years completely remaking our government in the image of California Republican billionaires. And despite the campaign's support of this truly dimwitted & selfish quixotic quest on Biden's part to maintain power, Kamala chose to inherit the Biden campaign staff & continued to trust them to figure out how to defeat Trump.
Obviously they failed. But the upside may be the imminent death--long overdue--of a corporatist party still deeply traumatized by Reagan's electoral reign.
The silver lining to Trump's victory, dull as it is, is that the Democratic electorate may be able to choose their own candidate in the 2028 primary. Had Kamala won, she would never have never forgone re-election & the Democratic Party would not have run a 2028 primary, all but guaranteeing the Republicans a victory. But now the Party has an opportunity to elect a populist nominee in 2028 instead of 2032.
Under the leadership of Pelosi--one of the wealthiest members of congress & a fundraising "money juggernaut"--the Party has continued the post-New Deal, Reaganist tradition of serving the donor class first & foremost, oftentimes at the expense of the average voter. This has manifested a number of times as deeply conservative moves, many times from Democrats still regarded as party leadership.
Biden's 1994 Crime Bill, for instance, contributed to historic incarceration numbers, particularly of black men. No nation has ever incarcerated as many of its people as America, in large part due to Biden's crime bill. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to allow anyone opposed to Bush's Invasion of Iraq to testify during hearings, greasing the tracks for America's illegal invasion. And he'd go on to increase funding to police after historic Civil Rights protests of 2020, where young people across the country marched in protest of police violence against marginalized communities.
Bill Clinton's wanton deregulation during the '90s led to the 2008 Economic Collapse, among other things like the destruction of regional radio. And Obama later oversaw record numbers of drone strikes in the middle east, including a wedding procession in Yemen.
And, of course, nearly the entire Party has backed Netanyahu's horrific assault on Gaza.
And these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Party's role in shifting the country rightward. Biden's final signature legislation, for instance, was supposed to be a deeply conservative border bill that he touted as being tough on illegal immigration. Kamala pledged to appoint a Republican to her cabinet. And Nancy Pelosi famously said that the country needs "a strong Republican Party."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once said that in any other country, she & Biden would not be in the same party, which is undoubtedly true. The Democratic Party has in this post-New Deal era done very little to distinguish itself from its conservative counterpart. The disagreements--like the Republicans' rejection of Biden's border bill--are mostly for show, nonsensical to anyone trying to make sense of each party's supposed values. You could make a convincing argument that the parties are in large part the same, except for that they differentiate themselves by serving different special interests & marketing themselves to different identity groups.
And yet the election of Obama, running as a New Deal type of change candidate, the election of Trump in 2016, the surge of support for Bernie Sanders in 2020 with the record small-donor fundraising numbers, & even Trump's re-election in 2024 all indicate a rejection of the status quo of corporate politics & of the wealth inequality explosion that's taken place under its reign.
But things can be different. And Gretchen Whitmer's governorship of Michigan provides an example for the future of the Democratic party. She was elected at a time when the state was ruled by an anti-union Republican trifecta who had restricted access to abortion, overseen the Flint water crisis, & passed so-called Right to Work laws. When Whitmer won, she didn't kowtow to the Republican state congress, she kept to her progressive ideas, contrasting herself against the Republicans' conservative, corporatist values, & by the time she was re-elected in 2022, she had turned both the Michigan house & senate blue. Then she followed through on her promises, repealing the abortion ban, the regressive tax laws, & the anti-union Right to Work laws, passing gun safety laws & LGBTQ+ protections, & expanding access to voting. Her governorship is what precisely what a "Yes we can" government looks like.
The pitchforks are coming
There is a wave building in America. It began under Obama with the Occupy Wall Street & Tea Party protests. It returned with the support in primary campaigns for populists (self-styled or otherwise) like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, & Donald Trump. Then came the 2020 Civil Rights protests. It splinters off into regional protests, like the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta. And endures in the campaigns of true populists like Claudia De la Cruz & Dr. Cornel West. These are all manifestations of a rejection of the status quo.
As wealth inequality continues to spiral out of control, shelter becomes less & less affordable, the cost of starting a family keeps moving further out of the average worker's reach, & environmental catastrophe continues to loom ever larger, the electorate will continue to place power in the hands of those who promise change. It's up to the Democratic Party to decide whether or not they want to take those reigns by adopting policies that promise to meaningfully improve the lives of voters.
The electorate was close to choosing one of these candidates in 2020 with Bernie Sanders. He was running away with the primary when Obama managed to convince Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, & Beto O'Rourke to drop out of the race & endorse Biden at a Texas rally just prior to Super Tuesday, gaslighting the electorate into believing that Bernie had no shot in the general election. Given the recent institutional re-assessments of what the electorate wants, the certainty that Sanders would have lost seems absolutely absurd.
The Democratic electorate will have another shot in 4 years.
A playbook for the interim
No one really knows what to expect from Trump's second term. On the one hand, he's no longer singularly focused on dismantling Obama's legacy, so petty moves like dismantling the ACA may no longer be a priority. On the other, the Heritage Foundation has a playbook of wants in Project 2025 that he may or may not to take up, including outright comical policies like banning pornography.
More tax cuts are all but guaranteed, but tariffs will likely lead to immediate inflation & therefore may not last. Trump will likely try to roll back Biden-issued protections for the LGBTQ+ community. He will gut (though unlikely eliminate) the Department of Education & try to privatize everything he can. And he will reduce efficiency of government (likely leading to a flood of lawsuits) by firing a slew of government employees with institutional knowledge.
It will be a mess.
Even a realistic view on what a Trump administration is capable of is still pretty bleak. But that doesn't mean there's not room to lay the groundwork for positive change.
Supreme Court reform
Many have speculated that justices Clarence Thomas (76), Samuel Alito (74), & John Roberts (69) may retire during Trump's presidency, but this seems highly unlikely. Liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor (70) just recently rebuked calls for her retirement, & she's on the losing side of the court. Supreme Court Justices are notorious about retaining their power, & the current conservative justices are enjoying remaking the law in their own image. The window in which they'd likely need to retire in order for younger conservative justices to take their place would be in Trump's first two years, & that seems like a stretch to me.
Regardless of whether or not they retire, though, the fact is that the court has been undemocratically shifted conservative to a degree that's deeply inconsistent with the will of the electorate. Therefore, it's paramount that the next Democratic nominee for president take on as their highest priority court reform. Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court floated a system whereby justices serve 18 year terms, codifying 2 justice replacements per 4-year presidential term, & this type of system can be implemented by congressional statute. This type of reform is essential to preserving democracy in the U.S. as we've traditionally defined it. So we must demand a Supreme Court that reflects the votes of the electorate.
State ballot initiatives
The most effective push-back against conservative Supreme Court rulings is through ballot initiatives at the state level. Since Roe v Wade was overturned, numerous states have overturned state level abortion bans through constitutional amendments, the most conservative of which being Missouri. This is an issue where the laws are deeply out of touch with public sentiment, & the 21 states that still carry bans will be overturned one-by-one. These ballot initiatives need to be vigorously pursued in states with abortion bans.
Demand for strong anti-trust enforcement
Kamala Harris received major push-back from donors regarding Lina Khan's aggressive anti-trust enforcement at the FTC. Despite being called the most effective person in Washington, Harris refused to state plainly that she'd keep Khan as the FTC chair even as her own surrogate, Mark Cuban, went on TV to endorse her firing. In an era where corporations are exerting ever more power over our lives, it's imperative that we demand the next Democratic presidential nominee have very clear views in favor of strong anti-trust enforcement.
Advocacy for marginalized groups
The Supreme Court has its eye on rolling back LGBTQ+ protections, & the Christian Nationalists have even more lifestyle/identity restriction plans on the legislative side at all levels. It's more important now than ever that we support marginalized Americans who are targeted by moral panics & religious bigotry. Kamala's campaign cut any mention of transgender Americans from the 2020 Democratic National Convention & we have to demand more from the next nominee. And we should find local groups to contribute to who protect the rights & well-being of these communities.
Demand a clear stance on Palestinian rights
A key component to convincing the electorate that your pro-worker rhetoric is genuine is to apply it consistently, & in this way Palestinian rights are closely related to worker rights. Indeed, seven labor unions have written President Biden asking for a weapons embargo, & these are not the only unions who express solidarity with the people of Palestine. The next Democratic presidential nominee needs these votes (not just college students, Arab Americans, & self-described leftists, but workers in general), & therefore needs a strong, clear stance on Palestinian rights.
Demand that climate catastrophe mitigation be a top priority
We live in a country where many people have been hit by multiple so-called "once in a century" storms. Hurricanes, floods, tornados, wildfires, heat waves & ice storms. Younger generations have little reason to hope for the future, given presidential candidates reluctance to acknowledge the gravity of the existential threat that manmade climate change presents. A candidate that does not boldly champion the Green New Deal does not champion the future of young Americans.
Class unity is the key to the future we want
The union exodus from the Democratic Party began in the '90s under Bill Clinton, but a general labor exodus started in 2016, after Obama failed to live up to his campaign promises during the Great Recession recovery. White working class men that Hillary took for granted or outright ignored peeled off of the Democratic coalition & gave Trump the presidency. In 2024, black & Hispanic men began peeling off. This is a trend that is not going to reverse in 2028 with the Democrats' current strategy.
The only solution is a complete redefinition of the Democratic coalition, focusing on pro-labor policy & celebrating things like a Joe Rogan endorsement of Bernie, rather than rejecting them. This means reassessing the political landscape along class lines & resisting the calls from ruling class politicians to fear & hate one another. Because we all have the same basic wants & needs when it comes to material conditions: fair pay, worker protections, health care, affordable homes, affordable education, the ability to start a family, etc. Acknowledging this, banding together & demanding real representation in Washington is the only way forward.
We can make Trump's election a blip, a misfire on the way toward New American Populism. We can avoid the authoritarianism that the Democrats have laid on our doorstep. We can have a "Yes we can" government, we just have to demand it. It's up to us to make it so.
Jon W. Cole is a graphic designer / developer based in Atlanta. His interests are corn syrup & esoterica. He has yet to take down his Christmas tree or remove his Bernie Sanders For President license plate.