By Eric Blanc, Jacobin
After spending a few days in shell-shocked mode, I started thinking seriously about what went wrong on Tuesday and how we can defeat Trumpism. And I’m here to tell you that the news isn’t all bad.
Blame the Democratic Party establishment. Tuesday’s loss is what happens when you leave workers behind for decades, from Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, to Barack Obama’s austerity, to Chuck Schumer’s pivot to suburban professionals, to going scorched earth against Bernie Sanders’s movement in 2016 and 2020.
Incapable of seriously looking at the Democratic Party’s flaws, many elitist liberals are already blaming ordinary people, claiming most Americans are irreparably brainwashed or prejudiced. But if this were true, it’s hard to explain why Americans elected Barack Hussein Obama in 2008.
Democratic hacks are also claiming Dems need to move back to “the center” because Biden’s relatively progressive domestic policies and appointments failed to deliver the goods electorally. But after decades of Democratic abandonment of working people, these steps were too little too late. (Had senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema not blocked an ambitious Build Back Better agenda capable of delivering visible improvements in most people’s lives, and had Biden been able to consistently string together coherent sentences, it’s not inconceivable that our country’s recent political trajectory might have been different.)
It was suicidal to embrace Biden’s candidacy despite his dementia and unpopularity. Pundits praised Nancy Pelosi and co for eventually pushing Biden out, but it’s inexcusable that they didn’t do so a year earlier and allow for a real primary.
The only chance the Dems had at winning in 2024 was by running someone outside of the Biden administration, probably someone like Gretchen Whitmer. (And though Bernie was too old this time around, it’s worth remembering that he won over exactly the people Harris struggled with: workers across the country, Latinos, and Joe Rogan bros.)
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