By Matt Bruenig, who writes about politics, the economy, and political theory, with a focus on issues that affect poor and working people. He is currently the president of 3P, a think tank founded in 2017. The primary mission of 3P is to publish ideas and analysis that assist in the development of an economic system that serves the many, not the few and aims to fill the holes left by the current think tank landscape with a special focus on socialist and social democratic economic ideas. Bruenig previously worked as a lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board and as a policy analyst at the Demos Think Tank. Originally published at his website.
For me, this election differed from the last two in that my particular policy interests — a universalist welfare state, mass unionization, and socialization of wealth — were absent. The Biden administration achieved nothing significant on these fronts. There was no primary campaign that featured a candidate championing these causes. Harris did not run on them.
This absence made me fairly intellectually detached from the election, not because the outcome doesn’t matter, but because it had no real stakes for the stuff that I promote in the discourse.
Other elements of the left-of-center world did not have this luxury.
The macro people are contending with a reality where fiscal and monetary policy helped achieve high employment, good GDP growth, and some wage compression, but Democrats still lost.
The self-styled populists got to run the relevant parts of the administrative state — Lina Kahn at FTC, Jonathan Kanter at DOJ, Rohit Chopra at CFPB, among others — and were able to achieve significant influence beyond that through a “whole-of-government” approach that had agencies as far flung as the Copyright Office, the DOT, and the NLRB all taking actions meant to support this broader agenda. All of these agencies took actions championed and then celebrated by this group. The self-styled populists even had significant influence over crafting the little bits of policy Harris actually released. But Democrats still lost.
The foreign policy apologists spent the year leading up to election in the unenviable position of having to defend that the Biden administration provided money and weapons to the Israeli government to assist the carrying out of an atrocity in Gaza. They argued that this was necessary because a less supportive policy would cause some voters to stop supporting Democrats. To the extent that Biden’s actual policy caused some voters to stop supporting Democrats, the argument was that those voters need to get over it and realize that Trump is worse than Harris in a variety of ways. Democrats still lost.
The moderates got to essentially run the Harris campaign. This group claimed that the way to win the election was to move to the right in rhetoric and in policy on things like immigration, guns, and identitarian issues while also paring down the policy agenda to a few seemingly popular topics like health care and abortion. Harris clearly did run her campaign this way, but Democrats still lost.
When the party does what you want, either in policy or in campaigning, but still loses, it is hard to escape this feeling that maybe you are implicated, maybe people now think you are stupid and your ideas were wrong. This also triggers a sort of defensiveness in the form of finding other explanations or defiantly doubling down. It’s a troubling thing to watch when viewed from the outside.
The truth of course is that nobody has some kind of silver bullet for how to win elections and generally people who talk a lot about that topic end up having views about the optimal way to govern and campaign so as to win elections that conspicuously overlap with their own separately-formed policy preferences or some unrelated antagonism they have with some other faction in the party.
Last time Trump won, the convenient explanation was that it was because of racism. This is nice because it places the blame elsewhere and on something that there is little you can do about because anti-racism is something that cannot be compromised.
The racism explanation seems to be falling away this time in part because Trump made inroads with nonwhite voters, most prominently Latinos.
The emerging convenient explanation this time is that it all comes down to inflation. Prices are up 20 percent since Biden took office. During the Trump administration, they only grew by 6 percent over the same period of time.
This explanation is convenient because it’s plausible to argue that (1) inflation was mostly caused by factors outside of Biden’s control, including post-COVID supply issues and the post-COVID spend down of pandemic savings, (2) to the extent that inflation was caused by things like the American Rescue Plan, that was part of achieving the other macroeconomic policy goals of high employment, GDP growth, and wage compression, and (3) the bout of inflation was a one-off thing related to unique dynamics that don’t have much to do with policy questions going forward. So the inflation explanation is consistent with “we did nothing wrong” and “we don’t need to change anything going forward.”
Which is not to say it isn’t true, just to say it is convenient in that it can conceivably absolve all of the groups above who may otherwise have a finger pointed at them.
For now, I don’t really intend to make bold claims about why this election was lost or how to make changes that will result in the winning of all future elections. Instead, as I did in 2016 and 2020, I will simply try to determine who will carry the torch for the left in the next Democratic presidential primary and see if I can help them construct a well-designed social democratic policy agenda.
71 comments
Comments are closed.
Just before reading this, I’d watched at least half of the Harris campaigns ads on Jim Heath’s seemingly non-partisan Youtube playlist, and my how it begs for the finger-pointing Bruenig discusses. Celebrities, fear-mongering, condescension, and nary a convincing appeal to prioritizing American precarity.
There’s an ad that lauds John Bolton’s endorsement. That was enough to put me off any thought of pulling the lever for the “lesser evil”.
Pompeo and Haley got that Not Invited memo. Bolton wasn’t ever in contention, to the relief of the world.
What dropped my jaw this morning was the Globe and Mail comments section under the Haley and Pompeo not invited to the party story. Almost unanimity around the position that Trump didn’t want them because their wisdom and integrity would be too much of a threat to crazy, despicable, shambolic Trump. Seriously: Trump’s rejection was because he is inherently anti-competence. Canada’s PMC is way more batsh*t crazy Neo-Liberal than what’s on offer south of the line.
After election, in my team (I am the oldest, and I already had to face the HR department because I contested conducting surveys that considered the provision of healthcare while asking for gender instead of biological sex; and for protesting for replacing mother with “birthing person”) there was mourning atmosphere in the morning after…
That was the best news of the day. “We thank them for their support.” Delicious dismissal.
Watching small Tiktok accounts (say under 25,000 followers), it is like a reverse FDR fireside chat, you hear the thoughts of people—real reality TV (the smaller the account, the less likelg that things are heavily scripted, edited)
And there are lots of confessionals of micro accounts railing at Democrats for sending millionaire celebrities to lecture people about issues, and Blacks Toktokers admonishing the Obamas for the same.
ironically, losing 2020 saved MAGA and Trump.
Not only that, the millionaire celebrities received additional millions from the Harris campaign for their endorsements, so now they’re even richer. There ought to be a law.
‘The moderates got to essentially run the Harris campaign. This group claimed that the way to win the election was to move to the right in rhetoric and in policy on things like immigration, guns, and identitarian issues while also paring down the policy agenda to a few seemingly popular topics like health care and abortion. Harris clearly did run her campaign this way, but Democrats still lost. When the party does what you want, either in policy or in campaigning, but still loses, it is hard to escape this feeling that maybe you are implicated, maybe people now think you are stupid and your ideas were wrong.’
Being a contrarian, I would say that most voters are not stupid and have seen that the Democrats will never deliver on those two topics – health care and abortion. With healthcare all they could come up with when in power was Obamacare and with abortion, the Democrats had fifty years to codify it and did zip. So essentially Harris tried to campaign on the two topics that people had seen that the Democrats will never, ever deliver on.
Yep. I will never forget or forgive Max Baucus demanding at a pre-ACA DC hearing that two Montana nurses attending, who were advocating / demanding single payor be on the table- be escorted from the public hearing they helped pay for.
For all the lamenting that ‘the progressive’ wing did this and did that- there is no progressive wing in American politics that carries any weight, holds any sway. And to be scapegoated and held out as the bogeyman is farcical.
Yes. While I am certainly sympathetic to Matt’s own policy interests, I was puzzled by his opening sentence:
“For me, this election differed from the last two in that my particular policy interests — a universalist welfare state, mass unionization, and socialization of wealth — were absent.”
I mean, these policy positions have been absent from the last *twelve* elections, at the least. I guess Matt is referring to the fact that at least there were primary candidates like Bernie, or perhaps third party candidates, who mentioned or supported such policies. But the fact is that the “moderates” have been calling the shots since Carter. There are many issues in addition to abortion and health care on which the Democrats have not delivered and which the voters have had fifty odd years to observe. On which policies *have* they delivered? Deregulation. “Free trade.” Expansion of our imperial military reach. Expansion of the national security state. Which brings up another issue: if the “foreign policy apologists” were arguing that Biden really didn’t have a choice but to go along with genocide, then they were lying. If they were defending our support for Ukraine on some “humanitarian” principle based on Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine, then they were lying. I’m afraid that Matt’s discussion fails to capture how completely progressive policies have been pushed out of the Democratic party, and for how long.
But.. that brings me to the exception that proves the rule: his “self-styled populist” category. Even today, for a variety of reasons, there are remnants, faint echos, of past populist policy that may still sound when principled individuals in Democratic administrations get placed in positions of authority. Lina Khan illustrates this well. Occasional pro-labor noises are another example of these remnants from the ancient past. Those more optimistic than me can take heart from these examples. I see them as almost accidental exceptions.
I don’t want to sound completely defeatist. But I’m not sure the Democrat party can be salvaged. It is so thoroughly dominated by the neolib/neocon establishment and has has alienated such a large segment of the working and middle class electorate that it seems a more radical overhaul is needed. I’m not sure what that is – which I know is a cop-out.
The necessary overhaul is obvious: off with the heads of the party. But as long as money governs politics, the new heads are same as the old heads. The only solution to the Democrats is no one voting for them.
Our election results make clear that corporate media has lost it’s authority for most non-PMCers. We’ve weighed corporate fear-mongering against Trumpian fear-mongering, and believed Trump’s more. I consider that at least half-good. In this fear-based electoral economy, even if we had a Left of hope and vision–what would they offer us to be afraid of? Not capital, not the rich or the PMC: that’s as verboten as ‘anti-semitism’. No wonder we have no Left left.
Yep. Dem Party is beyond reform.
Bullet in the head. Build a third party.
First build a second, then a third.
” I will simply try to determine who will carry the torch for the left in the next Democratic presidential primary…”
I don’t think the Democrats do “left” anymore. Sanders gave it a good try and the Democrats snuffed him out, ruthlessly. The Democrats are centered on the status quo, which seems to mean pre or non-Trump. I don’t think it goes any deeper than that. Perhaps the Obama era is the mythical “golden age?” If so, the DP is just an empty sack. If they have some actual passion, it seems the DP has become the party of HRC and has embraced the neocon compulsion with empire in all its forms. Perhaps this is just where the gravy flows.
In terms of a governing body, the DP, IMO, has become irrelevant and will stay that way so long as people continue to support it.
The original sin of Bernie-ism is that he didn’t support/mentor a cadre of under-50s to continue his legàcy.
Iam, Bernie 1.0 was genuine, Bernie 2021+ was just controlled opposition and/or Broken Bernie beccause of what happened in Iowa
To me, the giveaway was when Bernie stated his long friendship with Uncle Joe. He did not run the effective and necessarily blistering campaign needed to stuff Joe before the Obama-led Night of the Longknives. While much work needed to be done to actually defeat the center-right of the party, and would probably fail (because money), inroads to a sizable contingent of voters could have threatened a divorce by large numbers enough to make a platform truly independent of the Dems.
Yes, a very long shot, and prone to sabotage at any moment, but what else is worth an effort? A totally independent party is, in my opinion, nearly hopeless in this corrupted country. A total cultural overhaul is necessary, and won’t happen before an election effort. It’s way past due – we’re rotten ripe.
I think Bernie could have been a catalyst -or what the original Nat Org of Women dubbed Betty Friedan: the first pancake of their movement. However he revealed himself to be steeped in DC politics/lifestyle/culture. And I’m disappointed in what I see as Bruneig’s naive take in this essay; usually, I find him quite interesting.
Obviously, “the left” as those of us who were on the real left is dead except for those of us who came of age during the glory days of left in the 60s. Whatever happened to Bernie Sanders that caused him to abandon the real left, happened and you be the judge to speculate on what precisely was said to him so that he accepted the result of the rigged primaries in ’16 and has had his tail between his legs ever since.
Having said that, I no longer support social democracy in this country because the government is so systemically corrupt (this should be obvious by now) that nothing good can possibly emerge from it without some eruption of virtue within the ruling elites as well as the body politic. As it is maybe Trump will shake things up so something other than corruption can be a feature of the US government. Election reform would be a good start but I won’t hold my breath on that. As for the DP it has become the conservative anti-labor, pro-imperial, anti free-speech, pro-totalitarian party no sensible person can support if they are willing to face the truth. Fortunately, more and more people are facing the truth so the nature of the party may change.
The Democratic Party misleadership class works on behalf of its donors to ensure that it operates as the pall in the Uniparty ratchet which prevents any movement leftwards.
@ Rev Kev – re: Obamacare, I disagree. Although it is not terrific (I live in France and know terrific), the Care Act is evolving and it is increasingly doing many things to the landscape of medical care in the states (just as has the French system since its humble beginnings post-WWII), and more people are being covered, even (especially, actually) in Red states. More drugs are more attainable at less cost. And, versions of Medicare are not only covering more people, but it has entered the conversation as being the shape of universal coverage in the future.
Re: Abortion, I disagree also. On the face of the discussion, your statement appears to be correct, but in reality that isn’t how things work. Abortion was still discussed in hushed tones (safe, legal and rare) well into the Obama Administration the biggest efforts being to teach kids about “the sacredness of sexuality” (whatever the f that means in reality).
Roe was the law of the land and while there was a little fudging around the edges, there was no real pressure to specifically codify abortion as a right, just like no effort to make privacy a right – and when I write “pressure”, I write thinking of the increase in pressure that MLK made after his meeting with Johnson to get him some ammunition to use against the entrenched powers – telling MLK that he had spent his political capital on the few laws that were (comparatively) merely messing around at the edges of Civil Rights. Not just one march per year for 2 whole years like we saw in 2016. It takes one or more marches per month everywhere, martyrs and finally reducing the inherent allowances that the dogmatic cristian nationalists hold over everyone.
…and then repeating that again (or simultaneously) against the poor souls with GreedyBastard Syndrome and their lawyers and their wars and other inherent allowances (and bailouts that we give them every 6, 8 or 10 years.)
And there is plenty of evidence that quite a lot of voters are stupid – and certainly enough are. To vote for state abortion freedom laws and also vote for people who have voted for bills to rescind them federally …somewhere, that is the definition of ‘stupid’.
Gunna have to politely disagree here. The whole point of Obamacare was to short circuit the movement to a universal healthcare system. The plan itself originally came out of The Heritage Foundation and was a huge giveaway to the American healthcare corporations. And it worked. All mention of healthcare for all has completely disappeared from the American political landscape and it wasn’t even an issue this election cycle. It’s gone.
As for abortion, the whole thing is like Lucy and the football. As an example, before Obama was elected he promised to codify Roe vs wade once and for all and when elected he had a supermajority so could have done it easily. When asked about his promise he replied that he now had other priorities – his words, not mine. And now the Democrats will spend the next fifty years fundraising this issue and promising to fight for abortion. Here is the formula for this – Lucy + football + Charlie Brown = Thud!
I understand, and know the background of Obamacare and Hilarycare before it, but I don’t think it is as cut and dried as you say. …just using the term ‘entirely’ is not correct. It is what could be sold given the corporate socialists in the Dem Party at the time. …and yet again, after getting beat up on a progressive alternative for health care, he didn’t have the political capital for anything else – I quite remember the tea party lies of the time table rousing.
Notwithstanding. Fine – let the (R)egressives repeal it and lose some of their supporters in the mid-terms. Let it become more clear that our hyperbole is the actuality for the silly voters who can’t tell the difference between Progressive and corporate shills. I think that applies to both topics. And again, I refer to the tiny steps that got the French health and train infrastructure into what they are now.
Obama’s markers were thrown down at the beginning, when he appointed Geithner, let banksters walk and invited private equity to buy up foreclosed homes at industrial scale. That was his original betrayal, one that people immediately sensed, and his political capital was diminsihed – no that I think he really cared, because the man was a fraud from the beginning – even before he proposed Obamacare, which unlike Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation policy we’re supposed to revere, not freak out over.
The shock of O’s walk…or run…to Geithner was monumental to us plebs.
(Un)-imaginative thinking…tho it can make big bank hereabouts.
You must not have evet been self-employed and tried to use Obamacare. It is horrendously expensive and difficult to navigate. Our monthly cost was $2200 per month with $12k/$40k deductibles, complex coninsurance and absolute confusion about who was in network. The networks had different names on the contract, insurance card and the website. There are a lot of things you have to do to qualify for group coverage.
Luckily we are healthy and my boys and I can use Indian health service for most things.
Meant to mention. Without doing fully linked research, Obamacare had an earlier iteration – as Romneycare.
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/10/23/451200436/mitt-romney-finally-takes-credit-for-obamacare
And Mitt Romney wasn’t even a Democrat. How about that.
I am reminded of this classic…
https://pnhp.org/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-public-option-was-sold/
Thanks for that reference!
Actually Romneycare had a few more controls in it. As a test case it let the lobbyists writing the national version know some things to eliminate that helped keep the public’s cost from growing as quickly as it could.
Romneycare has evolved here in MA to a pretty darn good healthcare system. I’m concerned what may happen to it now that Trump has full control of government (assuming house goes R).
MassHealth and connector offers folks some agency in their lives and not to have to grind until 65 in work/job that may be wearing them down just because they need healthcare. Would love to hear others perspectives on this if they’re familiar with MA healthcare.
You live in France. I am not saying that is disqualifying, but it does mean that you have been removed from the disaster that is the ACA. Yes, more people are covered, at least in blue states. I don’t know how carefully you have read the comments of those from states that did not accept the Medicaid expansion, but suffice t to say there are numerous people who do not qualify for that and still cannot get enough of a subsidy for anything that will begin to provide actual medical care without seriously depleting their ability to feed and house themselves. Not to mention bankrupting them for anything serious.
Then there is the fact that those private insurance companies deny and massively delay paying the claims they are supposed to pay. Between that and the significant gap of coverage rural hospitals are disappearing. So there is also the getting to care issue. Something that would not be happening with single payer.
You must have misses where not only are studies showing that Medicare Advantage plans, which I am assuming is your supposed significant improvement because the joke of drug negotiation doesn’t begin to qualify, are increasingly difficult to use, have cut specialists from their approved networks, and in at least United Health’s instance stolen billions from the system.
And that doesn’t even begin to address the rape and pillage from private equity buying medical practices and hospitals, something that doesn’t even begin to try to hide that providing healthcare is of no priority, maximizing profits is all. Something else that would be slowed by single payer.
You also seem to be under the delusion that ACA is being improved. No, the point of ACA was always to protect the private insurance industry. That has been utterly protected by our bureaucrats. And it is not in their interest for it to be improved for the public. What is happening however is the infection that is American healthcare policy is expanding both because there is only so much that can be ripped from Americans as the lower half becomes the lower four fifths of the economy, and because the wealthy officials in other countries see how their American counterparts have benefited. The UK is currently under siege. And while you have a different system in France, I would lay odds they are looking at you as well. It isn’t like Pfizer didn’t take multiple countries for a ride.
Seriously, if I were you I would congratulate America on its faux first steps less, and guard your hen house more. Our system is filled with wolves and your system is full of fat hens and eggs. They will come.
Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/
How many people go BK in France because of healthcare? It’s hard to say in America, but the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 41% of U.S. citizens carry some sort of medical debt, and 24% were considering bankruptcy to solve a medical debt issue.
Sick and struggling to pay, 100 million people in the U.S. live with medical debt
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/16/1104679219/medical-bills-debt-investigation
My wife and I had to get rabies shots, or you know, you get rabies and die. It cost $44K. But after insurance it only cost $5K.
The actual healthcare once you get to the docs, RNs, etc, is great. Like everything in America, if you have the money (a lot of money), it’s great health care. But how many people don’t go to the doctor because money, or have decided they’re going to just die rather than put their family in great debt. I think it’s a lot of people, but (like me), they’ll never talk about it.
You are very lucky. You have no idea what a nightmare American healthcare insurance is, or what kind of decisions people have to make because of it. I once read an article about a man deciding which fingers he could afford to have re-attached after an accident. He could not afford to have all of them.
Try using Obamacare sometime — I had an Out Of Pocket Maximum for copays and coinsurance equal to 25% of my income. That is going to force most people into bankruptcy.
How Medicare Advantage can be likened to universal care escapes me, since it lacks the essential attribute of universal care: it is not universal, but instead, care is rationed out individually according to the whim of provider profitability. Public discourse on single payer in any mainstream venue was shut down with the Sanders campaign, and for that very reason. Conversations — by which I imagine you mean communications between the powerful and their consultants and courtiers — are most likely about killing any possibility of single payer, if it comes up at all.
@mgr – On the face, certainly. the DP is hopeless. 2 things, though. There is no way to create a new party in the US. There is a way to continuously build a progressive party within the DP. …and that is what is happening.
Bernie got quite a lot done in the Biden Administration – that there was the Machiavellian Manchin and Senima (not trying to be clever – I just won’t bother to look up the correct spelling of their names_) that made it difficult to actually spend what needs to be spent to actually fix things, was unfortunately just a reality.
In reality, there are more progressives, and more left middle every year. In reality, they are the ones who will voice other than the safe DP messages. …and teach their electorate what these things mean. …which Harris confused enthusiasm for. She made statements about price gouging, but didn’t engage for long minutes on examples of that to teach. She made statements about thousands here and thousands there for small business, but they were tax credits – WTF does anyone understand about tax credits and their life if they are barely scraping by? If I am developing a product in a new company, I don’t make any profits, much less have any taxes to put the tax credits against.
Perhaps I spoke too wildly in saying that there are the dumb – it is not their intelligence, it is their knowledge. Unfortunately, hate fits well on bumper stickers. Bright ideas rarely do.
internet: For quite a while now, the DP has been known as the place progressive dreams go to die. So long as the current ruling elite are in power, this, I believe, will remain true.
After 2026, I decided, not a vote nor dime more until DNC operations become transparent, “super delegates” were gone, and lobbyists were no longer embedded in the DNC decision making structure. I’ve stuck with that. Instead, the DNC circled the wagons. Nothing has changed, it’s only become worse. Currently, the DNC chair, Jaime Harrison, is, I understand, a former lobbyist. So, here we are. Perhaps you see other leadership on the horizon. At present, I do not. I believe the incremental improvements plan is a mirage, good only for deflection. In reality, it is one small step forward and three large steps back. The DP, IMO, needs revolution, not evolution.
Sorry, of course, I meant “After 2016…”
Bernie got quite a lot done in the Biden Administration – that there was the Machiavellian Manchin and Senima (not trying to be clever – I just won’t bother to look up the correct spelling of their names_) that made it difficult to actually spend what needs to be spent to actually fix things, was unfortunately just a reality.
Bernie, as pointed out by garland nixon yesterday, gets populous right after a loss, making himself the corporatist dems lightning rod and allowing all the excuse making from them. Manchin wanted his pipeline, and got it. Someone could have said no votes, no pipeline but really he was a convenient block to non corporate giveaways in the bbb, chips, and etc… Sinema blocked carried interest on PE and is moving into a bright future as a highly paid lobbyist and she could have been stopped as well.
There is no progressive in the dem party. The DCCC makes sure (recall the guy in mississippi or louisiana who self funded and got railed against) only right wing wall st friendly corporatists advance, so no, there is no progressive to choose from in the dem field by design. It’s a game of inches on a football field, 1″ increment at a a time for the population 3600″ increments for corporations. Socialism for corporations, see that leaked fdic memo on the silicon valley bank bailout and I for one am certain that memo is the tip of the iceberg as the bailout of SVB, Signiture and first republic, just those three, equalled the cost of the ’08 bailouts. A total garbage barge. Add in Ukraine which never had a chance and was peopled by supremacist azovs who willingly tell us who they are, same with zionists and a white guy mob marching in the al aqsa mosque and relenlessly killing brown people, “bringing civilzation” to lesser beings, east palestine in the US as well as that chlorine blast after helene…and I could go on like this for an hour. The dems deserved to lose even worse than they did but for their constant whinging about this or that ism in a form of cultish psychological torture. A pox on their house with an ineffective vaccine to keep them from expiring. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Manchin and Sinema – the rotating villians. Ever notice how the Dems never bring the hammer down on them or Lieberman before them. They never find themselves stripped of committee assignments or stuffed into a boiler room office for their opposition? It’s always just “those darn Manchin and Sinema meanies won’t let us enact vastly popular programs.” It was always pure theatre to do the will of the donors and stiff the people.
About inflation being a convenient excuse because there’s nothing Biden could have done about it, Bhaskar Sunkara (founding editor of Jacobin) points out here:
I thought Sunkara’s whole piece was very good.
My impression is that the cost of running the empire, the cost of wars has to have some effect on the US inflation rate. I wish Sunkara had included some analysis on what has become Biden’s and the democrat party’s signature success – a series of wars which together are looking a lot like a world war.
Yes, that’s why I voted for Trump — because of his adversary relationship with our cancerous national security state. We’re protecting democracy by starting a new Cold war, and a hot proxy war, which them have to take precedence over everything else, and whose factual underpinnings cannot be disclosed to the public for national security regions. Western governments were unanimous in supporting the neocon war mongering policies. Now Western governments are without exception overwhelmingly unpopular as the fallout from the empire’s wars hits the home from. However, to say such things is to be a Putin apologist.
So, while foreign affaris are not the proximate cause of election results in the US, Europe, and Japan, the empire’s push to dominate the world is a more fundamental cause of the unpopularity of the status quo. The West no longer dominates technology and industry, so our picking fights with the leader in these fields, and their allies, is failing. The elites panic over Trump’s idiosyncracies, while failing to see that Trumpian policies are gaining popularity throughout the West, and for good reason.
Hi, my name is Kamala and I was raised middle class…. good lord.
Credibility drove this election, more importantly the Democrats lack of credibility. They gaslighted the American public for too long with MSM providing cover. Kamala didn’t help that perception with her ever shifting positions, but the reality was it could have been any Democrat in her shoes and they would have lost, even Bernie.
Working class people no longer believe. From Clinton to Biden, ending welfare as we know it, deindustrialization, NAFTA, the 2008 bank bailout and nothing for Main Street, Obamacare written by the insurance industry and being unaffordable to this day for many, TPP, TTIP, FISA, No Medicare for All, No student loan forgiveness, increasing inequality, increasing poverty, increasing drug epidemic, increasing local auto and home theft, record homelessness, lack of wage growth, housing and rent unaffordability, and an endless parade of wars without financial consideration while at the same time saying we can’t afford to raise the minimum wage. My only surprise is that it took working class people this long to abandon ship. If Trump can end the war in Ukraine, or cut working class peoples taxes if even by a little, we’re looking at President Vance in 2028 and he’ll likely serve two terms.
Can you imagine what would happen if on his first day as President, that he announces that the government will pay the $600 that Biden reneged on? It would be a boost to the economy as it would be used to pay bills and staples whereas money given to billionaires stand a good chance of being sent overseas in investments instead.
“Here’s your $600!” After that, Trump could seriously consider trying to have himself declared “President for Life.” Who, in their wildest imaginings could have thought that Trump may well become America’s Cromwell?
I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the old “don’t presume malevolence when simple incompetence will suffice”. This election is not an exception.
I believe that the people selling malevolence (e.g. racism) as a root cause are quite likely incompetent. Mostly.
Well said.
We all rationalize our selfish behaviors. It’s part of human nature. So I like to say that the people in the cancerous national security state are well intentioned and that we have systemic problems that channel people in a certain counterproductive direction.
Can’t say I’m happy with the winner. Can say I’m very happy with the loser losing. Let me count the ways:
WWIII is delayed by 4 years, or possibly for much longer.
No CBDCs in the US for at least 4 years, or possibly for much longer.
No joining the WHO international pandemic treaty putting the WHO in charge of every signatory nation’s health response to WHO declared health emergencies. (They were so wrong about so much last time.)
The globalists’ donations to the KH campaign lost a ton of money to a guy who spent a fraction of what they/she spent. The globalists’ dreams of supranational control will be put on hold for at least 4 years.
The increasing authoritarianism in US CDC and public health had its wings clipped for the next four years.
What’s that, you ask? Well, I thought these rumors* coming out about the CDC were nonsense. Turns out they were true.
I’m guessing FEMA will get a major overhaul.
I’m hoping the DoJ will get an overhaul. At least Merrick Garland will be gone.
Short list that hit the main things. / ;)
*From Meryl Nass’s substack.
https://merylnass.substack.com/p/cdc-planned-quarantine-camps-nationwidejeffrey
here’s the CDC document.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200728203549/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/shielding-approach-humanitarian.html
I have been making “jokes” about where the local FEMA Re-education Centres would be sited for several years now. Great Googly Moogly! It wasn’t a “joke” after all!
I am repeatedly discouraged to find that so many who are skeptical of the efficacy of the Covid vaccines are also reflexively anti-mask.
Grateful for the presence of the hosts and commenters on this site who do not get swept up in the wholesale “anti” stance
After reading Nass’s post I’m getting the image of some very frightened bureaucrats throwing pasta at the wall. I’m surprised that the CDC document was ever made public.
The one thing I disagree with is that the moderates ran this campaign. No. Kamala ran a straight up right wing republican campaign. Maybe not far right but her platform would have been well at home in the Republican Party. There’s a reason Cheney, Bolton the Sec state endorsed her. Give the choice between a fake republican and a real one, people will chose the real one.
I was once at an event where one of the panelists was Anne-Marie Slaughter, who had worked under Hillary at the State Dept. She commented that after the loss, she had studied elections, and concluded that the winning candidate was the one who was perceived as being less likely to involve the US in wars. (Not that they always followed through on this , of course.) Biden administration involved in two.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, of the Clinton–led State Department: seemingly a case of nominative determinism if there ever was one!
Bruenig comes off as dishonest here, like so many autopsies of the campaign: “this election proves every one of my prior views”. Disappointing.
Burning is speaking as though we can’t know voters’ real opinions on things except that the election was a rejection of everything the losing candidate might have endorsed. That’s nuts.An individual voter can agree with everything a candidate stands for except one deal-breaker.
We have opinion polls that make very clear that certain issues (Israel, high prices) cost them in swing states and others (abortion) helped. In the end, it was a close election compared to the two Obama elections, so a close reading is essential.
Also, Bruenig’s anti-antitrust and anti-“populism” bias is insane. He is saying that antitrust isn’t popular when poll after poll shows it is and Harris actually rejected those positions in her campaign. She also backed away from economic populism starting in September, so there’s no way that the election could be seen as a referendum on those policies.
Meanwhile, the Biden admin was the least anti-union admin in 50 years, so one of Bruenig’s pet issues could be said to have been on the ballot, and lost, if we use his mode of analysis.
“… least anti-union admin in 50 years…” is a very low bar.
Since the beginning, the Unions have had to work outside of the political establishment to attain any meaningful accomplishments. So, when I read “…least anti-union administrations…” I look to each side, and then behind me, for I know that some establishment thugs are creeping up on me to deliver some “re-educational physical stimulus” to me.
Is Bruenig a Bobo? Inquiring minds want to know. / ;)
David Brooks NPR interview.
A New David Brooks Article Takes A Look At How The Cultural Elite Broke America
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/08/1025845766/david-brooks-new-book-takes-a-look-at-how-the-cultural-elite-broke-america
“I wrote a book called ‘Bobos In Paradise,’ and I noticed a whole code of conduct, and it had replaced the old WASP code. And it was basically people with ’60s values and ’90s money who thought it was gauche to spend money on a yacht but supercool to spend money on a $20,000 AGA stove.”
I appreciate the reference. Having read the interview carefully, though, I have no idea what this Bobo definition is supposed to mean. Nor have I ever understood David Brooks, though I get the chronic pretense.
It a shorthand for his description of the elite set he refers to as “Bourgeoisie Bohemians” or Bobos.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/books/050400brooks-book-review.html
May 4, 2000
‘Bobos in Paradise’: From LSD to C.E.O. in a Nation of Bobos
By JANET MASLIN
BOBOS IN PARADISE
The New Upper Class and How They Got There.
By David Brooks.
Within the Rousseau-like tableau on the cover of David Brooks’s delectable new book of social criticism there lurks one lone denizen of the wild. It looks worried, and it should. The undergrowth has been invaded by meaningful accouterments (laptop, sport utility vehicle, mountain bicycle, steaming beverage mug) and the arrivistes who come with them: the bourgeois bohemians Mr. Brooks calls Bobos. As analyzed here with gleeful wit and bull’s-eye accuracy, Bobos are as unnatural as forest creatures get. They are what happens when “the babbitt lion can mingle with the beatnik lamb.”
“Defying expectations and maybe logic, people seemed to have combined the countercultural 60’s and the achieving 80’s into one social ethos,” Mr. Brooks surmises in a book that merrily explores the implications of that claim. “We’re by now all familiar with modern-day executives who have moved from S.D.S. to C.E.O., from LSD to I.P.O. Indeed, sometimes you get the impression the Free Speech Movement produced more corporate executives than Harvard Business School.” But as part of “an elite that has been raised to oppose elites,” these individuals have had to undertake cultural and ethical contortions that would give a pretzel pause…
I will simply try to determine who will carry the torch for the left in the next Democratic presidential primary and see if I can help them construct a well-designed social democratic policy agenda.
And that’s the problem.
Anyone who thinks they are going to reform the D party is just looking for a lifetime sinecure. Let me guess: “Only $27 a month and you can have a voice in the new Democratic Party.”
No thanks.
Someone (CNN?) published a very useful breakdown of voting groups yesterday, and it showed the biggest reason the election was lost. In 2020, people who felt they were worse off economically (after Trump) went for Biden against Trump. In 2024, people who felt they were worse off economically (after Biden) went for Trump. For example, the inflation-adjusted cost of rent has gone up hugely over the past years, a big economic problem. Democrats also no doubt failed to retain Ohio and the once-industrial midwest because of the globalization they heavily promoted, and so earned their defeat fair and square on those grounds alone, practically. Obviously in a election where the margin was a few percent, one can pick out any number of things that provided the margin (and did), such as Harris being a woman (and black), racism, objections to the genocide, general unhappiness and so on, but people’s perception of “it’s the economy” is very big, and people like renters and others certainly had grounds. As for the DNC-democratic party being basically corrupt and bought by the rich and Wall Street and corporations, just like the republicans, I couldn’t agree more. It was an election where both sides deserved to lose, which was, of course, technically impossible.
Everyone seems to be speculating on why team Blue got the big can of whoop ass hung on them last Tuesday. Here is another theory, from the not so popular General Flynn. I think he makes some good points on how many feel IMO. From his Twitter feed; Democrats, if you’re wondering why America voted for Trump, allow me to explain:
The truth is, the American People are sick of your shit. <—The title caught my eye and pretty much sums up how I voted – and it wasn't for team blue no matter who.
I stopped reading after “far-Left agenda”. What a moron. And people take people like him seriously. No wonder the US is family-blogged.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
I am not seeing any blood anywhere. It’s going to be BAU.
TL;DR: “I hate everything corrupt and alienating about uncontrolled Capitalism but I call it The Left because I don’t know what either of those things are”
Here is a link to a few YouTube videos by James carville. He really lets the Dems have it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ECXzXtzuxGg
OK, that’s funny. He opens with talking about how T voters have been betrayed? right. Even funnier: his version of the Dem party, beginning with Clinton, lost the former liberal Dems Tulsi, RFK jr, Musk, and T. Yes, T was a liberal Dem for a long time. I guess Mz Liz Cheney is no substitute. / ;)
Adding: the center of his talk is right, imo, but only on the surface level. He’s right on the mechanics of PR and campaigning. However, as Diesen wrote, neoliberalism has exhausted the US. I agree with Diesen’s point. Carville offers no indication he understands the national and global current economies. His understanding might be 15 years out of date. Carville talks about the economy but never mentions the current fundamentals, imo. Maybe that’s not his job.
From Bloomberg, utube, ~13+ minutes.
ESG Ratings Are Not What They Seem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_rrS-_giP8
My take was that he is the first mainstream dem higher up to not be blaming the voters.
He’s stating they ran a terrible campaign
They didn’t pay attention to the issues important to voters.
She was a poor candidate
Etc.
this was a welcome sign
Might there be better solutions than what he says, sure but he’s at least calling out the Dems and not the voters.