The electorate has spoken and the earthquake is in progress. In a stunning victory, Donald J. Trump recaptured the presidency with a commanding victory. As of this writing, Trump is leading the popular vote by 3,676,500 votes. That is a strong lead. In the Electoral College, he is ahead 312 to 226. No matter how you slice it, that is a strong victory.
Of course, some are calling his victory a landslide. I would not use that term, but it is significant. Even more significant is the Republican capture of the Senate. Of course, all that does is ensure that Trump will get his judges confirmed, but so long as the filibuster exists, he will not get any legislation done. And, let me be clear, I do not support the elimination of the filibuster, but that’s a subject for another article.
Now that the Republicans have won, the Democrats have to determine how this happened. The pundits, in public at least, have overwhelmingly supported Harris and hailed her campaign as fantastic and, at least in the words of Joy Reed, “flawless.” The Twitterverse is blaming the American People and accusing them of being racist, stupid, misogynistic, etc. The Republicans love this as they rightly feel that insulting American voters is not a winning strategy.
I am not quite happy with the Democratic delusion. Let me explain why.
The Washington Post’s tagline is: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. While WaPo does not live up to the tagline, the tagline is correct. For Democracy to thrive and succeed, you need clear choices. Kamala Harris lost because she could not, and did not, articulate what choices she was offering. When asked what she would do differently from President Biden she responded that she could not think of anything. Harris made few original policy statements and refused to do any press conferences. She did a few interviews, but they were all on friendly media outlets.
Contrast that with the Trump campaign. Both he and JD Vance went all over the place. President Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalists and Vance went on CNN, just to name two examples. There are many others. As the results show, clearly team Trump had the better strategy.
Insulting the electorate was also not a great strategy. Despite fatherly admonitions from the great Barack Obama to black men, Trump did better among the African-American community than he did in 2020. Calling Trump supporters garbage did not help either. Advising women to lie to their husbands (a truly, totally, super-brilliant idea) and vote for Harris did not prove a winning strategy. Running ads stating different policy positions based on where the ad ran also proved ineffective as she lost both Michigan and Pennsylvania.
One could say that Harris can be excused for her execrable campaign because she only had 100 days. Bollocks. The mistakes I have pointed out were not caused by a lack of time. They happened because the campaign had a total contempt for the American people. They felt that they could, and should, insult them, lecture them, pander and lie to them, and they would be rewarded for it. That is counter-intuitive and obvious to anyone with half a brain that it could not be a winning strategy. And yet, they did it.
The Democrats need to seriously think about who they are and how they view the American people. They need to get back to the Democratic party of my youth and be a party that cares about people and not causes. The intersectional woke agenda must be thrown out because it is inherently racist. Supporting vile, murdering, raping, and kidnapping terrorists is not an American value. Antisemitism was never a Democratic value but it is now.
My pinned tweet says:
Political discourse in the United States today is the equivalent of a group of 5 year olds on the playground calling each poopie-heads.
— Mark Mazer #BringThemHome 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@yachnflaster) August 28, 2020
This is not good for Democracy, the United States of America, and the world.
I want a strong Democratic party, a true debate of liberal vs conservative values, and elections that offer us strong candidates with strong ideas. Is that too much to ask for?
My message to the Democratic party is this: this was a political event of historic proportions. You got your tails kicked. Do not make the mistake of blaming everyone but yourselves.
Winston Churchill once famously said: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” Both parties would do well to remember that.
