Where do we go from here?
What's the next steps after we're done pointing fingers at each other.
A week has almost passed since the chaos of election day and in these seven days we have seen a myriad of finger pointing, victim blaming, and frankly some crazy rhetoric. Perhaps the craziest of them all has been a group of people on Twitter and TikTok who have been calling for people to tell on their neighbors by calling ICE on them. Of course, I don’t want to make it seem like this is the sentiment of everyone, but there has been a scary rise of hatred for our fellow people. On the one hand, I get it, there is a flurry of emotions from anger to apathy. But on the other hand, we see the same problem that’s repeated over and over again too often. Instead of trying to address and understand why the election swayed the way it did, we just point at each other and say we didn’t do enough or the right thing. So if we can’t point fingers, what can we do?
Where we went wrong
You know the old saying, Republicans campaign year round, Democrats campaign once every four years? I think that’s our first step. In every way imaginable, no matter what your stance is on the DNC, the Democratic Party has a big marketing issue. All the complaints that we saw the electorate has had during this election, the Democrats, and Biden have been addressing it. Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, Biden’s massive pro union stance, student loan forgiveness. By far and large, these are all major legislation and positions that address the voter’s concerns over the economy, and much more useful than anything Trump has ever proposed. So why even with all of these fantastic things passed did the voters still not like the economics of the Democrats? To me, this seems like a clear issue of marketing. Democrats are great at passing legislation, but they’re horrible at showing people the great legislation they have passed. People love the Affordable Care Act but hate Obamacare. People love Social Security but hate paying for it. The Democrats can’t message to save their lives. Time and time again, we see Republican Senators who voted no on Democratic legislation take credit for it when it helps their state. It’s shameless, it’s hypocritical, but most importantly it works. Great legislation means nothing if no one knows about it, and marketing and reachability also means nothing without great legislation. So how can the Democratic Party get better at this?
1. Plaster your name all over it
Inflation Reduction Act? Call it the Biden Make America Better Act. Is it selfish? Possibly, but goddamn, I promise you it works. Cap Insulin Prices Act? That should be the Democratic Cheaper Medicine that we the Democratic Party did this Act. Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the point. The Democratic Party has a bad brand name. It’s like Comcast, people hated them so much they changed their name to Xfinity. People time and time again love these progressive legislations, but hate the Dems.
Even in red states when the Democratic Party’s name isn’t attached, people will vote for some extremely “liberal” policies. We saw Missouri vote for abortion rights, increasing the minimum wage, and paid sick leave while voting for Trump overall. This disconnect happens so often and so many times around the country. These are all things the Dems have pushed for yet their association with the policies doesn’t exist.
2. Stop talking about the opportunity economy
Opportunity economy. Opportunity economy. $50,000 to small businesses. Have we talked about the opportunity economy yet? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, says the Democratic Party, as more and more people everyday feel like their boots are being taken away from them. The Dems keep passing good populist legislation but keep advertising themselves as neoliberals that want to create an environment where you can have the opportunity to get better. The pull yourself up era is gone and people have gotten tired of it. So many have tried, and so many have realized it’s impossible. What do people want? They don’t want the opportunity, they want their current conditions to stop getting worse. So instead of spending half the campaign talking about how much you love capitalism and the system that is continually failing people, what if we talk about the actual good legislation you have passed to help better people’s lives? I truly don’t know who in the Kamala campaign thought it’s good to run on the neoliberal opportunity economy message, but please never let them have a voice in the party ever again. Just give them a job at MSNBC.
3. Stop telling people how much you love the Republicans
I’m your average voter. I keep seeing Kamala campaigning with Liz Cheney, talking about immigration problems, and how much he loves Biden, and she’ll be exactly like him but more Republican. Well as your average voter, why in God’s green earth would I vote for the Democrats. They’re saying they’ll be a worse version of Republicans. One of the craziest quotes from Harris is when she was on The View, where she said:
I'm going to have a Republican in my Cabinet, I feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea.
You asked me what's the difference between Joe Biden and me, well that will be one of the differences
Once again, I must ask who in the world thought this was a good idea? Please also kick them out and just let them have fun at MSNBC. You can’t keep running as a diet Republican, then be surprised when people just vote for the actual Republican. Really, Kamala, you can’t think of any other way you’d be different from Joe?
I think however, this highlights an even more worrying aspect, the never Trump Republican coalition the Democratic Party welcomed with open arms might not be as big of an electorate as they had imagined. After 2016 we got a huge wave of these Republicans through the Lincoln Project, Win it Back PAC, Republicans for Harris, and more who all turned to support the Democrats as a vote against Trump. The Democrats in turn welcomed them with open arms and even emphasized them throughout this whole campaign. However, what worries me is the fact that I think slowly they have taken a hold of the DNC and are trying to make the Democrats the old Republican Party. Consequently, what we got out of that is Mark Cuban and Liz Cheney. But these Trump Republicans fail to realize that this coalition of voters no longer exists. The Democratic Party needs to snap out of it and try to go for the far more expansive center left and progressive caucuses.
Will we learn our lesson?
If I know anything about the Democratic Party, it is that the answer will be a resounding no. As we already saw, we’ll have pundits blame everyone else except themselves, the Democratic Party will shift even more right thinking that’s what people want, and rinse and repeat. I truly hope that we as individuals and those involved in the roots of the DNC can come to realize what the real issues are. It’s so easy to focus on the group that voted and try to shift to them, instead of figuring out how to get those who didn’t vote to vote for you. And frankly, given the way our two party system works, if the Dems don’t learn their lesson, I don’t see how we as a country will ever have a true left and right party. So to all reading speak your thoughts, shout from the rooftops, and for God’s sake run in your local elections. The Democratic Party is currently fractured between the old guards that have been trying to maintain the status quo and the new generation who desperately has been trying to pull them back to be the party of the people. This election was not about left or right, progressive or conservative. This election was about the closest you have seen in recent times to be the struggle between the working class and the capital owning elites. Except right now, both parties try to appeal to the elites but in different flavors.