There were plenty of people “call[ing] out bigoted uncles” from leftist pundits and political figures to comedians and scholars of authoritarianism , even as the corporate media tried to ‘toe the line’ of being ‘moderate’ and ‘notpartisan’ (and certain billionaires reigned in their hobby media outlets like the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post). Certainly, there was no lack of vocal criticism of Trump for his felony convictions, past history and present evidence of corruption, influence of the Heritage Foundation, Silicon Valley ‘techbros’, and lingering suspicions over just how much influence Vladimir Putin has with Trump. The fundamental problem is that about half of the engaged, voting public witnessed four years of Trump’s disastrous leadership including the monumentally inept handling of a pretty tame pandemic threat followed by inciting an insurrection and decided, “Yes, please, I’d like another!” This wasn’t because of anything that Harris or “The Democrats” did or did not do in the 2024 election cycle, but because Americans have been primed for autocracy and even incipient fascism for going on four decades by the ‘New Right’, heralded by Newt Gingrich and his hypocritical “Contract with America”, with resentment fueled by decades of neglect of working class concerns and opportunities in favor of corporate benefactors by the vast majority of politicians on both sides of our constrained ‘two party system’ where despite the rhetoric around culture wars most of the actual policy differences when it comes to economics, employment, and public investment are a matter of splitting hairs.
Harris did not, BTW, run a terrible campaign, or fail by pandering to one group while ignoring the other (hence the contradictory claims). I think there are plenty of things to criticize Harris about (and Biden and the people insulating him for not doing the smart thing and encouraging Democrats to find a strong candidate rather than reneging on his pledge to be transitional candidate to the) but as I said in this thread she pulled in near record numbers of votes (74.7M), more than Obama (both times) or Clinton even adjusting for population, and just short of what Biden did against an enormously unpopular Trump in 2020. Trump, on the other hand, barely even bothered to campaign, had no actual message or policies other than vague statements about deporting immigrants in quantities guaranteed to overwhelm the immigration system, cut an impossible amount of money from the federal budget while cutting taxes on the wealthy, and bringing back manufacturing jobs to plants and companies that no longer exist. He literally spent one rally just swaying to an ‘eclectic’ selection of music and somehow still managed to get over 77 million votes on the premise of bringing ‘change’ even though he is stupidly reactionary and obtuse in every facet of governance to the point of being comically incompetent.
Trump won because a large swath of Americans no longer believe in the effectiveness of government or democratic institutions, because they are easily swayed by manufactured ‘culture wars’ issues being hyped on unregulated social media by exaggeration, distortion, and outright fabulation, and because they seek a ‘strongman’ leader who can just fix things the way Trump claimed that he will, even though there is zero evidence that he’s capable of leading a marching band much less a major business or national government. They bought into the hype, and the notion that Democrats need to field a candidate with an equal degree of hype-fueled bullshititude is really just asking to spiral faster down the slope to corruption, failure of institutions, and collapse of national integrity.
Stranger