The Democrats: A Tragedy
What would determine Joe Biden's legacy is going to be what happens between now and January 20
There’s good news and bad news.
Good news for American democracy: We aren’t getting an insurrection this time as the vast majority of the population accepts the result of the election. The bad news for liberal democracy: This time, it is because Trump won, and his most fervent supporters suddenly didn’t see any fraud happening at all!
As much as the aftermath of the election is about Trump’s shocking victory, it is also about the catastrophic defeat of the Democrats. Not only did Trump win all seven swing states by a sizable margin, but he also won over and gained votes among almost every voter group except white college-educated women. Even in states that are more reliably Democratic like Illinois and New Jersey, Trump gained ground in urban areas. He won the largest majority as a GOP candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1988, and only the second Republican to win the popular vote this century.
With the Democrats going past the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, we now enter the inevitable stage of finger-pointing. As expected, racial groups and democratic factions are blaming each other for the defeat. Blame Joe Biden, blame Kamala Harris, blame Latinos, blame Jewish Americans, blame Arab Americans, blame men…
That is not helpful, especially given the massive loss of voters by Democrats who would rather choose a wannabe fascist than their imperfect but competent candidate. Don’t get me wrong, despite Kamala’s great campaign, maybe Joe Biden’s late departure from the race generated irreparable harm to the party, and maybe a primary could select a better candidate that could defeat Trump, but doing “what ifs” is just a pointless pursuit if the main goal of the post-mortem is to reflect and improve.
Overall, I would argue four theories might explain the Democrats’ massive loss: The anti-incumbent shift, party traditionalism, the defense reactionaries, and the dark truth that people want Trump no matter what.
Let’s start with the anti-incumbent shift because, from a global perspective, the US is just the latest in a long list of incumbent administrations suffering serious defeats regardless of how long they are in power. Just this year, the EU elections dealt a heavy blow to establishment parties as many preferred hard-right populist parties, the UK booted out their Conservative government after 14 years in power, and just last week, Botswana’s ruling party lost the election after 58 years in power.
Thanks to post-COVID politics, the rise of inflation around the world generated economic anxiety (TM) and anger among many voters, and they blame incumbents for busting their wallets. Moreover, far-right populist parties are eager to seize on immigration as a key issue to demonize minorities and spread fear among voters. Depressingly, it works.
However, this theory cannot justify the tremendous swing away from the Democrats. It leads to my second theory on administration traditionalism, which acts more as a pre-requisite than the determining factor. Since the beginning of the Biden administration, they have adopted a more traditional way of governance that centers around revering the Constitution and bipartisanship.
Instead of listening to demands from the more progressive members of the party (See packing the Supreme Court with more liberal justices, granting Puerto Rico and Washington DC statehood), Biden has let Merrick Garland do what he wants to do regarding Trump’s crimes while pushing impactful legislations like the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS act with bipartisan support.
Even in campaigning, Joe Biden believed (Which you can argue due to his ego) he was the one to run for the next four years in the promise of traditionalism and constitutionalism. When Biden finally passed the torch to Harris, she ran a brilliant 2004/2008 style presidential campaign with massive grassroots efforts and door-knocking campaigns.
But it is the same high-brow style governance that the American people rejected on Tuesday. In hindsight, the traditionalist tactic of governance failed. If Democrats had taken a more progressive role in prosecuting Trump, as Brazil dealt with Bolsonaro, maybe they would have received the same punishment, but with a more palatable and democratic Republican candidate.
Another failure of traditionalist governance was articulated by Michelle Obama: “When they go low, we go high.” The Democrats’ nature of not responding to any criticism made by the Republicans, substantial or fictional, has hurt them in the long term.
Ron Filipkowski, the editor of MeidasTouch and a man with his finger on the pulse concerning the MAGA shift of the GOP, published a detailed article on the different policy directions Harris has lost. I highly recommend you read Ron’s piece in full, but I do want to highlight a few key insights I have from his piece.
Everyone should have expected Donald Trump is use immigration as the key issue to hurt the Democrats, but the reaction for most of the 4 years in office has been laughably inept. Here is Ron’s take.
While Fox and Newsmax were showing videos (yes, real videos) of thousands of migrants streaming across the border every day, and Trump and Republican politicians were screaming about it constantly, the Admin and the Democratic Party decided that the best way to counter that was to not talk about it. I would watch Fox and huge portions of their broadcast day was devoted to the migrant crisis, which other channels and the Admin never talked about it.
Alejandro Mayorkas, in my opinion, was a weak leader at DHS and a horrendous communicator. His congressional hearing testimony and TV appearance were a mess, where he allowed himself to be bullied and the Administrations policy mischaracterized. I believe if Pete Buttigieg and Mayorkas switched jobs, everything would have been different. DHS was a much more high profile job dealing with a major crisis that would become the centerpiece of Trump's campaign. And Mayorkas simply wasn't up to the job. When I think of how Buttigieg would have handled it differently, from both a policy and communication perspective, I believe the difference would have been stark.
Then Biden did Harris no favors by announcing in 2021 that she would be in charge of investigating the root causes of the border crisis. This led to Harris being dubbed the 'Border Czar' by the media and Republicans - a mischaracterization of her role and a job she clearly did not want or ask for. Biden making her the Administration's public face on the border crisis with a feckless Mayorkas at the helm would come back to haunt her when she ultimately became the nominee. Instead of being free to articulate a new vision, she was held responsible for the mistakes of the past.
At the 11th hour, with the election in full swing, the Administration pushed for a bipartisan border bill to be negotiated in Congress. The problem is that this was way, way too late. They had to realize that Trump was never going to let Mike Johnson pass that in the middle of the election, giving Dems a major win and a political out with voters. The plan to just blame Trump and Republicans for blocking the border bill was ineffective because they could simply counter that it was being advanced late in the game for purely political reasons.
Why wasn't a border bill introduced by Dems in 2021-23? Because it wasn't a priority, and that would come back to haunt them in 2024.
With inflation, the Biden administration could have taken a more empathetic approach to people’s concerns and frustrations while educating the general public about what has caused inflation (War in Ukraine, post-COVID demands, supply chains, etc). Instead, Trump seized on the issue and repetitively boasted about his administration’s low prices for consumers, completely ignoring the out-of-control factors that his successor has inherited. What did Biden’s PR people do? Crickets. That hence led to an increased perception that follows Donald Trump’s pseudo-reality than the reality we all live in.
Biden’s disastrous Afghan withdrawal shares a similar pattern. The withdrawal is objectively terrible, Trump pushed the message that this move makes America weak and unstable, and the administration barely responded to Trump’s bogus claims with fact-checking, the message hence festers and inevitably haunts the Democrats on election day. At the same time, it neglects Trump’s responsibility leading up to the disastrous withdrawal. This aspect of foreign policy was unfortunately backed up by the Ukraine and Gaza wars, which reinforces Trump’s message that he would end the wars, regardless of the international cost.
Not to mention the administration’s unbelievable hesitancy when it comes to cultural issues probably hurt them more than the Dems have thought. It’s no secret that America is more right-wing than most other Western countries, but the fear of triggering the “wokesters” and “social justice warriors” has hampered Harris from breaking away from the “San Francisco liberal (TM)” stereotype portrayed by the Republicans. In Ron’s perspective, that might have hurt the Harris campaign even more.
I hate the fact that we have to talk about this because I realize it is a very sensitive subject and it deals with a tiny handful of people who have been unfairly denigrated and persecuted for centuries. But Trump made this a major issue in his campaign - he spent tens of millions in swing state ads just on this issue alone, and it was very effective on a demographic that Democrats lost badly - men. White men, black men, latino men, young men, old men - polls showed this issue resonated with these voters, which is why the Trump campaign kept buying more anti-trans ads.
The key was in the framing. They cherry-picked comments Harris made over the years and took them out of context to set the narrative. That she was for children getting gender reassignment surgeries without parental consent, that people born biological males were introduced into women's sports, locker rooms, bathrooms and prisons with disastrous effect. UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas became their poster child - videos of 6'1" Thomas, who was born male, towering over female competitors while breaking records resonated. That was followed by female boxers in the Olympics refusing to fight or losing to Imane Khelif.
The pattern often goes like this: Something bad happens during the Biden administration, Trump and the Republicans attack them with dubious and flimsy accusations, the White House doesn’t respond, and the problems fester which culminates in the election.
But in my view, all of the theories justifying this Democratic loss is just trying to rationalize an inconvenient truth, something we now know about America that we either refuse to accept because it’s so bleak, or because we don’t even want to think about it.
Americans voted for Trump, knowing full well of the risks. Granted, some Trump 2024 voters will plead idiocy (Lack of a better term) as a reason they did not expect what might happen to them and their communities. But in general, everyone who voted for Trump signed the devil’s contract, regardless if they have read the fine print or not.
Some of them are not voting for Harris because she is a Black and Asian woman. It is a sad yet depressing thing to type, but how do you explain states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan electing Democratic senators in their state, and North Carolina rejecting Mark Robinson, but Trump still winning these swing states? How do you explain the prejudice people still have for her but would want to cover it up under “skepticism” and “I haven’t heard enough of her policies” from voters who have almost no bloody idea what the campaign is about?
Let’s be blunt here, a segment of voters are stupid. When an actual headline writes: “Search interest for ‘did Joe Biden drop out’ is spiking on Election Day even though he withdrew months ago,” it’s time to go home.
Then there are voters who believe Trump is only targeting the “other.” Some Latino or Muslim voters who voted for Trump believe “Oh, they’re not out to get me, they’re out to get [Insert persecuted minority here] but never me!” Boy are they so wrong.
Reflecting on that bit of analysis, my brain gradually deviates to the lifeboat theory. Imagine you survived a sinking ship and suddenly you saw a lifeboat, nobody was on the 12-seat boat and it was complete with oars and food. Two groups of people reveal themselves after they get on the lifeboat and clean themselves: One group does whatever they can to save as many people as possible, trying to save women and children while rescuing stronger men to help with the rescue effort; Another group would want to reserve the boat all up to themselves, using the oars to jab other survivors into the cold freezing ocean rather than saving their lives.
This election, we saw more than 50% of Americans belonging to the second group.
None of this is suggesting that all Trump people are bad people, but what happens next would be the wake-up call these people deserve.
When Latino voters who voted for the future president see their relatives and friends rounded up in concentration camps, they partly deserve it; When Arab voters who voted for the future president because of Gaza see Trump working with Bibi to escalate the genocide, they partly deserve it; When Muslim voters who voted for the future president have to witness another Muslim ban, they partly deserve it; When pro-Palestinian protestors who voted for Trump or third-party were oppressed by Trump who ordered the military to stop them, they partly deserve it; When male voters who voted for the future president cannot save their loved one’s lives because there is a national “backdoor ban” on abortion, they partly deserve it; When voters who voted on inflation as the biggest justification for the future president has to pay more thanks to Trump’s tariffs and increased taxes on the middle class, they partly deserve it; When immigrant voters who voted for Trump were sent to mass deportation camps because they look the same or have similar last names as those illegal immigrants; they partly deserve it; When LGBT voters who voted for the future president have to recokn with marriage equality taken away, they partly deserved it.
I get it, it may sound too cruel, and I wish Trump’s worst policies would not be implemented in the next four years and nobody would get hurt by the worst impulses inside Project 2025 or Agenda 47. But when they happen, I don’t think many outsiders, objective observers, or decent people would reserve kindness in their entirety to feel sympathy with these voters.
What is important now is not normalizing what has happened and what will happen since. There will be attempts in public discourse to excuse voters’ decisions as all the fault of the Democrats, arguing they ran a bad campaign despite their massive efforts to appeal to broader swaths of voters like Trump-hesitant Republicans. Have you seen Donald Trump’s entire campaign!? Last week was trying to argue Puerto Rico citizens are “trash” and jerking off a microphone!
What’s even crazier? Latinos and Puerto Rican voters still voted for Trump! For anti-democracy proponents, if this is not the epitome of why democracy doesn’t work, I don’t know what is (Except the searching Joe Biden story mentioned above).
Now we have to pivot back to Democratic critiques, and the man who is suffering the most from it: The President. In my view, Joe Biden is the greatest and most underrated US president of my lifetime, especially on domestic policy. He has been dealt with a bad hand from the start, and he has played it to the best of his ability. Many pundits and Democratic insiders gladly point at Biden as their cheap scapegoat, but I would argue his true legacy will be reflected between now and the days leading up to the inauguration of his predecessor and successor.
If you remember what happened in July, which felt like five years ago, you might have remembered the Supreme Court did this per writing from the American Civil Liberties Union:
The Supreme Court today ruled that former President Trump is at least presumptively immune from criminal liability for his official acts, and is absolutely immune for some “core” of them — including his attempts to use the Justice Department to obstruct the results of the election. With respect to Trump’s other actions, the court left to the lower courts much of the work required to determine which are immune and which are not. At bottom, though, the court’s 6-3 majority freed presidents to use their official powers to engage in criminal acts substantially free of accountability.
The court granted absolute immunity to President Trump’s use of the Justice Department for fraudulent purposes. With respect to other allegations in the indictment, it sent the case back to the lower courts to determine whether actions for which former President Trump has been charged were official acts or personal acts, and whether the government can rebut the presumption that former President Trump is immune for those official acts. The court did reject former President Trump’s claim to absolute immunity for all acts unless convicted after an impeachment trial, characterizing its ruling as endorsing a “far broader immunity than the limited one” the court “recognized” today.
Presidents are now kings. They can escape any legal consequences if their acts are “official acts.” Now, desperate times call for desperate measures. Normally I would not be a proponent for the president to do this, but he needs to abuse power to minimize Trump’s future damage as much as possible. He can provide as much aid and frozen Russian assets to Ukraine as he can, allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, expand the Supreme Court to reach a non-partisan balance, grant Washington DC and Puerto Rico statehood, legalize Marijuana, and pardon everyone who was locked up in jail because of it.
For the Democratic Party, a serious rethink needs to be made on what to do next and how to win back millions of voters who elected Trump over Harris. But now, as many eyes are looking at the 47th president and his next moves, the 46th president’s legacy is in its final stretches, but only if he is willing to do something.