Election 2024: Image World (11)

What It Is

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a down right fool and complete narcissistic moron.” — H. L. Mencken, July 26, 1920, Baltimore Evening Sun

Well, fuck — as Stephen Colbert said in his “Late Show” opening monologue on November 6.

Tess Gallo, Ulster County, NY, I Voted sticker (2024)

I did my civic duty, and have the sticker to prove it. (Tess Gallo, a 13-year-old student from Miller Middle School in Kingston, NY, won the 2024 Ulster County Board of Elections’ “I Voted” Sticker Contest.)

On the other hand, nearly 90 million eligible voters, 36% of the overall electorate, stayed home. And while the election apparently ran smoothly and largely uneventfully, free of significant fraud or interference by pro-Harris/anti-Trump actors, it appears that we need to consider the credible possibility that the voting machines in key states — compromised in 2020/21 by illegal break-ins by Trumpist actors — got hacked in this election not by the left but by the right.

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I did not have the United States reelecting a forthright fascist on my wish list, much less on my bingo card. But here we are. And however we got here, we are witnessing nothing less than an attempt at a hostile takeover of the United States government and the dismantling of our democracy, such as it is.

It is small consolation — make that no consolation — that

• a shift of 111,000 votes in three states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) would have swung the election to Harris-Walz;
• the voter shift to Trump for this election, as Chris Hayes points out, represented a mere 3 per cent;
• as states finalize their counts Trump’s popular-vote margin has shrunk to just 1.6% over Harris — the third-smallest margin since 1888;
• and, in developed countries worldwide, electorates are punishing incumbent administrations of all ideologies across the political spectrum for continuing inflation and economic problems.

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Amazingly, given the nostalgia implicit in the slogan “Make America Great Again,” the Democratic Party of 2024 ran on the Republican platform of 1972 — and lost.

Here’s Bernie Sanders’s post-mortem:

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.” — Sanders email blast, November 6, 2024

I agree with Sanders in part, but not entirely. As I’ve argued here previously, the Democratic Party has failed to connect with the working class. Specifically, the Dems have emphasized “raising the middle class” as the party’s primary economic goal. Their rhetoric refers to “working people” while steadfastly refusing to use the collective term “working class.”

With that said, the Democrats remain staunchly and unequivocally pro-union, pro-labor, pro-workplace safety, pro-equal pay, pro-daycare, pro-paid maternity leave, pro-public schools, pro-free college tuition, pro-universal healthcare, pro-affordable housing, pro-minimum wage increase … the list goes on and on.

The Dems, therefore, have by no means “abandoned” the working class. Clearly, however, their messaging on their efforts to support the working class have (a) failed to register effectively and/or (b) fallen on deaf ears. And while they need to shoulder some of the blame for that, much of it traces to the failure of the corporately controlled legacy media industry. As the Bible says, “It is easier for an elephant to pass through the eye of a needle than for a donkey to get credit from talking heads for any accomplishment.”

That the Dems haven’t managed to enact all of their programs and policies related to the ideas that disaffected voters care about doesn’t negate the fact that, in all these cases, they have tried their level best. Their success/failure ratio is attributable not to a lack of will but to a lack of clout. Which in turn is attributable to the fact that many members of the electorate who claim to care about these ideas sit on their hands and choose not to vote — or cast useless symbolic votes for candidates with no chance of winning.

So potential voters “caring about” those issues isn’t enough. Pay attention to what Democrats both say and do — or at least try their level best to do in the face of Republican obstructionism. Put a Democrat — any Democrat — in the White House. Give the Dems control of the House and Senate by comfortable margins. Disempower the MAGA party. Do the same all the way down the ticket, so that the Dems can pass the necessary legislation and establish relevant programs. See what they accomplish with it. And then hold their feet to the fire if they behave half-heartedly in re those issues.

Of course, this assumes we’ll have another mid-term election in 2026, and another presidential election in 2028 — neither of those a given.

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Sebastian Brant, Ship of Fools (1519), title page

I confess myself deeply disappointed in, painfully ashamed of, and profoundly shocked by my country. I did not believe my fellow citizens capable of this. I truly thought we would put Trump and what he represents on the shelf with other short-lived American examples of “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” His comeback signifies that, instead, he represents something enduring and evil in our collective unconscious.

I had hoped that, after this election, I could afford not to think about him again — not to have to see his likeness, heard his voice, pay him anything more than passing attention as the wheels of justice rolled over him. Instead, it appears that I’ll spend much of the rest of my life engaging with his malignant presence and its impact on our culture. That prospect fills me with dread.

I can only hope that, based on the past performance of Mango Mussolini and his MAGA clown car, he and his current ship of fools will either drift aimlessly or crash on the rocks (or both) while doing minimal harm to the nation and the rest of us.

Not holding my breath. The wild rumpus has begun. Or maybe the massacre of the innocents.

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This post supported in part by a donation from Carlyle T.

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