Don't Get Fooled Again

Twelve years ago, the last time the Democrats lost a presidential election, a not-very-bright college senior had this to say about his disappointment:

But don’t let the narrow difference in the Electoral College fool you. This wasn’t a close election. When the new Congress convenes in January, the Republicans will have double-digit advantages in the Senate and House of Representatives. Governors’ mansions and state legislatures remain, on the whole, firmly in their grasp. . . .

So what gives?

A lot of things, but I would argue the biggest problem is that most of us Lefties don’t understand people who base their votes on “moral values.” Here in Ivory Tower academia, we like to make fun of these people. With smug self-satisfaction, we mock them as backwards simpletons who can’t read and base their opinions on (gasp!) The Bible.

Well the joke’s on us now, and we need to regroup.

Two friends wrote me in the days that followed to take issue with my analysis.  One, Dave Weigel (now of The Washington Post), challenged me for overreacting to a single election.  Realignment is hard, he said, but there would be better days ahead for Democrats as they started to challenge in areas traditionally held by Republicans.  The other, Greg Lowe, challenged me for abandoning my principles.  Yes, moral-values voters had turned against the Democrats, he conceded, but on the big “moral” issue of that election—gay rights—we were right, and they were wrong.  We shouldn’t cede ground just because we had lost an election, he argued.

Two years later, Democrats took back Congress, and two years after that, they had a near-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to go with the presidency and the House.  Meanwhile, it would take barely a decade for gay marriage to go from a Republican wedge issue to a nationwide right.

It turns out two days after an election may not be the best time to make predictions about American’s political future.

In the wake of this year’s election, a lot of people are repeating my mistake of 2004.  They’re saying that Democrats are out of touch with the working class.  They’re saying that “identity politics” is (or should be) dead.  They’re saying that the left needs to reorient itself primarily or even exclusively around economic messages.  They’re wrong.

Like me 12 years ago, they’re overreacting to a single electoral loss without looking at the broader picture.  Yes, this hurts.  But when 2 million more people vote for your candidate than the other guy, and you gain seats in the House and Senate, it seems awfully strange to conclude that it’s time for a massive overhaul of your entire platform and message.  Democrats will remain competitive in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in the near term.  And as demographics shift in the southwest, Democrats should continue to make gains in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.  Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections.  Let’s keep things in perspective.

But perhaps more importantly, those calling for a significant messaging overhaul aren’t just overreacting.  They’re ignoring the moral imperative for liberals to continue to stand for the values—particularly equality and diversity—that have defined our movement.

Yes, we should stand with the working class.  But a lot of the working class is black or Latino.  A lot of the working class is Muslim.  An infrastructure bill is nice, but it won’t mean much to people who end up deported or part of an immigrant registry or on the wrong end of Trump’s plan to institute “law and order”—whatever that means in a time of historically low crime rates. 

Let me be blunter: You can’t cozy up to Trump in the hopes that he’ll pass your favored school reforms and ignore that he wants to deport millions of the kids you’re supposed to serve.

You can’t separate the good white supremacists from the bad white supremacists.

I’m all for listening to other people and understanding their pain.  Lord knows this election has revealed that a lot of people across this country are suffering.  But don’t tell me I have to give up on my vision of America as diverse, welcoming and forward-looking because Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College.

This was a loss.  For a lot of people, it will prove a devastating loss.  But for now, the only real option is to take the hit, spit out the blood, and get up and fight.  The war for our country is on.