Throughout the election, we heard one warning, repeated ad infinitum: A Donald Trump victory would precipitate a fascist dictatorship, and the United States would soon resemble Nazi Germany.
But Democrats didn’t take up arms to defend the ramparts of democracy. They didn’t repel Trump’s storm troopers who descended on Washington. Instead, something more. . . traditional happened. President Joe Biden welcomed Donald Trump to the White House, congratulated him, and promised a “smooth transition.” (A courtesy, we should note, that Trump did not extend to Biden in 2020.)
But now that Democrats have lost power—both in the White House and Congress—what changes should they make to regain it?
Here to answer that question today are Freddie deBoer and Ruy Teixeira. Freddie is a writer, self-described Marxist, and longtime critic of “social justice” identity politics. Ruy is a political demographer, Democratic strategist, and co-author of the book, Where Have all the Democrats Gone?
We talk about how Democrats became the party of elites, whether Kamala Harris’s loss is the death knell of identity politics, why abortion wasn’t enough to save the Democrats, and whether the party will learn any significant lessons from this historic defeat.
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In many ways, Trump is promising to take us back to a time very similar to the 1920s: isolationism and a recovering U.S. economy in the wake of a global pandemic. It sounds good until you go back to 1924 and think about how the next twenty years unfolded. If you don't know what happened between 1924 and 1944, maybe you should have looked into some of those Hitler references before you voted for Trump.
If I was a Republican, I'd feel pretty good about my chances of staying in power for a long time. Rui made sense sporadically, Freddy, not so much.
One of the many puzzles is their failure to acknowledge the reasons the Democrats are unable to offer a coherent program is there is not a model which supports their programs. These programs, "pay your fair share" in regards to taxes and the "transition to clean energy" being obvious examples, fail under the weight of their own contradictions, so they have to fall back on empty slogans. Voters have recognized this and the message only appeals to the true believers who are delegates at the convention or have appear on MSNBC.
It also seems with Alex Soros taking over the political arm of dad's empire, the funding won't dry up, which would be the usual impetus for change. Could be a long red wave.
PS- I loved the part where Freddy said we need to get elected saying A, then when we get in office we get do our Christmas list of what we really want to get done. Isn't that what we just lived through the last four years? God forbid we'd tell those pesky voters what we really are going to do.