An Inconvenient Blog

By Ashkan

After Hillary Clinton placed half of Donald Trump’s supporters into a basket of deplorables, it should have clicked. Someone should have said: “guys, let’s not do that again!”

But then Joe Biden told Black men voting for Trump that they ain’t Black. And Tim Walz wanted in too, calling Trump, Vance, and his supporters weird — which delighted the DNC so much that it single handedly catapulted him to the Vice Presidential nomination. With days left in the campaign, Biden topped it all off by reminding 75 million American voters that they were garbage. 

I can only hope that Tuesday’s walloping forced the Democratic party to get the message. Half of the country is not evil. People who support the other candidate are not depth-groveling vermin who should be exterminated for their high crimes and misdemeanors. 

Democrats have an elitism problem. They think of themselves as divine messengers of goodwill enlisted by God. This mindset is not only misguided and harmful, but also fueling the arrogance costing them elections.

Post-2016, Democrats aggressively went after White voters who supported Trump (I can still hear Van Jones saying “this was a whitelash” with a trembling voice). They hurled names, called them racist, and were then satisfied with their post-mortem analysis. Now the machine is glitching as they’re losing Black and Latino voters. Democrats could’ve examined how their platform and messaging missed the mark with these demographics — instead we have Joe Scarborough and Al Sharpton calling Latinos racist and sexist. That’ll work, guys! Now they’ll come back! Go ahead and say “fuck Cinco de Mayo.” Keep wishing deportation on the loved ones of people you disagree with. See how far that gets you. I’m sure you’ll win “Dumbfuckistan” back.

Instead of being willing to refresh their faulty playbook, Democrats find it much more convenient to look down on the pariahs from their Bloomberg penthouses. Anyone not with them is racist, sexist, authoritarian, whatever. Even if they’re minorities, even if they were with them before.

Maybe people voted for Trump not because he is an insurrectionist racist felon with sexual abuse allegations but despite that. Americans right now are feeling more economic pain than they were during the height of the 2008 Great Recession. So let me be perfectly clear: the voter whose family is struggling to make rent today does not care if a candidate once paid hush money to a porn star. And they especially don’t like being made to feel evil for that stance.

There is a hierarchy of needs when it comes to politics. I covered this in my piece analyzing why everyone has forgotten about climate change — nothing else matters if your immediate survival and security is at risk. To privileged college-educated Democrats, the philosophical idea of American democracy, the Supreme Court’s treatment of niche pockets of the LGBTQ community, and abortion are top of mind. And these issues happen to be easiest to fashion into a cudgel to demonize the other side: you’re anti-American! You’re a fascist! You’re homophobic! You’re transphobic! You’re anti-choice! You’re misogynistic!

But here’s what they miss: so many swing voters who went Red didn’t have the luxury to even consider these issues. Their musings on the culture war weren’t driving their votes. Their other priorities were. The polling finds that Republican concerns were so drastically more bread-and-butter than Democrats’ — it’s just all one degree more visceral and existential. For example, it’s shocking that “Economy” didn’t even crack the top 5 for Democratic voters. Look at this chart from Gallup:

Exit polling found that voters who were economically vulnerable were much more likely to support Trump. He won decisively among voters who self-identified as “falling behind” financially. Meanwhile Kamala made gains among voters who made more than $100,000 per year. What’s even more twisted and tone-deaf — the Left has begun to understand this trend and yet still demonizes people who are struggling. Look at this viral post. And this one, just mocking poor people. This is elitism. This is why you lose. Don’t you get it?

Bernie Sanders, a strange bedfellow, put it really well in his post-election statement. He said: “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.” That’s it. I’m sure Bernie and I arrived at this conclusion from different starting points — but the Trump campaign just did a better job talking to working class voters and addressing their economic fears than Kamala could. He made them feel heard.

Almost no Republican voter streaked to the ballot box on a mission to kill trans kids (that issue was ranked dead last in a Gallup poll). Many didn’t do so to strip reproductive rights from women (so many Trump voters also voted to legalize abortion in red states like Missouri, Montana, and Nevada). And no one went to the polls to vote for Trump because he was a felon and Kamala wasn’t — unless someone can help me find the single-issue felon voters. Trump voters aren’t morally bankrupt. But some might be approaching actual bankruptcy.

Democrats, do better. Respect your fellow Americans. Understand why they vote for who they vote for. It will do good for your party and for our country.