I’m feeling the weight of two obligations: the goal I set for myself to write here once a month, and the questions I get from relatives, friends, and acquaintances about the election. But I don’t really want to write or talk about it. In fact, I’m still grouchy about my then-boss* asking me what my take on the election was a mere three days after it happened.
*That’s not why I quit, I’d found something in the field I want to practice in and given my notice before that interaction happened, but it did not exactly fill me with regret at leaving that boss behind.
Here, for your convenience, is a handy list of my overlapping theories about why it happened the way it did. None of them are novel and other people have written about all of them way better than me. You will note that absolutely none of them lead to “and that’s why Democrats should throw trans people under the bus.”
The last couple of years have seen worldwide inflation that’s been brutal for incumbent parties no matter where they are. In fact, both inflation and the results could have been much worse for the U.S./Dems, though it doesn’t especially feel like it right now. (As a corollary, it’s been a long time since we’ve had meaningful inflation, but we have had high unemployment far too frequently, and those have very different economic and electoral effects. High unemployment concentrates misery. High inflation causes a smaller pinch but hits everyone.)
Many of Biden’s biggest accomplishments, in infrastructure and clean energy, are the kind of things that don’t have immediate impact on people’s lives but will pay dividends down the road…and to make matters worse, he didn’t do a great job of taking credit for them and making sure people knew about them. In part, I attribute this to his age and stutter making him leery of interviews and press, but Democrats as a whole also tend to think it’s somehow virtuous not to brag about what you’ve done, which is patently absurd. Meanwhile, pandemic-era measures like the child tax credit that were having an immediate impact were allowed to expire. (Thanks for nothing, Joe Manchin.) I think that, combined with inflation, made people feel like Democrats weren’t doing much for them.
People seem to have just…forgotten how much they disliked Trump 4 years ago. I am genuinely at a loss to explain this one. People collectively decided the economy was great pre-COVID (and it was actually fine, though not as gangbusters as people believe it was) and he won’t actually implement the giant tariffs and mass deportation he’s threatening that would crash the economy. This might be a “fuck around and find out” situation, and I really wish I didn’t have to be part of the finding out.
Related to #3, people are getting news and info about the world from sources like TikTok and podcasts that aren’t really news and where a lot of misinformation floats around. Not all of this is in Democrats’ control, and Kamala made some attempts to reach people who listen to podcasts and the like, but it clearly wasn’t enough.
2 and 4, I think, are where the biggest changes are needed in Democrats’ political strategy. 3 is cult-of-personality shit, and 1 is a worldwide trend you can only swim against and hope for the best.
Anyway. Finals are coming up, it was just Thanksgiving, and I don’t want to do election talk anymore. In time, I’ll do politics talk again. I don’t do fatalism. Fighting back will be necessary, it will matter, and it will be good for the soul. Every bit of harm we can prevent over the next four years matters.
But it’s not January 20 yet and I have a rare long weekend, which I’ve mostly been taking to rest. I spent my actual Thanksgiving mostly with my dad and stepmom, with a quick visit to my grandmother’s house to see Grandma, Mom, my stepdad, and my uncle, and all of it was wonderful. I’ve done a little shopping, both online and at the Bristol Bazaar, and a little house cleaning. But mostly just taking a break from the constant pressure to Do All The Things, and it’s done me good.
Leaving you with Molly scheming how to get a second Thanksgiving dinner. At my very lowest moment the morning after the election, she was there snuggled up next to me in bed, and I gave her a little scratch between her ears and remembered she needs me around.
Somehow, we’ll all mostly get through.