Since the election conservatives have assumed that the results represent a “mandate” for their political agenda, as well as a confirmation of their version of national identity. Yet in reality, the election was actually quite close, as Trump’s win margin in the popular vote is the smallest since Jimmy Carter’s in 1976.
This is remarkable given the inadequacy of the Democratic candidates, as well as the well-deserved disdain many Americans feel toward the Biden Administration. Indeed, the case can be made that the November vote was less an endorsement of Trump, who remained widely disliked all the way to the election, than a rejection of the current cocktail of progressive policies. These include unpalatable positions from draconian climate policies to the embrace of transgender ideology, open borders, race quotas, and censorship. As Nate Silver suggests, voters were “giving the middle figure” to the “expert class” of Harvard and Yale credentialed types whose genius brought the country rising crime, inflation, and a generally unstable planet.
Yet conservatives are making a mistake in supposing that the Democrats will be down for the long-term. Gallup notes that Kamala Harris was detested for many positions, but was still favored on such things as “preserving the American dream for young people” and “strengthening the middle class.” Similarly, most Americans favor increasing taxes on the wealthy, a position anathema to most Republicans but usually embraced by Democrats.
On top of this, Democrats can count on Trump finding ways to alienate voters with his myriad personal faults, which will make it unlikely there’s a repeat of Reagan’s “Morning in America.” Trump also will inherit Biden’s awful legacy, including a bloated budget deficit, a weakened military, inflation that hits hardest among the least affluent, and an economy that has failed to lift up the bulk of the working and middle class. Overall, one in four Americans fear losing their job over the next year, and roughly half now think the vaunted “American Dream” of homeownership has become unattainable, particularly in coastal cities.
The traditional Democratic focus on class mobility would be far more effective than their current approach, which is largely shaped by their own ideological and sociological bubbles rather than the concerns of regular Americans. As long-time Democratic operative Van Jones has observed, once voters choose wrongly, they’re dismissed as racists and fascists. It goes without saying that this kind of selective scapegoating is not a workable political strategy.
Democrats are already sharpening knives to keep anyone from thinning out the bloated bureaucracy, which, as Rep. Ro Khanna suggests, also places them out of touch with the majority of voters.
As they kowtow to progressive non-profits and public employee unions, Democrats reflect the values of the progressive culture dominant in classrooms, the media, Hollywood, and indeed the government bureaucracy itself. Doing this has led the Democrats to lose even the most basic sense of what is happening on Main Street.
Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Senate Democrats via X.
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