Postmortem

As we’re standing in the dimly lit autopsy room, the 2024 Democratic campaign lifelessly splayed out on the examination table in front of us, I can’t help but desire some retribution. While I am principally opposed to capital punishment, I will make an exception for this culprit: the myth of the centrist voter should be put to death. It has been the prevailing wisdom among Democratic Party managers that to win a presidential campaign, you must run to the right and situate yourself in the much- revered center. One way of doing this is the practice known as “hippie punching.” Bill Clinton famously did this in the 1992 presidential campaign. He randomly picked a rapper, Sister Souljah, who said something “controversial” about racism in America—meaning she made white people feel uncomfortable—and denounced her. It was an appeal to “moderate” voters who might be uncomfortable with an outspoken anti-racist candidate. It became known as “a Sister Souljah moment,” an expression still used in US politics today. At first glance, the hippie punching strategy appears as little more than a product of Washington brain-rot. But even this is frequently debated and contested by mainstream pundits. Even before the Harris campaign’s corpse was cold, a slew of mainstream commentators took to their broadcasts to lampoon the Democrats for running on a too-progressive platform. I have heard Harris get criticized for campaigning too much on transgender rights, even though Harris barely paid lip service to the LGBTQ community and trans-rights were mostly absent from her campaign (which is something to lament, not praise). I have heard Harris get criticized for being too “woke” or “too liberal,” despite her campaign embracing arch-conservatives such as Liz and Dick Cheney. There is no shortage of commentators trying to convince you that Harris should have campaigned further to the right. Let’s ask: does this make sense? We’ll start with an interesting fact: Bernie Sanders, the left-wing progressive senator, is the most popular politician in the United States. This is not only evident from opinion polls but also from election fundraising. In 2020, Bernie Sanders received more individual donations from working-class people than any other candidate in US political history; allowing his campaign to compete with corporate- backed candidates. The map below shows where political donations came from for the 2020 Democratic primaries: You might initially think that the map is colored blue by default, but no! Bernie Sanders is blue—and the map is blue. There is more interesting evidence in blind polls: American voters are given a list of policies espoused by each presidential candidate, but the twist is that they are not told which policy is championed by which party. With striking consistency over the years, US voters prefer progressive policies—even most Republican voters prefer Democratic policies. This year, the pattern held: a majority of Republicans preferred Kamala Harris’ policies over Trump’s. Additionally, just like in past elections, a majority of Americans vote for progressive ballot measures. And while Republicans have tried their best at demonizing transgender people—starting a kind of renaissance of the Lavender Scare—they have failed to make it a politically viable issue. In previous elections, every candidate that runs an anti-trans-focused campaign has lost. Polling has also consistently revealed that conservative efforts to vilify trans people have been in vain. Last September, another poll (conducted by Gallup) ranked transgender issues last on a list of election priorities, even among Republicans. In this year’s post-election polling, merely four percent said opposing gender-affirming surgeries and preventing transgender children from playing sports motivated them to vote—the issue, once again, ranked dead last as what voters cared about. Pitiful, considering the Trump campaign spent over $150 million on anti-trans panic ads. Even in the Republican stronghold of Texas, Julie Johnson was elected as the first out LGBTQ member of Congress from the South. And in the Texas House, an anti- trans Republican was unseated by another openly LGBTQ woman named Lauren Ashley Simmons. In Montana, progressive Democrats achieved a historic win, destroying a Republican super-majority in the state. Democrats gained nine seats in the state’s House and two in the Senate. One of the Democrats who won reelection in the Montana House was Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender representative in Montana. “Despite a national election cycle that saw a 2-3 point shift toward Republicans,” Zephyr wrote, “This is the largest gain for Democrats in over 30 years and represents a clear repudiation of the Republican’s extreme and undemocratic policies. … Republicans have lost more seats than any time in the last three decades.” Kamala Harris, for her part, did not campaign on a pro-trans message. The word “trans” was only used at this year’s DNC twice—the first DNC since 2016 where no transgender Democrat was invited to speak. And yet, curiously, certain Democrats are blaming their colossal defeat on trans issues. New York Representative Tom Suozzi recently told the New York Times that “the Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left.” “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody,” he said, “but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.” Hot tip: if you ever find yourself saying, “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but,” you’re already in the wrong. Other Democrats agreed with Suozzi, such as Representative Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, who claimed Harris lost because “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” However, this election alone was rife with various signs of a progressive electorate: Kentucky, Colorado, and Nebraska—two of them red states—rejected the Republican plans for private school vouchers and supported public education. Voters in seven states—including red states—voted to protect abortion rights (in Florida, the pro-choice measure failed due to the state’s rule requiring two-thirds of votes to pass a ballot measure, but 57 percent of Florida voters nevertheless tried to protect abortion rights), in every state where abortion rights were on the ballot, those measures received far more votes than Kamala Harris. Missouri and Alaska, also both red states, overwhelmingly voted in favor of raising the minimum wage and forcing employers to offer paid sick leave. Progressive candidates also easily won reelection; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American in Congress, in Michigan. And yet, a Hillary Clinton adviser, Mark Penn, also wrote that Democrats lost because they pivoted too far to the left: “America is a center-right country at heart. Only 25 percent are liberal and the other 75 percent won’t be ruled by the 25,” he said, without providing evidence. “Young people are waking up and beginning to reject woke politics and their turn to the center is the surprise of the election.” I don’t think it would shock many people that a Hillary Clinton adviser is so bereft of a political pulse that I could sooner ask my dead dog for electoral analysis and his silence would be more helpful to me. It remains shocking that the people who bungled 2016 are still employed. There appears to be a howling chasm between what American voters say they care about, and what some Democratic strategists believe voters care about. I’m starting to see the problem… But if Americans are as progressive as the evidence shows, why did Donald Trump become president? The answer lies in the fact that, while Donald Trump received only slightly more votes than in 2020, 8 million fewer votes went to the Democrats. So, why is this? Get your scalpel and bone saw, it’s time to dissect the Harris campaign. It is impossible to understand the beginning of the Harris campaign without first discussing the end of the Biden campaign. The Biden administration managed to get themselves into quite an unenviable position. What many people overlook is the depth of Joe Biden’s unpopularity. Biden’s approval rating is the lowest of any president in over seventy years. The last president to be this unpopular was Harry Truman. One problem that haunted the Biden administration was the cost-of-living crisis. Politicians have always deliberately confused a booming stock market with a healthy economy. Earlier this year in March, CNN published an article titled, “Americans’ cost of living remains a massive headache, even as recession fears fade.” “Inflation is cooling. The economy is growing at a shockingly strong pace. And unemployment hasn’t been this low for this long since the late 1960s,” the article began. “And yet, hidden behind these boomy-economic indicators, a frustrating reality persists: Life is far too expensive for too many. “From the historically unaffordable housing market and budget-breaking day care rates to high car prices, the United States has a cost of living problem many years in the making. Parents of young children are making difficult choices to afford child care—or they’re opting to evade it by dropping out of the workforce altogether.” Later, the article describes some of the crisis, including the cost of housing: “America’s affordability problem is most glaring in the housing market. … From January 2020 to December 2023, the monthly payment needed for the median home increased by more than 100 percent, while median household income rose just 12 percent.” Several working-class Americans are quoted in the article, including a woman with an eight-year-old child: “Even some of those lucky enough to have bought a home in recent years are now stressing out about how to pay for it. … ‘It feels like we’re going to be swallowed by that forever,’ Rachael said of her mortgage payment. Rachael conceded that as a homeowner, in some ways she is living the American Dream. ‘But at what cost?’ she asked. ‘My husband and I spend a lot of time stressing trying to make ends meet.’ And Rachael fears she won’t be able to give her son as much as she had growing up, including playing multiple sports. ‘Even swim lessons are outrageously expensive,’ she said. … ‘My husband and I fear we may never be able to have a second child—not because we can’t conceive, but because we can’t afford one,’ she said.” None of this is accidental. There has been an ever-worsening class war waged on the poor and working class for centuries, which reached a new level of savagery in the neo-liberal era. Keeping people in poverty is a deliberate policy and, to make matters worse, it’s a bipartisan effort. Although, the Republicans are far worse. The class war has been so vicious that it shows up even in mortality. According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, poverty is the fourth greatest cause of death in the United States; outdone only by heart disease, cancer, and smoking. The study’s lead author said, “Poverty silently killed ten times as many people as all the homicides in 2019.” Many physicians, and the World Health Organization, identify poverty in the US as a health concern. One doctor in Boston told journalists that “it’s pretty well established at most major academic medical centers that trying to alleviate economic inequalities is an important part of trying to promote health.” About sixty percent of Americans, while living in the richest country on Earth, are living paycheck to paycheck. While Biden and his supporters frequently boast that he is the most pro-working- class president in US history—which is true, except for maybe Abraham Lincoln—his administration did not do enough to address the cost of living. And Biden could have easily done more. Price controls are one example. Richard Nixon (of all people) was the last president to implement price controls. He simply forced corporations to lower prices. Nixon was lampooned by journalists for allegedly being a communist. Which I find hysterical, especially since Nixon was essentially hoodwinked into doing it by a small group of Democrats. Which earned their leader, Wright Patman, the number 16 spot on Nixon’s famous Enemies List. The “Nixon Shock,” as it’s known, was successful because it attacked the genuine cause of inflation: profiteers. Do not believe what most politicians or neo-liberal economists will tell you, workers’ wages are not the driving force behind inflation—corporate greed is. Interestingly, Kamala Harris proposed to crack down on “price gouging”—which is when corporations over-price their products, a practice that has netted them multiple trillions of dollars—and she implied she would use price controls. Immediately, capitalists slithered out of the woodwork and took to various publications to criticize Harris. For instance, the CEO and CIO of US Global Investors wrote in Forbes that Harris’ proposed “price controls … are misguided at best and catastrophic at worst.” He closed by saying, “If we want to preserve America’s prosperity, we must resist these flawed policies and instead embrace the principles of free markets and limited government intervention.” Reflect for a moment on the phrase, “preserve America’s prosperity.” Spoken like a man who benefits from said prosperity. In the United States that would put him in the minority; the bottom 50 percent of the population collectively own 1.9 percent of all the wealth in the country. Meanwhile, 1 percent of the population owns 30.4 percent of the country’s wealth—around 34.2 trillion dollars. The 59 wealthiest Americans are richer than 165 million citizens. To help comprehend those numbers, I will once again use the seconds metric: a million seconds is twelve days, a billion seconds is thirty-one years, and a trillion seconds is 31,688 years. To make matters worse for Biden, while unwilling to adequately fight the class war, he was more than willing to fund a proxy war in Ukraine and a genocide in Israel. Seriously, how hard is it not to send weapons in bulk to a government accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice? The vast majority of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans oppose Biden’s Israel policy. A majority of Democrats believe the word “genocide” is appropriate to describe Israel’s actions. A majority of Democrats want a weapons embargo. But Biden and the Democratic Party remain steadfast in their opposition to voters. While Biden’s Israel policy might not rank as high on the list of electoral priorities for many voters as it should, Biden’s obstinance and unwillingness to rule democratically on this issue has become symbolic of the government’s unresponsiveness to the wishes of the country. Due to widespread protests, Biden’s campaign stopped announcing his scheduled appearances beforehand. Effectively running a sub-rosa guerrilla campaign: quickly popping into friendly interviews unannounced, before hurrying back into the shadows in fear of running into voters, angry about the genocide in Palestine. When Biden took the debate stage in June and proudly proclaimed that “we finally beat Medicare,” it was over. But make no mistake, that CNN debate was only the final nail in the coffin. After trying and failing to cling to power, Biden got COVID and with the urging of Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats, finally dropped out of the race. It would now be Kamala Harris’ turn. There was some talk of still holding a primary, but in our quest to save democracy, there was no time to let voters decide the future. Within 24 hours of Kamala Harris becoming the Party’s nominee, her campaign raised more than $81 million from small donations. A fortuitous sign of changing tides. As vice president, Harris had made some subtle overtures to the left. Last March, for instance, Harris called for a ceasefire in Gaza, at a time when such a word was anathema to the Biden administration. “What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating. We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed. Women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration,” she said. “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.” She added that Israel immediately had to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, “No excuses.” While Biden told a group of journalists, “I’m a Zionist,” Harris’ rare display of compassion seemed refreshing. After she became the nominee, the first order of business was picking a running mate. Two members on the shortlist were Josh Shapiro and Tim Walz. Shapiro is the Governor of Pennsylvania—a key must-win swing state. If the Democrats were playing cynically, Shapiro might give them an edge in Pennsylvania, but it would kick sand in the faces of progressives. The first people to raise the alarm on Shapiro were the teachers’ unions, due to the governor’s support for a private school vouchers program. A scheme cooked up by Republicans as part of their assault on public education; similar to the proposals that voters in Kentucky, Colorado, and Nebraska voted against in this election. Shapiro is also a lifelong supporter of Israel. “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully,” he wrote in 1993. “They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.” Earlier this year, he compared pro-Palestinian protesters with the Ku Klux Klan, something he only slightly walked back in a hollow PR statement after he was considered as Kamala’s VP pick. To anyone with a keen sense of smell, Shapiro, with his history of giving tax cuts to corporations, comes across as an insincere ladder-climber. Just the type of person the Democrats like to run for high office. Walz, meanwhile, was brilliant. A teacher who coached football turned progressive politician. His past military service insulated him from the type of “don’t you support the troops?” attacks when he became an anti-war Democrat. As governor of Minnesota, with only a slim one-seat majority, Walz led Minnesota Democrats down their most progressive path in history. In only five months, Democrats passed legislation protecting abortion rights; they eliminated barriers to voting and gave former prisoners the right to vote; sensible gun-control laws were passed; recreational use of cannabis was legalized; and they enacted a law to force electricity companies to be carbon-neutral by 2040. They also invested heavily in public services such as social housing, child care, elderly care, and schools. Oh, and they also improved the state’s infrastructure. And they made higher education free for poor families. And they created an insurance program for folks who lost income due to being seriously ill. They also passed union protections and strengthened labor laws. Under Walz’s stewardship, Minnesota’s unemployment rate dropped ten percent. And they also passed a universal school meals bill that made school meals free for all students. Walz also believed in what almost no other politicians do: “You don’t win elections to bank political capital,” he said. “You win elections to burn the capital to improve lives.” I love Tim Walz. The icing on the cake? While he did not stick his head above the parapet by supporting the Palestinian cause, he refused to demonize the student protesters. Tim Walz is great. This was the choice: cynical status-quo Democratic politics with Shapiro, or a bright and ambitious progressive future with Walz. Incredibly, Harris picked Walz. And unsurprisingly, she kept rising in the polls. For the first time in years, I felt a frisson of hope for the future. An emotion I haven’t felt in over a decade. The Democrats finally seemed to be concerned with winning. Then came the Democratic National Convention. And by the end of the fourth and final night, any glimmer of positivity I had was smashed to pieces. I wrote at the time that all presidents who had won since George W. Bush had campaigned against Bush’s Freedom Doctrine—the ideology of foreign interventionism and preserving America’s global hegemony through military might. “The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom,” as Bush explained it. First, Obama won against the relentless war-monger John McCain, who sang his own parody of the Beach Boys’ song “Barbara Ann” by replacing the lyrics with “Bomb Iran.” Then Donald Trump won by railing against Bush, Cheney, and the Iraq War—saying, “The war in Iraq is a big fat mistake,” and, “They lied! They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none.” Trump attacked Hillary from the left, portraying himself as a pro-peace moderate and her as a Kissinger-type hawk. Then came Joe Biden in 2020, promising to end the war in Afghanistan and make human rights central to America’s foreign policy. None of these candidates kept their promises. In fact, the Bush Doctrine was only an extension of the long-held bipartisan belief that the United States owns the world. Every US president since the Second World War has extended the American Empire by violence—there is no anti-imperialist party. But nevertheless, peace is hugely popular. As I wrote during the DNC, “Kamala Harris, however, is seemingly unwilling to capitalize on the popularity of peace.” The Harris campaign adopted the most unfortunate quality of the Biden administration: framing everything through the lens of imperialism. Harris, like Biden, had some genuinely good policies—insufficient, but still good—yet it was never sold to the public as being beneficial to them, it was sold as a way to remain competitive with China, to ensure that “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” in Harris’ words. Democrats across the country campaigned like this. Painting their opponents as “weak on China,” as Bob Casey did for instance. Or Elissa Slotkin, who criticized her opponent for “helping Chinese companies get access to the US.” “Profit from China or protect America. That’s the choice,” she said in one of her ads. Another Democrat, Tammy Baldwin, similarly framed pro-working-class policies through the anti- China lens: “We can’t let China steal Wisconsin jobs,” she declared in her campaign ad. Both Harris and Biden spoke at length of the importance of NATO, and ensuring America’s good reputation around the world. During the DNC, Biden spoke at the end of the first night: “When Trump left office, Europe and NATO was in tatters. Not a joke. ‘America First’ doctrine changed our whole image in the world. Well, I spent—they gave the hours, about 190 hours, sum total—[inaudible] with my counterparts or heads of state in Europe to strengthen NATO. We did. We united Europe like it hadn’t been for years, adding Finland and Sweden to NATO. Ten days before he died, Henry Kissinger called and said, ‘Not since, not since Napoleon has Europe not looked over their shoulder at Russia with dread, until now. Until now.’ Well, guess what? Putin thought he’d take Kyiv in three days. Three years later, Ukraine is still free. When I came to office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably surpass the United States. They haven’t noticed: No one’s saying that now!” (Small side note: Napoleon invaded Russia, not the other way around.) In Harris’ closing speech on night four, she said: “As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world. I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families. And I will always honor, never disparage, their service and their sacrifice. I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence, that America—not China—wins the competition for the 21st century, and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership. … And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists. And I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-Un, who are rooting for Trump because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know that Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat! As President, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals. Because, in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand—and I know where the United States of America belongs.” The Biden-Harris administration viewed the role of the state similarly to George W. Bush: the United States’ role in the world is to spread democracy and stand up to authoritarian regimes, and they viewed the fight against Trump through the same lens. Meanwhile, Trump again campaigned on an anti-war platform. He’s not serious—he will be pro-war just like his first time in office, but he knows how unpopular the Bush Doctrine is. Upon leaving office, Dick Cheney had a 13 percent approval rating. The number of politicians so universally detested is low, but Dick Cheney is considered by many people (including me) to be a Satanic figure. Even Republicans loathe him. But in almost any speech she gave or event she attended, Harris would boast about getting endorsed by Dick Cheney. Several staffers on her campaign tried to warn her, one of them told Rolling Stone that they’d told the campaign’s managers, “People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil.” Their warnings went unheeded. Kamala Harris would attack Trump from the right on almost every issue. The Biden administration had supported a Republican-drafted border security bill that would have constructed Trump’s wall. The same wall that Democrats rightfully railed against as useless, racist, environmentally damaging, and expensive. Kamala Harris once called it Trump’s “medieval vanity project.” But in her DNC speech, Harris said, “Let me be clear: after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it, but Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign. So he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security. Here is my pledge to you: as president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed. And I will sign it into law.” Every time Harris mentioned immigration, it was through the lens of crime and crisis. They argued that Trump wasn’t serious enough about immigration and lacked credibility, but Democrats would be the genuine anti-immigrant party. During a town hall on CNN (where candidates take questions from audience members), Harris was asked by the host, Anderson Cooper, about her support for the Republican bill and specifically Trump’s border wall. She replied, “I’m not afraid of good ideas.” She and other Democrats repeated the lie that fentanyl is smuggled into the country by immigrants. I’ll repeat this until kingdom come if I have to: Just 0.02 percent of immigrants and asylum seekers smuggle fentanyl. Most fentanyl is smuggled in by US citizens since they won’t be searched at the border. Biden and Harris’ immigration policy is further to the right than Ronald Reagan’s. On the DNC’s third night, Walz gave his last good speech. He even called housing and healthcare a “human right.” After that, the campaign clipped his wings. I suspect the Harris campaign believed they had the progressive vote in their pocket. In subsequent appearances and interviews, Walz was sent out mainly to defend Harris’ foreign policy. He gave it his all, making the case on the vice presidential debate stage that Kamala would ensure “steady leadership” in contrast to Trump (I think that’s also the best I’d be able to do). Walz virtually stopped campaigning on progressive issues. On top of that, the thing that initially put Walz on the map, calling Republicans “weird,” was abandoned after the DNC. This subtle line of attack was effective, it resonated well with voters and it sent Republicans into a conniption: on Fox News’ prime-time broadcast, the host played a video of Walz hugging his wife, before bear-hugging Kamala’s husband, and said Walz was the weird one—not Republicans—since he hugged his wife in a feminine way and hugged Kamala’s husband too enthusiastically. Walz called the GOP’s obsession with policing the private lives of citizens “weird,” and voters agreed. After the DNC, the Democrats completely dropped this line of attack. I cannot explain why. The Harris campaign did not allow a Palestinian Democrat to speak—despite warning signs that they were pushing Muslim, Arab, and young voters away. Unlike in 2020, they did not come out in support of healthcare for all, which a majority of Americans support. While progressives like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, and Shawn Fain were invited to speak, every progressive policy position that the Democratic Party previously supported as a whole, no matter how small or disingenuous, was surgically removed. The Party’s opposition to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen? Gone. The Party’s opposition to the death penalty? Gone. The Party’s formal opposition to regime change? Gone. After the DNC it was all downhill. During Kamala Harris’ first interview, on CNN, she boasted about having been the tie-breaking vote to auction off close to eighty million acres of federally owned water rights in the Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling and declared she wasn’t in favor of banning fracking. When asked directly whether her policy on Israel would change from Biden, she said “No.” Even though a majority of Americans—and a massive majority of Democrats—want an arms embargo. This is not new either, on the 2020 election night, J Street—a liberal Jewish lobbying group—conducted a poll showing that 57 percent of American Jews wanted to cut off military aid to Israel. Even two weeks after October 7th, a CBS News and YouGov poll found that 52 percent of Americans did not support sending weapons to Israel. That number has only continued to grow. On September 10th, the Cato Institute published a poll that showed the majority of voters in swing states wanted an arms embargo. Between July and August, the Arab American Institute polled over 2,000 Americans and discovered that if Harris would cut off military aid, support for her would grow from 44 to 49 percent. Meanwhile, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that the issue particularly resonated with people of color, including Black people and Hispanics—demographics wherein Harris underperformed. Harris started campaigning with Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter. She, too, is universally hated. By the Republicans for being a traitor, since she did not go along with the January 6th insurrection; and by Democrats for being a homophobic neo- conservative hawk who supported all of Trump’s policies, and undermined the Democrats’ effort to impeach him. During her interview on 60 Minutes, Harris said that ensuring “Iran never achieves the ability to be a nuclear power” is “one of my highest priorities.” The campaign seemed almost designed around Bush-style rhetoric, focusing on the two surviving “axis of evil” members that Bush and Cheney singled out for regime change. In doing so, the Harris campaign abandoned over 16 years of political precedent: Since 2008, voters have forcefully rejected every campaign centered around foreign interventionism. But in order to cling to this neo-conservative carcass, the Biden and Harris campaigns argued that the opposite was true; they argued that the mythical centrist voter wanted this, that these conservative policies were necessary to win. In reality, these people simply believe that the United States should rule the world. They were given a choice: defeat Trump or maintain US supremacy in the world. They tried both. It failed. As for domestic policies, according to polling, such as a Blueprint poll from September, when voters were given a list of policies that Harris supported, the three least popular were: her support for the conservative border bill, her plan to give tax breaks to small businesses, and her opposition to a ban on fracking. Yet for reasons I can’t fully explain, whenever she gave speeches she would talk about her plan to give tax breaks to small businesses and her support for the Republican border bill. Precisely her most unpopular issues. During the presidential debate in September, Trump spewed a series of racist lies, falsely claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” And added that “Millions of people are pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.” Journalist Natasha Lennard wrote the following day: “Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, didn’t bother to counter the sentiment, the central ideological violence at the heart of Trump’s message. Harris, albeit in the predictably moderate tones of a Democratic border authoritarian, upheld the right-wing lie that immigration—the migration of poor people, that is—should be stopped. Both candidates purported to offer diametrically opposed visions of the country’s future. When it came to immigration and the US border, however, only one narrative was available throughout the night: Immigration is a social ill, if not a criminal endeavor, to be deterred as much as possible. … The rhetoric around the ‘border crisis,’ from the far right to the liberal center, suggests that the pressure of global migration is bearing down on the US. This is hardly the case. “The overwhelming majority of displaced people in the world are internally displaced or in refugee camps near their countries of origin. By comparison to the United States’ so-called crisis, around 1.5 million Syrian refugees currently reside in Lebanon, where the total population is only 5.5 million. I’m not suggesting that, even for a global superpower, it does not take resources and work to settle millions of newcomers into a country, but these are questions of resource distribution priorities. Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, the federal government has spent an estimated $409 billion on immigration enforcement agencies alone, and tens of billions more on deterrence strategies like barriers and walls. “Prioritizing the economic security of our collective lives, and the lives of those who enter the country, rather than ‘securing the border’ through militarized violence, would see such sums better spent.” While Harris would proudly say that the Border Patrol endorsed “my” border bill, the Border Patrol endorsed Trump for president. In some ways that was a microcosm of the bigger problem: while you can adopt Trump’s policies, you will never be Donald Trump. Those who are opposed to immigration—such as the people who work for the Border Patrol, which is a frighteningly extreme right-wing organization—might endorse one of your right-wing policies, but they will still support the right-wing candidate. Voters who hate immigrants will always vote for Donald Trump. Harris effectively spat in the faces of the Democratic base and tried to appeal to a small minority of anti-Trump Republicans. She also kicked sand in the faces of progressives by hiring a multi-billionaire businessman, Mark Cuban, to campaign on her behalf. During a TV interview, Cuban disparaged Bernie Sanders, the most popular politician in the country, by saying Sanders and Trump were both anti-business. Then, Kamala Harris went on The View, an American talk show, and was asked the following question: “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris replied after briefly considering the question, “in terms of—and I’ve been a part of, of, of most of the decisions that have had impact.” Saying you won’t differ from a president who is Truman-level unpopular was a ridiculous thing to do. Eventually, Harris did think of something: “Listen, I plan on having a Republican in my cabinet. You asked me, what’s the difference between Joe Biden and me? Well, that will be one of the differences, I’m going to have a Republican in my cabinet—because I don’t, I don’t feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea.” The New York Times recently reported that after that interview, “In their group texts, Trump advisors rejoiced. They were stunned Ms. Harris did not have a ready- made answer to such a foreseeable and strategically important question. “Mr. Blair, the campaign’s political director, told the team they needed to get the clip seen by as many voters as possible. By that afternoon, up to 10 million voters received text messages containing the clip on their cellphones. Television ads broadcast it to tens of millions more over the following weeks.” The Trump campaign also focused their efforts on where they thought the Democrats were most vulnerable: Muslim and Arab voters in swing states, where Trump campaigned heavily. In response, the Harris campaign sent Bill Clinton to Michigan. And so the people of Michigan—a state that’s home to the largest Muslim demographic in the US—were treated to a lecture from one of the most pro-Israel presidents about the good intentions of the Israelis, and the shameless barbarity of Hamas. “I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died. I get that,” Clinton said. “But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim in Israel, right next to Gaza, where the people there were the most pro- friendship with Palestine, most pro-two state solution, of any of the Israeli communities, were the ones right next to Gaza.” I’d like to briefly interject and mention the town of Sderot, which overlooks the Gaza Strip, where Israelis would sit in lawn chairs and cheer, laugh, and applaud, whenever they saw and heard bombs being dropped or buildings destroyed in the Strip. But sure, Bill, “most pro-friendship with Palestine.” Clinton continued: “And Hamas butchered them. And so, then, the people who criticize it are essentially saying, ‘Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in retallant [sic] so, how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?’ That all sounds nice until you realize, what would you do if it was your family, and you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians, and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village? You would say, ‘Well, you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not keeping score that way. It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill. Because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians. They’ll force you to kill civilians.’” That all sounds nice until you realize, Hamas didn’t force Israel to bomb Gaza and specifically target schools, refugee camps, tents, hospitals, officially designated safe zones, and apartment buildings. Hamas didn’t force Israel to cut off all humanitarian aid and use starvation as a weapon of war. Hamas didn’t put two million people into the world’s largest open-air prison, deprive them of freedom of movement, clean water, books, art supplies, and adequate food, for no other reason than their ethnicity. What if it was your family, and you were born into the Gaza Strip and deprived of basic human rights? Even the former head of Israel’s secret service (the Shin Bet), Ami Ayalon, admitted that if he were born in Gaza, he “would fight against Israel, in order to achieve my liberty.” According to a recent report from a UN special investigations committee, Israel’s actions “are consistent with the characteristics of genocide.” So, you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not keeping score that way. And neither are many people in Michigan. This past election was a day of grief for many voters, especially for Muslim and Arab Americans. One voter in Pennsylvania, Reem Abuelhaj, told The Intercept, “I entered the voting booth and found myself unable to stop crying. All I could see was the face of a child in Jabaliya, holding the body of their younger sibling who was killed over the weekend. I voted down the ballot but left the top of the ticket blank.” “Some of her friends and family joined her,” the article adds, “unable to get themselves to cast a ballot for Harris. Others who did vote for Harris cried or felt physically sick, [Abuelhaj] said. One friend said she had voted for Harris ‘but prayed for forgiveness afterward.’ “‘This was a day of grief and devastation,’ Abuelhaj said.” Many Democrats also expressed their dissatisfaction with other aspects of the Harris campaign. “What are you doing for the people? What’s changing with the cost of living, food, medical assistance, and things like that, medical bills?” one Harris voter in Philadelphia, Kandice Cabeza, asked. “I really haven’t heard much about that from neither one of them. They’re kind of feuding over who’s gonna be number one. But what about us? It’s kind of like, fingers crossed that someone looks out for all of us and not just a certain group.” One Harris voter said this “was the most unenthusiastic vote I’ve ever cast.” Another voter, Parastou Hassouri, said, “There’s nothing I see in Harris’ platform that gives me any hope.” “I can’t bring myself to cast a vote for the Democratic Party,” she added, “It’s a decision completely informed by the situation in Gaza and now Lebanon.” The result was that, although Trump did not do significantly better than 2020, barely anybody voted for the Democrats. While roughly 74 million people voted for Trump in 2020, that number increased to 75 million—a little over 1 million more votes. Meanwhile, Democrats got over 81 million votes in 2020, but got fewer than 73 million in 2024—so around 8 million fewer votes. All the non-voters could have beaten either party by fifty million votes. After the election, Bernie Sanders released this statement: “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. First, it was the white working class, now it is the Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right. “Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago. “Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. … Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave. “Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children. “Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.” The blame game has already begun. Even though this was the most right-wing campaign conducted by the Democrats since 9/11, a number of pundits are suggesting the Democrats should move further right. This conclusion is rather simple-minded: since the right-wing candidate won, voters prefer right-wing candidates, so Democrats should move further right. This is a suspiciously superficial analysis. On the contrary, as we have discussed, progressive policies are popular. Some highly-paid pundits have suggested that Trump did better with Muslim voters due to their conservative values and distaste for “woke” transgender politics—which Harris did not campaign on. This does not explain why Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, two Muslim Democrats, are able to retain their popularity with the Muslim and Arab communities despite being openly pro-LGBTQ. If we dig even deeper below the surface we arrive at the true reason for the Democrats’ loss. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked on her Instagram, “If you voted for Donald Trump and me, or if you voted for Donald Trump and Democratic down- ballot, I would really love to hear from you.” “This is not a place of judgment,” she added. “I’m not gonna put your stuff on blast or anything like that, or dunk on it. … I actually want to learn from you. I want to hear what you were thinking.” Some of the responses she got were very interesting. (These responses were written on social media so the “sic” is implied for all of them.) “I feel like Trump and you are both real,” one person wrote. “Voted Trump, but I like you & Bernie. I don’t trust either party establishment politicians,” another person said. Someone else wrote, “I feel that you both are outsiders compared to the rest of DC, and less ‘establishment.’” “I know ppl that did this and it was bc of Gaza.” “Voted for trump and you, not genocide Harris. Dems need bernie!!” “I support you and did this. Felt like I didn’t have a choice after Biden’s administration.” “He speaks of war as something that is bad. Democrats became the party that supports war.” “loved ones say you’re both straightforward and challenging corrupt and broken gov.” “I voted all DEM but damn you guys make it so hard! I think I identify more with you&bernie.” “I voted Trump and dems because he reached out to Muslims.” “Because of Gaza.” I’ve heard some progressives, even people I respect, dismiss these responses as crazy. Trump, after all, has openly encouraged Netanyahu to “finish the job,” and has a long record from his first term as one of the worst war-mongers and corporatists in Washington. In his first two years in office, Trump ordered more drone strikes than Obama had done during his full eight-year rule; Trump increased drone strikes by 432 percent. So while their belief in Trump’s anti-war and populist rhetoric may be, yes, stupid—which I think some are already realizing since Google data from red states (Iowa, Kansas, Idaho, Nebraska, and Alabama) showed a massive surge in people searching, “Can I change my vote?” and “Will tariffs cause inflation?” after the election—these responses can still teach us something: the defining factor of this election was not about left or right, it was populism. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. Democrats said that the economy was healthy and prosperous, that our institutions functioned, that everything was fine. But people knew that it wasn’t fine. Populists, on the other hand, agree that the institutions are weaponized against the public. They agree with the anger that people feel—they give a voice to it. Left-wing populists correctly place the blame on capitalists. Right-wing populists, who are always wolves in sheep’s clothing, instead blame scapegoats—like immigrants or, historically, Jews. In the 2013 book Power Systems, Noam Chomsky compared the state of US politics to the late Weimar Republic: “About half the population thinks that every person in Congress, including their own representatives should be thrown out. That’s the center not holding. “Take a look back at the Weimar Republic. It’s not a perfect analogy by any means, but it’s strikingly similar. First of all, Germany was at the peak of Western civilization in the 1920s—in the arts, sciences, and literature. It was considered a model democracy. The political system was lively. There were large working-class organizations, a huge Social Democratic Party, a big Communist Party, many civic institutions. The country had plenty of problems but it was, by any standards we have, a vibrant democratic society. “Germany was beginning to change even before the Depression. In 1925, there was a mass popular vote for Paul von Hindenburg for president. He was a Prussian aristocrat, yet his supporters were petty bourgeois storekeepers, disillusioned workers, and others—in fact, demographically not unlike the Tea Party movement. And they became the mass base for Nazism. In 1928, the Nazis still got under 3 percent of the vote. In 1933—that’s only five years later—they were so powerful that Hindenburg had to appoint Adolf Hitler as chancellor. Hindenburg hated Hitler. Again, Hindenburg was an aristocrat, a general. He didn’t pal around with the hoi polloi. And Hitler was this ‘little corporal,’ as he called him. What the heck is he doing in our aristocratic Germany? But he had to appoint him as chancellor because of his mass base. That was within five years. “If you look at the forces behind this shift, initially one was disillusionment with the political system. The parties were bickering. They weren’t doing anything for the people. By then, the Depression had hit and the Nazis could appeal to nationalism. Hitler was a charismatic leader. We’re going to create a powerful new Germany, which is going to find its proper place in the sun. We have to fight our enemies: the Bolsheviks and the Jews. They’re the trouble. That’s what’s spoiling Germany. By 1933, Hitler for the first time declared May Day a workers’ holiday. The Social Democrats, who were a powerful group, had been trying to do that ever since the Second Reich was established, but could never do it. Hitler did it. There were huge demonstrations in Berlin, which was called ‘Red Berlin,’ a working-class, left-wing city. There were about a million people demonstrating, very excited. Our new united Germany is going to forge a new way. End all this political nonsense by the parties, and we’ll become a unified, organized, militarized country that can show the world what real power and authority is. “All of that looks very similar to here. It’s ominous. The Nazis destroyed the major working-class organizations. The Social Democrats and the Communists were huge organizations, not just political parties. They had clubs, associations, and civic societies. They were all wiped out, partly by force but partly because the people joined the Nazis out of disillusionment and hope for a better future, a bright militaristic, jingoistic future. I wouldn’t say it’s identical, but the parallels are strong enough to be frightening.” Three years after Power Systems was published, Donald Trump—a right-wing populist—took power. That was the result of 45 years of neo-liberal austerity, 15 years of growing disillusionment and distrust of the government after 9/11, and Obama’s betrayal of his constituency—something Democrats still haven’t recovered from. Democrats have never been able to repeat the success of the 2008 election. Obama campaigned as an anti-war, pro-working-class candidate and he promised to hold the banks accountable for the 2008 financial crash and help out the people they screwed over. Instead, once in office, Obama bailed out the banks with no strings attached, using taxpayers’ money, and only temporarily ended one of the two ongoing wars. The result was that millions of angry Obama voters flocked to Trump in 2016. Now, in 2024, with most Americans correctly believing that the institutions do not serve them or their interests, the United States is fertile ground for populism. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. A left-wing populist movement could have organized these people instead of the alt-right. Bernie Sanders appealed to many of them. Unfortunately, we are mired in a corrupt plutocratic system that undermines true progressive movements. While the Republican Party has become the arch-enemy of humanity, the Democrats have stopped being an adequate opposition Party. Maybe in four years, if the US still holds elections by then, a suffering population will vote for an uninspiring corporatist like Gavin Newsom, and Democrats could retake the reigns of power. But their solutions to these systemic and maliciously created problems will always pave a smooth road back to fascism. Kamala Harris proposed to tinker with the status quo; small business owners will get a tax break and maybe, maybe we can do something about your rent. She proposed to uphold the institutions, Trump proposed to smash them to pieces with a sledgehammer. The people chose the sledgehammer. This will keep happening. The only way out of this deadly tailspin, the only escape from this nightmare, is left-wing populism. A lively left-wing participatory movement is the only thing that can mobilize people against Republican fascism and actually solve the root causes of our crises. The Democratic Party will become increasingly unelectable if it keeps asking billionaires like Mark Cuban to campaign with them. If the Democrats want to become a vibrant political party, they need to become an effective counterweight to right-wing populism. Which means removing the corporatist and imperialist Democrats by the bitter roots. Democrats need to appeal to Americans by pledging to protect people—all people—from rich vulture capitalists. Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about the Democratic Party successfully reforming itself. I suspect that’s why there is so much focus in Washington and among the corporate media’s political consultants on criticizing Harris for running a “woke” campaign. As we’ve discussed, Harris neither ran a “woke” campaign nor would it have disadvantaged her if she did. But wealthy Washington consultants would rather throw trans people under the bus for losing this election than acknowledge the corrupting influence of corporate money in US politics. They may claim that—as Chris Cuomo put it—Democrats should “focus less on who is woke and more on who is broke,” but we should all be clear-eyed enough to recognize such a treacherous pivot, which frames progressive social policies as the problem. Centering the conversation around this canard—and away from a populist platform uniting all  working-class voters around a common goal—attempts to divide and undermine the Democratic base, which is overwhelmingly in favor of “woke” policies. Democrats actually need to fight for voters. Besides alienating their core base of support, I suspect that the Democratic Party’s hard pivot to the right on key issues hurt them in more subtle ways as well. It shows an unwillingness to fight or make enemies. How can we trust Democrats to stand up for us, for working people, for the elderly, for the sick, or minorities, when they won’t even stand up to Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration? When they won’t even stand up to Netanyahu? There’s one more point I’d like to make in case Kamala Harris ever comes out with a book modeled after Hillary Clinton’s What Happened. Clinton’s book is one filled with grievances and desperate attempts to dodge responsibility. She blames everyone, from the New York Times to Barack Obama, the FBI, Bernie Sanders, Vladimir Putin, and voters. She wrote about one woman who made her adult daughter apologize to Clinton’s face for not voting for her. “I wanted to stare right in her eyes and say, ‘You didn’t vote? How could you not vote?! You abdicated your responsibility as a citizen at the worst possible time! And now you want me to make you feel better?’ Of course, I didn’t say any of that. These people were looking for absolution that I just couldn’t give. We all have to live with the consequences of our decisions,” Clinton wrote. She was also particularly aggrieved with Bernie Sanders. On the campaign trail, Sanders made the case that she wasn’t qualified to be president, saying, “When you voted for the war in Iraq, the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in the history of America, you might want to question your qualifications. When you voted for trade agreements that cost millions of Americans decent-paying jobs, the American people might want to wonder about your qualifications. When you’re spending an enormous amount of time raising money for your super PAC from some of the wealthiest people in this country, and from some of the most outrageous special interests … Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you’re raising millions of dollars from Wall Street whose greed and recklessness helped destroy our economy?” He also went after Clinton for her cozy relationship with Henry Kissinger. “In her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval, or the support, or the mentoring, of Henry Kissinger,” Sanders said. “I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend. I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger. In fact, Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia, when the United States bombed that country, overthrew Prince Sihanouk, created the instability for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come in, who then butchered some three million innocent people, one of the worst genocides in the history of the world. So, count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger.” Applause erupted in the audience. Clinton tried to shoot back: “Well, I know journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy and we have yet to know who that is,” she began, but was interrupted by Sanders: “Well it ain’t Henry Kissinger.” This time there was loud laughter in the audience. In What Happened, Clinton complained that “Bernie routinely portrayed me as a corrupt corporatist who couldn't be trusted. His clear implication was that because I accepted campaign donations from Wall Street—just as President Obama had done—I was ‘bought and paid for.’ … His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.” Hillary also argued that the Democrats should run a more right-wing campaign: “Some on the left, including Bernie Sanders, argue that working-class whites have turned away from the Democrats because the party became beholden to Wall Street donors and lost touch with its populist roots. … Some supporters of Bernie Sanders have argued that if I had veered further left and run a more populist campaign we would have done better in the Rust Belt. I don’t believe it. … Republicans are unabashedly allied with powerful corporate interests, including the coal companies trying to take away health care and pensions from retired miners. Yet they keep winning elections.” Of course they keep winning elections, they are populists. Right-wing populists, but populists nonetheless. Ultimately, Hillary Clinton’s problem was the same as Biden’s fatal flaw: she is one of the most unpopular politicians in the country—for precisely the reasons that Bernie Sanders explained to her face. Clinton is one of the worst snakes ever to slither about in the halls of power. Her campaign was terrible. She didn’t campaign for her base because, as reading her book makes clear, she felt entitled to win. We—the voters—abdicated our responsibility to give her what she felt she deserved, as opposed to the other way around. So, I’m not sure Kamala Harris will write a similar book, but let’s be clear about one thing: Kamala Harris’ campaign was awful. And I fear, just as no senior Democratic strategists were fired for the 2016 debacle, no Democrat will be axed for running this year’s atrocious campaign. If you want a simple sign of how bad this campaign was, consider how Democrats spent their campaign money; for instance, they spent six figures to fly banners over football games to “reach male voters.” The Biden campaign was likewise run by clowns. The New Yorker wrote this about Biden’s campaign strategist Mike Donilon: “Donilon’s mild demeanor can be misleading. Like Biden, he has firm beliefs—about politics, the public, the press—and a contrarian side. In 2020, he and his campaign team had decided whether to emphasize the economy or the more abstract idea that Trump imperiled the essence of America. ‘We bet on the latter,’ Donilon said, even though ‘our own pollsters told us that talking about “the soul of the nation” was nutty.’ That experience fortified his belief that this year’s campaign should center on what he calls ‘the freedom agenda.’ By November, he predicts, ‘the focus will become overwhelming on democracy. I think the biggest images in people’s minds are going to be of January 6th.’” Lastly, I want to end by quoting a little from Bernie Sanders’ excellent book, It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism, which came out last year: “When we ponder the future of the Democratic Party, a simple question has to be asked: How does it happen that the Republican Party—which supports tax breaks for the rich, attempted to deny 32 million Americans health care coverage they had under the Affordable Care Act, wants to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, opposes legislation to lower prescription drug costs, and resists efforts to raise the minimum wage or to make it easier for workers to join unions—now has the support of a substantial and in many regions a growing number of working-class voters? … Republicans understand just how widespread working-class frustration has become, and how volatile it is. They have made it their mission to exploit that frustration in starkly divisive terms. Republican officials, and their powerful media echo chamber, go out of their way to provide working people with an ‘explanation’ for their angst. It’s built on a foundation of lies. But these Republicans are extremely sophisticated in playing the blame game and attacking everyone—women, immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, transgender people, teachers, and union leaders—for the challenges facing the nation. Like every demagogue of the past, they smear everyone except the people who are actually responsible for what’s gone awry—the people with the wealth and power. “The Republican lies have been carefully developed, using focus groups and polling. Here’s some of what they claim at election time.” He then proceeds to describe in detail the way various scapegoats are attacked by Republicans. He examines various Republican campaigns against “Immigrants,” “Black people,” “LGBTQ people,” “Muslims,” and “Teachers.” “And on and on it goes,” Sanders continues. “Republicans are constantly on the watch to exploit grievances. “And what of Democrats? Do they counter the GOP strategies that deflect attention from the real sources of pain and frustration among working-class voters of all backgrounds? “Ask yourself: What is the overall message now of the Democratic president, Democratic congressional leaders, and the Democratic Party leaders? If Republicans have defined minorities or immigrants or gay people as ‘the enemy,’ and ‘the problem,’ who are Democrats calling out as the real culprits? Who are Democrats holding responsible for the pain that so many Americans are experiencing? It’s not enough to simply say that Republicans are engaging in ugly politics when they target immigrants, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. It’s not enough simply to say that Trump and his followers are extremists who do not believe in democracy and the rule of law. … It doesn’t recognize that, when the oligarchs and the corporate world are waging class war against working Americans, the working class needs a party that will fight back. And win. “Our country faces unprecedented challenges today. They cannot be resolved with half-steps or compromises. There is no middle ground between the insatiable greed of uber-capitalism and a fair deal for the working class. There is no middle ground as to whether or not we save the planet. There is no middle ground about whether or not we preserve our democracy and remain a society based on equal protection for all. “Democrats face the most fundamental of all choices. They must choose whether to be on the side of working-class men and women who create the wealth of this country, or to be on the side of the billionaire class, the corporate elites, and the wealthy campaign donors who hoard wealth for their own self-interest. “By making unequivocal decisions as to which side they are on in the class war, Democrats can finally enact policies to overcome uber-capitalism and the greed, inequality, and bigotry that have denied this country the promise of ‘liberty and justice for all.’ “This is the stuff of a political revolution. A political revolution that every poll tells us the American people want. The danger for the Democratic Party is not being too bold. It’s being too cautious. It’s time, finally, for the Democrats to recognize that good policy is good politics. It’s good for the party. It’s good for the country. It’s good for the world. “Let’s do it!” Sadly, the Democratic Party did not listen to Bernie Sanders. And they’re still not listening. Which leaves us, unequivocally, up shit creek without a paddle. People are going to suffer enormously, unnecessarily so, in the United States and around the world. Trump will stuff his cabinet with the most sadistic jingoists, who drool at the prospect of launching a Christian holy war akin to the Crusades against the Middle East. Trump’s appointees will deliberately exacerbate climate change, which could therefore become too catastrophic for humanity to recover from. Israel might well annex the West Bank into Israel proper, which would spell the end for any two-state solution—and maybe any solution. Immigrants and trans people will likely be directly targeted by psychopathic legislation. A federal abortion ban and the destruction of the Affordable Care Act are also likely items on the agenda. For at least two years, the GOP will control both chambers in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, so the American people are completely on their own without recourse. Even Trump supporters will suffer the consequences of the free- market austerity programs already announced by the incoming leadership. Trump’s rule, much like his first term, will also unleash extremely dangerous and ugly forces in society. In fact, it has already started. Trump’s election was taken as a green light to openly hate. Among many examples, Black college students across the country got anonymous text messages after Trump’s victory as part of an organized hate campaign; the messages read, “Greetings. You have been selected to be a house slave at Abingdon Plantation,” which was a real 18th- and 19th-century plantation. “This is mandatory. Our executive spaces will come get you in a Turquoise van, be prepared to be searched down once you enter the plantation grounds. You will be station at [sic] plantation point L. Sincerely, Trump administration.” Even in Canada, one trans woman wrote, “As a Canadian in Toronto, I knew this would still affect me in some ways, but I didn’t think it would be this quickly or brazenly.” She described that shortly after the election, while she was getting medicine for her fiancée, she was accosted in public by a man who “was shouting about how ‘Trump wants to round up all the people like you.’ Alongside many colorful words, he threw out some casual death threats as I speed walked away, drowning out his voice with my headphones.” “I can’t help but feel like these people are now emboldened to think that they can say or do whatever they want,” she added. “And it’s terrifying. I know Toronto can be a bit sketchy in some places, but I honestly never felt that unsafe before.” Meanwhile, in Texas State University, Trump supporters celebrated his victory on campus. They held signs saying, “Homo sex is sin,” “Women are property,” and “Types of property: women, slaves, animals, cars, land, etc…” I fear that this is an ominous sign of what’s to come. We are going to be mired in this mess for the foreseeable future. So ready the defenses, man the walls, and erect the barricades. Because in January… the Republicans are coming.