When Donald Trump won in 2016, you could plausibly argue that he was a fresh face, and voters didn't know what they were getting. Eight years later, he's very familiar. For your next president, America has knowingly elected an always-angry, born-rich billionaire with a solid-gold suitcase stuffed with startlingly cruel ideas. And he won by five million votes.
In this first week after the election, Trump has made a dozen cabinet and high-level nominations, each of them comic-book evil and emphatically wrong for the job — the only requirements for anyone Trump would nominate. He's also asked for the unconstitutional abrogation of Senate confirmation hearings, a demand immediately agreed to by his Republican Party's leadership, who control the Senate.
And with that, Trump's Project 2025 is underway, rewriting the USA as something uglier than it's been in my lifetime.
But why did America vote for this? That's my question, and here's my answer, in four parts:
- Many Americans have no empathy — no concern or no ability to care about other people's problems. Show them kids growing up hungry, a beggar on the street, a stranger coughing up blood but unable to afford a doctor, and these people do not give a damn. Can't quantify how many of these people walk among us, but anyone with two eyes and a heart can see that not caring is the American way.
There are fancy words for this lack of empathy — psychopath or sociopath, or maybe Vulcan — but those are loaded terms, saying more than I want to say. It's not intended as an insult, just a fact: Most Republicans lack empathy. That's the base of their political party.
- The Democratic Party has been marching steadily to the right since the 1960s, doing it doubletime since the ’90s, and if you're an actual leftist, the Democratic ticket for 2024 offered nothing.
Harris's campaign rushed rightward to pile up endorsements from Republicans, without a whisper about universal health care, or breaking up giant corporations, or anything more than a tiny token tax increase for billionaires. Harris refused to say she'd even reconsider aid to governments actively engaged in war crimes. Universal basic income and ranked choice voting weren't mentioned. She spoke to a right-tilted middle, not to the left.
That's because the Democratic Party's only purpose is fundraising. They did a great job, too — the Harris campaign brought in and wasted more money than any political campaign in US history. To the people in charge at the Democratic Party, that's victory; the election is immaterial. Harris had nothing to say to the left, because anything that might cost the party fundraising opportunities from the center and right, even if it would win votes and elections, is disallowed.
- Harris offered diddlysquat to people who are hurting.
On 10/23, two weeks before the end of the campaign, she came out for raising the minimum wage to $15 p/hour — something first proposed so long ago (2014, I think) that by now $15 p/hour is nowhere near what's needed.
Only in platitudes (if at all) did she mention patching the safety net that barely exists for the unemployed, the sick, the disabled. Or complete medical and student debt forgiveness. Or worker's rights. Or rent control. Or the cost of groceries.
To people literally dying of corporate capitalism, Harris's mantra was, "You're wrong — everything's pretty good, just look at our charts!"
- Last and most obviously, the media decided the election, well before it got underway. Even as someone who reflexively distrusts corporate news, it's been jawdropping to see.
For making a few confused statements in his debate against Trump, Joe Biden was portrayed as the oldest, weakest, most intellectually infirm president we've ever had, and whatever will the Democrats do about having him on the ticket?
Trump routinely makes lengthy speeches with no two sentences connected to a third, says the most inane, unintelligible blather, makes up lies that aren't plausible or possible, insults anyone who's annoyed him, often with racism and sexism… And from all that, The New York Times will distill a phrase here or half a sentence there, and report that Trump proposed a new tariff.
It's understandable that voters informed only by such media headlines might vote for Trump, so he's finally, accidentally right about one thing: The news media is the enemy.
And those were the circumstances under which Kamala Harris got nine million fewer votes than Joe Biden got four years ago, while Donald Trump gained one million more than in 2020, to win handily. About eight million fewer Americans voted this time, than last time.
Where did everyone else go? They weren't invited, so they stayed home.
And the only person I won't particularly blame is Kamala Harris, because why bother? She's politically blah, always has been, but she wasn't in charge of her campaign's strategy any more than she would've been in charge in the White House, which is not at all.
Harris (once) called Trump a fascist and (constantly) said he's a threat to democracy, but having lost the election, President Biden and VP Harris now welcome our new insect overlords. They're moving toward a peaceful transition of power, without any complaint.
I don't expect or suggest that they should refuse to concede or cooperate, like Trump did in 2020. But if democracy and the constitution and the American way of life are in peril — and they are — then it is incumbent on the incumbents to say it out loud. They should be speaking against Trump, sounding an alarm as he begins building his Second Reich.
They'll say nothing, though, until it's at a $5,000-a-plate chicken dinner, because Biden and Harris and their ilk are not in charge and never have been. They're middle-management for the oligarchy, that's all, and the oligarchy wants what's coming.
(Drop by itsdougholland.com and say hello. It's not always as boring as this.)
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