There's An Old Sheriff In Town
SAME AS IT EVER WAS
As the dust settles on the most consequential election in recent times about the only positive to be drawn from it is just that: dust settled.
The outcome being in dispute has proven to be far-fetched not out of any sudden Trumpian respect for democratic norms, but from such a swing to the right it makes any quibbling over numbers or lost votes now a Democrat fantasy not a fear.
But with only themselves to blame, it’s all too easy to point to why.
I don’t mean political punditry with the benefit of hindsight, a case of —to use a phrase more in keeping with the country concerned— Monday morning quarterbacking. We know now, in the days after, what was obvious then in weeks and months before, that the Democrats were never serious about winning the election.
And that would be true even had they won.
It’s easy to say it all went sideways with the first debate, but of course, all concerned knew well before then that Sleepy Joe was living up to his Trump-given moniker in ways that could no longer be camouflaged.
If Dr Jill Biden couldn’t discern what we could all tell from TV she would have had her professional practice curtailed as sharply as her husband’s but she’s an E.D., not an M.D. That’s a doctorate of Education, a detail of some relevance later on.
But then, in the same breath as his arm-twisted concession, he went and nominated next cab off the rank, Kamala in a strategic move that made his every utterance in the previous 6 months genius by comparison. Whether at the behest of the activist core of the party or off his own ding-bat it only proved Obama’s observation you should never “underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”
As the thunderous silence from the more right-leaning, right-thinking Democrat quarters and, most notably, chez Obama served to attest. But then everybody got really excited because next to Joe anybody looks amazing and, with the Obamas finally frog-marched into the caboose, the hype train left the station.
No primary required. We may not have the best man for the job, but we absolutely have the best black women who grew up in a middle-class family for the job.
The tick from Biden, aside, there were crosses in every other department you could imagine. This is someone who failed her way to the top at every turn. A person who, after securing zero votes in a Democratic primary (the lowest total ever recorded) was elevated above every other higher rated contender to Veep purely on the basis of gender and colour: a DEI captain’s pick. And should there be any doubt about it, the captain made a point of telling us all, as a demonstration of just how progressive he, and the party, are.
And as soon as the words had left his mouth, the idea she achieved the position for any reason other than merit became an insult, you racist, misogynist. Casual (and lazy) charges shot from the hip these days, and it’s not that I feel any obligation to answer them when pointing to facts like these but here it’s all too easy to cut them off at the knees.
If identity politics is the stupid game you want to play then Michelle Obama was the best black woman for the job. But once she was out of the running — if she was ever in— then it was this same stupid game that painted them all into the same stupid corner.
Because in a further illustration of this rubbish playing out in the only way it can, Harris then, not wanting to be shown up by somebody with some political chops and half a brain, selected her running mate. And that’s how we get Dumb and Dumber running for biggest cheeses in the land, nay the world.
And why you’re going to have a very hard time convincing anybody you’re serious about winning any election much less the ‘last’ one: that Momala and her folksy friend are not only the best in the bunch but the last bastions of hope for democracy full stop. As Andrew Sullivan writes, the sales pitch was “they had to beat Trump at all costs — but not at the cost of replacing a mediocrity on the ticket.”
Just like the DEI celebration/denial VP pick above, this was just one more of the many contradictory kernels at the core of this codswallop.
But if the Dems are good at anything it’s sticking to a story and they chose to stick to their ideological guns, instead of winning an easily winnable election.
Easily winnable because even at this late stage, and even in light of all these unserious decisions, all was not lost.
But only because they were up against Trump. A man who has hijacked the Republican party of old and turned it into a personality cult. And he’s been able to do so, to thoroughly remake the GOP in his own weird image for one reason: because Republicans—if you can still call them that— are serious about winning elections. So serious, that they sold the soul of the party to the greatest grifter in history.
A man so odious to all outside this cult and somebody who would have beaten himself—and tried to at damn near every opportunity he was given such that— like in 2016— you’ve gotta wonder if he really wanted it at all or if it’s just further expression of base impulses he’s clearly so helpless against. He can’t handle losing, for a start. And those pesky prosecutions. Well, I guess I have to do this shit again.
And you can’t fault the effort.
The Democrats, by contrast, to use the Antipodean vernacular, did absolutely nothing but take the piss.
They were never going to roll the MAGA faithful nor did they need to. All they had to do was offer something remotely normal. They couldn’t wind Kamala up, sit her in front of a teleprompter and have her simply acknowledge that maybe she did get a few things wrong in the past. That she may have been a bit too caught up in what was a crazy time for everybody, but her views have changed and she’s happy to say she now stands for X, and Y. And Z.
An admission that could only have reflected well on her but would also have been such a breath of fresh air blowing through the political landscape it could have had the same rallying impact as near-assassination did for Trump.
Instead, at every turn, she did the opposite. Denying and doubling down. Prevarication and platitudes. All hype, zero substance, until all those outside the MAGA mirror leftist cult, those who needed only the slightest assurance, began to suspect it was all a dupe.
You couldn’t help that feeling of suspicion if you tried. With all the dodging and ducking and denying it becomes obvious—there is no sleight of hand. It’s a primal, instinctive, before-conscious-thought feeling that something is wrong here: I’m being played.
And the devil you know describes the rest. Those who could not, and can not stand Trump, and, with all the cognitive, moral and social dissonance it entailed held their noses and voted for him anyway. Choked it down. And who are now are trying to live with themselves, fearful of what it might mean, and angry the Democrats forced them to it.
Post-mortems are pointing to usual suspects like the economy, the border, abortion, and foreign policy all the way down the line to the Joe, no Joe (Rogan) factor, and while I don’t doubt these issues and more played their respective parts, none of them nearly describe that shift. That backlash. Not even combined.
The real reason is obvious, and the Democrats are, true to form, still missing it.
Even as the first rays of a new day with an old Don began to dawn it started with MSNBC citing not a poorly run campaign and mistakes of policy, positioning or presentation, but:
anyone who has experienced this country’s history. . . and knows it, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of color.” Of Harris’s election effort, she added: “I mean, this really was a historic, flawlessly run campaign.
It’s not just misogyny from white men; it’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from black men—things we’ve all been talking about—who do not want a woman leading them.
I was so hopeful that a mixed-race woman married to a Jewish guy could be elected president of this country. And I think that it had nothing to do with policy. I think this was a referendum of cultural resentment in this country.
There are many more examples but as they pick over the bones the Democrat diagnosis of this disaster puts the blame squarely back on the voters. And that should come as no surprise. Because in Democrat land voters don’t have problems, they are the problem.
I don’t want an open border.
That’s not a border problem, it’s because you’re racist.
I don’t like my kids socially transitioned and counselled towards irreversible medical procedures at school without my knowledge.
That’s not an education— welcome back Dr Biden— problem, it’s because you’re a transphobe. And a bigot.
I could go on, and on, but you can trust that the short answer to any problem, whatever it might be, is you getting with the program.
And that is how the Democrats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. If you think this failure of self-reflection means nothing will be learned and that these mistakes are only destined to be repeated, you’re almost right.
Because this failure of self-reflection across the board is not only a failing of the individuals concerned but a property of the ideology itself. It’s taken a long time to wend our way to woke but when you hold a utopian ideal as your standard, the utopia— by definition— can’t be wrong.
So the problem must lie elsewhere.
Peak woke has been promised for over 12 months now, but if this failure marks where the woke wave broke, I’m less optimistic it will mean anything, and for the same reason: here too, reality will be ignored, and indeed must be.
As here in The Guardian, drawing the same inevitable conclusion: that failure is never cause to revisit or revise one’s position, only to ‘reargue’ it. If you are not on board it can only be that you are not sufficiently enlightened.
When you’ve nailed your colours to this mast, any failure of woke means you need only woke harder.
Bringing us to Biden’s last laugh—until he’s wheeled out of office, at least— showing the same stubborn denial.
Under extraordinary circumstances, she stepped up and led a historic campaign that embodied what’s possible when guided by a strong moral compass and a clear vision for a nation that is more free, more just, and full of more opportunities for all Americans.
What a load of shit. Those extraordinary circumstances were because you were forced to step aside and it was historic only because they raised and spent a record amount in record time. Three times more than the Trump campaign in a third of the time. Blowing record amounts of money for a bad outcome is about as Democrat as it gets but this, finally, is where having the old sheriff back in town may yet have a silver lining.
Because even with the Dems voted out, much more of this wokery is embedded not only into academia, tech, and the media but in the bloat of bureaucracies full of unelected, and unaccountable, cultural commissars creating legislation and policy outside the checks and balances of the democratic legislative process.
That is until Elon Musk’s touted ‘Government Efficiency Commission’ gets on the case. Nothing is nearly as inefficient as denying reality so if Elon gets to take a red pen to this managerial bloat— to the tune of 2T USD if he’s to be believed— much of it must be wokery. If he’s even half right we’ll all be better for it.
And do I like the idea of somebody like Musk wielding that sort of power? Can it be worse than Kushner or Ivanka? Should somebody like RFK Jr. be running food or health or whatever? Well, it’s not as if any American government has ever let science get in the way of an agenda. Every single iteration of the food pyramid has only reflected the (severe conflict of) interests of the committee rather than any biological basis.
But, really who knows what we’ll end up with? Political punditry even after the fact is just as prone to our cognitive biases and the misreading of the whys and wherefores detailed here are as likely to be mirrored on the right with Trump and associates seeing the dramatic shift as a clear mandate, a blank cheque.
While the Democrat drive to vote against Trump— instead of for something— came back to bite them very hard indeed, it was because voters in question did the exact opposite.
Which is to say they did not vote for Trump, they voted NOT Harris.
Not the same thing.
And those who point to Trump’s first term as evidence of the institutional safety nets and guardrails corralling him, ignore the alarming fact that 40 out of 44 of those guardrails told you, in no uncertain terms, not to elect him again. Having a second crack at stress-testing those institutions is also quite a different prospect, but, once, again, the sheer arrogance of the Democrats made this bed we all get to lie in.
They did not run their best candidate. Twice. And made no attempt to meet the moveable voter base even part way—not even a fraction—just continued to deny reality. The same stubborn obstinance. But you can only ignore reality tapping you on the shoulder for so long — just ask Joe Biden. Harris presented all the sincerity of somebody giving a book report when they’ve only read the back cover, the trouble is most people know David Copperfield is not about a magician. A disrespect revealingly extended even to her supporter base by her failing to front on election night. Classic Kamala.
But they didn’t run their best candidate because they couldn’t: the ideology didn’t allow it. And if you still see woke as being not quite the deciding factor, there’s one key data point that confirms it. The only group Kamala Harris made gains with was white college-educated women and those over 65. No group have taken the woke flag and run with it quite like this demographic. And have done so because none are so insulated from its consequences. This is woke HQ.
They may not have been the only group you spoke to but, in an apparently ‘flawless’ campaign, they were the only ones who listened. Everybody else is tired of seeing their legitimate concerns and grievances painted as racism, bigotry, misogyny and every other shade of hate only because they don’t conform to a warped ideal. The same ideal that forced Democrats into a clear-cut choice: abandon it or this is the hill you will die on.
They made their choice. And America, to paraphrase Lt. Aldo Raine, simply obliged them.
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI