The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Democrats will not adapt to this defeat

There won’t be any introspection.

Empires, like fortunes, are lost slowly and then all at once.

I’m afraid what is coming is going to fall on every American fairly equally like the snow on the graveyard at the end of James Joyce’s “The Dead”

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Democrats who have themselves not yet fallen into precarity or the economic abyss can not and will not accept that our system is completely rotten and we need to change course and leadership.
It took the GOP from 2008 to 2016 to admit that the Reagan/Bush playbook and leadership class was bankrupt and had to go.
It will likely take multiple election cycles before some figure or movement arises that can win a Democratic primary. And given that the Democrats have a long and proud history of sabotaging the most popular and most likely to win the general election candidates it might require a whole new party emerging.
Democrats had their chance at a new direction and likely multiple administrations and an even longer dominance of the Congress with Bernie Sanders but rejected the clear will of the overwhelming majority of the young voters of their party.
Those young voters are drifting away in multiple directions.
Of my comfortably retired upper-middle classic acquaintances none are even willing to admit publicly (some will in private) that the Democrats make poor tactical choices, much less admit that the whole party and every individual needs to really re-evaluate their approach and even core beliefs.
Trump is at least a wild card which presents some chance of positive change, but the odds of radically negative change are much higher.
Regardless, the status-quo has been thoroughly rejected by the majority of the American public.
That is a fact people need to accept in order to try and steer that majority in the least self-destructive direction possible.
It’s unfortunate that the members of professional-managerial class (and those of us who have pretensions to it) have never truly accepted the idea of majority rule.
We’re going to lose a war in humiliating fashion — with an outside chance that it will be over quickly — which will trigger economic collapse (and that’s if we don’t start nuking people).
Then and only then will our ruling elites turn on each other in something that will be like a post-modern parody of the first American Civil War.
Hopefully it’ll be over in 5-7 years and some of us will be alive to adjust to the new normal and enjoy a few decades of relative peace as we adjust to penury, plagues, and rapidly worsening climate change.
Jonathan Cook had some good observations:

Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she’s a woman or because she’s black.

She lost because, if your political and media system – rigged by donors – limits the choice to two hardline neoliberal candidates, with anything else denounced as “communism”, the most hardline, neoliberal candidate has an edge.

Over time, the system keeps moving further to the hardline, neoliberal right. You can’t stop that relentless shift by voting for one of the two symptoms of your diseased political system.

You have to rise up against the diseased system itself.

As did Freddie de Boer:

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on Jill Stein.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on Putin and the Russians.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on Joe Rogan.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on Glenn Greenwald and The Young Turks.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on the decision to run with Tim Walz.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on the New York Times and its occasional Democrat-skeptical opinion pieces.

You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on Joe Biden for getting out of the race too late.

You can’t pull all the usual Democrat tricks. You have to actually figure out what’s wrong with your party, root and branch. Because you called the guy a fascist, again, and he walked right through that insult to the Oval Office, again. And the eternal question presents itself: what are you going to do about it?

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20 Comments

  1. Dermot O Connor

    On Freddie’s “You can’t blame….”

    I think you’ll find that the Dems can, and will do all those things. Some of the stuff on CNN/MSNBC is a hoot, already.

    “Can we elect a new people?”

  2. There is a bleak future in store for us on all fronts: climate, health, and sustenance.
    The Democrat’s happy talk of following ‘the science’ and touting their version of trickle down economics motivated voter revolt.
    When the impending disasters start impinging upon the upper quintile’s standard of living then the Democrats will take up reform in earnest. That reform will be too little too late.

  3. Steven Coleman

    It took the GOP from 2008 to 2016 to admit that the Reagan/Bush playbook and leadership class was bankrupt and had to go.

    The GOP as a party didn’t, their voters did. And they picked the most despicable, disgusting POS life form ever to get vomited up on this planet.

  4. Nate Wilcox

    @Steven Coleman: good point about the voters. The party leadership’s attempt to fob off DeSantis on voters in 2024 showed they took all the wrong takeways from Trump.

    I think Victoria Nuland and Matt Miller are fare more disgusting and despicable than Trump but he still sucks really hard.

    There is no Trumpism. We are in for a wild ride as no political actors in any party are showing signs of actually grappling with our situation and how to adapt to it.

  5. Duncan Kinder

    Perhaps we should set our goals lower and just get rid of Facebook Community Standards.

    That would keep them from blocking me for incomprehensible reasons and allow me to repost your comments.

  6. Nate Wilcox

    @DuncanKinder
    Meta’s censorship policies and flagrant support of genocide makes that platform essentially useless for anything political.
    I won’t even share this post on my FB page for a variety of reasons, for one thing all my Dem friends and relatives are there doing everything I’m talking about here.

  7. elkern

    Compared to the GOP, the Dem Party has little national infrastructure. It is a collection of separate State Parties, with a bunch of vaguely associated NGOs to employ apparatchiks between Gov’t jobs. The power within the Party is concentrated in a few big [rich] States: CA, NY, & IL (no coincidence that 3 of the last 4 Dem Candidates came from those States). I’d bet (admittedly without Sources) that a large majority of Dem National funding comes from those same three States.

    Until those State Parties face serious threats to their grip over their States, they are unlikely to consider ceding power to any national organization capable of developing long-term strategies to regain Federal power.

  8. DMC

    Surprisingly, Harris’s campaign of “more of the same and harder” failed to capture the the imagination of the typical voter.

  9. bruce wilder

    very nearly half the country voted for her so maybe, be a little careful with “typical”

  10. samm

    “There won’t be any introspection.”

    Of course not. Introspection? Change of course? Who would believe they would ever do that? I’m 52, and the Democrats have had only one answer for every loss my whole adult life: cry the party has moved too far to the left and do everything in their power to court conservatives in the suburbs. It’s their one and only trick. From Schumer in 2016: “for every blue collar vote in eastern Pennsylvania we lose, we’ll pick up two Republican voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia.” Didn’t happen then, didn’t happen in 2020, didn’t happen this year. Kamala rehabilitated Cheney for chrissakes. Who the hell would vote for probably the most evil American alive?? And when they lost they even wheeled out Chris Matthew’s coffin to hammer out how the Democrats have gone too far left and “don’t know how Americans think.”

    The Democrats have long since become the Bourbon dynasty. Its’ a simply truth that they “have learned nothing and forget nothing.” If their program loses then they will weather it in their comfy sinecures where they can spend long days publicly aiming the blame cannons on anyone who has ever crossed them.

  11. bruce wilder

    at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the Democratic Party establishment — political operatives and politicians together — are manipulators financed by corporate business and billionaire donors. it is exclusively top-down electoral politics, where the voters are treated as herd animals, classified and penned and shorn at periodic intervals.

    that donor-financed manipulation has no purpose or goal other than to satisfy the interest of the donors in producing politics that effectively manipulates and neutralizes the electorate as an independent force that might want something while delivering policy that serves donor interests.

    the idea of an entrepreneurial politician finding ways to serve the material interests of some large part of the electorate as part of a strategy of mobilizing them to produce political power — that’s just crazy talk. anyone who tried to do that would be isolated, silenced, eliminated as a possibility by whatever means necessary.

    the detachment from reality that so many criticize the Democratic Party establishment for is simply a by-product of making manipulation job 1. It is manipulation for its own sake, since their donors do not want the electorate mobilized as a political movement pursuing goals in the electorate’s material interests. So, entirely fictional controversies and fantasy narratives that arouse and distract are coin of this realm. Dividing the electorate into passionate, opposing camps that will not converse with one another is a no-brainer. If they could, they would instigate a color revolution every other week and every such revolution would have no result — nothing would fundamentally change for the 1/10th of 1% or Israel or Wall Street

    waiting for the Democrats to transform themselves magically back into the Party of FDR or JFK, a party of labor unions and small business and teachers and civil servants and the working class is to mistake not just the times but the nature of the beast. it supposes sentiments and tendencies that simply do not exist in the Party.

  12. Tc

    Are you talking about the dem party and politicians or does this include voters too? Cuz from what Ive seen in the last year (on Gaza) or more (on less horrible issues) the online dems are just as self involved, out of touch, frivolous and morally bankrupt as the ploiticians.
    Nobody was talking about what would follow Biden until it was too late (should have been in planning from the day after election). Instead it was scared little girl talk of how we couldnt afford to take a risk on anyone but the corporate owned dotard from Del.
    Then with the Gaza genocide that he never had any intention to halt or slow down, there was still 2 or 3 months before primaries, and the scaredy cats just doubled down and lectured the rest of us to grow up and stop being genocide purity ponies, right up to that disastrous debate, and even following that.
    Now that Kamala lost, none of their post mortems mention Gaza, just racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. All their usual cop outs

  13. Nate Wilcox

    @Tc I’m definitely talking about the voters too.

  14. Feral Finster

    1.If Harris supposedly lost because she was a black woman, why was it necessary to replace Biden at all? Biden was an white man. The old halfwit must have been cruising to an easy victory, right?

    2. Team D ran a shit candidate that had never won a serious or seriously contested election in her own name (VP hardly counts) and was chosen last minute by party insiders. Because Harris she had been VP under Biden for four years, she could not pretend that she had no inkling of his obvious senility and could not run on any policy other than the historically unpopular Biden Administration policies.

    Had Team D pulled the plug (yes, you saw what I did, there!) on Biden early enough to allow a normal primary process and been able to nominate a candidate not tied at the hip to Biden, they might have done better. If Team D were able to nominate a candidate whose basic qualification was something other than “I was Willie Brown’s mistress”, they might have done better. And if the queen had balls, she’d be king.

    Now, watch democrats and liberals blame everyone and everything, Russia, men, women, minorities, college students, “ungrateful negroes”, Lina Khan, Elon Musk, Russia some more, feral tomcats, Peanut The Squirrel, Puertoricans, everyone and everything but themselves for losing to a loudmouth moron reality TV star.

    Oh yeah, and Harris outspent Trump 2-1 and had the MSM to act as her unpaid propaganda arm, not to mention most of Big Tech on her side and a star-studded galaxy of celebrities to shill for her.

    And She Still Lost. Hell, Harris got monkeyhammered.

    Now, watch Team D not learn jack diddly shit from this fiasco.

  15. different clue

    Here is a funny little video titled “Joe Biden congratulates the DNC on losing another election to Trump.” It is an AI synthetic but still funny.

    https://x.com/RyanPatrick1991/status/1854171873980063914

  16. different clue

    The DemParty will learn nothing from this defeat because the DemParty core-base of Clintonites and Obamazoids will learn nothing from this defeat.

    Here is an example of “proudly learning nothing” picked from off the web.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/MarkMyWords/comments/1gmughp/mmw_democrats_will_learn_nothing_and_continue_to/

    I suspect one can see the purest and most refined expressions of this spirit on blogs like Riverdaughter’s The Confluence and Digby’s Hullabaloo. Time will tell, I suppose.

    Here’s something from a Democrat who already knows something, named Governor Walz of Minnesota. These are his official post-defeat words.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/1gmty2d/gov_tim_walz_in_his_first_remarks_since_election/

    The ClintoBamazoids will learn nothing from Tim Walz.

  17. different clue

    There is an English sorta-left commentator named Jonathan Pie who makes short little talking-videos about this and that political issue, item or problem. He has made one about the Trump win, noting in his own way that the Dems have learned nothing and will learn nothing.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0eq7VNCcYY

  18. different clue

    Here is another example of a clue-proof anti-Trumper immune to learning or facing up to why this happened. I don’t think she would like Jonathan Pie’s video very much.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0eq7VNCcYY

  19. different clue

    ( My last comment reposted the wrong video. Trying again.)

    Here is a video from a clue-proof Trump opponent ( Trump’s own niece in this case) demonstrating an invincible refusal to learn the why of what happened.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYvINwoUSvI

  20. somecomputerguy

    Here is my mental model of what happened. Please feel free to dispute.

    A few weeks ago, an article was published arguing the polls were wrong, that Harris had the election in the bag. This was widely discussed. Rick Pearlstein talked it up in The Prospect.

    Shortly after, Vice President Mark Cuban became the face of the campaign, and this silly Walz fellow was invited to sit in a closet.

    That way, he wouldn’t distract from the campaigns real assets; the Cheneys.

    In my minds eye, I see Harris tearfully embracing the Cheneys, then cackling with satisfaction and relief as Bernie Sanders is physically removed from the building.

    This would show the ultimate wisdom of slow-walking every Constitutional safeguard and sanction, preserving Trump as a candidate.

    It would vindicate the particularly gutsy move by Democratic leadership, when, in the early hours of January 7, they instinctively vetoed the second impeachment. I mean, with the smoke still rising, no one could be thinking;”Let’s not over-react.”

    A Trump-led GOP of the gauche, would finally show the good Republicans where their real home was. Where they belonged.

    With the election in the bag, this was the time to celebrate ultimate victory. To finally preside over a Democratic Party that could openly spit in the face of labor and the left, and laugh if they are reminded of that during the next election cycle. The realization of the 30 year dream.

    No more having to engage in ever more elaborate ruses to pretend they care. No more spending months, years, on elaborate Potemkin legislation, never intended to be passed.

    I hear Reid Hoffman has some ideas about how run the FTC.

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