There is absolutely no doubt that the Democratic Party has lost the trust of the American working class as it pivoted to the right, no veered sharply to the right, losing its progressive legitimacy in the process. I know that hindsight is always 20/20 and Monday Morning quarterbacking is the favorite pastime of the political punditry. But as the 2024 POTUS election fallout continues, and more data becomes available, a picture has emerged of a war party, and its hubristic condescension to "ordinary Americans. There are some very obvious signs of a party in disarray and in dire need of a course correction.
To begin with the Democratic Party decided not to hold an open democratic convention but acting on President Joe Biden's orders asked his Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him on the ticket. While the mainstream media hemmed and hawed, and clucked about Ms. Harris's political power, it stupidly obfuscated the deep internal divisions that this move opened up. Many Democrats thought that this decision undermined intra-party democracy, and stifled legitimate dissent, discussion, and freedom of choice.
That was the first wrong move built on a foundation of elitism, high-handedness, and a callous disregard for party member's objections. The next bad move followed when Ms. Harris and her campaign's failed strategy of cozying up to died-in-the-wool, anti-abortion Republican Party warmongers like Liz Chaney, whose visceral hatred for Donald Trump had nothing to do with democracy but with rank political opportunism. Her embrace of such divisive politicians mixed in with the party's meritocratic and celebrity culture further alienated working class voters.
The fact is that no matter Ms. Harris's flailing efforts, Republicans stuck with Trump, remained on the fence or voted third party. But the damage to the Democratic Party base was already done: The Harris Campaign alienated many core supporters who saw her craven cave in, back peddled would be more precise, on such controversial issues as fracking, immigration, and health care. Those errors of judgement, political showboatism and a spotty policy regime further eroded BOTH interparty and wider community support, as Ms. Harris's campaign literally made up policies to suit the occasion further frustrating supporters.
Then there was the fact that the party - for many years now - bolted from America's working class as evidenced by the fact that in this election cycle the Harris campaign lost the support of labor unions and could not articulate a coherent set of policies for rural America. In fact, the Democratic Party opted for a celebrity-driven campaign locking out popular union leaders and labor champions who were noticeably absent from her campaign - something that further alienated key Democratic Party bases. Pro-working-class senator Bernie Sanders noted that 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."
This caused the most serious blow to the party's legitimacy with a large defection of progressives and other Democrats horrified by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the blinkers-on, tone-deafness of the Biden-Harris Administration with its unfettered transfer of U.S. weaponry to its apartheid client state for its wars in both Gaza and Lebanon.
In fact, this fallout was clear: Kamala Harris lost the popular count by five million votes. And, she finished 12 million votes below the 81.2 million votes Biden received in 2020. So, the question is: Exactly where did those "missing Democratic" voters go? The November 10 New York Times article gave us part of the answer, in an op-ed entitled "Democrats Ignored Gaza, and It Brought Down Their Party." Peter Beinart, noted:
"Over the past year, Israel's slaughter and starvation of Palestinians-funded by U.S. taxpayers and live-streamed on social media-has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activation in a generation."
He continued, "Many Americans roused to action by their government's complicity in Gaza's destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam War, their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral."
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