How the Democrats threw away their shot to topple Trumpism
The US election has not delivered the Joe Biden landslide that many were anticipating.
Instead, the Democratic candidate appears to be limping towards a narrow Electoral College victory, which may well end up in the courts.
Even if The Donald is beaten, he is hardly vanquished, and the Democrats also look like they’ve failed to take the Senate.
This result shows that for the last five years the Dems have failed to find an answer to Donald Trump and the strain of national populism he represents. The Trump administration has seen cities in flames, the horror of separating immigrant children from their parents, and the scandal of many of the President’s closest allies going to jail — and yet he still came close to keeping the White House for another four years.
In both 2016 and 2020, the Democratic primaries delivered the worst possible alternative to Trump. The billionaire could only win by presenting himself as an outsider, an insurgent — and both times his opponents have been the most DC picks imaginable. One, the wife of a former President who seriously considered the slogan “It’s her turn”, the other a former vice president with a long history in the Capitol.
Both played into the hands of Trump’s anti-elitist rhetoric. Indeed, both struggled in their own party primaries, even with the weight of the Democratic National Committee machine behind them.
Outside of the election cycle, the Democrats did almost everything they could to play into the hands of The Donald. From the outset of his presidency, they launched a series of attacks which were doomed to fail and would bolster his base.
The allegations of Russian interference may have been credible, but without a smoking gun they just looked like losers whining. The impeachment was never going to pass the Senate, and allowed the beleaguered President to portray himself as a victim of a DC elite — something that Democrats must have known would appeal to the voters who took him to the White House.
The Democrats failed to understand that it did not matter what outraged liberals from the outside edges of America thought. Those Electoral College votes were already in the bag and would count for nothing if Trump repeated his victories in the Midwest or Florida — which he appears to have done, in the latter at least. The Democrats never seemed to make these voters a priority, and it cost them a second time around.
Trump, in contrast, has courted these voters impeccably. He’s avoided sending their sons and daughters off to costly foreign wars while still showing America’s enemies that she can strike with impunity if she chooses. He’s attacked foreign trade in a way which, however costly, sounds good to those who see themselves as the victims of globalisation. Moreover, he’s been able to cast his failures in a way that make them seem like successes.
Trump failures on Covid, for example, have been seen as a fillip to freedom, attacking masks and lockdowns as a sign of liberal control. He has disguised his own part in stoking racial tensions by successfully portraying the BLM movement as violent revolutionaries. Ultimately, since the first Republican primary way back in 2016, he has taken everything bad about himself and supercharged it, turning political lead into electoral gold.
Meanwhile, the Democrats fell into the classic political conceit. They looked towards themselves, thinking the other side must be evil or stupid. They neglected to think of the real alternative — that for a big enough chunk of America, Trump offered hope and change, when his opponents offered just more of the same.
For five years, Trump has pulled his opponents onto the terrain where he was strongest. Their reactions never cut through where it counted, and instead gave him more chance to play to his base. They fought according to his strategy, and accordingly, were run close to the wire.
The Democrats need to look at themselves long and hard. 2020 was an election they could have won by a landslide. Trump was bad and beatable. Yet from day one, they were unable to find a way to do it. They talked to themselves too much, and failed to deliver something — or someone — who could capture the imagination of voters.
This is not so much a question about centrism or leftism, but rather the inability to find a convincing narrative and an energising candidate. If the Democrats had connected with the moment, they could have built a movement that carried the blue wave across the continent. Instead they pulled themselves into a close contest which did little to repudiate the most outrageous of Republicans.
Main image credit: Getty