Topic: Politics & Elections
As they struggle to process the election of Donald J. Trump progressives are strongly tempted, of course, to blame (a) Hillary Clinton, who was a terrible candidate and (b) those deplorable bitter clingers, everyday Americans. I see it a bit differently: progressives have no one to blame but themselves.
First, they sold their souls to Barack H. Obama, who as president presided over the hollowing-out of the Democratic Party. Though he was always personally popular his polices were not, as the results of the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections showed. This year he went all out for Hillary, reminding voters that a vote for her was a vote for four more years of Barack. We saw how well that worked out. And not only did Hillary lose. Despite a Senate electoral map thought highly favorable to the Democrats, they only managed to knock off two vulnerable GOP senators—leaving the Senate in Republican hands. And though of course the Democrats never had a prayer of taking back the House, their six-seat gain was far short of earlier, optimistic forecasts. So now the GOP, supposedly the party on the ropes, effectively controls all three branches of government. In short, the Obama years have been catastrophic for the Democratic Party.
But it wasn’t all Obama’s fault. In the hours and days after the election, many progressives succumbed to a fit of pique, denouncing white voters & etc. as racists, xenophobes, homophobes, etc. That was nothing new; they’d been saying it all along. And that type of rhetoric, so smug, smarmy and condescending, exemplifies the attitude that drove the white working class into the Trump camp. Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” sneer—the gaffe of the campaign—merely reflected a widespread attitude in progressive circles. Postmodern progressives have wrecked the Democratic Party—once the party that owned the white working class vote—via their obsession with identity politics, political correctness and fringe issues like gender-neutral restrooms. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was chortling over the prospect of putting coal miners out of work. Is it really so surprising that white working-class guys living in Michigan or western Pennsylvania looked at that freak show, saw nothing in it for them and their families, and said to themselves, "Uh-uh"?
Bill Clinton, no less, tried to explain some of this to the Bright Young Things running his wife's campaign—and they blew him off. Who needed all those blue-collar Archie Bunker types, anyway? The Obama coalition was so much cooler! Well, it wasn’t quite cool enough to overcome Trump’s Election Day performance in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania coal country, where he ran up huge margins in county after county. (Incidentally, West Virginia’s flip to the GOP, which happened earlier, was a warning sign that the Democrats blithely ignored.) Obsessed as they are with identity politics, Democrats and progressives forgot that others, too, could play that game. Thus they were shocked, indignant and at a loss for an answer when the white working class asked, “What about our identity?”
I didn’t support Donald Trump and I didn’t expect him to win. But though his victory surprised me, I wasn’t shocked. Trump’s appeal to those millions of Americans once designated as Reagan Democrats had long been obvious. I underrated it. Democrats and progressives disregarded it entirely.
