The decline of the democratic party
The democrats are trying to understand what happened in the election they thought they would win easily. It looks like they will narrowly lose the House of Representatives, thereby losing the presidency, the senate, and the house, securing a strong mandate from Trump and the republicans. The democratic party is trying to understand what went wrong.
After four years of an unusually unpopular president, Joe Biden, with endless problems such as inflation, affordability, immigration, crimes, wars, the party decided to replace the fragile president with his VP Kamala Harris without going through a due process with primaries. This approached weakened the party as it might have resulted in a stronger candidate. Harris then decided to select the governor of Minnesota, the left-winger Tim Walz, as her running mate. Walz did not bring anything to the table as Minnesota was going democratic anyway. A wiser choice would have been the moderate popular governor from Pennsylvania, a key swing state, Josh Shapiro. He would also have consolidated Jewish voters. Walz made bizarre appearances on TV, had a weak VP debate and had too much praise for China throughout the campaign.
The democratic party built on years of Obama’s reign and continued their focus on minorities, on an open border and on growing the government by a massive increase in hiring. They also established programs focused on equity in DEI and in gender equality by emphasizing the rights for transgender people. Common voters care about equality, but hardly equity, and to see men in women’s sport does not seem to make sense. The democratic party has also been in the forefront to defund or lower funds for the police and law enforcement, increasing crime rates in blue cities such as Chicago, LA, New York and San Francisco. Also, there voters are mystified. Why would they like more crimes?
Most of all though, is the confusion related to the open border and the Biden administration’s flying in illegal immigrants. It is estimated that during the Biden-Harris administration, about 10 million illegal immigrants entered the country. This has led to economic hardship; more crimes and the policy just does not make sense to the average American voters.
The democratic party has also started to show signs of wanting to create a one-party state by emphasizing their wish to pack the supreme court, to end the filibuster, to censor opposition, to add more states such as DC and Puerto Rico, and to jail political opponents like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro. They also went after the political opponent Trump and showed pettiness and no mercy. They were simply going to try to put him in jail no matter what. This effort is still on-going but will likely be ended or at least paused given Trump’s victory. Some say the government was behind the assassination attempts of Trump too, and it is possible.
The democratic party continued Obama’s spending spree and printed money and created massive budget deficit. There was an attempt to build up the entitlement system like Europe, but in the U.S., the programs are often run so inefficiently and expensively with marginal impact. Some reasons might be the weak taxation system and the vast bureaucracy. The party also is becoming to be the party for minorities and have a safe voting bloc among most minorities. In this election though, latinos and black men increased their share for the republican party, and whites overwhelming supported Trump, in particular men.
Harris did not have an agenda for the economy and that was a mistake as Biden’s economic policies have not been popular and increased the financial burden on the average American family. Instead, she chose to associate herself with Biden’s policies and did not manage to come up with her own path. The economy was after all the biggest voter concern, followed by immigration.
One could argue that the decline of the democratic party started with Obama, an inexperienced left-wing politician from Illinois. The party became more aggressive, more to the left, more focused on race and gender-issues and created a weaker U.S. globally. This trend has continued with even more extreme policies and programs during Biden, undermining the American economy and its culture. The voters reacted emphatically to this and elected Trump again. Many voters question Biden’s more than 81 million votes in 2020, Harris has less than 72 million so far. Where did all the millions of democrats go? Or was Trump right that 2020 was a massive case of fraud by the democratic party? It is possible as more than 81 million votes seems impossible. The democratic party needs to regroup, find a moderate leader, get rid of talk of open borders and transgender rights, and start building up the party again to a moderate party similar to the one during the Clinton era. Harris certainly does not belong there and her days as a politician are most certainly numbered.