I don’t claim any special knowledge about this. I can only comment as someone who’s observed the struggles of the Democrats ever since Reagan. But in my mind, the key to the next few years will come down to how Democrats respond to the Trump regime.
To be honest, I’m not terribly optimistic.
For many years, I’ve skewered Republicans as the party that pretends to care about social issues every four years. Having thus corralled the “values voters”, they immediately revert to their pro-corporate, pro-rich agenda once election day is over.
I’ve lately come to realize that there’s another side to this. Namely, that Democrats are the party that pretends to care about laid-off workers every four years, and once the election is over, rushes back into the loving, globalized arms of Goldman Sachs.
I hate to say it, but if there’s a poster child for this practice, her name is Hillary Clinton. Yes, under pressure from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, she “evolved” a bit during the campaign, but who doubts where her New Democratic heart really lies? I voted for her in the firm belief that she would be a vastly better President than *name deleted*, but frankly it was without a great deal of enthusiasm. Apparently a lot of other voters (and non-voters) felt the same way.
So where do Democrats go from here? From the outside, the national party looks smug, complacent, and unwilling to even consider significant changes. The same old experts and consultants, with their same old stories and rationalizations and “media strategies”, seem to be firmly in control. Will Keith Ellison turn the table over if he takes over? I sure hope so. The conventional wisdom is that this was a “change election”. Think Democrats will get the message?
Democrats have a huge job in front of them, starting with rebuilding the party at the state level to reclaim some of the hundreds of local seats they’ve lost. They’d do well to start by listening to George Lakoff, who has been pleading with them for a decade to come up with a messaging strategy that’s not actually counterproductive. When will they understand that their old habits don’t work in the era of *name deleted*?
There’s another huge component to this that few are talking about: the impact of technology. Smartphones and the Internet have turned the world upside down, and Trump was the first politician to grasp this and use it to his advantage. Things will never be the same, and, as Billy Beane famously said in Moneyball, people, and parties, must “adapt or die”.