Despite the depth of his open depravity, Donald Trump has managed to be elected as the country’s next president.
Many have called the result sad. They should be calling it infamous.
Much of the mainstream media has immediately jumped to speculating ad nauseum about the reasons for the Democrats’ loss. Everybody’s got an opinion on what the Democrats should have done differently. Did they fail to convince the public of their accomplishments? Was it the impossibility of electing a woman? Or of electing a Black woman? Was the problem low information voters? Or misinformation? –Heaven forbid that the media use the word disinformation.
The New York Times' Maureen Dowd even advanced the view that the Democrats lost because “woke is broke.”
Dowd cited a Financial Times chart purportedly indicating that “white progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that ‘racism is built into our society.’” She posits that “Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they’d always talked.” And that “people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.”
None of that speaks to what the Democrats did wrong. Rather, it speaks to what is wrong with the people who voted for Trump. If one cuts to the essence of what Dowd is attempting to skirt, Donald Trump played to Americans who want to be as racist as they’ve always been and have everyone shut up about it. And any Hispanic and Black Americans reflected in the Financial Times chart must be suffering from some form of mass psychosis or amnesia. Trump, after all, is the one who will deport or cage Hispanics as he has done before, and Trump’s white supremacist buddies will kill Black people with even greater impunity than has already occurred since the murder of Trayvon Martin, if not before.
The 2024 election presented a clear choice between honesty and corruption, between democracy and giving power to a malevolent dictator and the ruthless, greedy oligarchs backing him. Those who voted to put Trump in power should not be let off the hook with anemic speculations about them voting based on economics or being "low information voters" or that they are "misinformed," or this or that or the other that Democrats supposedly failed to do to persuade them. They voted in fascism, racism, and antisemitism. It does not matter whether they were influenced by Fox News and right-wing podcasters to believe lies. They CHOSE to listen only to that. They CHOSE to believe only that. That is on THEM.
George Conway, a conservative Republican and one of the founders of the Lincoln Project opposing Trump, wrote in The Atlantic:
We knew, and have known, for years. Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse…His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.
When Trump and Project 2025 get going, many of the Trump voters and his diehard MAGA followers are going to suffer. When they do, I myself will have zero sympathy for them. Even a dumb animal would know to stop licking the hand that beats it. But Trump voters? They CHOSE to be enthralled by or deliberately ignore the noxiousness of Donald Trump. So, I'll save my sympathy for the rest of us who have to suffer alongside them for what they have wrought.
And if the mainstream media wants to play their blame game, most of them should look in the mirror. They could begin with their promotion of Trump’s propaganda about Biden’s age and ability while they gave Trump a pass on his own age and inability to complete even a rambling thought.
Once Harris became the Democratic candidate, most of the media chose to simply report what Trump said—or worse, try to reinterpret it as something coherent--while picking over anything Harris said or did with a fine tooth comb. Not to mention the pundit kibitzers constantly prescribing what Harris must do or not do to win. Meanwhile, they treated Trump as a magnificent, mythical creature performing a circus act. They marveled at each crass thing he got away with rather than forcefully denouncing it. Furthermore, their false pretensions of neutrality helped Trump get away with his next transgression and his next and next, while neither Biden nor his successor, Harris, were given an inch.
Instead of covering the election like a horserace they were handicapping, or a boxing match, the media could have seriously addressed the candidates’ proposals. They could have made the plans laid out in Project 2025 the lead story on every nightly newscast, and a front-page story in every newspaper. They could have exposed foreign interference in the election in every newscast as well. They CHOSE not to.
Sherrylin Ifill, former NAACP Legal Defense Fund President, has told MSNBC that progressive people and others who support democracy must now directly deal with issues that they have not yet truly confronted. One that is essential, according to Ifill, is ongoing racism and white supremacy. That, she said, “has been kind of the gateway drug. Trump couldn’t have come to power without it. Without making appeals to our ongoing flirtation, encounter, embrace of racism and white supremacist ideology. And every time he wasn’t stopped, every time we treat this as though it is not a dealbreaker for leadership in this country, we open up the door to the danger that Trump has represented. “
Ifill continued, addressing the failings of both the press and the public:
We count on the media to sift it for us—and to tell us…this is out of the mainstream. This is out of bounds. And we didn’t get enough of that. We got a lot of stenography. [Emphasis added.] …Trump is truly a vulgarian. Everything about him is repulsive in the sense in which we think about what makes people good politicians. And saying he is appealing and entertaining—why were we so vulnerable to someone who basically runs a campaign as if it’s a reality show?
…Trump has groomed us. He has allowed us to accept more and more things that are off the table to the point that we’ve actually shifted. And I don’t mean just the people who support him or the MAGA people. We’ve all shifted because we’ve been compelled to accept things that would have been unacceptable…We’ve moved the line ourselves…the line has moved in terms of what judges think is unacceptable, what people who sit on juries would think is unacceptable, what that public popular opinion will be. And if we don’t recognize that, we will think that we have more strength than we have to counter him in the way that we need to.
How to change this—how to move the line Sherrilyn Ifill references back—is what the Democrats and others who care about democracy should focus on.
A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny. And anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time, in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God. My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign—the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people. A fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation...
Contrary to Maureen Dowd’s analysis finding fault with the Democratic party, former Florida Republican Congressman David Jolly has asserted to MSNBC, “Losing doesn’t mean you’re wrong on the issues. Democrats are right on the issues. Republicans are wrong on the issues.”
Jolly added that the Democrats can keep soft Republicans that they courted in 2024 “within their tent” without compromising their own basic principles. Noting that Harris said she wanted to give Republicans a seat at the table, Jolly maintained that, in doing so, “she didn’t abandon the left of center roots of the Democratic party. She didn’t abandon a single Democratic priority simply to say, ‘be a part of this coalition democracy.’ The worst thing Democrats could do in this environment is overcorrect. You remain right on the issues. This was a very tight race. You’ll have another chance in two years.”
Given the power Trump, his reactionary Supreme Court, his Republican Senate, and likely Republican House will now bring to bear, I sincerely hope David Jolly is correct in thinking there will exist another chance in two years.
NOTE: George Conway's superb opinion piece is well worth reading in its entirety, and Sherrilyn Ifill's insightful commentary on MSNBC is well worth watching. If you have the time for them, I highly recommend clicking on the links to Conway's article and Ifill's commentary within this article above.
If you like what you have read here, you might try visiting My Washington Whispers, for more such opinion pieces. (and yes, Voltaire3 is also the author of the My Washington Whispers column.
© 2023 by Jessie Seigel
