Why did Trump win? What should Democrats have done differently? What should Democrats do differently in the future?
Many media pundits, in my view, are not seeing the simple truthful picture, they are over-analyzing the situation. One simple reason why the Democrats lost is the overwhelming audience reach of Fox News and the other right-wingnut media is corrupting our politics and bringing the worst out in everyone. The right-wingnut media calls what is right wrong and pretends that hatefulness is virtuous. For the right, battling wokeness trumps loving your neighbor.
Another reality is that while the mainstream pundits proclaimed Kamala Harris as the winner of her presidential debate with Trump, Trump also won the debate in the minds of the majority who voted for him. Let us compare Trump’s winning message of the 2024 debate with his winning message after descending the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015:
Trump, 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”[1]
Trump, 2024: “In Springfield, (the Haitians) are eating the DAWGS. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”[2]
YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/xbtOf4ICxUk
What is the difference? Trump’s only path to victory in 2024 was to continue stirring up the hate and prejudice that won him the election in 2016. Simply put, more Americans approved of Trump’s divisive message than disapproved.
Trump’s question to black journalists: When did Kamala Harris turn black? may have been more calculating than it seemed. Since Kamala Harris could pass for white, Trump wanted to hammer home the message to his base that Harris was as black as a burnt black kettle.
In this past election, we learned that many older white voters who will vote for an old boring white guy will never vote for a younger black woman, whether she could pass for white or not. Joe Biden won in 2020 because he was an old boring white guy with significant support from black voters. Unfortunately, in 2024 black and liberal voters did not turn out in sufficient numbers to tip the balance. My gut feeling is that a Tim Waltz-Kamala Harris ticket would have won, but that was a political impossibility given the short time frame needed to swap the candidates. After Biden’s disastrous debate performance, he was not seen as a winner.
Again, do not forget that half the country lives in the news bubble dominated by right-wingnut media, including Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s podcast, and Alex Jones, that lie with abandon.
Did Kamala Win the Debate? Did Trump Win the Debate? Compared to the JFK-Nixon 1960 Debate
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/did-kamala-win-the-debate-did-trump-win-the-debate-compared-to-the-jfk-nixon-1960-debate/
https://youtu.be/6BS9MUktRto
Trump-Biden Debate, Compared to Kennedy-Nixon 1960 TV Debates
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/trump-biden-debate-compared-to-kennedy-nixon-1960-tv-debates/
https://youtu.be/_YvIst9oxXo
Atlantic Magazine Endorses Kamala Harris: Are Migrants To Blame? When Did Kamala Turn Black?
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/atlantic-magazine-endorses-kamala-harris-are-migrants-to-blame-when-did-kamala-turn-black/
https://youtu.be/Vh2VDx0VigU
John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/john-f-kennedy-cuba-russia-and-civil-rights-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/krkJki2vQ2o
WHAT SHOULD DEMOCRATS DO DIFFERENTLY?
Many pundits agree that the Harris-Waltz campaign was run as perfectly as possible. IMHO, the only changes Democrats should consider is to double down on compassion, and to oppose the cruelty that the Republicans will show during the Trump Presidency with vim and vigor.
Both Presidents Lincoln and Grant wanted to establish foreign colonies where the freed slaves could flee to escape the hateful racism our black citizens faced in their homeland. Black leaders like Marcus Garvey reenergized the Back to Africa movement, and WEB DuBois himself chose voluntary exile in Ghana in his waning years. But most freed blacks did not want to flee their home after Reconstruction, and often those who did flee to Africa returned to escape the instability and violence of the fledgling African nations. Most certainly, blacks in America today will rarely consider fleeing America when so many civil rights victories have been won.
General Grant’s Memoirs, Civil War Diplomacy, Post-War Events in Mexico and Santo Domingo
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/general-grants-memoirs-civil-war-diplomacy-post-war-events-in-mexico-and-santo-domingo/
https://youtu.be/14xYWgYmb10
WEB Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, Essays on Alexander Crummel, Black Episcopal Priest, and Sharecropping
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/web-dubois-souls-of-black-folk-essays-on-alexander-crummel-black-episcopal-priest-and-sharecropping/
https://youtu.be/J3TnQyig6Nk
WEB Du Bois and the NAACP, Continuing the Fight For Civil Rights
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/web-du-bois-and-the-naacp-continuing-the-fight-for-civil-rights/
https://youtu.be/MNhkq69CIfo
Was WEB Du Bois a Communist? The Later Years of WEB Du Bois
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/was-web-du-bois-a-communist-the-later-years-of-web-du-bois/
https://youtu.be/YwgrKvIjoc0
This means that morally Democrats have no choice but to continue the struggle for civil rights and due process for all citizens, and to encourage their fellow Americans to be compassionate towards and to love all our neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin or their country of origin or the religion of their ancestors. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the core of all Judeo-Christian mainstream traditions, as well as the Democratic Party ideology. Politics is merely an expression of how we love our neighbors, even those we barely know, even those unknown neighbors we fear, or who cause us discomfort. Shout on the rooftops: Democrats are all good Christians and Jews because Democrats show compassion for and love all their neighbors!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/
When will this struggle for civil rights end? When will America become a truly color-blind nation? We must take a long view of history to answer this question. Many millennia ago, the Old Testament prophets warned the Jews that their God demanded that we be compassionate towards the widows, the orphans, the poor, and the sojourners, or immigrants. At the very dawn of history God reminded Cain that, unfortunately, YES, he was indeed his brother’s keeper. The struggle for civil rights is a forever struggle that will last as long as people do not love their neighbor as themselves.
Democrats must brand themselves as the Party of Compassion, the Party Who Condemns Cruelty. We should all fear that Trump will, indeed, bring out the worst in all of us, that in a decade or two we will descend back into the Jim Crow days when uppity blacks were swinging from trees without justice, without due process. We should push back vigorously against teaching our children that we would be turning back towards God when we return to these good old days. Democrats must champion an education where our children are taught the uncomfortable truths about our past, and that the 1619 Project is nothing more than narratives on what life was like for blacks surviving in the dark Jim Crow past.
Ida B Wells, Journalist, Brave Woman, and Anti-Lynching Activist
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/ida-b-wells-journalist-brave-woman-and-anti-lynching-crusader/
https://youtu.be/sLDHs0AigvY
Critical Race Theory: Reviewing the Books 1619 Project and Beloved
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/critical-race-theory-reviewing-the-1619-project-and-beloved/
https://youtu.be/JRdnB0lqN5o
Teaching Both Sides of American History: Civil Rights, Jim Crow, Reconstruction, Civil War, Slavery
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/this-old-deep-south-white-christian-reflects-on-critical-race-theory/
https://youtu.be/lAa_jqL3S7I
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/american-evangelicals-civil-rights-and-republican-politics/
American Evangelicals, Civil Rights, and Republican Politics
https://youtu.be/XekOz29oWL0
Democrats must gain hope by remembering when compassion eventually conquered cruelty even during the darkest days of past history. We must remember how, in the dark days after the end of Reconstruction, Booker T Washington was able to establish the Tuskegee Institute, a black college and trade school, with a grant from the Alabama legislature, and initially with substantial assistance from local white businessmen in rural Alabama.
We must remember how although Theodore Roosevelt’s Attorney General was unable to combat the cruel system of peonage, where blacks were jailed for vagrancy and other trumped-up charges so they could be leased out in chain gangs to local businesses, railroads, mines, and plantations in conditions often as bad as the Nazi work camps. We must remember how public hearings of the Georgia legislature slowly turned public opinion against this practice, enabling the administration of his cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, to finally end peonage on the eve of World War II.
We must remember how the initially conservative court of Earl Warren paved the way for the Civil Rights legislation of the Sixties in the Brown decision desegregating public schools, and other opinions ending segregation and discrimination in public life. We must remember how a Deep South former Senator Majority Leader from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson, pushed through ground-breaking civil rights legislation, even though he knew this would lose his beloved South to the Republican Party for decades to come.
Up From Slavery: Autobiography of Booker T Washington
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/up-from-slavery-autobiography-of-booker-t-washington/
https://youtu.be/yxDnJ6sBoJc
Slavery By Another Name, Convict Labor in the Jim Crow Deep South
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/slavery-by-another-name-convict-labor-in-the-jim-crow-deep-south/
https://youtu.be/2TCXcEpohaM
NAACP Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston Challenge Jim Crow in the Courts
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/naacp-attorneys-thurgood-marshall-and-charles-houston-challenge-jim-crow-in-the-courts/
https://youtu.be/fBSNQXDziDU
Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Civil Rights, Great Society, and Vietnam War
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/presidency-of-lyndon-baines-johnson-civil-rights-great-society-and-vietnam-war/
https://youtu.be/lydW8mfpJGQ
The Democratic Party must be seen as the Party of Compassion. The Democratic Party must be seen as the Party Opposing Cruelty! We must also pray that one day the Republican Party will likewise reject Cruelty and embrace Compassion, recalling George Bush’s doctrine of Conservatism with Compassion. Maybe, when that happens, American politics will unite us rather than divide us.
https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/opportunity-road/george-w-bush-on-compassionate-conservatism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542
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