Reality Has a Way of Catching Up
Donald Trump didn't win. The Democrats lost.
Honoring the men and women who serve and protect. Thank you. Happy Veteran’s Day.
This week, I’ve opted for a longer column only. We’ll be back with a round up of what’s happening in the world next week. A huge thank you to Kate Brannen for her eagle editor’s eye on this piece. That said, any mistakes are mine.
During the pandemic, in 2021, my father was diagnosed with cancer. I’d often accompany him to his oncology appointments. On these calls the doctor would refer to me as “the daughter.”
Born in Crimea and raised in Turkey, my father was not a native English speaker, but he did have a command of the language. Rather than trusting that my father could understand and communicate, the oncologist would look past my dad, talking only to me. My dad wasn’t phased that the doctor didn’t look at him. It made me uncomfortable and angry however. I complained about it on our way home one day. “Those guys all talk to me like that,” my dad, a car mechanic, said. He didn’t have to clarify what that meant. “Those guys” were the doctors, the lawyers—the white collar college-educated.
One day, the oncologist engaged me in small talk. He learned that I teach undergraduates. Immediately, he stopped calling me “the daughter” and addressed me as Elmira. (And predictably mispronouncing it 🙄).
I do not know this doctor’s politics. What I know is the elitism that informed his behavior. It’s something I’ve witnessed repeatedly, towards my dad, my mom, my Turkish Muslim community, and the people who I grew up with in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. These are largely non-college educated working class people.
Grappling with the election results this week, David Brooks wrote about this widening chasm developing in America:
“People who climbed the academic ladder were feted with accolades, while those who didn’t were rendered invisible…. Society worked as a vast segregation system, elevating the academically gifted above everyone else.”
However ironic, Donald Trump, the billionaire reality TV star, saw the invisible and, more importantly, he let them feel seen. That strategy is what catapulted him to a decisive victory this week.
No doubt misogyny and racism contributed to Tuesday’s results. As I wrote last week, many “Americans are loathed precisely because of their gender and race.” I know Kamala Harris was no exception.
For the last century, the Democratic Party has offered a refuge for women and minority groups. Their proverbial tent not only welcomed the “other,” it advocated for their rights, along with those in the LGBTQ+ community. It has been the Democratic Party that has championed labor and immigrants as the backbone of American success. On healthcare, Democrats have pushed to reduce costs while fighting to extend benefits and care. These are just some of the reasons that I have been a lifelong Democrat.
On Tuesday, it wasn’t so much that Donald Trump won, but that the Democratic Party was rejected for neglecting that worldview and being out of touch with struggling Americans.
As Brooks sums it up:
“The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality. Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow many Democrats didn’t see it. Many on the left focused on racial inequality, gender inequality and L.G.B.T.Q. inequality. I guess it’s hard to focus on class inequality when you went to a college with a multibillion-dollar endowment and do environmental greenwashing and diversity seminars for a major corporation. Donald Trump is a monstrous narcissist, but there’s something off about an educated class that looks in the mirror of society and sees only itself…..The Biden administration tried to woo the working class with subsidies and stimulus, but there is no economic solution to what is primarily a crisis of respect.”
R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Preach, Aretha.
The United States is a place that gave my working class, non-college educated immigrant parents opportunity and, thereby, gave me social mobility. I am evidence of the “American dream.”
Somewhere over the past few decades however, that dream transformed from social mobility to winner-take-all. Go big or go home, became the driving force. Wall Street replaced Main Street. Silicon Valley tech ostracized the manufacturing Rust Belt. Big box stores edged out mom-and-pop shops. Wealth eclipsed opportunity. Consumerism drove away civic engagement and community. Americans went from taking pride in quality to wanting things cheap and NOW. They went from talking to their neighbor to interfacing with apps. Greed not only became good, it became the go-to — in our daily lives, in our career pursuits, in our entertainment, and, inevitably, in our politics.
Both Democrats and Republicans spent about $15 billion dollars on the 2024 US presidential election. Meanwhile, people are struggling to scrape together copayments for medications, doctor visits, and childcare. School teachers either shell out or fundraise for supplies in classrooms. Cities have no money to care for the mentally ill and homeless. Democrats have tried to correct these wrongs. Unfortunately, in the face of the big money needed to finance campaigns, they have found themselves pandering to lobbyists and the one-percent. It has trapped them in a cycle where money has trumped principles (pun intended) and disconnected the party from its constituents. Justice went from being a guiding value to a performative talking point tossed out after a Beyoncé performance or an Oprah shoutout.
That disconnect was evident this year. Two Democratic progressives, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, lost their primaries after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, aka AIPAC, poured millions into opposition candidates that did not decry the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. Even if money were not an issue, Joe Biden was never going to change his support for Israel. (I wrote about that a few weeks back.) I don’t think that’s true for Kamala Harris. Sadly, in our money-dependent political system, we’ll never know.
What I do know is that Kamala Harris was dealt a bad hand. Joe Biden should have kept his word and not run for a second term. The Democratic Party should have had a primary process that would have unearthed internal disagreement and debate. That is what happened in 2008, when Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton, who was the overwhelming favorite among party elites. Obama understood that after eight years of George W. Bush, the godforsaken war on terror, and failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American people wanted change. Clinton, while enormously qualified, represented the establishment. Not only did Democratic voters agree, but so did many Americans. Barack Obama was able to win over voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin, as well as the red states of Indiana and Iowa. Yes We Can motivated and mobilized people into a movement, not just a ballot box.
In 2024, Harris had little more than 100 days to redirect a flailing campaign and make a case that she would be different from her boss. While she wisely distanced herself from the lofty talk about “democracy” that Biden said was under threat in a world of rising authoritarians, she didn’t criticize the sitting president. Instead, she leaned into protecting reproductive rights, which resonated and won her significant support. In fact, it was precisely because Kamala Harris was the Democratic nominee and not a white guy in the wake of the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade that she didn’t suffer a complete rout.
Unfortunately she also leaned into celebrity, relying on big names, such as Liz Cheney, Michelle and Barack Obama, and Harrison Ford, to get her message out. Somehow these surrogates felt the need to patronize and lecture, warning about the dangers Trump posed — to women, to civil liberties, to the Constitution, to global affairs. In one ad that depicts two white women going to vote, Julia Roberts cringingly says that there is “one place in America where women still have a right to choose. You can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” panning out to a man who asks, “Did you make the right choice?” So much for trusting women, or men for that matter.
On Wednesday, I was flooded with messages from people who shared my devastation at Trump’s victory. One person noted, “how can a criminal become president?” I responded that he can in a country where the majority feel left behind and struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, big business — corporate CEOs, VCs, and tech bros — flit around to multiple homes in private jets. They are angry that they work hard, sometimes at two jobs, and still can’t afford to cover basic needs, let alone luxuries or a home. These Americans pay taxes and receive limited, if any social services, and they face discrimination and other injustices. These are people who think the “system” is for the “haves” — not them. Donald Trump zeroed in on that. The Democrats either ignored it or responded: The economy is in good shape! Trump’s rhetoric about a rigged system and a broken economy and inflation resonated. In turn, those very people chose to overlook his criminality — and his character.
On LinkedIn, I came across a post by Nishant Shah. He writes:
“If you feel the system has failed you, remember that systems have always failed people. If you feel it is happening to you for the first time, it means that you have had privilege which is for the first time being threatened.”
The people who voted for Trump on Tuesday are used to being threatened, left out and behind, and looked down upon. And they got tired of it and the privileged.
Amid all of the Monday morning quarterbacking, a number of people have pointed to how Biden did consider the everyday American. “Objectively, and improbably, (Biden) has passed new domestic programs than any Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson—maybe even since Franklin Roosevelt,” writes Nicholas Lemann, in a piece entitled, “Bidenomics is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed?” Lemann notes that the Biden administration “has been far more aggressive than previous ones in taking antitrust actions against big companies,” “to strengthen organized labor” and “to build thousands of infrastructure projects.” It was hard to notice amid the larger message about the threat Donald Trump and his MAGA coalition pose.
And Trump is a true threat. In his first tenure, he was able to appoint Supreme Court justices that rolled back reproductive rights. Going into his second, he has vowed revenge against his “enemies.” Trump stands to undo Biden’s policies along with other vital protections that have long been in place. Wait ‘til you see the corruption that will come. Worse, yet, he stands to sow chaos, not just for Americans but the world. Sorry Madam Vice President, but we are not just going back, we’re going down a kleptocratic hole.
On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris repeatedly declared that “when we fight, we win” — blind to the gap between that ideal and the Democratic Party’s insularity. To her and the Democratic Party’s detriment, they made that fight about Donald Trump, rather than a fight for change, or, more importantly, a better America. For them, the former president was the biggest menace and their message was about protecting what we have. On Tuesday, Americans that don’t have much shook all of us back to reality. — Elmira
I’m opening up my column to others. Please pitch me your op-ed idea/perspective. Let’s get more female perspectives. Email me on endeavoringe@gmail.com or respond to this post.
Editorial Team
Elmira Bayrasli - Editor-in-Chief
Editors:
Catherine Lovizio
Emily Smith
Elmira, I always appreciate your insights. I agree that Democrats--and Republicans--need to address the inequality gap that's been growing for decades. But Trump lost an election too, in 2020, and he won in 2016 only because the electoral college trumped the popular vote. This year many Democrats were re-elected even as the Democratic presidential nominee lost, and Harris' signature issue--reproductive rights--won in many states that voted for Trump. All of this seems to suggest that it's not Democratic policies or condescension that has been uppermost in voters' minds in recent years. Instead it points to what you describe-- to economics being their priority issue in presidential elections, and one that hurts Republicans as well as Democrats if they are the incumbent when the economy feels depressed to individual voters even if the macro numbers look good to economists. Is it possible that being in the opposition during this administration might allow Democrats to call out the hypocrisy of Trump's fake economic populism and coalesce around a set of policies that would actually improve the lives of the working class?
Great piece making sense of our moment. So well done.