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Monday, July 22, 2024

What it's Going to Take for Democrats to Win This Election

Ever since the debate, we have been watching the Democratic party fall into chaos and confusion.  The rhetoric prior to the debate actually helped set the President up for failure.  There was a lot of talk on social media, on message boards like Democratic Underground and even on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, of how this debate would contrast the stumbling, rambling inability of Trump to organize his thoughts and coherently discuss his campaign with the sharpness of the President who, for the most part, had successfully "won" the debate contest with Trump in 2020.  And when that didn't materialize, panic set in.  

In spite of what has been a stellar performance and a solid record of achievement, President Biden has suffered low job approval ratings and a drop in support, according to polls, going back to the end of his first year in office.  In spite of what he has done to curb inflation, a problem that has occurred largely due to the recovery of the economy from COVID, and to tariffs and tax policy set in place during the Trump administration, which he couldn't change, because it persisted, he got blamed for it and that, rather than the fact that the economy is actually in better shape from a growth and productivity standpoint, and from an unemployment perspective, than it has been in over sixty years, due to his leadership, is the main factor in his low polling numbers.  

Or is it? 

It's been difficult to reconcile the President's job approval rating with what has happened in virtually every election cycle at the federal and state level, since President Biden took office.  The pollsters and the pundits started off predicting a "red tsunami" in the mid-term elections in 2022, based on the President's job approval rating and the conventional wisdom that the party in power in the White House always loses seats in Congress during the mid-term.  And based on the polling numbers, the prediction was for a huge loss for Democrats in the House, 60 seats was the number being tossed around, and as much as a five-seat Senate majority for the GOP.  

That never materialized, though most of the polls, right up to within weeks of the election itself, kept hammering that theme, in spite of data that was showing otherwise.  But the media kept insisting, in spite of the numbers, that voter enthusiasm among Democrats wasn't going to be high enough to prevent the mid-term "red wave" from the GOP.  

But something sure did.  

The "red tsunami", then "red wave," turned into the "pink trickle" on the house side.  On the Senate side, the election of Democrat John Fetterman as Senator from Pennsylvania, to replace Republican Pat Toomey, and flip a seat, combined with the re-election of Raphael Warnock, in Georgia, to hold a seat flipped in 2020, gave Democrats enough support to keep control of the Senate.  

The composite pollsters defended their missed prediction by claiming most of the elections fell within the margin of error, though in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the statewide Senate races fell well outside the margins.  The "odds" of winning, they said, is what they calculate, so as long as there were odds for a particular candidate to win, even if the odds were calculated at 1 in 3, is still an "accurate prediction."  

Democrats have, in fact, enjoyed a higher level of electoral success during Biden's term in office than they have since 2006, the year that the Bush Recession, almost depression, set in.  Even when there were setbacks, such as in Virginia when Glen Younkin got elected as Governor, there have also been comebacks, such as the surprising flip of the Virginia House of Delegates in 2023, which took pollsters by surprise, especially after redistricting from the 2020 census had been done in favor of the GOP.  

So, one poor debate performance by the President, and a cluster of polls with some provably dubious data, sent Democratic party leaders and donors into a panic, and created what has been some of the most damaging and destructive internal confusion and chaos within a political party since the Vietnam War.  Democrats, in typical fashion, could not grab control of the narrative in the media.  Not even the assassination attempt on Trump or the chaotic Republican convention could wipe it off the news cycle, because in what appeared to be a clearly orchestrated effort, Democrats kept popping up to ask the President to bow out.  

And so, on July 21, a Sunday afternoon, after consulting with his advisors and with his family, he did.  

Where do Democrats Go From Here?  

The question of whether President Biden could have won the election will not ever be answered.  Those who heavily depend on polling data and media perception are the ones who provided the agitation necessary to force him to step down, because they don't see a pathway for him to win.  Those who see the current polling data as dubious, at best, and the media coverage biased against the President's age, a long standing theme going back to before his first election, think otherwise, especially against a candidate Republicans are stuck with, a convicted rapist, felon, insurrectionist, unpatriotic, self-interested former failed President.  

Why this wasn't thought out, and carried out, a year ago, before the primaries and caucuses, is beyond my ability to understand.  The President's job approval had been hovering around 40% even then, and he's only aged one year since.  His speech difficulty, and his physical frailty, were observable.  It's hard to get to 80, and not look 80.  What I don't understand is why party leadership didn't have those kinds of difficult, but serious discussions, looking to the future, knowing the GOP couldn't nominate anyone but Trump, and knowing that the President's age was going to be a factor and convince the President then, that the best thing he could do for the country, and for his party, would be to step down and let someone else run.  

The Democratic bench is full of politicians who, given a year's worth of primary elections running up to the convention, would have established a front-runner who would be able to win against Trump and make his age and dementia an issue.  Instead, they opted for this very bad public relations disaster, which now looks like complete subversion of a democratic primary process in favor of the rich donor class who got in front of the chaos from the start, and who have seriously impaired the party's ability to field a candidate who can beat Trump, and cast doubts about its ability to get control of Congress back. 

There are a lot of unanswered questions.  Will the party get behind Vice President Harris, who has been endorsed by the President, and who, along with him, have 90% of the delegate support at the convention?  Does she have that kind of support among the party leadership, and the donor group who caused this controversy in the first place? These are not the kind of people who generally have to accept the consequences of their actions.   So is the goal and the energy going to go to defeating Trump or are there other agendas at work that over-ride this concern and have the potential to split the party.  

And, in the Meantime? 

It's been amazing to observe, on Democratic Underground, the shift that took place in just one day, Sunday, after the President announced that he was stepping out of the race.  Suddenly, as if by some miracle, support for Vice President Harris appeared from everywhere.  Just the day before, a poll showed over 90 percent of those who responded wanting the President to remain in the race.  By late Sunday evening, posts were "hurrah for Kamala" and declaring she was going to kick some Trump butt.  

I certainly hope she does.  

But, this is not "problem solved," not by a long shot.  We are facing an election in which the other side is completely sold out to a convicted felon and insurrectionist, and is intending to pull every trick in the book to steal the election, regardless of how the votes turn out.  They've been in the Viktor Orban school of "How to use Democratic Processes to Build a Dictatorship," and if one really believes history repeats itself, shades of the Weimar Republic come to mind.  How prepared is Democratic party leadership to handle that, or will it be the normal response of raising our hands up and declaring "How can they do that and get away with it, tsk, tsk, tsk?"  

And while there may be some folks at Democratic Underground who see this as a resolved problem, has the rest of the party arrived at this same place?  Have the wealthy donors who upended Biden's candidacy by withholding their contributions approved of Kamala Harris as the nominee, or are they wanting to support someone else?  Not only is this not settled, it has the potential to blow up into an even bigger disaster that winds up electing a felon and insurrectionist to the Presidency.  And if preventing that is still the party's goal, then we need to see some real leadership and get a handle on a solid sense of direction over the next couple of weeks, or it is going to get out of control.  

And as a volunteering, contributing, supporting Democrat, who has accepted the party's goal of keeping Donald Trump and the GOP out of the government as much as possible, I have a right to expect the party leadership to be as committed to the goal of winning control of the government, and doing what it takes to achieve that, as anyone else does.  This needs to be settled now, not a week or a month from now.  Every day that goes by is a day that Trump has to campaign that we don't.  We can't be tentative and iffy, we must be assertive, take control of the narrative and force a biased, incompetent media to act as a free press for a while, anyway. 

In addition to knowing who is carrying the torch, we also need to know what is being done to effectively counter Republican efforts to steal the election.  We know this is going to happen, they've talked about it for four years.  We know what they're planning to do.  What's being done to stop it or prepare to prevent it from happening, such as calling it out and getting law enforcement on top of it?  Our justice department doesn't move very quickly, these days.  

A Victory for Democrats is a Victory for Democracy

I will cast my ballot for whomever the Democratic party nominates for President.  I have no plans to spend much time at the polling place, I will walk in, get my ballot, press the key for "straight Democratic ticket", turn in the ballot and head out.  But in order to do this, we need clarity, not confusion and we need to look like we know what we are doing, and not have this chaos which not only alienates Democrats, but other voters we must have in order to win elections.  These past three weeks have been a demonstration of inexcusable incompetence and have done more to put the party in danger of losing the election than the President's debate performance or his age ever did.  

It's been a display of disrespect toward those of us who support the party as best we can, because we are committed to its ideals, particularly the preservation of individual rights in a Constitutional democracy.  For the most part, we are still going to be supportive.  But don't ignore the support we gave to the President, or the grief that most of us are going through over what has happened, nor our disgust or displeasure over the way it was handled.  Taking that is the price that must be paid for the chaos and confusion that has been caused and for forcing out the best President we've had in decades.  

We are running against the biggest anti-American threat to our Constitution and to American Democracy that we have ever faced in our history in Donald Trump.  He's given us everything we need to win.  Let's use it and do exactly that.  

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