Politico: I Watched Orban Destroy Hungary's Democracy. Here's My Advice for the Trump Era.

[Cirsium]

44. Probably, yes

I am certainly guilty of hearing what I want to hear. The stakes were so high. The result is so devastating. We can hardly blame people for questioning everything, for challenging our assumptions. If not now, when? It may already be too late.

Lest anyone imagine that my critical remarks are a sign of some sort of disloyalty, I have voted Democratic in every election for over 50 years, volunteered, donated, etc.

“Politicians respond to only one thing—power. This is not the flaw of democracy, it’s the entire point. It’s the job of activists to generate, and apply, enough pressure on the system to affect change.” - Ta-Nehisi Coates

The politicians are supposed to represent us, they are supposed to have our backs. We should not be asked to represent and protect them. We look for loyalty from them, not to be badgered by demands for loyalty to them.

"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it." Abraham Lincoln from the House Divided speech

Critical analysis of exactly where we are and how we got here is vitally important, more so than ever before. We are in the most dangerous passage in US history since 1860. As Lincoln said at the time "The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson from Self-Reliance

I think that the upper middle class people who control academia, the media, the non-profits, and the party are severely out of touch with the reality that most people in the country are facing. The Harris campaign did not reach blue collar voters. How do we know that to be true? Because she did not reach blue collar voters in the only way that we can measure that, by the election results.

Whatever appeals that the campaign made to blue collar people were insultingly condescending: look, Walz is a hunter! That should appeal to those low lifes. Look, Harris worked in a McDonald's; or else they were Republican light: we are tough on the border too! It is hard to imagine a more tone deaf campaign. It had to be tone deaf for Trump to win. Early in the campaign Harris talked about corporate greed, but that was scrubbed, apparently at the behest of wealthy donors.

We are paying the price now for mistakes that were made made back in 2004-2010 and repeated ever since. I was among the working class rural people back in 2008. Obama, and the Democrats in general, did very well in 2006 and 2008 across the Midwest. Many districts went Democratic for the first time in years. I know first hand that people heard and understood the promises Obama made. They also were fully aware that Obama and the congressional Democrats broke those promises once he got into office.

Liberalism was definitely not outside the “Overton Window” as some like to claim as an excuse for failure. In the packing plants, the fields, and the shops , I would say “didn’t Limbaugh say Obama was a Socialist?” to which the almost universal response was “maybe that is just what we need.” On the race issue, when I asked if they were willing to vote for a Black person the typical response was “I don’t care about that, if he can help us, I am all for him.”

People expected at least a fight for universal health care, not an immediate sell out to the health care corporations. People expected an end to the immigrant raids on the farms, not an escalation. People expected Wall Street to be forced to pay for the 2008 crash, not to see the fat cats bailed out and propped back up. We were promised rural broadband, card check, help for rural schools, a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, relief for people facing foreclosure, tougher rules against the “revolving door” of lobbyists and government officials moving back and forth, etc.. etc.

Yeah, I know, baby steps, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, these things take time, look how bad the Republicans are, etc. We have been hearing that for 50 years and we have been going backward that whole time.

Obama betrayed the voters — not just the liberal base — on the issues that matter the most to struggling working class people. That opened the door for a right wing populist movement. Failure doesn’t come any bigger than that, because job one for the Democratic party politicians was to prevent the country from sliding into a fascist nightmare. If that is not true I don't know what is. The only legitimate way to measure our approach is by whether or not it worked. It did not work.

This is from a New York Times article about a forum Harris held hosted by Oprah Winfrey:

Meryl Streep asked Ms. Harris how she was preparing for the “long slog of shenanigans” that may come should Mr. Trump not accept the election’s results and incite violence reminiscent of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Ms. Harris said her team was ready for Mr. Trump to challenge the election: The “lawyers are working.” But she encouraged people to talk with their friends about misinformation, to protect poll workers and to not be afraid to vote.

Anyone see the problem there? The Trump campaign responded with this:

(Harris is campaigning) “with an out-of-touch celebrity, further confirming that the Democrat party is not the party of hardworking Americans — it is the party of elitists." Whether or not what the Trump campaign said is true or not is sort of irrelevant. It worked, and the party leadership played right into their hands.