Member Newsletter
I think this post will displease or even enrage some readers. But I have to write it. I’ve spent the last several days thinking through various things Democrats will need to do to confront and challenge the incoming Trump administration and things Democrats should now do differently. That is not only with what they’ve learned from this campaign and defeat but with a hand now free of the locked-in realities of Joe Biden’s incumbency and the first two years especially of his administration. That to-do list is critical to get right. The tasks are real, super-important and Democrats need to get down to work on them right away.
But for many people, the dire consequences of Trump’s election are distorting our understanding of just how he was elected. They’re not the same thing. And the difference matters. I see repeated headlines about how the Democratic Party and its political coalition have been “shattered” or are now in “shambles.” I’m having an, I hope, friendly email exchange with one reader who told me this morning that he felt no one, including TPM, prepared him for Trump’s “overwhelming victory.” Analysis pieces in the big papers state as a given that it will take years or possibly decades of rebuilding for the party to recover.
I really have no choice but to say that all of this is immense and innumerate bullshit. This isn’t even a subjective point. What we have is a bout of escalating competitive hyperbole in which the wild overstatement keeps getting ramped up because no one is willing to step up and state the obvious for fear of being shouted down as being in denial or naive or not recognizing the gravity of the crisis or whatever. Without anyone willing to push back, the chorus just keeps moving to more and more over-the-top claims. A party with a bit more self-respect and spine would be less bowled over by claims from the opposition and a press in the habit of portraying Democrats in the most negative terms. But here we are.