Various commentators have provided rationales
as to why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election. These include the
charge that the Democrats were out of touch with the average voters and were
either too consumed by the machinations of identity (woke) politics or a
radical “far left” socialist agenda that could not be operationalized in the
current social, economic and political climate.
Some Democratic prognosticators
thought that Harris did not veer sufficiently to the center while others
identified the failure to embrace a hard-working class agenda based on high
paying jobs and a firm commitment to the labor movement. I had wanted Biden to announce he would not
run for a second term right after the mid-term election, which would have
provided time for a sufficient airing of several candidates for the Democratic nomination.
The Harris campaign was launched
with a burst of energy after Biden pulled out of the race. Harris dominated the
airwaves in August through the Democratic Convention. She got a small pickup
after her highly effective debate against Trump and continued to run what many
thought was a well-focused campaign, highlighting core issues and warning the
nation against the pitfalls of a second Trump term. Yet, Trump dominated the
airwaves during the last six weeks of the campaign when it counted, through his
usual tactics of issuing one outrageous statement after another, which was
picked up by the compliant media.
There is substance to much of these
criticisms, but the issues that ail the Democratic Party are more structurally based.
A root problem extends back to the origins of the modern Democratic Party in
the racism at the core of the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). It was
this racism which fueled the secessionist movement of the South leading to the
Civil War. It was that same Democratic Party that empowered the Jim Crow
movement after the Reconstruction era formally ended in 1877, which led to an almost
a century of legal segregation in the South. It was this racism which gave a
double-edge thrust to the presidency of Virginia-born, President Woodrow Wilson who
allowed for the resegregation of various federal government departments while
embracing several progressive domestic reforms during his first term.
Meanwhile, a progressive Democratic
Party emerged in the early decades of the 20th century, in the ethnically
diverse cities of the north, particularly under the leadership of President Franklin
D. Roosevelt (1933-1945). Notwithstanding the significant reforms of the New
Deal era, the radical thrust of FDR’s vision was significantly curtailed by the
need to minimize benefits to the African American sector in the South as the
price for Dixiecrat (southern Democratic segregationists) support for the New
Deal mandate, without which FDR’s legislation would never have been approved by
Congress.
The tension between the progressive
and segregationist wings of the Democratic Party came to a crisis point during
the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1968) with the passage
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This
legislative tour de force resulted in the Dixiecrats switching their
affiliation to the Republican Party, a realignment which continues some 60
years later. In short, the cost for doing the right thing on race was the loss
of the white working class in the South, from which the Party has not been able
to recover.
The rise of the Christian Coalition
and broader affiliation between Protestant evangelicals and conservative
Catholics was the second structural source of opposition to the Democratic
Party. Fueled by a collective attack on homosexuality, abortion, feminism, “reverse
discrimination,” and utter contempt for the hated 60s, this well-organized
movement has galvanized millions to vote Republican in the west, the south, and
within key urban and suburban sectors in the north. This has remained a durable
center of Republican power ever since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, which
turned the Democratic Party into an oppositional battering ram, an onus which
it has not been able to escape since that time.
The consolidated power of right-wing
media, having its roots in talk radio, now extending to all media, has created
an insular echo chamber for its many consumers. This is the third major structural
source of Republican power. Typically lacking in serious journalism, such
outlets as the Fox News, Breitbart News, Newsmax, Twitter (now X under Elon
Musk), and the Christian Broadcasting Network, feed their consumers propaganda,
misinformation, and conspiracy theories, while keeping them insulated in their
disinformation bubble. These outlets serve as a primary communication venue for
politicians whose values they promote, while selected news casters are given direct
access, and are sometimes promoted into top-line governmental positions by
politicians in high places.
These deeply-rooted structural
realities—the loss of the south, the allegiance of the Christian coalition to
the Republican Party, and a right-wing media echo chamber, have limited the
impact of the Democratic Party even in the best of times. Democrats can and do
win elections, but even when they do, their capacity to govern is limited. In
the short term, the Democratic Party can and must continue to engage in the
battle for the soul of America. Whether it has the capacity to build an
organizational infrastructure comparable to the Republican juggernaut remains
to be seen, without which it simply cannot govern in any sustained sense. The
Democratic Party has suffered a severe loss in 2024, in which recovery for the
short-term is only likely to be piecemeal. Whether a more fundamental rebirth
is plausible remains to be seen, without which both the Party and the nation are
likely to be stymied, at best, and irretrievably impaired, at worst.
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