2024 Election Analysis

Reading, Listening, and Taking Notes for Part III of Surviving the Next Four Years

Mandami: Well, this Beat was/is about the fall election but this paragraph will be about Zohran Mandami, starting with this piece recommended by a friend, ditto by this. And see this in the NYTimes.

6/27/25: Political miracles like Obama's 2008 victory, Bernie's 2016 campaign, AOC's emergence, and now Mamdani's victory, do not come out of nowhere. Take Mamdani's left populism and democratic socialism; he borrowed something from Harold Washington, didn't he? Washington is beloved today by cabbies in Chicago for the medallion lobby he started, and likely many cabbies in NYC remember Mamdani's advocacy for cabbies. Mamdani's politics have roots in the support of many Africans of Indian origin for South African liberation in South Africa, but also in Uganda and elsewhere on the content, a political which was victorious only because it rejected racialism and ultraleftism.

Mamdani also rests on the shoulders of a decade’s long commitment of the organized left to what I have written about: the struggle for representation (see Essays). Mamdani has not won the mayoralty yet. And to win it, he will need to move beyond the kind of exhilarating left population and would be democratic socialism of his primary and run as a pragmatic progressive who is personally committed to a form of democratic socialism which rejects all utopian ultraleftism and focuses squarely on human needs and human rights. The far left will need to be on its best behavior; he will have to repudiate those portions of the left who thrive on what I call anti-ZionISTism--a form of antisemitism per my analysis on my beat on Anti-ZionISTism

He will have to come our more specifically, as I have called for, in favor of the anti-bigotry education he proposes, but to make it one which fights antisemitism, anti-ZionISTism, anti-Palestinianism, anti-Arab chauvinism (of the kind his Syrian-American wife must know) and Islamophobia.

There was Mamdani’s incredible speech this week. But there was one other significant speech this week, by Senator Slotkin:

All progressive must listen to this speech, by a candidate who won Michigan the same year Trump did so. Slotkin was endorsed by AIPAC but has also very strongly supported a two-state solution and condemned land seizures on the West Bank. She is a good example of how the left’s obsession with AIPAC is self-defeating, when the goal should be to win over rank-and-file AIPAC members to support J Street-like positions. That also has lessons for how Mamdani should proceed; but watch as left anti-ZionISTS try to highjack Mamdani’s campaign, starting with those who on election night seemed happier that it was a defeat for AIPAC or for the extreme wing of the--mainly-non-Palestinian I might add-- Free Palestine elements who last month disrupted a book talk by Senator Shumer, and who had in March 2024 made one of the most significant speeches on behalf of Gaza ceasefire. and who has just endorsed Mamdani. Antics like that can ensure Mamdani can’t prevail.

6/27/25: Election analysis will no doubt need to examine Mamdani’s campaign as well. He is one thing by Bernie in Politico.

6/26/25: Jill Jacobs postes this publicly on Facebook:

A few notes about the mayoral primary (if there's anything left to be said).

1. Mamdani ran a *great* campaign. He generated an excitement that has rarely been seen in politics, and spoke directly to the #1 concern of the vast majority of New Yorkers: The sheer impossibility of being able to afford this city without a Wall Street salary, and the fear of being pushed out by rising rents and other costs. It's no secret that I supported Brad Lander and believe that he was best positioned to be mayor, and I'm sure he will find a way to keep contributing his wisdom and passion to making this city better for everyone. His grace and commitment to partnership over the past few days (& always) has been something to behold.

2. I hear the fear in my Jewish community. I've also witnessed the dehumanization of Israeli (& American) Jews, the calls to wipe out Israel, the attacks on synagogues and other institutions, and horrifyingly the murders and attempted murders in DC and Boulder. "Globalize the intifada" rightly sounds to most of us like a call for violence against Jews across the world. And I am impressed at Mamdani's willingness to visit multiple Jewish communities and his reflecting back the fear he heard in his Colbert interview and elsewhere.

3. I don't agree with Mamdani on a lot of points when it comes to Israel. But NYC, contrary to popular belief, does not make its own foreign policy. And I haven't agreed with any previous mayor on everything (or in most cases even on most things...though my very first vote as an NYC resident was for Ruth Messinger as mayor, so I guess that could have been different). Various interest groups, ethnic & religious groups & political factions will need to fight with the next mayor just as they've fought with every mayor. (Adding: just to be clear, I found his Oct 8 post and some other past statements deeply offensive and think he has a lot to learn about Israel & the Jewish community)

4. This election was not a referendum on Israel/Palestine. Despite attempts to make it so, Mamdani kept his focus on affordability-- again, the thing most important to most New Yorkers. Want proof? In a less noticed election, Mark D. Levine is the presumptive winner of the Comptroller race, despite the fact that lefty groups declined to endorse him and some even actively campaigned against him because of his Zionism. (I tried to find a picture of him speaking at one of the Israeli democracy protests--in Hebrew no less-- but instead here's a pic by Gili Getz of him at the rally last week after Lander's arrest for accompanying an immigrant.)

5. Jews are and always will be an important part of NYC. And the best thing we can do for the future of this city and for our own safety and here is to work with our neighbors to make this a better and safer city for everyone-- neither ignoring our own fears of antisemitic violence or masking our connection to Israel, nor making a certain position on Israel the be all & end all of our politics.

6/10/25: Brando reviews two books and asks if the Democrats will learn from the Biden disaster.

6/5/25: As I shorten and edit my book review essay, I am finding extraneous election analysis, which I will preserve here: Trump’s supporters include—as of one report way back in 2020—36 million people on his email lists, as well as tens of millions of recipients of his X and True Social posts. In 2020, these legions displayed far more yard signs, flags and bumper stickers than did Biden and other down ballot candidates, since the typical Democratic consultant would readily tell you, “bumper stickers don’t vote.” No wonder the MAGA movement thought they had won, the eyes told them otherwise. It too me three months of dozens of emails to the Georgia Democratic Party and both the Warnock and Osssoff campaigns—including the sending of a prototype bumper sticker design, “Both for Georgia,” to convince them to issue the sign now on my file cabinet: “Warnock x Ossoff: Vote January 6.” You can still find tee-shirts, but the 2024 campaign lacked the Black-Jewish historic unity which helped win in 2020.

The MAGA forces in 2024 were joined by an undetermined number of authoritarians willing to support extra-constitutional measures, xenophobes, transphobes, homophobes, racists, fascists, Neo-Confederates, Nazis and others on the far right. Once during the “Fuck Biden” sign era, some of them, armed to the teeth, display their “might” in downtown Cleveland on a flatbed truck, which rolled along past City Hall during a free-stamp rally.

Trump’s supporters include—as of one report way back in 2020—36 million people on his email lists, as well as tens of millions of recipients of his X and True Social posts. In 2020, these legions displayed far more yard signs, flags and bumper stickers than did Biden and other down ballot candidates, since the typical Democratic consultant would readily tell you, “bumper stickers don’t vote.”

No wonder the MAGA movement thought they had won, the eyes told them otherwise. It too me three months of dozens of emails to the Georgia Democratic Party and both the Warnock and Osssoff campaigns—including the sending of a prototype bumper sticker design, “Both for Georgia,” to convince them to issue the sign now on my file cabinet: “Warnock x Ossoff: Vote January 6.” You can still find tee-shirts, but the 2024 campaign lacked the Black-Jewish historic unity which helped win in 2020.

The MAGA forces in 2024 were joined by an undetermined number of authoritarians willing to support extra-constitutional measures, xenophobes, transphobes, homophobes, racists, fascists, Neo-Confederates, Nazis and others on the far right. Once during the “Fuck Biden” sign era, some of them, armed to the teeth, display their “might” in downtown Cleveland on a flatbed truck, which rolled along past City Hall during a free-stamp rally.

6/4/25: The NYTimes published a county by county electoral analysis and has this audio of it. And here is the transcript. Well worth the listen and/or read. It was not Biden was too old, Harris didn’t have enough time, Biden should not have run, etc. MD: In 2020, I felt that Biden’s victory was lucky, and said so in various places. I think I was right. The article says of the nation’s 3100 counties, 1400 are solidly and more and more Republican and very few are moving Democratic in fewer and fewer counties, mainly in the richest and most educated counties.

The reporter Shane Goldmacher says the R’s have continually improved their showing in more working class counties.

MD: I do not think it is necessary a matter of a “working class” rebellion. I think is a matter of primary vs. secondary labor market. That market is made up by owners, managers and employees in small and medium sized private-for-profit sector. These are workplaces without strong HR operations, DEI training, unions, and excellent benefit systems, and where there are fewer in the workplace with colleges degrees. Many of these counties, often rural or small town counties, are heaviliy Latino.

The primary labor market is more public sector, large nonprofits, universitites, unionized, college educated, and urban or inner ring suburban counties. I continue to feel that primary/secondary labor market division is the key one, not geography, not race, etc. The economic mechanism here is what is known as externalization of costs. The radical Weberian analysis by Charles Perrow’s Organizing America shows how large organizations externalize all sorts of costs onto the rest of society, but let me expand. I do not just mean pollution, a wall known form of externalization.

Because these larger organizations have excellent benefit systems including short-term disability, why support state-based short-term disability benefits that are social insurance in nature: only 6 states have. Why work to add Short-Term disability to Social Security when the large organizations already have them? Why fight to pass the ERA when large organizations have typically already found ways to implement gender equality? Why pass legislation on affirmative action, with a sunset clause as to when bonus points would end—what measure of increased equality would trigger and end to bonus points? Such bonus points are justified by the equity principle of common law. But only a sunset clause can ensure equal protection per the constitution?

Large organizations, you see, rule, as far as they are concerned. They stiff their subcontracors, who can barely pay a living wage. And who are their subcontractors? Folks in the secondary labor market. The failure of the labor movment in the public sector and large private employer market to truly fight for these kinds of universal social benefits, not even when Obama controlled both houses of Congress (and ditto in first two years of Biden) was very problematic but just symptomatic of Democratic failures nationally and the focus of most urban local Democrats to just focus on their safe seats and urban patronage and not on willing statewide.

Okay, how can I show this empirically? By re-building the historical city/county datablook SPSS file I built, using raw ISPCR data, covering 1946-2000, and donated following my dissertation to the University of Virginia. That data and other census data enable calculating the proportion of workers working in large vs. small employer organizations. But survey data may also have data on what kinds of organizations, small or large, people work for.

The Times argues that the DP could win in 2016, but that could mask this longer term problem.

6/2/25: Leo Casey has published an important addition to the discussion on election analysis. He recommends reading the How Trump Won post of Michael Podhorzer. Such accounts are less and less common, although hopefully books will be coming out. I have not, other than in this “beat” to finish my own thinking or produced a third essay (see essays) on How to Survive the Next Four Years.

5/27/25: The new book Original Sin, according to The Guardian review, is more damning evidence of my below assertion of Biden’s guilt in pursuing a second term, despite his promise to be a transitional president. In fact, given his promise to appoint a female vice-president, and his subsequent decision to score one victory for what I have called The Struggle for Representation, Joe decided to appoint a black woman. In my view, however, in the interests of defeating a likely Trump run in 2028, he should have extracted a pledge from whoever he picked to join him in the pledge that the Biden presidency would be transitional and that neither candidate would run for president in 2028. They could have been the “get the job done” team. In my view, Katie Porter or Karen Bass would have been ideal. From her own campaign, it was clear that Harris was not an effective communicator, and while my above essay shows I did everything possible to support Harris, the campaign was likely doomed from the start and likely would have been, even if Biden stuck to the promise and Harris announced her candidacy the fall of 2023.

One thing could have possibly succeeded, and that was for Joe to have resigned 2 years into his term, with Harris becoming president and appointing a Vice-President from the heartland, like Senator Michael Bennet. Together they could have taken down the MAGA-heads in Congress, whose heads would have not just have been bobbling, but dazed. Likewise, the Cabinet, which Biden rarely convened—as no doubt Original Sin discusses—could have invoked the 25th Amendment or pressured Biden to resign.

But let me say one thing more: Either way, it was not just Biden who was frail, and Harris who was out of touch. The entire Democratic Party from the blue dogs, to the 2 Senate holdouts, to the moderates, to the progressives, to the Squad were not presenting pragmatic and progressive, bold and developed ideas that had the possibility of passage. It was largely all performative.

On the left, they presented pie-in-the sky ideas like Bernies’ version of Medicare for All, instead of the expanded public option demanded by Bennet and Brown and a few others, or god forbid Real Medicare for All. Rather than focusing squarely on continuing the Bennet/Brown Child Tax Credit and going to the carpet on that, the progressives and the Squad allowed that to die in the debates over the original version of the Bring Back Better Act. Instead, the party was divided over a dozen wish lists for that act, none of which really got in. What was it about a law that cut child poverty in half and send checks monthly to every lower income household that they did understand. If in voting in 2024, they realized that Trump’s election would stop tohse checks, there would have been a huge turnout even from those suburban families above the cut-off level for those checks.

Also, the lump-sum payment during Covid and the business bailout plans were clearly pork and full of corruption and everyone knew it even at the time. Both the Ds and Rs got their piece of the pie. That money should have been used to make the Child Tax Credit permanent or at least. Also, the successful repeal of the Windfall Reduction provision of Social Security, proposed by Sherrod Brown, should have been done in the Spring of 2022 prior to the 2022 election. Why O, why O, didn’t the Dems listen to the Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Colorado.

In the muddling middle, it wasn’t clear what if anything they proposed that anyone could get excited about. While the Inflation Reduction Act was the most important legislation—other than the expanded Child Tax Credit with its sunset clause—since the Affordable Care Act, the IFA had many of the problems of the Obama-era stimulus package, in that it would not quickly be clear to voters how it was helping them. Now, the Dems are so bamboolzed by Trump’s myriad outrages, they are only just beginning to introduce legislation—even though they know it will not pass—and not in a coordinated manner. Why not start with making Permanent Standard Time the law of the land; even Trump says he favors it! That would be a difference. We might literally wake up, smell the oats, watch the news at breakfast, feed our kids properly and see them off to schools that would likely decide to accede to a mass campaign by Start School Later for later school opening times. Let’s see some action! Memo to Mike; finish your Election Analysis as an Essay and an op-ed!

5/20/25 Apparently, Biden had a “politbureau”of four aides who helped in the cover-up, although that doesn’t count his actual day to day physical handlers, and of course Jill. See this from THR. As for Biden’s prostate cancer, I was at first doubtful it was possible for Joe not to have been on a “watch and wait” protocol due to rising PSA or abnormal digital prostate exam a known tumor (from a biopsy. On the other hand, an MD who did a very thorough Medicare home visit for me very recently explained that absence a known tumor, many physicians do not order PSA tests over age 70; he said they are not recommened as it often leads to overtreatment. Plus, true biopsies themselves are a risky procedure in the elderly, especially the frail elderly. Given Joe was biking during his Presidency—although there was one fall—I’m not sure he is frail.

Sadly it looks as if Joe encountered an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which can be typed with a PCA-3 test, widely used in Europe instead of doing a prostate biopsy, presumably when a digital rectum does not show a “lumpy and bump” prostate, which is a sign of a tumor and of one which may risk the spread of cancer. The test was used from time to time by Dr. Eric Klein at Cleveland clinic when he was practicing clinically. But it rarely used in the US.

When PSA rises over time, and it is above the level indicating there is likely a tumor, the test predicts how aggressive it likely it, expressed in terms of a percentage. Sadly, believe it or not, It looks like after leaving the Vice-Presidencey, Joe’s physicals did not cover prostate cancer prevention.

The bottom line is that the number one reason Trump one was Biden broke his word to the voters in that respect and didn’t step down and let Harris serve as president. That is not a counterfactual; that is an assertion.

]5/6/25: But there is evidence that voters who do not engage wih the news, who voted for Trump in large numbers, are turning on him.

5/3/25: Oh no, this is convincing as to how Dems are in trouble. The concept of “opt-out” voters.

4/28/25: Dems suddenly know they want to organize everywhere?

4/26/25: Dems don’t know what they want.

4/24/25; What working class voters want.

4/20/25 Kristof from February and Neil Meyer on delalignment.

4/10/25: Tim Walz is now giving his ideas on why the Dems lost.

4/4/25 Socialist Majority’s Sam Lewis issues a valuable election analsysis focused on mistakes made both by DSA and the DP. Sam praises the plan put forward in 2/24 by SM, which was defeated in the hard-line DSA NPC:

“DSA needs a clear orientation towards (1) defending socialist legislators, who will face millions of dollars in dark money to defeat them; (2) fighting the right and preventing a fascist takeover of the state, including through organizing for voting rights and against right-wing efforts to steal the election; and (3) preparing to defend itself against state repression in the event of a Trump victory.”

(1) was clearly on target. Here is a list of DSA officeholders, which now includes Ohio General Assembly Rep. Tristan Rader. DSA members Bush and Bowman were defeated.

(2) was vague and post-election analysis tends to show that new voters leaned Trump, as our local Progressive Caucus astutely realized and explained to me, and therefore a new voter registration campaign wouldn’t likely have done it. However, vigilance against voter suppression is key, and SM is to be applauded for having proposed this later to the NPC: “In October, SMC brought forward a proposal to join the Election Suppression Response Network (ESRN), a coalition that included representatives from AFL-CIO and major international unions including UAW as well as more liberal and progressive groups like the Working Families Party, Indivisible, and MoveOn, which formed in advance of the election to mobilize against a possible coup attempt. The NPC rejected joining in a 8 to 6 vote, with members of Bread and Roses, Marxist Unity Group and Red Star again voting against or abstaining.

(3) was worth raising and we now see this reality of repression.

But what was missing from the SM plan was a solid pledge to work to defeat Trump either as a caucus or for DSA as a whole. No, DSA itself would never endorse Biden or Harris, but SM should have called on DSA and all SM members to work within their unions and professional associations to suport the endorsed candidates while working to let people know about the DSA affiliations and so forth. In the end many individual SM members did support Progressives for Harris, but it was too little too late. In 2020, there was a last minute mass sign-on DSA Members Organizing to Defeat Trump as well as a somewhat earlier The Nation ad sign-on that got national publicity, but there was no real similar campaign in 2024.

Lewis’s next point praises the work of many in DSA on the uncommitted campaign: “DSA did do important work at the national level throughout 2024, especially through the Uncommitted Campaign that mobilized voters in Democratic primaries against the genocide in Gaza to put pressure on the Biden administration—pressure that likely contributed to his collapsing popularity and decision to drop out. But even with the election looming, the NPC majority remained resistant to preparing for the possibility of the Trump election.” It is likely true this campaign helped pressure him to drop out, but no sooner than Harris was the candidate and the race for VP began, DSAers (from Groundwork primarily) launched the Genocide Josh campaign and in my view poisioned the atmosphere leading into the convention. Given by then Biden/Harris were desperately trying to seek implemenation of the very UNSC Resolution #2735 which they got through the UNSC prior the convention, had developed a new MOU with Israel to restrict weapons use, and were supporting stronger enforcement of the Leahy provisions on weapons use—all after very strong pressure from J Street and the whole PIN network of Jewish peace groups—it remains hard for me to understand the vehemence of the anti-Biden/Harris rhetoric in the face of Trump, other than it being a failure to recognize the true significance of the MAGA danger. Without any serious pushback within DSA—other than efforts by the North Star Caucus to which I have belonged since April 2020—to put together an excellent resource list of organizations through which DSAers would work to defeat Trump, it was up to rank-and-file DSAers, with little impetus from chapters, who rarely had the presidential election on meeting agendas, to vote with their feet. In Ohio, I saw very little DSA member involvement in the Harris campaign. Even the Progressive Caucus of the DP in Cuyahoga County did not prioritize either Harris or Brown, although many of it members were very involved through their unions and professional associations and local clubs. I still do not understand how so much of DSA could basically sit out the election, but without a doubt it did.

However, looking back, I think the turning point was the decision of SM, in an article in The Agitator, to support DSA joining what was called the Reject AIPAC Coalition. It has all been downhill since DSA voted to join the Reject AIPAC coalition, which did nothing but get a few Squad members, Bernie and a couple of Progressive Caucus members to pledge not to take AIPAC money. It failed to see how the average AIPAC bear is like a doctor someplace in Dayton where there is no J Street or other viable group. It just alienated people we should be reasoning with, talking with, and most of whom oppose Netayanhu, at least outside the beltway, where big donors control the AIPAC national office.

This coalition was a violation of the left's traditional policy of "winning people over" in the struggles against racism, war, anti--Semitism (yes, remember that?). Much of this was happening while half a dozen nations and paramilitaries including Iran were attacking Israel. With the same group of organizations united to defeat Trump, push for a sane democratic left foreign policy, work with labor for grassroots campaigns, we would have done something. Apparently the only thing that can unite the left is to promote the idea that it is AIPAC (Jewish) money that is the problem in US politics.

Socialist Majority pushed for our joining this, in a piece in The Agitator. It was probably too late already for Bush and Bowman, but golly, what a lost opportunity to form a viable left alliance. The thing is, even the last minute coalition Progressives for Harris (and see here as well) that invoved a few of the same grouops went nowhere. Many of the individual groups did some good work but there were uncoordinated efforts. What strikes me in the Sam Lewis piece is the absolute absence of any self-criticism by SM itself or analysis of the extent to which SM members were actually involved in working to defeat Trump. Some of the SM members I know in various locales were deeply involved with their union’s efforts or WFP’s last minute pro-Harris efforts. Why not discuss that?

4/1/25: Another commentory about the Dems not facing up to why they lost.

3/31/25: Matthew Y. writes something valuable to understand. Again, no time to read, but key for my election analysis. Also, a friend on FB reposted this, from Dissent’s obit for Todd Gittlin in 2022. I sub to Dissent and had read it then, and am too sad to read it again, right now but will before writing my analysis. These are just random notes.

3/28/25: Abundance book sounds key. Many are discussing it. No time to read now.

3/19/25: Read This is why Kamala Harris really lost: TikTok is making young voters more Republican?by Eric Levitz. He has a couple of later pieces as well A new book suggests a path forward for Democrats. The left hates it and Does moderation actually hurt Democratic candidates? .

On election analysis, in response to Eric’s work, my only two truly original ideas, but I keep coming back to them, is that this was two things:

(1) a counter-reaction to what Frank Parkin's Weberian sociology called "usurpatory" closure, namely an effort by an oppressed groups to gain a slice of the pie and have real power. But in doing so, it can involve alienating people along the way. Jesse Jackson was a master of both coalition building and of making demands on elites. DEI, which was actually a retreat from affirmative action rather than an advance, came about by relying on federal executive orders and regulations and court decisions, rather than by passing legislation. As a result, affirmative action and later DEI alientated many. It was done by elite fiat, to cover their own asses for their ongoing institutional racism. Done properly, it would have been done by law, and with a sunset clause as to when preferences would no longer be neccessary (when substantial equality of opportunity in the region and institution using preferences was achieved). Even Trump doesn’t deny the anti-discrmination laws prevail; but no doubt he will try to gut enforcemt. In any case, first we lost Moynihan, then many conservatives and Jews, and finally the majority of the populace as a whole. See my Beat on DEI here and I’m writing an essay in first draft now. Draft essay available upon request.

(2) A counter-attack by the people in the "secondary labor market", the small and medium sized businesses and their employees shut out of the larger public, nonprofit and market sector firms. In the primary labor market, there are developed HR systems, fairly good benefits and so forth. And those firms by the way are the ones pushing DEI training down everyone's throats, like the "implicit bias" training David Wellman and I have criticized. Together I think (1) and (2) explain a lot but two wars to stop, so I haven't written it up yet. I will read substantially into Eric Levitz before I do.

3/17/2025: Harris’s director of Jewish outreach Ilan Goldenberg weighs in, linking to the address at the DNC of the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who later died of bullet wounds in a Gaza tunnel, according to the New York Times. Ilan pointed out that the convention did include a panel on Palestine, but did not have a plenary session Palestinian speaker, which he did not comment upon.

3/16/2025 Max Sawicky agrees with Senator Brown.

3/15/25: Reactionary solidarity? That term is suggested here by Parul Sehgal in the NYTimes (gift). Sehgal also traces the power of a “transformative solidarity” — that confers dignity to all, as opposed to the “reactionary solidarity” on the right, based on a politics of exclusion. And linked to work by the WFP’s Maurice Mitchell. And one on the lessons of ACT-UP. Paul explained: “The concept of solidarity made its first written appearance in the legal documents of ancient Rome, which established the notion of joint liability, a debt held in solidum….It’s a neglected story; I crib it from Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor’s “Solidarity: The Past, Present and Future of a World-Changing Idea,” in which they trace the history of the movement he popularized, Solidarism, which laid the foundation for social security and public health in France.”

3/14/25: Add to database: The anti-social century, by Derek Thompson in the Atlantic February issue (gift copy): “Even in the highly progressive borough of Brooklyn, NY, three in 10 voters chose Trump. If progressives still consider MAGA an alien movement, it is in part because they have made themselves strangers in their own land.” Sorry must say it: what do we expect with the populace sees progressive and socialist Jews who proclaim, by wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh—thinking this is the best way to show solidarity with Palestine—and who more devoted to boycotting Israel than actually influencing American Jews to put pressure on our government to rein in Israel, and who are too busy spouting gibberish about turning Israel/Palestine into a bi-national state than insisting the US the US get serious about its longstanding bi-partisan support for a 2-state solution. This became the image of the Democrats nationally and not only was it not the way to work in solidarity with Palestine, but it was also a losing image for the Democrats nationally. The left fringe on the East and West coast alienated the swing state populace. It wasn’t that the Democrats were too left or not too left; their message was muddled. The far left and the do-nothing tens of thousands of DSAers who sat out the election after the “no preference” movement and convention spelled defeat for Harris/Walz and practically guaranteed Trump’s election, as Senator Bennet, from his perch in Colorado saw coming and said so. The left didn’t even have a Defeat Trump sign-on in The Nation as in 2020! The closest it came to unity was a ludicrous Stop AIPAC coalition and then a too-late Progressives for Harris coalition focused mainly on the individual fundraising and phone-calling of groups focused more on their own organization-building than on spirited support for an African-American, South Asian bi-racial Vice President and a populist Democratic governor.

3/6/26: AM Add to database: This article from Common Dreams by Robert Francis is about Trump and Gaza but has some insightful election analysis: “In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump made calculated overtures to Palestinian and Arab-American voters, particularly in areas like Michigan’s Hamtramck. He attempted to portray himself as sympathetic to Arab and Muslim concerns, even naming Jill Stein as one of his “favorite politicians,” presumably to appeal to disaffected progressives. Yet these gestures were nothing more than political theater. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conducted an exit poll revealing a significant shift in Muslim voter preferences during the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favor. It’s important to note that while Arab and Muslim Americans have been scapegoated for Trump’s electoral success in certain quarters, their communities have consistently organized against his policies. They are ultimately victims in a U.S. electoral system that offered no positive options.”

3/4/25: Sherrod Brown in The New Republic. Very convincing in some ways: focus on workers. The problem in my view is workers are divided between those in the primary and secondary labor markets, basically large vs. small organizations and businesses.

3/2/2025: Read Randy’s Rants, this time about the DNC, very valuable critique!

2/25/25: It has all been downhill since DSA voted to join the Reject AIPAC coalition, which did nothing but get a few Squad members, Bernie and a couple of Progressive Caucus members to pledge not to take AIPAC money. Here is who signed on: Justice Democrats, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action [the primary US pro-BDS group], Jewish Voice for Peace Action, IfNotNow Movement, the Working Families Party, Sunrise Movement, Showing Up for Racial Justice, MPower Change Action Fund, the Democratic Socialists of America, CommonDefense.us, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Center for Popular Democracy Action, Our Revolution, Dream Defenders, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction, Grassroot Global Justice Action, Justice is Global Action, Future Coalition, Peace Action, National Iranian American Council Action, and Gen-Z for Change. At least, let me count, eight of these groups that I have donated and volunteered or belonged/belong to.

This failed coaltiion failed to see how the average AIPAC bear is like a doctor someplace in Dayton where there is no J Street or other viable group. It just alienated people we should be reasoning with, talking with, and most of whom oppose Netayanhu, at least outside the beltway, where big donors control the AIPAC national office.

This coalition was a violation of the left's traditional policy of "winning people over" in the struggles against racism, war, anti--Semitism (yes, remember that?). Much of this was happening with half a dozen nations and paramilitaries including Iran were attacking Israel.

With the same group of organizations united to defeat Trump, push for a sane democratic left foreign policy, work with labor for grassroots campaigns, we would have done something. Apparently the only thing that can unite the left is to promote the idea that it is AIPAC (Jewish) money that is the problem in US politics.

Socialist Majority pushed for our joining this, in a piece in The Agitator. It was probably too late already for Bush and Bowman, but golly what a lost opportunity to form a viable left alliance. The thing is, even the last minute coalition Progressives for Harris (and see here as well) that invoved a few of the same grouops went nowhere. Many of the individual groups did some good work but it by and large. There was never the 2020 Nation sign-on, which I signed in a year, and which garnered national media attention that the left was supporting the defeat of Trump. In 2020, I almost killed myself working for Biden and for Warnock and Ossoff. I’m recovered now from a string of things that almost did kill me. And I can’t wait to finish my election analysis. But it isn’t going to look good for how both liberals and the left performed 2000-2024. Now, however, I’m going to sit down and finish my book review essay, which will guide my analysis.

2/25/25: I knew there would be more article-length election analysis I had missed or was coming, and here is one of the best ones so far: George Packer’s The End of Democratic Illusions in The Atlantic January issue (gift). He is on target especially about what he calls the majoritarian illusion and his point we perpetually blame the left or right of the party, missing the actual much deeper problems that we are as I would put it the Establishmentarian Party. Yes, that’s right comrades—I’m kidding of course—but do you remember learning that antidisestablishmentarianism was the longest word in the English language? I do. Somehow over the decades we who were anti-establishment gradually courtesy of our “long march through the institutions” ended up as stalwarts of of what Packer referred to as “the party of institutionalists.” Yes, we became the estalishment, all the while railing agsint the “neoliberals” we claimed were the problem. The country is so ready for a political leader who comes from the real heartlands and is not perceived as a Beltway figure or a coastal elite and who can’t be pinned down with one easy moniker like “progressive” or “liberal” but have shown courage in public office, while being well-read, reasonable, pragmatic and determined. People with real charisma as defined by Max Weber and Wendy Brown. which is not the typical understanding of charisma as some kind of charm or ability to whip people up in a frenzy, Elmer Gantry-like, or delude people or scare people. Not it is rooted in the way they convey their deeply held values by their actions and their passion, but in an authentic manner. People like Gretchen Whitmer, voted most effective member of the Michigan House before becoming a Michigan senator and then Governor. People like US Senator Michael Bennet. What a team they would be! Some progressives nitpick Michael but I have met him and he is the real deal. Every single time someone calls him moderate or centrist he corrects them and says he is a progressive and a pragmatist: why do we want to not take him for his word? Perhaps he made a few enemies along the way with labor and environmentalist with key votes or actions would be a good thing given the Packer analysis. Both Bennet and Whitmer are of the right generation and right region to help bring a refreshing message to our country. Reminder: work this Atlantic Editors piece into my analysis. I have ordered George’s award winning book The Unwinding from 2012. Now for some reading and walking while listening to Atlantic writer Sophie Gilbert’s Misogyny Comes Roaring Back and The Gender War is Here, wait, they are the same article, don’t you hate when online and in-person headlines differ? Other links to park here as I back-up my database: The Liberal Patriot on why Democrats lost their edge with women

2/24/25: Somehow this from Vanity Fair in November just cross my desk. It is all about Bannon’s ideology and Traditionalism. That and the other notion from the Times article I can’t seem to put my fingers on, about a sort of Trumpian focus on sovereignty, explain a lot. More to come on this.

2/19/24: I want to share a valuable blog from veteran bi-lingual education professor, Chile solidarity activist, farmworker solidarity and immigrant rights activist, Duane Campbell. The title is DSA Should Turn Left and Join the Resistance and it comes from my DSA caucus of, shall we say, truly democratic socialist democratic socialists, including many founders of DSA and so forth. It isn’t strictly speaking election analysis, but its diagnosis of those who are missing in action is on target, and also I think its analysis of what may have caused so many DSAers to sit out the election, with notable exceptions from our small caucus of a couple of hundred not very disciplined members, and two other larger caucuses, and some local races. Also, his prescription to “join the resistance” is on target. If we can bring almost 1500 people to a high school at an event here in Cleveland sponsored by the Cleveland Heights Democratic Party, let’s see how many we can bring to other local Resistance or as I prefer “We’re the Opposition” events, and what can be done after those events. I now see, “What is to be done - 2025” is the subtitle, but thankfully our wing is not Leninist in nature or I would not belong. In saying, “Although the Palestinian solidarity movement in the U.S. is militant, well organized, and influential in DSA,” I agree that it functioned to sidetrack DSAers from electoral work to stop Trump. Furthermore, I would add, it coopted the development of any real peace movement, as opposed to a solidarity movement. A peace movement would have, and still can, unite those whose basic sympathies are with either Israel or Palestine into one which insists that the US once and for all work with other nations on a fundamental solution. I do not agree, “The U.S. is presently experiencing a coup by right wing fascist forces,” as language like that come from the left implies we need to take “resistance” actions parallel to the kinds of actions taken by the far right when they themselves convinced themselves and tens of millions that the 2020 election was stolen. And I know that is not the author’s intention. In general, I oppose use of the word coup, “fascist” and so forth and think we need to focus squarely on authoritarian excesses, illegal acts, defense of the privacy of our government records, and defense of our rights in general. The reason the author is saying “turn left” is to counter those who say that it is only the “right” within DSA that wants to work electorally and for building left/center coalitions as the author (and I) clearly want to do. The blog is followed by a Google doc of valuable resources.

2/11 Resistance Fair Saturday afternoon in Cleveland. 1500 came despite street covering snow. Dozens and dozens of groups! Although sponsored by the Dems, most of the participating groups were nonpartisan issue groups. See more info and a list: https://www.clevelandheightsdems.com/. I would prefer we call things Opposition Fairs; opposition to injustice, opposition to war, etc. But this worked! Very heartening.

The most important thing said Saturday was from a veteran labor movement activist: “We have to bring people together.” This was in reponse to my concern there is so much backbiting and blaming going on within the DP and the movement, from all directions. People are often saying things like this: If it weren't for the neoliberals, if it weren't for the looney left, if it weren't for the centrists, if it weren't for DSA, and so forth. I think the best analysis I’ve heard so far was from my granddaugher the day after the election: “The bad man beat the good woman.” That about says it.

We need analysis and proposals for action from the ranks of activists who may not be very well known. We should convene people to talk, as Greg Coleridge of Move to Amend did a while back. Here in my Village, our elected chair Suzanne Blum is doing just that; our meeting of Bratenahl Dems is in March, and she sent out the below link from the Resistance Fair and invited me to way a few words about my experience. I have to ask: Where is the realization that, "The question is not who said it, but is it true?"

That is a question Barry Cohen reportedly asked about a contribution to the dicussion on the left in 1991, that contribution being the 11x14 multiple page statement later published in two pieces as Notes from the Winter of Our Dreams and Roots of Discord on the Left, in Crossroads: Contemporary Left Dialogue, and indexed in the Left Index. I link to these two articles of mine in my Other Works Section. The work here, in some ways, is an effort to update that to today. Yesterday I wrote something that is helping get me closer to my final analysis. I have it out now for feedback privately. Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones, is something I said about myself in my initial essays How to Survive the Next Four Years. I still don’t, but I’ve been trying, and hope to pull my understanding together soon. Meanwhile, see Tom Gallagher’s thought provoking piece in Stansbury Forum. And remember, We Are Stronger than We Think.

2/6/2025: Well, excuses excuses, but it is time for me to find time to complete my election analysis. Little new work is coming out to try to make sense of the election. True, one DSA member has proposed DSA run a Deb-like presidential campaign in 2028, aguing it would “unite the left” and build chapters and so forth. That is a fantasy. Although the piece was not clear whether it would be a primary campsign or an independent campaign, I assume the latter. Not a good idea. If a member of the Squad ran, even so, DSA members might support the candidate, but to seen as anything but a “cadre candidate” beholden to DSA rather than the voters, the candidate would have to pledge the support the nominee, and yet almost certainly DSA itself wouldn’t so pledge! Nor would most DSA local electeds support any independent ticket. Another DSA article is of the title Against the Senate; the tendency to attack the legitimacy of our democracy has a long pedigree, but one of the very reasons Trump won, as my analysis will show, is fear the Democrats would try to do things like eliminate the Senate and takover the country, so the coastal elites would control the breadbasket mainly rural states. There are so many other more important issues progressives should raise. Also, the immanent attacks on our democradcy from the left mirror attacks from the right. Anti-Americanism is not progressive. Now, the Democratic Left article praising Upton Sinclair’s 1933 victory in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, although he lost in the general election, is a better approach. It made ending poverty a major issue, one that still resonated later in Michael Harrington’s books The Other America and The New American Poverty. Here in Cleveland, major institutional forces have just launched a new Urban Agenda coalition of major nonprofits with the goal of ending poverty, but it will take progressive and socialist critiques to press it to be serious. It seems to me that a county version of the Child Tax Credit would be an important initiative, for instance, as well as guaranteed jobs with a living wage, part-time or full-time, for all high school graduates, while they pursue education and training. If someone ran in the gubernatorial primary on such a program, it could raise important issues. But that would take a visionary indidividual who is actually a feasible governor in terms of their qualifications, not just a “cadre candidate” beholden to DSA. My platform for what I think a feasible candidate for president or governor should follow? I wrote it in a November 2020 op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: Let’s talk turkey about pragmatic ways to address our common human needs. Since then I have continued to develop a combination theory of human injustice, human need, and human liberation and also finished 15 years of work on a taxonomy of right, center, progressive and left views. The sweet spot for a successful candidate should be box 11, a candidate who is progressive and pragmatic and plays nice with both boxes 10 and 12. Well behaved persons from box 4 welcome and those remaining social democrats in box 3 who are willing to realize how utopian it is to think you can achieve cradle to grave security without transformative reforms and challenges to economic inequality also welcome. I continue to contend our major political problems are theoretical in nature, and are largely rooted in dogmatism on the left and an unwillingness to re-think shibboleth.

1/23/2025: Was Joe Biden’s Presidency staged? I’ve finally read the WSJ article from December, “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge: Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.” In my view, the question we should still be asking in an analysis that should still be going on in even in the first 100 days of Trump’s second presidency, is not only whether the Democrats could have won the 2024 election were Biden to have stuck to his promise to be a transitional one-year president--although that is indeed an important question to ask and answer--but, counter-factually, how would the term of his actual presidency differed, both in domestic and foreign policy? The unit of analysis can and must be what I would call “the presidential decision.” What were the the days and key moments of key presidential and administration decisions and who had input into them? At each moment and decision, was Joe Biden “in touch” or “out of touch” with the realities in the world and the world around him? And what role did those close to Biden play in ensuring he was in touch or keeping him in the dark about factors that should have been at the forefront when he made these decisions? Take the decision not to actually implement the 30-day ultimatum to Netanyahu last fall? There are not an infinite number of such decisions. Ok, now there is the book idea, and I say, Steal This Book. I say this as one of four persons—incuding Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Ray Mungo—who did guerilla theater at the plenary session of the University Press Syndicate in Washington DC, as confirmed by an book on the underground press hidden somewhere on my shelves.

1/22/2025: “Before the election, I concluded that if Trump won, it would mean that something is seriously wrong with our society as a whole.” This from Reframing America. But it is not the typical analysis you hear from both moderates and many on the left, one version or another of a resurgent racism. This is why I’m continuing to work on my own election analysis and a review of Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times. I also recommend her article in the current Dissent and virtually that entire issue.

1/21/2025: Jacobin has a valuable analysis of Democratic overfocus on Trump instead of on the issues, with oodles of links I need to read and harvest. Matthew Yglesias’s Slow Boring nails it again, with one of the first posts that deserves commentary both here in my Election Analysis Post on my Beats, but also in my Middle East Peace with Justice Post, another of my Beats. Let’s focus here on what Matthew said. Some might think, hey, Dover, why are you focusing on the “moderate” Matthew when you are supposed to be progressive and a democratic socialist? Perhaps you are really a rotten liberal or worse? Well, Barry Cohen reportedly said someone said about something I had written in 1991, “the question is not who said it, but is it true?” I had written a long xeroxed legal-size piece about politics on the left and sent it to friends on the left in NYC in spring 1991. It was later published in two pieces, Notes from the Winter of our Dreams and Roots of Discord on the left, in Max Elbaum’s Crossroads and available on links from Other Works. I feel the say way about Matthew’s Slow Boring. I do not quite understand overall what Matthew’s—as he puts it—”my larger political interests” are, but I have to nod in approval as he says the follow following in 31 Thoughts on the Ceasefire Deal. On election analysis, here is what he says:

• “9. The Biden administration’s approach to climate, global energy prices, and sanctions enforcement was incoherent in a way that I think Kamala Harris might have fixed (idiosyncratically, one of her top advisors was a sanctions enforcement guy) but Trump will definitely fix.” I don’t know why he thinks Trump will fix anything but I’m open to understanding his point about Biden/Harris. He tries to link to this which I’ll read later (the link says Bad Gateway at my end, but I found it. Anytime Matthew links to something, read it!

• “11….one of the core dynamics of contemporary politics is that Trump scares his interest group activists, while Democrats tend to be scared of their interest group activists.” Wow, what an amazing observation. It may explain a lot, although the implications are worrisome, in that it means that a cultish devotion and fear of the leader works in US politics but openness to the influence of a diversity of issue constituents is fatal. I’ll have more to say on this in my Reviews section regarding Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times. But I think it has to do with what was once called “the vision thing” in US politics. A charistmatic leader in Weberian terms, as discussed by Brown, must have a vision linked to an inner core intregity and responsibility that is guided by a moral commitment and consitent values. Biden’s had always been flawed fundamentally: take his blithe suggestion that the US should work towards partitioning Iraq into Sunni and Shia sections, and his failure to understand the implications both for Afghanistan’s women and for US politics of his approach to ending the NATO mission there the way he did, not to mention his back and forth messaging on Gaza (from being the first to admit in November 2023 to the IDF’s “indiscrminate bombing” and the last to realize that perhaps if this was so we should seriously condition access to the US offensive weapons stockpile. As for Harris, she barely had time to evolve her own vision, but might have been able to do so over four years as VP had Biden been as loyal to Harris as Biden was to Obama, and had not taken advantage of her loyalty to him, a loyalty which led to her statement about not being able to think of a think she would have done differently. When it came to foreign policy, all she had to say was, “On foreign policy, there are delicate diplomatic developments in Ukraine and the Middle East and as part of the administration, I’m not going to criticize the President, but on domestic policy, I would have gone to the mat to defend the Bennet/Brown Child Tax Credit which cut child poverty in half and as President I will bring it back.” As for Biden, loyalty to Harris and to the American people (or at least the non-deportable variety) meant staying true to his pledge to be a transitional president. Neither Harris or Obama, however, ever really had “the vision” think, torn as they seemingly were between outright progressive/socialist family roots and darnright moderate inclinations to avoid rocking the boat, leaving them both as semi-pragmatic liberals, who the average voter lost trust in when it came to the vision thing.

1/17/25: Not quite ready to write my own Analysis, but my bibliography should defintely have bragging rights (see link above). Vox’s Eric Levitz, on Vox, however, has a very important anslysis using some of the most recently exit polls and ballot measure results and oodles of links, all of which are no in my bibliography: https://tinyurl.com/2024ElectionAnalysisItems. I am super impressed by the rsearch. Hope I can write How to Survive the Next Four Years Part III soon.

1/16/25: I am inclined to agree that focusing on Proportional Representation (PR) is one lesson of the 2024 elections. Some hardliners in DSA and many advocates for splinter far left third parties like it on the grounds no one could claim they were spoilers. I find it hard to understand, and if that is true for a politial junkie like me, imagine the average voter. Instinctively, and right or wrong, PR produces distrust in our electoral system, and we have enough distrust as it is. People act as if the major parties are totally under control of neoliberal capitalists. Not true; in most states there are quite democratic procedures for electgion of precinct leaders, who in turn elect county central committees and so forth. Let’s use the systems we have and re-focus on precinct level work as we are in my village, and attend public meetings and draw conclusions. I attended a DP meeting with my county councilperson and the county chair speaking last nigh. It was very well attended, very diverse. PR is presented by some as a golden bullet to fix our system, but I am not buying it. Universal automatic voter registration like in...drumbeat...Georgia! is the first reform I would propose, at the state level. At the federal level, I favor term limits for the House of Representatives. I do not favor it for the Senate, as doing it for both would weaken our system of checks and balances by making Congress weaker compared to the courts and executive branch.

1/13/25: DSA North Star caucus—my caucus—has released an ongoing guide to political action called Choose Democracy; it has dozens of key items to which I have linked in my database and which I will more carefully read as I do my How to Survive the Next Four Years Part III analysis. The caucus has also highlighted this article on its blog, by Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. and a former journalist, published this short essay recently in Politico Magazine. As we prepare for Trump’s regime, I thought you’d find her views useful, and recommended by Robert Reich.

1/11/25 First, I highly encourage listening to this video of Senators Bennet and Booker, one of whom definitely needs to be on the Democratic 2028 ticket. And to the inaugural address of NC Democrat Josh Stein. (More exit polls are being released, and it turns out only 38% of the electorate were MAGA voters and even they may soon be disillusioned if Trump doesn’t satisfy their concerns. See Navigator Research. Meanwhile one memver of DSA thinks DSA is going to “build its own coalition.” Good luck, after its stunts with “Genocide Joe”, “Genocide Josh,” and the defunct “anti-Zionist coalition” which I predicted would come to the nothing it came to, and which did nothing but drive moderate and liberal Jews away and contribute to the primary loss of Congressman Bowman and, ironically to the Stein votes in WI and MI. As for Progressives for Harris, it also did nothing than promote its member’s organizations own in some cases effective pro-Harris work (WFP, and SURJ in particular), but in general the proliferation of independent progressive groups that did work for Harris may, I say may, have drawn away from people working directly in the Harris campaigns. At least Ashik Siddique, DSA co-chair, avoided the worst anti-Harris rhetoric at an “anti-war” rally at the DP convention in Chicago but the others didn’t. Andy many members of Ashik’s caucus, Groundworks, and of the Socialist Majority (SM) caucuses were electorally active for down ballot progressives and as individuals in support of the Working Families Party campaigning for Harris in swing states. But DSA does not see that no one knew of anything they were doing and by and large. I didn’t see, no one I know saw and anyone I ask can’t give a single example of evidence then even DSA members as individuals stepped up to try to defeat Trump other than with rhetoric. Michael Harrington would be heartbroken to see DSA’s stance in 2024. And certainly not DSA as an organization. Were DSA members even encouraged to work in independent political action within their unions and professional associations? Not that I saw. I’m sure many did, but those unions and professional associations themselves had their own problems of insufficient electoral work, including the problem of members who themselves were registered Republicans. In some cases, officially or unofficially, compared voter registration lists with membership lists and sent postcards to the Rs to try to convince them to vote for progressive ballot measures and candidates.

1/4/25 Exit polls are coming into play in some of the recent additions to my bibliography. Tarence Ray’s fascinating peice in the January The Nation has some valuable history of how the media shifted the Republicans from blue to red circa 2000 in all their maps, and an infamous statement in 2016 by Senator Chuck Shumer that the Dems would pick up two moderate Republicans for every blue-collar Democrats they lost. I’m still thinking the issue isn’t blue collar versus white collar but primary vs. secondary labor market and the loss of Democratic influence in small towns. We’ll/I’ll see if I can find time to do my own analysis. Soon the books will come in, but many of the prevoius ones are discussed by Ray, including Robert Wuthnow’s take on the small town effect—Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Small Town America, and its cultural and not necessarily reactionary culture. But there is also the effect shown by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and Our Kids which has to be considered. Ray also discussed Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort, Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in their Own Land, Beth Macey’s Dopesick, and Jonathan Metzl’s How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing American’s Heartland. And yes, he discussed the book that shall not be mentioned, Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. He also discussed Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman’s White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. Perhaps if I had actually read that book back when I was teaching full-time, I might have been less flabbergasted by the 2024 results. Ray’s analysis leads to this conclusion: “Attention to the economic reality would have revealed the crisis of red-state America in the second-half of the 20th century for what it was: a roller coaster of deindustralization and reindustrialization attenuated by worker exploitation that resulted in no major political victories for rights or representation but instead in further extrangement from their communities, their fellow workers, and even themselves.” This is an economic foundation for the nihilism of which Wendy Brown speaks in her Nihilistic Times: Reading with Weber. In any case, Ray stated, “The long sought populist revival never materialized, because the economic base for it no longer existed. The numbers of farmers and miners had dwindled, replaced by nurses and McDonald’s workers.” It didn’t help, as I see it, that so many liberal and even progressive Democrats took on a sort of beltway mentality, increasigly save in their seats and less and less oriented to these realities. Or that the SEIU and UniteHere left the AFL-CIO (SEIU not being on the verge of returning) and that DSA became closer to the far left than the mass democratic socialist group for which Michael Harrington hoped. In any case, Harris didn’t do well enough with the youth vote per Nell Srinath in The Progressive. Sarah Lahm’s conclusion that was soft populism and Harris’s hobnobbing with elites, plus gender and racial dynamics worked against the Democrat’s success, but at least she pointed out Harris won Minnesota, even if as Ray points out they didn’t win Tim Walz’s home county. Clearly, as Erica Etelson wrote in The Nation, we need to be rethinking rural. This little update ends with Ruth Conniff’spiece in The Progressive. It pointed out that Stein plus Kennedy were 1% in Wisconsin, just tipping the state to Trump. Once again the Green’s are looking a bit objectively brown as they did in 2016 all by their lonesome loony lefty selves in both WI and MI and almost in PA. She interviewed a Black descendant of the Great Migration who was thoroughly disgusted with the Democrats. Deindustrialization killed Milwaukee. We all have a lot of thinking to so.

1/4/25: This discussion of capital strikes as one possible ruling elite responses to a progressive candidate and campaign, which suggests more of a Popular Front strategy, comes from Progressive Democrats of America. Ro Khanna spoke and Nina Turner visited and interestingly rather than just bash “neoliberals” there was discussion about the need to engage them and even actual capitilsts in dialogue but also the need to push a bold progressive agenda.

1/4/25: This deserves more than a brief mention, and I will surely discuss it in my own analysis, thanks John Judis I know people who have already read and recommend this:

The DNC and The Democrats

1/3/25: This guide to winning the working class (a veritiable analysis of what the Dems did n-o-t due in 2024, is now out from Working Families Party. Thanks you to the person who recommended it: https://workingfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Practical-Handbook-to-Winning-the-Working-Class-9.9.24.pdf. I haven’t fully read it yet but when I do I will also read the YPDA manifesto, which also seems invaluable.

1/2/25: Jacobin has a valuable analysis, which validates the effort which has gone into this Election Analysis beat so far, and which suggests many of the very issues about the vocation and avocation of politics which motivated Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times and Jonathan Foiles’ Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room, my book review essay of which is still not done. What I am seeing is a rush by the left to get back into action without truly carrying out any serious re-thinking. It just occured to me, this may all be what in the good old Red Book which I toyed with for a few months when the BPP was in its Maoist phase: prior to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention: “a contradiction among the people,” namely those in the primary and secondar labor markets and the owners/managers of each sector. That would take a political/historical sociologist to study.

1/1/25: Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein in The New York Times nail it in callong Trump’s regime patrimontial rather than authoritarian. They argue: “Eviscerating modern state institutions almost always clears a path for a different type of political order, one built on personal loyalties and connections to the ruler. The German sociologist Max Weber had a word for this type of regime: patrimonialism, based on the arbitrary rule of leaders who view themselves as traditional “fathers” of their nations and who run the state as a family business of sorts, staff by relatives, friends and other members of the ruler’s “extended household.” Social scientists thought that patrimonialism had been relegated to the dustbin of history. And for good reason: Such regimes couldn’t compete militarily or economically with states led by the expert civil services that helped make modern societies rich, powerful and relatively secure. But a slew of self-aggrandizing leaders has taken advantage of rising inequality, cultural conflicts and changing demography to grab power. The result has been a steep decline in the government’s ability to provide essential services such as health care, education and safety.”

Bingo! Since 2008, I have been working on an alternative continuum to replace the traditioanl right, center, left framework, but a weak link was my bottom row which I lamely labeled individualism, but patrimonialism is the correct label. It is now here.

1/1/25 Update: This is a thought-provoking post from Left Notes. I tend to agree with David Duhalde. I have responded at length, as I prepare my own election analysis for publication as an essay in my Speaking from the Heart substack. Meanwhile I’ve added the piece by Nick French to my Zotero report of my bibliography of well over 500 Election Analysis items, at the link at the top of this post in my substack election analysis post: https://michaelalandover.substack.com/publish/post/152097845

It all depends on the meaning of the word faction. The Squad are all members of the Progressive Caucus, are they not? Their reading is that it makes no sense to differentiate democratic socialists from other progressives. I see no point of demsoc caucuses in the DP.

Too many in DSA and on the far left seek to draw unnecessary dividing lines between socialists and progressives. As for building progressive caucuses, that can and should be done within the constitutional structures in place to form DP caucuses like we have in Cuyahoga County. And it should n-o-t be with a goal of #ProgressiveTakever or a goal of splitting off and forming a new party. The Working Families Party has already done that is fairly optimal manner.

If our goal is to win over the diverse constituencies who see the DP as an important place to build support for key legislation and constitutional amendments supported by labor, civil and human rights advocates, and proponents of pro-human needs policies, you do not do it with either of the 3 strategies you outline.

I agree by and large with David's proposal but would go farther. I have long believed and advocated that DSA should n-o-t run or endorse candidates at all. But that does not mean anti-electoralism. To the contrary. DSA and other groups, and unions for that matter, should have current events and electoral developments on every meeting agenda.

We should work collaboratively with grassroots voter registration groups and GOTV groups and be seen as a place where candidates and issue campaigns can seek volunteers. We should work with other groups to have candidate forums which would be places no candidate would dare miss. Members should vote with their feet and report back on their experiences. That is the best way to build a mass democratic socialist voluntary association, which was always the goal of DSA, over and above "re-alignment."

In fact, re-alignment, meaning turning the DP into a progressive party, is a losing strategy, in that in my Ohio and many other places, the only way to defeat reaction is to turn our progressive caucuses and groups toward a less sectarian and more pragmatic source of unity-building. We should explain, patiently explain, not call everyone who does not agree with us "neoliberals."

For instance, I like to ask, name one "neoliberal" in the Ohio Democratic Party, and no one can, so far. Yes, there is too much influence from consultants and failure to do deep canvassing and focus on precincts and focus too much on judicial elections. And there is too much holding on to safe seats and not doing voter registration in those districts. And not enough reaching out to rural areas. Once, at City Club of Ohio, both the DP and RP state chairs used the word "bold" to describe what they propose. So as a longtime member, I asked them to each name one "bold" measure they favored, and they couldn't!

The role of a united democratic left within the DP and within in the larger polity (what AOC recently emphasized as inside/outside strategy for our work) should be to make and organize for exactly such bold transformative reforms.

In 2008 I called every Democratic State Rep candidate, after working with a progressive doctor to send them all Obama stickers and buttons. Not a one was a "neoliberal" and the progressive thing to do was convince those who were rural, moderate, or not very liberal liberals to support the top of the ticket. In 2020, I did something similar with DP State Senate candidates. Not one was a "neoliberal". Most were closet progressives, but they had to tone down their message in our red state, outside urban areas.

Democratic socialists and progressive are already a key component of the DP, and this was shown at the 2024 convention in many ways. By uniting, instead of splitting, those two trends on the democratic left can continue to work to help the DP realize it must go further in fighting for truly transformative reforms such as restoring the full Child Tax Credit, working for a truly effective federal and/or state guarantee of child support, working for turning our public schools into places which would include before and after school day care, and finally, what I call Real Medicare for All (the original intent, which was for Pediacare to raise its age each year and Medicare to lower it, so that soon everyone would have the real Medicare we trust). For those who feel dirtied by touching the democrats, there is always the opportunity of joining Solidarity or one of the far-left parties. Rather than trying to turn DSA into a party, and turning it toxic, like the far left killed SDS (I saw it happen in the Hoover Street Athletic Building at UM).

12/30/24 If there is one thing I'm sure about going forward politically, it is that precinct pragmatism that seeks to operationally and aspirationally unite politically and culturally diverse groups of moderates, liberals and progressives of our various identitarian stances and evolving class positions is the political order of the day and that the place to do this is face to face and door to door networking, one precinct at a time. A book review essay I'm trying to finish by New Year’s day, will inform my own thinking about how to understand both the 2024 elections and political strategy write large going forward. The review will cover a very readable narrative third book by University of Chicago social work educator and psychotherapist Jonathan Foiles, Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room from Cleveland's Rust Belt Press and an equally short but dense and indispensable book, Nihilistic Times: Reading with Weber by political philosopher and University of California Berkeley Professor Emerita of Political Science Wendy Brown. In my view, both books contribute to our individual efforts to re-shape our thinking about the angst and uncertainty about the world around us and out political place within it.

12/27/24 See my restack of Antonia Scatton’s Reframing America for her post on Why Trump Won Voters who don’t consume news, and her link to her prevoius piece on Kamala’s branding, both not on my bibliography.

12/26/24: Paul Mason’s substack to the rescue, Conflict and Democracy/. This is an important critique of misinterpretations arising from the far left: “The Democrats lost, in short, because they failed to understand the world we live in. They failed to evolve a strategy to confront the complex of challenges liberalism is up against.”He says in 2028, depending on how things go, a Democrat who understands narrative, and I would add history, could win. That triggered me a bit. I’d bet on Senator Michael Bennet of CO, who deeply reads history and grew up at the foot of global developments from his father’s work as a diplomat and university president and with a deep awareness of the horror of the holocaust from his mother and maternal grandparents. In a debate, he could take down Vance like he took down Tee Cruz. He would show him up as someone who appears to have read very little since Yale, if then. He might trip him up on more than one point of the law, as well. One mistep by Vance as Presidident of the Senate and he might take to the floor again, respectfully objecting to anything that dishonors the Senate. I might add, Bennet was the first Senator to respectfully warn Biden couldn’t win and later that Trump might win by a landslide. In 2020, when every presidential candidate but Bennet raised their hand that they favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings (not just lightly prosecuting them but repealing the law). It appears all the candidates including Biden were thinking this would get them Hispanic votes, not thinking what was good immigration policy. Bennet explained with comments on immigration policy, informed by his having written the so-called McCain comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate in 2013 with 67 votes. His comments produced the largest ovation of that evening’s debate and showed how deeply he cares about immigrants, dreamers, etc. He should be on the ticket in 2028, in my view. Bennetis just the kind of self-declared progressive and pragmatist we need, as is, I think, Mayor Karen Bass. But Mason is right, the progressives and left in the US have lost touch with the meaning of the revolutionary democratic potential of those two words, progressive and pragmatic, when used in tandem with each other. Bennet did n-o-t support Bernie’s Medicare for All bill but, had such a strong public option proposal that it would have lead to what I call Real Medicare for All, while not disturbing union and other large organization/large pool plans if they met Medicare standards. So whether on health care, immigration, education (a former school superintendent with nuanced views on charter schools), or women’s and reporoductive rights, or the needs of farmers, Bennet can take just about any other Senator or Representative to school on nearly every issue, and without notes or a teleprompter. Why am I saying this now, before I’ve even concluded my own analysis? Because I know very well my analysis will propose that the sweet spot is progressive pragmatism and that literally everything the progressives and what Mason calls the “anti-imperiaist left” is way off target. Their erroneous positions can be traced by to the turn to the left and to being an “anti-imperialist, anti-racist” during the invasion of Iraq left. This turn was taken by the very same new communist groupings who in the late 80s and early 90s had turned to the right to seek supporters from parts of the left who were proponenets of Gorchachev’s effor to bring social democratic approaches to economic and political democracy to the Soviet Union (myself included). But all that “new thinking” died out on the far left and now almost the entier left and progressive movement have lost sight of the kind of social democracy of which Mason writes and about which I was writing in my 36,000 word monograph What Kind of Democratic Socialist Are You, which has sat undeveloped since 10/006. Mason is one of the few open critics who has publicly criticized the New Manifesto Group’s tilt away from human rights and towards China. With some encouragement and a good editor and publisher, I am confident in my monograph’s originality and applicability. This is especially so in our current nihilistic period, much like the period Mason says Mannheim addressed in Ideology and Utopia. I seem to be in close agreement with much of what Paul Mason wrote in his piece in 12/23, Over this weekend I hope to finish my write up of Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times. I like Mason’s approach in his piece For a Humane and Radical Left, given his support for humanism. Early on, I was friends with Ann Arbor’s supporters of Raya Dunayevskaya’s book Marxism and Humanism and ever after tried to make that a standard for my evaluaiton of leftist thought, while never once even flirting with the Trostkyist aspects of that trend, based largely on witnessing the deficiencies of its actual praxis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raya_Dunayevskaya. Alas, that humanist trend within Trotskyism was always in a small minority, although thankfully it was one that rejected all anti-Semitism. Unfortunatley, neither than trend nor Paul Mason’s recent books show a clear understanding of human needs, although they are infored by aproaches to human rights. For instance, Mason states, “The extent of human needs and desires is limited only by human imagination, which means, in practical terms, there is no limit.” (Mason, Paul. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (p. 126). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.) That is true only of wants, not needs. Yes, we can imagine us all having 1500 square feet apiece in housing. All humanity could be housed in that manner just within the borders of Texas according to one caculation I read once long ago. But would there be enough water for those homes there in Texas? That is very questionable. But how much water can anyone drink? Or use to bath? No, all humanity couldn’t have a back yard pool in those 1500 square foot house backyards. But the point is that human needs are satiable, and with proper social planning, we can meet them in a sustainable manner, as Ian Gough has contended in Heat, Need and Human Greed. And still have recreation centers with pools and a sauna and steam bath to boot! Well, enough of a rant. but my main take away is that Paul Mason is an important, outspoken, writer and other than my quibbles about his not having read my favorite needs theorists—or my own work—which I hope he will rectify, I think his approaches are spot on, to borrow a bit of British English.

12/25/24: Thank you to the invaluable www.portside.org for this valuable election analysis from Jacobin which I have included in my free substack’s election analysis bibliography and commentary found here.

12/24/24: Great thoughtful must read analysis from Andrew Doris: https://substack.com/home/post/p-153093210. I had to laugh at the end when he said: “This post has run long enough, so I’ll save my fuller theory of elections for a future one.” I’m busy writing my review of Wendy Brown’s Nihilistic Times and Jonathan Foile’s Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room, which will guide my own election analysis and my teaching next term. But I too have my election analysis coming by first week in January, I promise!

12/22/24: I attended the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) as an ongoing commitment, with whom I had not worked much since 2020. Over 200 people attended a valuable Zoom. In response to the great comments of Kendall Avenis (PDA SC) about the working class, I responed: “Thanks for the comment about the working class. Let's think very broadly about that about workers, not ‘working class’ which is actually a identity not always accepted by workers or retired workers ourselves. From Matewan: Joe Kenehan : You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain't a union, it's a goddam club! They got you fightin' white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain't but two sides in this world - them that work and them that don't. You work, they don't. That's all you get to know about the enemy.”

In the meeting, Hartzell G. the new YPDA organizer used the phrase radically realistic. Hartzell! Very close to my pragmatic and progessive mantra. Another recommended Braver Angels: https://braverangels.org/. Another mentioned: https://mlkjrway.org/. Betty Kissilove said we have to “reframe our identity” and focus on ourselves as “earth beings”, in other words more than human, more than humanity. “We are larger than our race, class, etc.” Bill of Rights should be for ewveryon. “Couch things in this expaned identity.” PDAmerica has a YouTube page, can’t post the link or it will show up here!. What a well-run meeting! The moderators had an Academy Award clip they played when you got to 60 seconds which in the end they started using. Daniela spoke: https://www.danielagioseffi.com/ about her ecopoetry website: http://www.ecopoetry.org/daniela_gioseffi.html. I ordered her book on predjudice from www.abebooks.com.

Someone mentioned Jared Yates Sexton's insights on YouTube. Don McCanne Physicians for a National Heath Service spoke up along with Kylie his granddaugher. Someone recommended Stephanie Kelton’s substack: stephaniekelton.substack.com, The Lens. Robert Reich’s article on oligarchy was recommended: The American Oligarchy is back. Bernie Sander’s talk on oligarchy as well. Here is the “manifesto” of the YPDA: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_6H974mZUsCbP9hp434eSFL-zAw_4sxtIfS0BysOfMA/edit?tab=t.0. The broadcast YouTube ended with what they called Family Time. There was a call for labor solidarity to sign up here and some other calls for action. I volunteered for a couple of thinks. No analysis without action, right?

12/21/24: I am very appreciative of David Duhalde for bringing to my attention of few of his election analyses. There are in the bib near the top but deserve mention. In his piece for DSA’s Socialist Majority Caucus The Agitator https://www.socialistmajority.com/theagitator/staydirty he said: “For DSA, I especially want us to stop pretending we are building a third-party when a better and more honest orientation already exists, one in which we are fostering a left-wing faction within the Democratic Party, the party which most members will gravitate toward anyway." I am largely in agreement with this.

The Democratic Party (DP) already, due to Bernie and The Squad, grudgingly accepts that democratic socialists are here to stay in the DP. But we ourselves, both those in DSA and those who are independent democratic socialists—I’m trying mightily to stay at least an at-large member of DSA for 2025 at least—should likely be active in the DP not as some kind of cadre under orders from would-be Leninist leaders of a would-be DSA party, but as individual members of various Progressive Caucuses and other caucuses, and as part of the political work of our unions and progressive organizations.

To repeat, DSA members should be involved as individuals who are openly in DSA not as a "cadre" who act at the behest of chapters or DSA national. There is an entire book about fear of secret societies in US politics, which I will review in my Reviews section soon. We must be open and transparent about our politics, unless that is we think we have something to hide.

Alas, despite the efforts of DSA’s two most electoralism positive caucuses, Socialist Majority and Groundworks, and DSA’s overall campaign Socialism Beats Fascism (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf3m6lSPmmFvstvTTUxVQa_5Aq4hsGiUZ4ONh213yu3qnQF8g/viewform) which called on DSAers to promote DSA’s Workers Deserve More program and work down ballot and for “encouraging workers to tactically vote against fascism in key races and swing states”.

I’m still of the view DSA and DSA members were largely largely missing in action, at least from what I could see in the Harris and Brown campaigns in Ohio. I’ll give this more analysis later. But at this time, DSA's reputation is in shatters in the Democratic party due to the Genocide Josh campaign against Josh Shapiro for VP and other interventions I do not want to dwell upon here. I think it is easy to exaggerate how many rank-and-file DSA's actually did "tactically" vote for Harris and so forth. They may have voted, but I see littleor no evidence DSA individuals were active for Harris or Brown other than a large group including SM caucus members in NE PA, or our work as part of our work in unions and professional associations.

David said: "But Democrats’ fear of third parties was unwarranted. Third-party support has continued to collapse in our polarized environment. In both 2024 and 2020, third parties combined got less than two percent of the presidential vote. Compare that to the 2016 Libertarian ticket that alone received over three percent - over half the total non-major party vote.” That is a very original point, one no one is pointing that out: The decline over time in third party overall. ‘

David said: "I do not think DSA should return to a realignment strategy of trying to make the Democratic Party into a social-democratic party. " Well, it is complicated. When I write my election analysis based on this substack and its bibliography, one point I am going to make is that the strategy many on the far left advocate, of entering into the DP with goal of taking it over or building support and splitting off to form a socialist party, is a no-win proposition. Why should the DP welcome people whose goal is takeover or desertion?

In my view, we should stay in the DP as loyal Dems and work for our points of view and for Democratic unity between democratic socialists. Wwe must proclaim we are part and parcel of the DP and ain't going anywhere. We should seek to unite progressives, liberals, moderates and some "conservative democrats" if there is such a thing, by proposing progression pragmatist measures such as what I call Real Medicare for All (policy brief coming soon) and other measures.

We have to stop acting like if the DP would just follow our lead all would be okay, and we have to stop condemning “neoliberals.” I’ve been asking around, and no one can tell me a single "neoliberal" in the Ohio DP!!!!! Not one! This is a canard we throw around. "Neoliberals" are largely in the Beltway, captured by big money, and they are rare. Hillary, yes, in my view and Bill, but they didn't start that way. They were captured. As for neoliberalism itself, it is a system of power that is real, and on which I will be writing more soon, elsewhere, but linked here under Other Work.

David also wrote this piece in Democratic Left, the newsletter of DSA, which I’ve been reading since 1992: https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/to-rally-after-trumps-second-victory-dsa-must-look-past-2016/.

David said: “DSA is now a place where those who want to elect socialists and challenge the Democratic Party establishment go.” I wish that were the case, but I think it is hopeful thinking. But I am not sure that is the case outside New York City, where David lives and where DSA is a viable political force.

Nationally in the chapters I follow and what I learn from other members of the DSA North Star caucus to which I belong (a few hundred veteran activists with a wide variety of views, and a blog https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog, the great majority of DSA members were largely inactive in the Harris/Walz campaign, except perhaps as part of their union’s or professional association’s political action.

But I very much agree with David on this and hope it proves true: “DSA has been able to take in hundreds of new people in individual chapter meetings across the country after the 2024 general election. This difference means DSA can chart a new course and not merely try to repeat the successes of previous election bumps. My major advice is chapter leaders should find projects and asks that build capacity and give them to new members. This can be plugging people into a political campaign, asking them to table, or helping put together an event. Recent joiners are looking for something to do and should be plugged in — not left to figure it out on their own. We want to make it as easy as possible to get involved to resist the new Trump administration. People are ready and we need to be too.” I recently met some of these new members and leaders in DSA Cleveland at a showing of the film Matewan at Cinematheque.

My only revision would be that we should drop the term “resistance” and act as an “opposition.” We are not the left-wing version of insurrectionists and election deniers. Many and perhaps the majority of DSAers are closer to my 12/20/24 Election Analysis update of the nature of my politics: ““Democratic socialists on the democratic left strive to be humanist, feminist, autonomous and independent thinking, activist, revolutionary democratic, pragmatic, progressive, internationalist, constitutionalist, environmentalist, and abolitionist (of human injustice and wrongfully unmet human needs—in our personal, professional and political lives—and view such principles as part and parcel of our identity as democratic socialists, whether we are members of Democratic Socialists of America or independent democratic socialists.” It is all well and fine to do all this analysis, but it must be finalized before inaguaration day, as after that it will be all Opposition, all the time.

12/20/24: Thanks again to CCPC leaders Deb Klein and Steve Holecko for lengthy briefings on the phone this week about the realities they face within DP politics. I am also an admirer of the approaches of Greg Coleridge of Move to Amend and a longstanding peace activist; I think movements towards constitutional amendments are central to my ongoing advocacy for, and this is a mouthful, what I consider to be my political stance: “Democratic socialists on the democratic left strive to be humanist, feminist, autonomous and independent thinking, activist, revolutionary democratic, pragmatic, progressive, internationalist, constitutionalist, environmentalist, and abolitionist (of human injustice and wrongfully unmet human needs—in our personal, professional and political lives—and view such principles as part and parcel of our identity as democratic socialists, whether we are members of Democratic Socialists of America or independent democratic socialists.” There, I’ve said it, or did so 8/3/24 as part of the most recent draft of my 39,000 word monograph draft, Are you a democratic socialist? What kind of democratic socialist are you? This has been on hold since 10/23 and I’m glad to correspondent or consult any editors who can help me boil this entirely original theorization of democratic socialism down into publishable form. But as Kamala famously said, “My values haven’t changed.” This point of view will inform my election analysis, which however aways the outcome of my daily hopes and prayers for a ceasefire in Gaza (see my Middle East Peace with Justice in my Beats section as well.

12/17: Thanks to the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus (CCPC), I read yet another perceptive piece in Jacobin by Branko Marcetic, Four Myths about Kamala’s Loss. I sub to Jacobin, which has a new issue out on the legacy of Biden, which I plan to read and review in light of my 12/16 comment below on the piece by Joe Biden in TAP, a publication whose material is closer to my point of view than Jacobin. I’ll just respond briefly to each of Branko’s main myths:

One: The country didn’t move right. True, but the left didn’t get it right and if Kamala followed much of our advice, which I don’t want to get into, Trump would have done even better than he did, which isn’t as good as the liberal media say he did. It is a myth that the Democrats would do better nationally if we just adopted a progressive agenda. We can barely elect outright progressives even in heavily blue states at the state level. A progressive and pragmatic position is the sweet spot, but the democratic left has yet to formulate such a set of policy proposals, and the far left is out of touch with the realities of US politics.

Two: The Harris Campaign Was Too Far Left and Woke. Branko is stronger here. True, in fact, Harris started strong but then was persuaded to downplay, most importantly, the centrality of the goal of restoring the Child Tax Credit. She could have said, “There is one thing we should go back to, the Child Tax Credit in 2020-2021, which cut child poverty in half.” And that is just one example of the kind of progressive and pragmatic measures she could and should have supported. Another could have been expansion to all of the kinds of special training and re-employment measures available to those who have lost jobs due to offshoring of plants and also those available to veterans. Most importantly, she could have drilled down on the need for a federal living wage, supported by targeted tax credits for small businesses who, yes, would otherwise be forced out of business. The left has of course proposed a federal living wage, but typically fails to recognize measures to support small businesses in that regard, which could actually prove to be a strong source of support for such a measure, if constructed properly. But the left was not proposing either such pragmatic measures or even more advanced ones either, like the right to a job (an issue not even raised by Bernie Sanders in 2016 or 2020). Branko’s point on immigration was, I think, a low blow. It wasn’t that Kamala supported Trump’s border wall, she merely said she would sing the Border Security bill into law, which Trump scuttled in the Senate. Many Democrats supported that in part to set the stage for comprehensive immigration reform, which Kamala supported but did not adequately discuss. Branko harked back to the 2020 Democratic convention’s diversity-related content but didn’t actually draw a comparison to either the convention content or platform in 2024. Arguably, the 2024 convention was an anomaly in many respects, and what is not a myth is that had Biden stayed true to his promise to be a one-term, transitional president, we would have had a real convention and likely a different ticket than Harris/Walz. Honestly, we really needed two people on the ticket with widespread name recognition and the ability to win bi-partisan support. Branko’s contention about the futility of trying to win over Republicans is contradicted by what I saw on the ground in my Bratenahl precinct, where there were dozens of prominent Republicans supporting Harris/Walz and Sherrod Brown with donations, yard signs, and so forth. This wasn’t tied to not letting Harris and Brown be Harris and Brown; it was tied to moral opposition to Trump and his MAGA message.

Three: Biden Ran a Populist Presidency That Gave the Left What It Wanted. Read it and weep: This is on target. It is almost as if he had read Joe Biden’s piece in TAP and pointed out one thing, I point out below: the things the article by Joe doesn’t discuss. Branko clearly, in this article, which is very well documented, rises above the pundit moniker. And that, my readers, is one of my goals as well. One Cleveland journalist, when I published my first reporting piece in over 50 years, reminded me I was not a journalist, even if I had, to joke around, produced a reporter’s notebook from my back pocket. He said, “You are not a journalist; a pundit maybe.” I joked he would live to regret those words, and in some ways this entire substack is an effort to restore an identity important to me: journalist, editorialist (via op-eds), reporting (see Get the News Straight, for more to come). In fact, I may decide to do actual reporting on the nature of the election results, in order to ascertain actual on-the-record, off-the-record and documentary data related to Election Analysis.

Four: Racism and Sexism Made the Result Inevitable. I have heard this again and again, often from the same people who say the problem is Kamala ran too far to the left. I thank Branko for his excellent rendition of the various victories in what, in my Speaking from the Heart peace, I called the Struggle for Representation. And yes, some of those victories were by Republicans. In my piece, I pointed out that the glass ceiling is not just for women, when it comes to the presidency. In fact, no African American survivor of descendants of US slavery has yet to be nominated for or elected President. My own consultations with knowledgeable African American observers of the Ohio political scene, confirming what I was hearing on the streets, lead me to believe that Trump’s somewhat increased support among Black male voters in particular was motivated by cynicism regarding the bi-racial nature of first Obama and second Harris. This is an issue it seems as if no one is discussing. Another fact not discussed is not whether US voters were ready for a woman, a Black/Asian woman, in the White House but whether they were ready for a Jewish first-gentleman or a president in an interracial relationship. That said, the data are clear that more and more people of all political persuasions, and especially among young working-class people at least from what I can see in Ohio, are themselves in interracial relationship. But guess what? As I learned in my own canvassing and from my own observations, this does not mean they are diehard Democrats! Does this make them racists or misogynists? No! Until we learn more from exit polls, I think the data are not yet there to fully understand these questions. To be continued.

12/16 Update: Byline by Joe Biden in the TPN: The American Prospect, to which I subscribe: https://prospect.org/economy/2024-12-16-biden-from-the-middle-out-and-bottom-up/. Yes, the White House contacted TAP and asked if they would publish his article! I have now read and listened to the article, and shared nearly all its links in the bibliography shared here of over 500 election analysis articles, on which I hope to draw for my own analysis, which, however, will await more of the election day and post-election polls, a rich source of data. My immediate reactions are these: ‘

1. Why didn’t President Biden make such an analysis available for use by Vice-President Harris in her campaign? This was a very convincing reason to vote for her: to carry forward Biden’s achievements.

2. While extolling what Biden did accomplish, he did not focus enough on the measures he sought to achieve but which the Republicans and two recalcitrant Democratic senators from WV and AZ scuttled, especially the renewal of the Child Tax Credit.

3. He was vague about taxation. A progressive and pragmatic tax agenda, in my view, would avoid Sanders-like contentions we can just soak the rich (the “1%) and corporations in order to achieve economic security and prosperity. The notion one won’t raise taxed on the “middle-class” is fine, but what about measures like raising the cap, the maximum income, on which SS and Medicare taxes are paid. That must be raised and raised soon. Also, what about bringing back more progressive taxation on not just the 1% but the 10%? Here is where my previous comments on classism come into play. Much of the donor base of the Democratic Party are exactly such upper-middle-class individuals and families. If they were forced to vote their pocketbooks, by proposals for a more progressive income tax, some might very well support Trump rather than having to pay individual income tax at a higher rate, in order to restore the 2020-2021 levels of the Child Tax Credit. But many more would react positively to a truly bold and realistic plan to eliminate child poverty permanently via Child Tax Credit Measures, and poverty more generally through a return of the minimum SS benefit measure, elimination of the five-month waiting period for Medicare after SS Disability determination, an expanded public option now for Obama Care, and soon the realization of the original vision of both Medicare and Pediacare, which would have led to Real Medicare for All, instead of a means-tested Medicaid program for the poor.

4. It was quite obvious Joe didn’t write this: who did? And why didn’t Biden have regular press conferences and cabinet meetings? To his discredit, his administration came across as detached from the norms of presidential practices. If his foreign policy team can success in what I am told by very knowledgeable figures is a likely Gaza ceasefire before Christmas (see my LINKS item on Middle East Peace with Justice), he may be able to achieve some degree of redemption from his failure until now to stop the war crimes which have emanated from both Gaza and Israel since 10/07/23, with US complicity.

5. The above said, this article seems to me one of the very most important articles to come out since the election, and the best expression of what is known as a national industrial policy in decades. The article should be widely discussed, in op-eds, books, and so forth. Joe Biden has given us, in one well-referenced piece, a very solid portrait of something which seems to have left the public discourse: the question of a US industrial policy. In Europe this is called a national policy framework. But in the US, the question of the US having an “industrial policy” disappeared from public discussion an undetermined number of years ago. It was the victim of the view that even discussing such a policy was like turning the US into a socialist state with five-year plans.

6. Joes’s article dodged discussions of the need for urgent action to save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. This brings to mind another disappearing discourse: the “lock box.” Remember when everyone, both Democrats and Republicans, favored the “lock box”? Long a goal of Minnesota Republican Congressman Tim Wahlberg, it would protect a SS and Medicare trust fund from efforts to raid them to finance other federal spending (to vastly simplify the issue). These days, both parties would rather gamble that we can count on funding SS and Medicare Part A from federal tax revenues rather than FICA social insurance contributions. We’ll see how that turns out, very soon.

12/14 Update: In recent days I’ve been attending as many post-election updates and events oriented to building community as I can. Today I attended a really inspirational meeting that empowered us to speak openly, and I am grateful for the opportunity to hear and, as typical, probably speak too much and end up being a bit too professiorial. In my 12/12, I mentioned on 12/12 the CCPC YouTube, and I share it today. Coming up soom, Bratenahl Dems will be having an informal discussion of people who live in Bratenahl, worked on the election with us here, and need to connect.

One comment I’ve heard frequently is that the voters were influenced by racism and sexism; aren’t we all, in ways we need to consciously raise are consiousness about? If Caitlin Clark can discuss her white privilege, we certainly ought to do so. But as an explanation, I do find that the notion we lost due to racism and sexism among the voters very convincing, not that it was not a factor. In fact I think we need to be self-critical about various forms which classism takes within the Democratic Party including the progressive wings of the party and liberal wings. Both wings seem to think they have the best approach and they blame each other; I’d say it is closer to the truth that both wings need to re-think things from the ground floor. As for what I consider the mythical neoliberals, just who are they here in Ohio?

Although the Harris and Brown campaigns made mistakes galore, some eggregious, I doubt there was a neoliberal in the entire structure of the Ohio Democratic Party, at least that I can find. There are many alleged moderates, and I’ve talked with dozens of them over my years of calling State Representative candidates (2008) and State Senator candidates (2020) to encourage them to support the topic of the ticket. Not a one was a neoliberal. They were well respected in the extra urban areas in which they did their best attracting voter support. It seems to me we have more that unites moderates, liberals and progressives than divides us. We need to compare notes across urban, suburban and rural divides, perhaps by organizing purposefully structured discussions of 9 people, there diverse people in a trion from urban, a trio from suburban, and a trio from rural. Then compare notes. Here is a link I’ve put on my Other Works link at lower right of my home page here: Pairing and Intentional Activist Groups and Empowering Diverse Social Movement Organizational Forms

Although the piece discussed pairs, trios can work as well. And geography is as important as race, class, gender and so forth, when it comes to bringing diverse groups together. Als, I think we can inject more idealism and pragmatism into our approaches. Basically, we need to have oodles of discussions as we build community and continue to try to balance analysis of what went wrong with planning for action going forward.

Meeting and venting and discussing tactics and strategies is great, but I think we need to take notes, produce discussion documents, and come to collective conclusions in various ways. I’m collecting observations and comments I’ve heard made, as well as some comments I’ve made and heard, but do not feel comfortable sharing publicly here. These updates of Election Analysis are supposed to learn to my writing ny own follow up on my previous two Surviving the Next Four Years pieces, and I hope to have something done before end of the year.

12/12 Update: I highly recommend this YouTube replay of the post-election discussion of the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Progressive Caucus. Most DP’s have bylaws that permit caucuses, so let’s use those forms! Also, most DPs, by law, are based on elected precinct chairs. My chair in our precinct is calling a meeting very soon, let’s meet regularly in precinct’s not just in wards and caucuses.

12/11 This indispensable analysis by Peter Dreier in TPM (Talking Points Memo) contends that Trump does not have a mandate and that the vast majority of voters have progressive positions on a whole range of items.

12/10: Read this from Vox’s Eric Levitz! Thanks to the Cuyahoga Progressive Caucus for bringing it to my attention. Be sure to follow this link in the article to sign up to their Rebuild free newsletter, which will be doing more election analysis between now and Inauguration Day. After all, in his regular substack updates, Simon Rosenberg has warned us it is till too early to come to solid conclusions. Levitz warns against conclusions which may make us feel “comfortable.”

Read this from Andrew Tobias of Signal about the defeat of Senator Brown. On his link to Redfern’s criticism of Brown, I have this to say: From what I can see, Sherrod constantly invited down-ballot candidates and gave them the microphone at all his events. i would ask: how much did these down-ballot candidates support the top of the ticket? I found in 2008 you had to literally send them bumper stickers and buttons and call them and bug them to support Obama openly. Was it different this time?

12/8/24: The New York Times confirms many of the problems with the top-down, consultant run campaigns for Harris/Walz. This is consistent with what was seen by Jay Schaffner’s piece, linked to below, and what I saw in Ohio. The Democratic Party leadership was not interested in listening to volunteers and efforts to really involve volunteers were paltry. Our script involved a way to ask if voters could help but that was not the real emphasis. There was no real relationship building. One could go to campaign HQs at peak times and see perhaps a dozen or two volunteers, when there could have been a hundred like in 2008. Once again, urban Dems with safe seats were not truly devoted to the top of the ticket (Harris/Walz and Brown). And even the Progressive Caucus, on grounds Brown hadn’t “asked for an endorsement” were not as a collective involved in the campaign, although many individual PC caucus members were.

The official position of many in the DP and even among its progressive wing was apparently primarily concerned turning out the reliable vote, not with voter registration, when it was still open. That was left to the League of Women Voters and other nonpartisan groups, many suburban white women and one key African-American led group, who made a valiant effort to do grassroots work in the cities. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, was busy hiring Black workers and that clearly paid off.

Again, voter registration was officially not the priority, even before the closing of registration. Rather turnout was the goal, and mainly turnout of likely voters. Once the likely voters reported they had a plan to vote, there was some follow-up if records showed they had not voted early or send in a mail ballot, but by and large the focus was n-o-t on inner city minority voters. That was true statewide and in Cuyahoga County. Now if this was part of a strategy to reach out to the hinterlands, that might be defensable. But that was not the case this year nor in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 as well. Established local Democratic elected officials, with a few notable exceptions, were focused on their safe urban seats, getting out the vote among their reliable supporters, and making token efforts to support the top of the ticket. My theory is that they worry about an unknown electorate. It might prove disloyal to them or even vote Republican, and some did!

One African American activist with a long-standing records of grassroots organizing told me that the one local version of the Harris/Walz campaign effort that was in fact rooted in an inner-city largely Black area was likewise focused in this manner, on likely voters. As a result, turnout in Cleveland was lower than in 2000, with a Black female presidential candidate and loss of the Senate at stake! I’m just getting started…But I guess my biases are showing. One example: both for Trump and Harris/Walz and Brown, yard signs and bumper were scarcer than in previous years.

This was a chance to create a public presence showing strong anti-Trump support, but the campaigns blew it. I formally met with and wrote party officials proposing they send a free Brown bumper sticker to all Brown donors or all previous 2020 Biden supporters, along with a link to how they could order more to give to friends. The letter wasn’t acknowledged. Yet guess what? The national Harris/Walz campaign did exactly that? I asked in my building and sure enough; she donated and got a Harris sticker sight unseen! There was zero creativity in these campaigns in Ohio from what I could see.

12/4/24 update: Jay Schaffner’s must-read election analysis in the Stansbury Forum. Trump lost he national popular vote! NPR Confirms it (links below in Election Analysis items). I try to update almost daily, and the items can be reached here: https://tinyurl.com/2024ElectionAnalysisItems, but returning here to Lagniappe is the best way to check updates of this and other collections and key individual links I share here in Lagniappe Links: A Little Bit Extra.

12/3/24 Update: I’m still focused primarily on reading/understanding and working to update my own election analysis piece. Last night I attended an open Zoom meeting of DSA with AOC in NYC, and was pleased she addressed a question I raised in advance, asking her to expland on her earlier post about building community. On my home page, I do have Surviving the Next Four Years—including a Part 2—on my home page, and I do have an reading list which isn’t ready yet on action items for going forward. Watch for it here on Lagniappe. Right now I do want to draw attention to Thom Hartmann’s latest work on Agenda 47, Trump’s own branding of Project 2025 items and his own priorities. Several of his other recent pieces are also key to understanding the election results.

I really hate to link to Trump’s website on Agenda 47, but here it is. It purports to show his own priorities. I recall his pledge prior to his inauguration in 2000: “No one is going to freeze to death on the streets in my administration.” I once documented—just to make a classroom point while teaching about housing policy—that this promise certaintly wasn’t kept. We will need to seriously engage each and everyon on of the Trump Agenda 47 items, and also how the Democrats and advocates in each of the related policy areas to Agenda 47 themselves address the very same issues Trump raises, as well as the many other issues Trump’s agenda neglects.

First, alhough I have Surviving the Next Four Year plus Part 2 of that in Speaking from the Heart on my home page, I’m still not done with my analysis of the elections, and my first obligation is to family, friends and students, and to be true to my current reseach, “First, do not harm, second, neglect no need,” which of course starts at home. Sso who who knows when I will finish, but I’m still reading And “bookmarking” here.

12/11/24 Comment on 11/22/24 item which I added at the time to my bibliography: Liberation Road Notes https://liberationroad.substack.com/p/refuse-resist-contest was a valuable 11/22/24 analysis. I had added it to my bibliography when it came out but now want to comment on it. It was a "provisional" analysis. I really like the structure of it and I assume it comes from collective discussion among some of the most experienced, most diverse and least sectarian of the organized formations on the left. I am looking forward to a much fuller version, which draws on and cites other work to see if its conclusions can be sustained. For instance, is it warranted to propose essentially the same build/bridge (now broaden), block strategy adopted in early 2024? As Simon Rosenberg's Hopium Chronicles and others such as Vox's Eric Levitz have warned, even now 12/11, it is still premature to draw anything more than provisional conclusions. Levitz also warns progressives not to draw conclusions which are self-affirming. Of course, there is tension between doing what may seem like idle election analysis as opposed to formulating a srategy for implementation, and I like how LR tries to combine the two. As Leslie McCall has noted, inequality is complex regionally but only rarely does left strategy note the need for different approaches in different states/regions as LR's analysis does.

For now, For What It’s Worth, got to add this, until I’m doing trying to figure out what is going on: