2024 Election Analysis
Reading, Listening, and Taking Notes on for Part III of Surviving the Next Four Years
Full Bibliography always here: https://tinyurl.com/2024ElectionAnalysisItems. Readers are encouraged to send links to items to add, including books, to michaelalandover@gmail.com with Lagniappe Links in the subject. Minor updates do not produce subscriber notificaitons, only new posts, so readers are encouraged to subscribe (at no cost). Send comments to the above email please.
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.