Erik Loomis offers his election thoughts

 

I want to highlight a recent blog post by Erik Loomis in part because I largely agree with his conclusions, but also because after a few days we are moving past the point of poorly thought-out hot takes. This is no hot take. He makes 20 points that begin with the most obvious: that Harris faced some stiff headwinds into this election simply because of something many of us have observed, which is an anti-incumbent mood in democracies across the globe. Almost without exception, incumbent governments have been replaced. I also think it is helpful that Erik offers a perspective about the union vote that is overlooked: the proportion of labor union members who voted for Harris were really about the same as the proportion of union members who cast a vote for Walter Mondale in 1984. So 40 years and no difference, except that the percentage of union voters is now much smaller than then, so their turnout is valuable but has less impact than it might have in the late 20th century. He also wants to put to rest some of the hysteria about identity politics. No we don't need to abandon identity politics, but we really need to think about how to do so while making sure we stay focused on kitchen table issues. Many of us have talked about meeting the voters where they are, and I am glad to see Erik draw a similar conclusion. He also suggests that sometimes sound policy decisions are just not going to resonate with the voters. Biden advocated for and signed a lot of legislation, especially during the first half of his term, that will help out many of the same Americans who would rather have nothing to do with Democrats for years to come. Like me, Erik really has no complaints about the campaign Harris ran. I think we can say that she did well on the campaign trail but that it probably was never going to be enough. He also reminds us that Trump is dumber than a bag of hammers. Yeah, Trump can do a lot of damage, and we need to be deeply concerned. His next term will have existential implications for our republic. But Trump is likely to fuck things up in a way that will make voters notice in time for the midterm elections in 2026 (let's assume for the moment that free and fair elections will still happen). When folks realize that mass deportations and tariffs will end up tanking our economy and drive up inflation dramatically, they'll want change yet again. Erik also observes something that Martin Longman has been saying for a long time: we can't continue as a party with an urban-suburban coalition. That's just not sustainable. We also can't become the party of the relatively wealthy, and Democrats apparently did have a good showing among voters who were making $100,000 a year or more. There aren't enough of those voters to do us any good. He identifies a few issues that I think he would like to loop around and tackle. Anyway, it's worth a read.