I hung up on my mother today because she was trying to make an argument justifying why ~20 million Joe Biden voters didn’t show up for Kamala Harris because she wasn’t competent.
There are many, many reasons why this happened, and none of them have to do with the competency of Kamala Harris compared to Donald Trump.
The Democratic Party is toothless and passive and arrogant.
From their perennial collection of un-electable candidates paraded out like a “stereotype everyone can agree they hate” variety show, to the inability to hand off the torch to a new generation, to the constant shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to consensus positions within their own party and among the majority of Americans on everything from securing basic human rights for women and the LGBTQ+ community to gun control to taxing billionaires and corporations to legalizing pot to climate change all the way down to fucking congestion pricing in Manhattan, The Democratic Party is a wet fart that thinks they are ambrosia — and no one believes that but them, to the point that we just chose Christofascist White Nationalism over status quo mediocrity.
The Democratic Party doesn’t care about people who don’t live in cities.
Exemplified by how they don’t have a ground game anywhere there isn’t an urban population density; how they don’t have a voice among folks who go to church to serve them in opposition of the Prosperity Theology and Last Days Prophesy preached by heretics leading Pauline cults masquerading as Christianity; how they don’t have answers for the blue collar jobs going away, for the unions being busted, for the Main Streets being boarded up, for the kids not being able to do their homework because there is no Internet service provider bringing broadband connectivity to the house, for the helplessness that leads to hopelessness that leads to drugs and crime and to death clinging to everything and everyone who lives beyond the suburbs.
But most of all how they can’t muster a single consistent message about how all of the things that make the lives of rural folks hard come as a consequence of the people that they vote for, and the robber barons that own them, and how The Democratic Party is going to make them go away.
The Democratic Party doesn’t care about using power effectively when they have it.
Exemplified by how they didn’t immediately go after the domestic terrorists who tried to overthrow the 2020 election as if they were domestic terrorists and instead loitered around until they were shamed into action by Liz fucking Cheney, and then tried to prosecute them like they were a rowdy mob celebrating a football game instead of domestic terrorists trying to overthrow the Constitution far too late in the term for it to ever get done before the 2024 election.
The Democratic Party doesn’t care about minorities.
Exemplified by how nothing came from Black Lives Matter mobilizing their community to get Joe Biden elected only to have The Democratic Party increase funding for police, decrease Justice Department oversight of law enforcement activities, do nothing to create opportunities to move up the class ladder, and do nothing to stop the flow of drugs or gangs into the poor, hopeless neighborhoods that underprivileged communities are forced to live in because of systemic racist theft of generational wealth. The Democratic Party paired that with pandering to the right on immigration and “border security” making it harder to seek asylum, did nothing to fix the Kafkaesque immigration system, did nothing to address the conditions in Central America and South America that cause them to seek asylum in the first place, did nothing to strengthen or improve relations with Mexico, and provided no help for Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans being targeted, exploited, and victimized by China even while living in the United States. And as an encore, The Democratic Party feted themselves for their slavish devotion to the State of Israel as they murdered tens of thousands of civilians with weapons we provided and clamored over one another to be the loudest voice to condemn anyone with the temerity to voice opposition to genocide or question why or how supporting it is consistent with the Ideals and Values of America.
People of color have had enough of The Democratic Party’s bullshit.
The Democratic Party doesn’t care about the middle class, the working class, the lower class, or the no class.
In American politics, you have to make a choice between people who make less than $500K a year, and people who are worth more than $100 Million. There is no getting away from this fundamental decision about who you serve.
The Democratic Party doesn’t serve the people who are pretty well off that just want life to be a little bit easier, like the iconic scene from The West Wing.
The Democratic Party doesn’t serve the people who are getting by but have no reserves and no safety net, like in the movie Nomadland.
The Democratic Party doesn’t serve the people who live hand-to-mouth, like those described in the book Nickel and Dimed, or shown in dramas like The Wire or Shameless.
The Democratic Party doesn’t serve agents of change who will put it all on the line to demand that the world be a better at places like Standing Rock or Zuccotti Park or the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or blow the whistle to tell us about the malfeasance being done within a corporation or the government.
The Democratic Party doesn’t serve the people who have fallen out of society and can’t get back up, who are trying to survive under freeways and in parking strips and in the shadows.
None of the issues in any of these examples have been acknowledged, much less resolved, by The Democratic Party because they are not important to them as a motive force to accomplish their aims.
The Democratic Party serves rich people.
Specifically, rich people who want to feel good about being rich, and who want to be seen as being differentiated from the rich people that are served by The Republican Party.
The Republican Party has won control of the United States because ~20 million Joe Biden voters stayed home. They stayed home because the Party they put into power to protect them from the Republican Party victimized them in much the same way they had been victimized.
Whether or not Kamala Harris was qualified or made them feel good might have been a factor for some people, but not a “the population of New York State didn’t show up at the polls” factor. To argue otherwise is stupid and feckless, even if — especially if — you are my mom.
I love you, Mom, please stop.