Democrats should learn this one lesson

The debate continues over why Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris. So far, it seems to be centered on two related arguments. One is that Harris didn’t do enough to appeal to white working-class voters and their concerns about the economy. So they voted for Trump.

The other is that the Harris campaign had moved “too far to the left,” embracing transgender issues and other forms of “identity politics” that alienated voters, not just the white working class, but also some Latino and Black voters. They didn’t like that. They voted for Trump.

These arguments are quickly becoming the conventional wisdom, but that’s not because they are good or accurate or right. It’s because they are easy. It’s easy to blame the loser for the fact of her defeat. It’s much harder to assess the real and more vexing reason for Trump’s victory.

The allegation that Harris did not listen to working-class concerns is fantasy. She was explicit in her plan to expand the achievements of the Biden era, in which there was no recession, inflation went back to normal, unemployment sank to historic lows and real wages rose for everyone. Joe Biden invested hundreds of billions into working-class concerns, reviving manufacturing in ways no one has since the 1960s. Harris promised to help growing families, help growing businesses, help first-time homebuyers, break up corporate monopolies and most of all, crack down on price-gouging, especially at the grocery store.

She promised to continue what Joe Biden started, which was to put the power of the government on the side of people who work for a living and against people who own so much they don’t have to work.

That’s just a fact.

Also fact: The Harris campaign did not “move too far to the left” on transgender issues or any other form of “identify politics,” because she didn’t campaign on these issues at all, except when talking about the moral imperative to protect the rights of everyone, including the right to be who you want to be and to love whomever you want to love.

So the question isn’t whether Harris listened to voters’ economic concerns. She did. The question is why voters didn’t hear her. The question isn’t whether she “moved too far to the left” on transgender issues, etc. She didn’t. The question is why voters believed otherwise.

The answer is the rightwing media apparatus.

It is huge. It is everywhere. It is dominant.

And the Democrats have no counter to it.

Trump lied, and every single one of those lies was carried deeper and farther into the public psyche, by way of a menagerie of digital outlets, including Fox, X, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, podcasts and more, than anything we have seen in our lifetimes. It just didn’t matter what Harris was offering policy-wise. A majority of voters was not going to hear it. As Matthew Sheffield put it, she had a coalition. She had the policies. She had the tactics. Trump, however, had a “modernized ecosystem.”

“When you compare and contrast the Republican and Democratic parties, it’s crystal-clear that Republicans have created a sleek and modernized ecosystem, while Democrats oversee a tottering coalition based on outdated assumptions about how politics works,” he said.

While I still believe that propaganda never made anyone believe anything they didn’t already believe, and while I still think propaganda and white-power politics are mutually reinforcing, I’m going to leave those points for another time. For now, I think it’s important to put the rightwing media apparatus at the center of the election postmortem debate, because if we don’t, we’re going to learn the wrong lesson.

Voters who knew the facts voted for Harris. Voters who believed lies voted for Trump. That is the new fault line in American politics. To continue arguing about whether Democrats should or shouldn’t talk about this or that public policy is to continue having a 20th-century argument in the 21st. It used to be that it’s the economy, stupid. Now it’s the perception of it. We’re stupid if we don’t see the difference.

(This is not to say that policy itself does not matter. When they were divorced from candidates, voters chose liberal policies. This was also seen in successful votes to protect abortion rights in red states.)

If the presidential election wasn’t enough to convince you of the power of perception over reality, consider what’s about to happen. Trump has promised to impose punishing tariffs on imported goods from places like China and Mexico. If reality matters more than perception to Trump voters, they’ll turn against him the minute they start paying three and four times more for food, clothing, electronics and more.

They won’t turn against him. They won’t blame him, nor will they blame themselves for voting against their own interests. They will blame something, anything: immigrants, maybe, or some other imaginary cause of their pain. They will do that due to the influence of the rightwing media ecosystem. As Lindsay Beyerstein wrote, Donald Trump didn’t campaign against Harris. He campaigned against reality.

And won.

There are some liberals and Democrats, and some anti-Trump conservatives, who believe the post-pandemic economic issues explain the backlash against incumbent parties around the world. They have voiced hope in the persuasive power of reality. They believe that the Democratic Party will rise again once Trump tanks the economy.

I don’t know why the Democrats should believe that. Why would they put their fates in the hands of voters who are not only fearful, ignorant and superstitious but deliberately so. Are we supposed to believe they can determine on their own what’s best for them economically? Or can we trust them to believe whatever Donald Trump tells them to believe?

Point is, we should learn the right lesson from 2024. The Democrats can no longer afford to outsource their communication strategy to the Washington press corps. They must compete head-on with the rightwing media apparatus or risk leaving more votes on the table. They must recognize that an informed republic is the future of the party. And they must build an infrastructure toward that end.