A Comprehensive Defeat
One of the most enduring pictures of the 2024 US presidential election was President Joe Biden welcoming the president-elect and former president Donald Trump in the White House. The irony of this photo-op, however, was that this was the same Donald Trump Mr. Biden, the Democrats, and their proxies had demonized throughout the election cycle by calling him a fascist, Hitler, racist, misogynist, and against whom they had put the might of their administration in a lawfare unrivaled in the history of a mature democracy such as ours.
The Democrats, the U.S. legacy media, and wokeism have become synonymous with each other over the past few years. When the 2024 US election results came out, they all ended up on the losing side, individually and collectively. The thrashing was so comprehensive that it left the Democrats and their surrogates in US media, as well as the out-of-touch Hollywood celebrities, in a state of shock.
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Mr. Trump and the GOP have clinched the remarkable trifecta, winning the House, the Senate, and the White House, even though California is still counting its votes. Mr. Trump also won the popular vote and swept each of the seven “swing states.”
The Democrats were left scratching their heads at the loss of nearly 10 million of the 81 million votes Mr. Biden had received in 2020–an election marred by the COVID pandemic and widespread BLM-Antifa riots. Mr. Trump saw his vote share marginally increase to 75.6 million, up from 74.2 million four years ago, a difference of about 2%. Mr. Trump gained votes in almost every conceivable demographic except among the affluent and highly educated.
Mr. Trump led the GOP in its best electoral performance in 20 years. He broadened his base, even poaching from the core constituencies of the Democrats. VP Kamala Harris, the Democrat presidential candidate, surrendered a share of their advantage over men, women, blacks, Latinos, college-educated, and Indian Americans. “There has been no clearer repudiation in recent memory of the world view, held by many Democrats, that all racial minorities have the same political predisposition and that political predisposition is toward progressivism, particularly on race and gender,” posted Renu Mukherjee, a Manhattan Institute fellow, on X.
Democrats abandon Democracy
One of the reasons Democrats lost is that they abandoned democracy. The White House and the Democrats were determined not to expose an aging Mr. Biden either to his primary competitors (yes, Mr. Biden had several Democrats challenging him in the primary) or voters.
There were no primary debates, and Democrats maneuvered to eliminate primaries in states such as Florida and North Carolina. They also tinkered with the primary schedule to give Mr. Biden an advantage over his rivals. This blatant disregard for democratic principles eventually made Mr. Biden the presumptive Democrat Party nominee for the 2024 presidential race, betraying the trust of the voters.
Democrats, ably aided by the legacy media, constantly lied about Mr. Biden’s failing physical and mental health. They claimed Mr. Biden was “as sharp as a tack,” but behind the closed doors, Mr. Biden displayed “signs of slipping.” The media turned a blind eye to this fact and called the murmurs of Mr. Biden’s failings fake. However, it wasn’t until the presidential debate between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in late June that the Democrats and the media openly accepted it.
Mr. Biden was eventually pushed off the ticket. Former President Obama and many high-profile Democrats pressured Mr. Biden to step aside. A report in Politico describes the behind-the-scenes maneuverings. The report claimed that Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, “made clear that [the Biden camp] could [step aside] the easy way or the hard way… She gave [the Biden camp] three weeks of the easy way” to bow out of the race.
The Democrats installed VP Harris as their candidate without winning a primary vote in two presidential runs. It is worth noting that in the 2020 presidential run, Ms. Harris dropped out of the race without even facing the primary.
Misreading Public Mood
The Democrats failed miserably to read the mood of the nation. While the opinion polls consistently indicated that illegal immigration and the economy were heavily on the minds of the voters, the Democrats overplayed their hand on ‘abortion,’ demonstrating a significant disconnect between the party and the people.
“Harris performed much worse than Biden among voters who said they thought abortion should be legal in most cases—even though the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in between the two elections,” CNN reported. “Four years ago, 26% of the electorate held that opinion, and Biden won them by 38 points. This year, 33% held that opinion, and Harris won them by just 3 points.”
Democrats failed to reconcile with the fact that, just as everyone else, there were many race-conscious minority and pro-choice voters who were also concerned about the economy and inflation, illegal immigration and jobs, shortage of affordable housing, and rising crime in their neighborhoods. According to Andre M. Perry, Hannah Stephens, Manann Donoghoe, Anthony Fiano, and Farah Khan of the Brookings Institute, “In defeat, Democrats struggled to convince working-class voters of all races that the party’s platform addresses their concerns, likely due to their very targeted focus on the issues of Black and Latino or Hispanic voters.”
Democrats also misread voters’ anger against their “woke” agenda. Parents were concerned about what was going on in their kids’ schools and sports. “Those who can’t define what a “woman” is,” said Deepa Bhaskaran Salem, a Chicago-based author, “constantly attack family, inciting needless comparisons between genders.” One of the reasons the Democrats lost young male voters is because they constantly demonized men. Any display of masculinity was rendered toxic, according to the dogmas of the progressive gender ideology.
In the Democrats’ loss, we see a rejection of wokeism and the regressive agenda of the progressive left, which includes policies and ideologies that some perceive as regressing rather than progressing society.
Publicly declaring one’s pronoun(s) has become a tool in virtue signaling about regressive gender ideology that demands conformity to its dogmas and orthodoxies. After the elections, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s prompt removal of her pronouns “she/her” from her X bio prompted speculations about the collapse of the woke agenda of the Democrats.
RIP! Legacy Media
A recent Gallup poll suggested that Americans’ trust in mass media has been trending low–currently at 31%–for the past several years. The cumulative effect of the Russiagate hoax in which the media colluded with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the coverage of the COVID pandemic, censoring the New York Post story of Hunter Biden’s laptop days before the 2020 elections, the coverage of the January 6 capitol riots, the war in Ukraine, and lies about President Biden’s mental acuity, have laid bare American media’s claim of journalistic integrity and objectivity.
“For the third consecutive year,” according to Gallup, “more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount.” For eight years non-stop and three consecutive presidential election cycles, the US media painted Mr. Trump as a Russian stooge, a racist nazi, and a dangerous criminal. But it all fell flat on voters. A majority of American voters ignored those warnings and characterization. A Pulitzer for all their lies may not be a big enough consolation, but that is what the US mainstream media must reckon with, at least for now.
The legacy media’s irrelevance has been so glaring that it made Gerad Baker, the editor at large at The Wall Street Journal, make the following claim: “If 2016 was the handwriting on the wall for the legacy American news media, 2024 was the final collapse of Babylon. It is hard to see how they can ever again claim a central role in the democratic life of the nation.”
The US electorate has handed a decisive mandate to Mr. Trump. It has also given the Democrats plenty to think about. While the Democrats must correct the course, Mr. Trump must still govern to fulfill his promises. The 2026 midterm will be lurking before they know it.
