There are any number of things that might have swung the election outcome, since the margins in key states were still small -- by which I mean low single digits.
I am not into recrimination. I am humbled by the election which I thought we’d win. I was one who LOVED Biden walking on the UAW picket line. I was apparently one of the few who even noticed it. Clearly, I don’t understand current politics as well as I thought I did. Others who noticed it were the “billionaire class” liberals and the New York Times. They want no return to that old stuff and they didn’t even need to express those thoughts, needing only oblique attacks to smear Biden and then Harris.
I think we’ll be in a reactive rather than proactive b mode for awhile.
Commenting again after a few days. (Note to self: STOP analyzing this shit and get some sleep!)
I agree with your take that a Bernie-style focus on the “billionaire class” is not necessarily the answer to our dilemma now. He is right that Democratic abandonment of the working class in the 80’s and beyond is at the root of our problems. But wrong that it’s a switch that can be turned on and off at will with a few slogans. To the working class voter, it’s all pie in the sky: Kamala’s not-well-defined home-building scheme, Medicare for All.
Bernie also sort of ignores the fact that he and AOC were Biden’s staunchest defenders right up to his post-debate withdrawal from the race. This made sense since Biden had basically abandoned a lot of neoliberalism. However, the working class didn’t much notice it. Wall Street and its wing of the DP DID notice it, and this, rather than Biden’s age, was the reason the NYT and the rest of mainstream media treated him so poorly. IMHO, his age was a convenient excuse, even though it was a real problem. (So was Trump’s, assholes!)
As for the immediate agenda, let’s stop the internecine warfare and concentrate on stopping Trump’s mad power grab.
And let’s note that the ONLY Democrat to be elected President in the last century without benefit of some kind of Republican screwup was JFK in 1960. That includes
FDR (depression),
Truman (still the depression),
LBJ (Goldwater plus JFK assassination support),
Carter(Watergate),
Clinton (third party split),
Obama(Great Recession, Katrina, Iraq) and Biden(COVID).
Without Trump’s disastrous handling of COVID we don’t win in 2020, IMHO)
I am not into recrimination. I am humbled by the election which I thought we’d win. I was one who LOVED Biden walking on the UAW picket line. I was apparently one of the few who even noticed it. Clearly, I don’t understand current politics as well as I thought I did. Others who noticed it were the “billionaire class” liberals and the New York Times. They want no return to that old stuff and they didn’t even need to express those thoughts, needing only oblique attacks to smear Biden and then Harris.
I think we’ll be in a reactive rather than proactive b mode for awhile.
S Brown GOING down
is worth a multivariate analysis
Commenting again after a few days. (Note to self: STOP analyzing this shit and get some sleep!)
I agree with your take that a Bernie-style focus on the “billionaire class” is not necessarily the answer to our dilemma now. He is right that Democratic abandonment of the working class in the 80’s and beyond is at the root of our problems. But wrong that it’s a switch that can be turned on and off at will with a few slogans. To the working class voter, it’s all pie in the sky: Kamala’s not-well-defined home-building scheme, Medicare for All.
Bernie also sort of ignores the fact that he and AOC were Biden’s staunchest defenders right up to his post-debate withdrawal from the race. This made sense since Biden had basically abandoned a lot of neoliberalism. However, the working class didn’t much notice it. Wall Street and its wing of the DP DID notice it, and this, rather than Biden’s age, was the reason the NYT and the rest of mainstream media treated him so poorly. IMHO, his age was a convenient excuse, even though it was a real problem. (So was Trump’s, assholes!)
As for the immediate agenda, let’s stop the internecine warfare and concentrate on stopping Trump’s mad power grab.
And let’s note that the ONLY Democrat to be elected President in the last century without benefit of some kind of Republican screwup was JFK in 1960. That includes
FDR (depression),
Truman (still the depression),
LBJ (Goldwater plus JFK assassination support),
Carter(Watergate),
Clinton (third party split),
Obama(Great Recession, Katrina, Iraq) and Biden(COVID).
Without Trump’s disastrous handling of COVID we don’t win in 2020, IMHO)