Lessons and Narratives

Posted on Friday 8 November 2024 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Everyone has theories and lessons to be drawn from the election results; Robert Reich rejects several and offers his own;
  • The focus on the current economy is just another example of short-term thinking, at the expense of bigger issues;
  • Disinformation and propaganda were key as well;
  • Items about what the world thinks, American’s dark age, how the consequences will be dire, preparing for the Trump sequel, and weaponizing the First Amendment;
  • And Adam Lee on heading into the dark, but reassuring us it won’t last forever.

It happens after every election, I’m sure, but this time the Monday-morning-quarterbacking (is that the right term?) seems especially extensive. Everyone has their own theory about what the Democrats did wrong, or what Kamala did wrong, or why voters cared about this and not that. The trouble with these is, they’re all ex post facto. If the problems were as obvious as the commentators seem to think, why weren’t they pointed out ahead of time? On the contrary, most Democrats and commentators seemed quite optimistic leading up the election…

So let’s start with Robert Reich’s piece. (In another couple days, maybe, I’ll move to non-political subjects. Maybe even science fiction!)

Robert Reich, 8 Nov 2024: The Lesson, subtitled “The real lesson we should draw from what occurred Tuesday”

To set my broader context: any “lesson” is a kind of story-telling, a narrative imposed on messy reality to try to place at least a small set of facts or observations into some coherent narrative. Depending on which set of facts you choose, you can justify almost any “lesson.” As the commentators are demonstrating.

Reich begins:

A political disaster such as what occurred Tuesday gains significance not simply by virtue of who won or lost, but through how the election is interpreted.

This is known as The Lesson of the election.

The Lesson explains what happened and why. It deciphers the public’s mood, values, and thoughts. It attributes credit and blame.

And therein lies its power. When The Lesson of the election becomes accepted wisdom — when most of the politicians, pundits, and politicians come to believe it — it shapes the future. It determines how parties, candidates, political operatives, and journalists approach future elections.

There are many reasons for what occurred on Tuesday and for what the outcome should teach America — about where the nation is and about what Democrats should do in the future.

Yet inevitably, one Lesson predominates.

Today, I want to share with you six conventional “lessons” you will hear for Tuesday’s outcome. None is or should be considered The Lesson of the 2024 election.

His six lessons that are not The Lesson:

  1. “It was a total repudiation of the Democratic Party, a major realignment.” Rubbish, says Reich; he points out that “less than 1 percent” vote shift in three battleground states would have changed the outcome.
  2. “If the Dems want to win in the future, they have to move to the right. They should stop talking about “democracy,” forget “multiculturalism,” and end their focus on women’s rights, transgender rights, immigrants’ rights, voting rights, civil rights, and America’s shameful history of racism and genocide. Instead, push to strengthen families, cut taxes, allow school choice and prayer in public schools, reduce immigration, minimize our obligations abroad, and put America and Americans first.” Wrong, says Reich; these are moral ideals at the heart of the Party and at the core of America.
  3. “Republicans won because of misinformation and right-wing propaganda. They won over young men because of a vicious alliance between Trump and a vast network of online influencers and podcasts appealing to them. The answer is for Democrats to cultivate an equivalent media ecosystem that rivals what the right has built.” Partly true, Reich admits. (As I’ve been thinking.)
  4. “Republicans cheated. Trump, Putin, and election deniers at county and precinct levels engaged in a vast conspiracy to suppress votes.” Reich doubts it. No evidence; the system works.
  5. “Harris ran a lousy campaign. She wasn’t a good communicator. She fudged and shifted her positions on issues. She was weighed down by Biden and didn’t sufficiently separate herself from him.” Untrue. In fact I read something a few days ago by some political observer about how Harris had run an almost perfect campaign, with no errors, except possibly for Biden’s gaffe about “garbage.”
  6. “Racism and misogyny. Voters were simply not prepared to elect a Black female president.” Partly true, Reich admits. (And I’ve been thinking this too.)

So what’s the real Lesson? The economy (but not in any simple way).

On Tuesday, according to exit polls, Americans voted mainly on the economy — and their votes reflected their class and level of education.

While the economy has improved over the last two years according to standard economic measures, most Americans without college degrees — that’s the majority — have not felt it.

In fact, most Americans without college degrees have not felt much economic improvement for four decades, and their jobs have grown less secure. The real median wage of the bottom 90 percent is stuck nearly where it was in the early 1990s, even though the economy is more than twice as large.

Most of the economy’s gains have gone to the top.

Followed by details… Then:

Democrats need to tell Americans why their pay has been lousy for decades and their jobs less secure: not because of immigrants, liberals, people of color, the “deep state,” or any other Trump Republican bogeyman, but because of the power of large corporations and the rich to rig the market and siphon off most of the economy’s gains.

So if the economy is “rigged,” it’s rigged by the big corporations and the Republican policies that give them free reign.

If the Trump Republicans gain control of the House, as seems likely, they will have complete control of the federal government. That means they will own whatever happens to the economy and will be responsible for whatever happens to America. Notwithstanding all their anti-establishment populist rhetoric, they will become the establishment.

The Democratic Party should use this inflection point to shift ground — from being the party of well-off college graduates, big corporations, “never-Tumpers” like Dick Cheney, and vacuous “centrism” — to an anti-establishment party ready to shake up the system on behalf of the vast majority of Americans.

This is and should be The Lesson of the 2024 election.

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Yet, as I’ve said, this focus on the current economy is just another example of short-term thinking.

Salon, Matthew Rozsa, 8 Nov 2024: Trump’s win is a victory for the “petrostate” and a major loss for climate action, experts say, subtitled “Trump’s anti-science ideology will devastate our ability to stop our planet from cooking us to death”

Now that the Republican nominee has won, scientists are bracing for the worst. Speaking to Salon, these experts reiterated one theme over and over again: This was an election between science and ignorance of science, and the ignorant side — which serves special interest groups like the fossil fuel industry — have prevailed.

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On Reich’s third “partly true” notion.

Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 7 Nov 2024: The MAGA propaganda machine helped carry Trump back to the White House — and it’s not done poisoning America

Conservative audiences are dependent on a right-wing media complex that bombards them with falsehoods and grievances while dissuading them from consulting any alternative sources of information, be they legacy news outlets or government officials or medical experts.

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A few more links.

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And then Adam Lee.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, 7 Nov 2024: Heading into the dark, subtitled “This too shall pass.”

Like most of you, I hoped for a different outcome this Tuesday.

This election was a litmus test of our morals, our values, and who we are as a people. And we failed it.

I don’t want to believe in a world of cruelty and arrogance, where might makes right. I don’t want to believe in a world where the powerful have impunity, where tyrants crush free nations beneath their tank treads, where the innocent suffer, children go hungry, the poor die on the streets, and justice is nowhere to be found.

But what I believe has nothing to do with it. The world is what it is, and it doesn’t bend itself to our desires. Any belief other than that is foolish. We can’t control reality by wishing or by wanting, only by working.

At the very least, I wanted to believe that people would be motivated by their own self-interest: the poor, who face the loss of their safety net; union members, who face the end of their hard-won rights; minorities, who are menaced by white supremacists on the ascendant; immigrants of all backgrounds, who face mass arrests and deportation; women, who’ve already felt the oppressive hand of the state weighing on their bodies; and people who value democracy in general, facing a wannabe dictator who’s promised to dismantle it.

But it appears not. People were eager to believe the lies of a demagogue. Even when his evasions were obvious and his promises transparently false, we long to be fooled. We saw decency and turned away from it.

They voted for their own self-interest, but only for the very short-term.

And remember: This won’t last forever. As hard as it may be to imagine from the standpoint of this moment, there will be better days.

If the study of the past has anything to teach us, it’s that history goes in cycles. We alternate between eras of tolerance and expansiveness, and eras of regression and prejudice. When the world is changing rapidly and our accustomed ways of life are under stress, people shrink into themselves; they become insecure, fearful, easily manipulated into hate.

But the wheel will turn, and views that are ascendant one day will lose favor the next. As the Persian poet said, “This too shall pass.”

No ideology or political platform is dominant forever. Churches, states, kingdoms and empires that all claimed to be invincible and eternal in their heyday have crumbled into shadows and mist. Rights have been won and lost and won again. The only thing that ensures defeat is giving up.

In the midst of darkness, it can be almost impossible to imagine light. But as far-off as it may seem, don’t let that vision go. Keep it alive, even if it’s just an ember of dreams smoldering in the ashes. A day will come when the world needs and wants it again.

And that is the big picture.

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