Title : Why Dems Lost
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Why Dems Lost
Anyone out there? Anyone reading this? No? Good. Finally, I can speak freely. I can say something that has been on my mind a long, long time.After the Kavanaugh imbroglio, I lost heart. Blasey Ford was perfectly credible and Kavanaugh was a complete asshole -- yet BK was seated nonetheless. But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was the fact that the Kavanaugh Effect improved the poll numbers of Republicans across the board. I need not cite evidence; if you've visited 538 or looked at the polls skittering across the top of the Kos website, you'll know that the effect was real.
When the Kavanaugh effect took hold, I knew that this day would come -- and that there would not be enough vodka in the house to make this loss bearable. The only way I've been able to get through this past month was to stay away from political news as much as possible. I've tried to paint abstracts (badly). I've worked on two books, neither of them political. I came up with an idea for a movie.
I have done everything possible to avoid thinking about today. Today is the day when the Dems will lose both the Senate and the House.
Afterward, Trump will fire Sessions, Rosenstein, Mueller.
He will have won. Why use the future tense? He HAS won.
538 told the story a few days ago, in a piece titled "Republicans Need A Systematic Polling Error To Win The House." The headline seems like good news for Dems, but it really isn't.
If Republicans win 24 of those 34 seats — assuming everything else goes to form — they’ll keep the House.Election rigging accounts for the three percent. Election rigging is real, as this story -- just one of hundreds -- indicates. (Thanks to reader Tom for the link.) Honest Democrats have known for quite some time that they have to win by more than three percent. If the rigging consistently goes too far beyond the polls, the jig is up -- but three percent is within the margin.
How hard is that? Because of the possibility of a systematic polling error, it isn’t really that hard at all. If there’s a typical polling error of 2 to 3 percentage points and it works in Republicans’ favor, the House would be a toss-up.
And then, of course, we have the problem of Russia. They continue to manipulate millions.
So the real question is: Why can't Dems manage a sizable-enough victory to offset the finger on the scale?
Trump is an utterly vile human being. This widely-shared opinion has little to do with policy; I thought he was an utterly vile human being when he was a Clinton-supporting Democrat. So why does he remain popular -- or rather, just popular enough?
The answer became clear to me in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh debate. This is about sex.
Progressives keep saying that Trumpism is all about racism. While I believe that we are living through the most racist time I have ever known (at least in my adult life), simply crying "Racist! Racist! Racist!" won't explain our current predicament. The progressives who think that they can explain Trumpism in this fashion keep making the same mistake made by the idiots who want to ban screenings of Gone With the Wind on the grounds that the film is racist.
GWTW has cringe-inducing moments, but it is not about race. It's about sex.
Trump's racism is an utter horror which must not be minimized. But his appeal has even more to do with sex.
No, I'm not saying that he is sexually appealing to women. I'm saying that he tells men a message that they've been longing to hear -- a message which progressives disdain.
Trump tells men: "I don't hate you."
As simple as that. He tells men: "I don't think you're the problem. I think you're the solution. You guys are great."
That message overwhelms all policy-based arguments. Most Americans do not and cannot understand the policy details that political junkies love to debate. During the campaign, Trumpists denounced neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, yet Trump hired John Bolton and a bunch of Goldman alums. A direct contradiction. Yet the Trumpists do not care.
What they care about is far more basic. Primal. Sexual.
For decades, too much of our culture has dedicated itself to demeaning men, particularly white males, particularly heterosexual white males. Let's call them HWMs. They are the bad guys in every film and television show. Every Democratic website treats white males as if they are a disease. Worthy to be spat upon. Women and minorities are perfect, sacred, holy, never to be criticized; white males are cancer.
If you tell a child every day "You're no good," how will he behave? Eventually, he'll stop trying to please you. He'll stop giving even half a damn about your opinion. He'll rebel. Why shouldn't he? After all, you hate him and he hates you.
And when someone else tells that child "I like you just fine the way you are," the child will listen -- even if that "someone else" turns out to be a child molester.
Every election season, progressives haughtily tell white males: "We HATE you. We HATE HATE HATE you. Now vote the way we tell you to vote." And after the Republicans wallop them at the polls, progs wonder why white males refuse to vote as commanded.
Suicide. Look at the videos embedded below: There is an epidemic of suicide among white males, particularly less-educated white males in the Midwest. Even though we are supposedly living in boom times, many white males can't work the kind of jobs or live the kinds of lives that their fathers did.
Everyone knows that this problem will only worsen as technology renders more workers unnecessary. Everyone has seen the automated order-takers and checkout machines at Wal-Mart and Mickey D's. That's the future. Very soon, there simply won't be enough jobs to go around.
Hence, the paranoia about illegal immigration. Hence, too, the despair. The suicides.
Many progressives, upon learning of these suicides, will secretly respond: "Good."
Deep down, progs want HWMs to die. They just want them to fucking die.
And yet they wonder why Dems lost the House and the Senate today. (And please note that I write these words between midnight and dawn, before the voting. I am absolutely confident in my prediction of defeat.)
Nothing, not even this day's humiliating massacre, will stop progs from calling every white male privileged, even though many white males feel anything but privileged. In fact, they feel so thoroughly unprivileged that many of them want to put a bullet through their skulls.
If progressives had one ounce of sense, they would strike the terms "privileged" and "patriarchy" out of their vocabulary. If Dems want to win over a larger number of white males, the winning message is not "You're privileged." The winning message is: "You've been screwed."
That was FDR's message.
But liberals won't emulate Roosevelt. Nope. Liberals are going to double down on those dreaded P-words.
I've had it up to here with Dems who keep fastening onto the illusion that they can win elections without white males. Progressives also think they can prosper without white females, the majority of whom also voted for Trump.
No, dummies, you can not scream "Die!" at allegedly-privileged white males and then tell yourselves that you can make up the difference with incessant GOTV efforts directed at minorities, feminists and collegiate SJWs. Admit it: You found last month's incessant GOTV rah-rah as obnoxious and boring as I did. Every time I turned on MSNBC, I felt as though I had invited a dozen Jehovah's Witnesses into my living room. Actually, that comparison is unfair: The JWs who demanded my soul were a lot nicer, a lot less predictable, and a lot less likely to induce yawns.
When a thousand banshees scream "VOTE VOTE VOTE," my natural instinct is to spend the day in the basement eating Fritos while playing Doom. When they hand you lined paper, write the other way.
Progs, forget your GOTV fantasies. You'll never whip up enough enthusiasm to counter the fact that the other side also knows how to whip up enthusiasm. In order to win elections, you've got to conquer your hatred of heterosexual white males. That's where the votes are.
If you insist on alienating HWMs, you are a de facto Trump supporter. You won't admit it, but you are. You care more about your ego and your resentments than you care about attaining power and defeating fascism.
Emulate FDR. Suppose Franklin Roosevelt had alienated HWMs. Suppose he had said to jobless, desperate working-class white men: "You know what your problem is? You're privileged." (In the 1930s, socialists wanted FDR to do just that. They routinely called him a racist and a tool of Wall Street.) Suppose Franklin beamed his approval while Eleanor slammed the patriarchy and accused all men of testosterone poisoning.
What would have happened?
You know the answer. FDR would have lost in 1936, and Hitler would have won World War II. A lot of people would have died just to please the egos of a handful of far-lefties. Could America have survived that catastrophe? Maybe, but it would have been an America without Social Security or Medicare or a Voting Rights Act. Probably an America without democracy.
You know what Americans called each other in FDR's day? "Brother." It was a common form of address. You hear it in old movies.
If you want to win, you've got to start using that term to address those heterosexual white males you hate so much. Brother.
Unless Americans start thinking that way again, we will fall into fascism. The course may already be irreversible.
"Didn't you say this was all about sex?" Yes, I did. I'm getting to that part now.
Why did the country chose to believe Kavanaugh over Blasey Ford, even though Blasey Ford was obviously the more credible witness? I think it was because Christine Blasey Ford became a feminist symbol.
Prepare for a reading comprehension test. The words that are about to enter your eyeballs and impact your brain may differ markedly from the actual words on screen. Read the following paragraph twice.
Progressives have to come to grips with a difficult truth: FEMINISM IS NOT POPULAR.
Admit it. You failed the comprehension test, didn't you? You saw the words "Feminism is not popular," but those are not the words which entered your mind. You thought I said these words: "Feminism is wrong."
I did not say those words.
I happen to agree with most feminists on most issues. I happen to think that feminism has done an enormous amount of good. Most of you know that I was a huge advocate of Hillary Clinton in both 2008 and 2016 -- and if she runs again, I'm in. Elizabeth Warren? Kamala Harris? Love 'em. Stacey Abrams? I could form a religion around that woman, even though I know she will offer a concession speech before this day is out.
Let's look at those words again: Feminism is not popular. Polls prove this. Most men (of all races) don't like feminism. Most women don't like feminism. In fact, most women have an opinion of feminism which is far lower than my opinion of feminism.
If you hit the latter link, you'll find a comment I consider appropos:
What is missing is nuance. They ought to ask what *kind* of feminist? Classical feminist, who believes women deserve equal rights to men? Or so-called "third wave" intersectionalist, Marxist feminist, who believe everything should be viewed through the lens of patriarchal oppression? In other words, all men are unwitting agents in a system of oppression wherein all women everywhere and at all times are dangerously subjugated as a class? I suspect the majority of Americans, ever the optimists, reject this latter narrative.I disagree with the use of the term "Marxist" in this context, but otherwise the observation works well. We have allowed the unhinged, man-hating kind of feminist to drown out the classical feminists.
The Democratic party has tied itself to the man-haters, and the man-haters will always be hated by the majority of Americans, including the majority of American women.
Most Americans saw the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford standoff not as I did. They saw it as a domination ploy by the man-haters. That is the reason why the Kavanaugh Effect helped Republicans, when it should have doomed them.
When Blasey Ford spoke, they didn't see her; they didn't see the sensible, logical, persuasive human being that I saw and you saw. No: Many Americans irrationally decided that a triumph for Blasey Ford would be taken as a triumph for every howling, neurotic whackadoodle ultrafeminist who presumes that every man is either Harvey Weinstein or Jack the Ripper, and who thinks that her right to free speech is being squelched if she is not allowed to do 95% of the talking.
I support classical feminism, but I also recognize that a certain kind of feminist makes all the others seem repellent. The latter kind keeps hogging the stage.
Some women -- like some men -- are constitutionally unable to take responsibility for their own failures in life. They find it convenient and comforting to blame all of their problems on the Great Penismonster Conspiracy. In a sense, this sort of feminist doesn't want the burden of agency or responsibility.
In other sectors of the culture, the same type of person might feel compelled to blame their problems on demons or alien abductors or Satanists or CIA mind controllers -- anyone and anything other than that person in the mirror.
But isn't the male Trump voter in Wisconsin guilty of the same sin? Isn't the male Trump voter so afraid of facing his own failures that he prefers to believe hogwash about the Caravan of Evil, George Soros and Hollywood pedophiles and any number of other boogeymen?
Of course. That's my point.
Such is the nature of our society today. The same psychological crisis afflicts male and female, conservative and liberal. We all do the same dance in different ways. We all want to blame Someone Else.
A long time ago, Gore Vidal wrote something that has always stuck with me. He said that, during the Depression, workers who lost their jobs and self-respect always blamed themselves. They didn't blame capitalism or society or any unseen, abstract force: They blamed themselves. Hence the appeal, in that era, of both fascism and communism -- two ideologies based on the seductive assurance that the best way to avoid self-hatred is to hate someone else.
Today, we have white males committing suicide. No matter how hard they labor, they will never command the respect or the paychecks that their fathers attained. In response, feminists want these guys to see therapists (preferably female therapists) and start blubbering about their feelings. In other words, the reflexive man-haters want these average, not-particularly-bright guys -- well-meaning guys who really just want a steak and a blowjob and a decent paycheck -- to feel even more subjugated and emasculated. No matter how much self-loathing these guys feel, it's not enough to please the hard-core feminist.
They're just Penismonsters. Not even human. Fuck 'em. We can win elections without them. Right?
As a result, these self-loathing white males are always going to be suckers for any sharpie who tells them: "Don't hate yourself. Hate those other people over there." That's why so many Americans have bought into conspiracy theories about George Soros. That's why they believe is so many other ludicrous fear-fantasies.
If you are an American and you feel like a failure, you need an Evil Other. Without that Evil Other, you're stuck looking at that person in the mirror.
For too many progressives and feminists, the Evil Other is the Heterosexual White Male. Progs find identity in their hatred of HWMs.
Until Dems learn how to resist the temptation to speak to the HWMs condescendingly, Trumpism will triumph. Fascism will triumph.
Will Progs learn from today's loss? I doubt it. They lack humility and self-awareness. They lack any sense of their own unpopularity. They remind me of Woody Allen's great line in Deconstructing Harry: "I think you're the opposite of a paranoid. I think you go around with the delusion that people like you."
Arrogant progressives, all tucked away in their Smugland enclaves, cannot admit to themselves that they are detested by most Americans. They will not admit that what we need now is a Dem who will say a loud and shocking No to the HWM-haters, to the progressive purists, to the people who demand ever-more-insane levels of political correctness.
Like it or not, democracy is a popularity contest. The Democratic party cannot win if it continues to be the party of effete snobs who make most working class Americans want to vomit. Gerrymandering is a genuine evil, but guess what? It's here, and we can't get rid of it any time soon. The only way to defeat gerrymandering is to find some way to speak to folks in those red districts.
The Democratic party has to relearn how to be the party of FDR -- the party that champions the laborer, including the laborer who has pale skin and a penis.
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