The Chris Moeller Archives

What to make of the results? First of all, pollsters were embarrassed for the second presidential cycle in a row. Not only were they drastically off on Biden and Trump across multiple states, they fared even worse with the races in the legislative branch. Here in Iowa, the Democrats were trounced, Biden included, losing the senate race badly, and losing two of the three congressional seats they controlled going into this week. The polls had the Democrats up in each race except the heavily Republican 4th district. 

The narrative of the presidential campaign throughout was not only about Trump’s racism, but the fact that he’s the leader now of a pretty distinct white supremacist movement, yet he doubled his support among African-American women from 2016, up to 8% from 4%. The candidate who, at a rally in Minnesota, praised their predominately Nordic population for its “great genes,” claimed the vote of one in every five Black men nationally. Trump, in fact, got 26% of his overall votes from nonwhite Americans. That’s the highest percentage for a Republican nominee since 1960! He said during his last campaign that Mexican immigrants were “bringing drugs… bringing crime,” and were “rapists,” but he did really well with Hispanic and Latino voters in 2020. Approximately 35% of them nationally went for the incumbent. In Starr County, Texas, the county with the highest percentage of Hispanic voters in the nation, he lost by only 5%. In 2016, he lost that same county by 60%. With the LGBTQ community, he raised his 14% support in 2016 to 28%. 

So maybe it’s the…hmmm, what else could it be? What issues would be important to voters? Democrats ran on a very clear message this year of “We’re not Trump” and took care not to let any other message interfere with that one. They shouted down sexual harassment claims against Joe Biden while calling Trump a sexual predator. (Trump even did better with white women this year-- 55%-- than he did four years ago.) They dismissed evidence that Hunter Biden and possibly Joe were both trading on the family name in Ukraine while making the claim that Trump was monetizing his presidency and taking his marching orders from the Baltics. We know Trump didn’t do much as president to help any of these individual identity groups listed previously so it doesn’t speak well to what Democrats were offering as an alternative message.

Are Democrats going to take a lesson? Only the wrong ones, I’m afraid. Centrist congressional reps were on a conference call yesterday ripping into the Democratic Socialists in their caucus. A defeated incumbent in Florida named Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was in tears at one point. If you thought they couldn’t find anyone besides themselves to blame during a year in which the mainstream news media was suppressing stories damaging to Biden, third party voting was nil, and Bernie went all the way to the mat in his public support of the party nominee, then you’re in for a surprise. 

Apparently the poor showing at the polls that only impacted the centrists was the fault of all the high-profile socialists who have been scaring the church folk and the farm animals, talking loud and proud about Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and defunding the police. No, it wasn’t the absence of any populist economic policy by the corporate wing of the party, or Biden telling Rust Belt voters at one point that “anyone who can learn to throw coal in a furnace” can “learn how to program.” Or the three years of time we all wasted under the trench coat of Robert Mueller and the CIA spooks. Or the repeated promise to return us to a Washington leadership that America never much cared for to begin with. Or the convention this summer starring Michael Bloomberg, Christine Todd Whitman, and the parade of Republicans.

Biden told everyone that would listen: "I beat the socialist," referring to his primary defeat of Sanders. But somehow Middle Americans, I guess, because of the negative ads, still mistook his 50 year Washington career for that of the life of Emma Goldman. Apparently voters in Florida’s 27th house district thought former Clinton cabinet member Donna Shalala was Hugo Chavez in a skirt. Or how about this one? Iowans thought that farm girl turned commercial real estate planner and Chamber of Commerce president Theresa Greenfield was Leon Trotsky. 

Progressives actually won the presidential race for Biden. “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib delivered 100,000 voters in her Michigan district. “Squad” member Ilhan Omar also delivered 100,000 in her Minnesota district. Theirs are single-party districts during a general election but those candidates inspire their base and they turned them out. The flameout came instead in states where there are no inspiring Democrats like these, and from the so-called Lincoln Project of disgruntled never-Trump Republicans. It seems that the only Republicans that flipped to Biden were the ones that make their living in Washington. Meanwhile, the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) endorsed 22 candidates and won behind 19 of them! 

It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s actually the working people, stupid. Trump didn’t deserve their support but he’s the only one of the two candidates to attempt to get it, unless you count Biden trying to persuade us all to learn how to write computer code. As a result, he turned out the working class-- sadly, the new GOP-- even as he went down to defeat by the voters and into the pit of Deutsche Bank while Biden couldn’t carry a tune. 

The story and the lesson of the year-- for everyone in American politics-- was Bernie Sanders raising more money for his campaign, through an army of small, working-class donors-- than anyone else managed to raise on either side of the “divide,” even with corporate contributions included in the equation. This fact of his achievement should have made Democrats giddy with excitement, but it didn't, and it doesn’t, because what it really does is threaten their corporate hustle. The ones that are there wouldn't be there without their corporate benefactors. The Democratic Socialists are worth crying over-- but only for those weepers that reside in the diminishing American center, which is beholden to the big banks and amounts to the right wing of most every other Western nation. The socialists in Congress are an inspiration instead for the people and the better Democrats that are coming along behind them. There are going to be so many “Squad” members in the 117th Congress that their collected images almost won't fit on a t-shirt anymore.