COMMENTARY: The Election Was One Side's to Lose ...
... and lose it they did.
Jay Brock
GUEST COMMENTATOR
Editor’s note: The Advance rarely ventures from stories that don’t have a direct tie to the 540. However, the fallout from the 2024 election has roiled our community in ways good and bad. Retired physician Jay Brock—who normally writes about health issues—offers his take on what happened, and why. His insights are food for thought for both national-level Democrats, as well as for party operatives and members at our local level.
This was an election for one side to lose. This time, it was the Democrats who lost it. What happened?
They say all politics is local—and it doesn’t get more local than the kitchen table.
Somehow the Democrats forgot that in this presidential election cycle.
For while it looks like the economy as a whole is steaming along just fine—our economic growth is impressive, and so are the number of jobs created; wages are rising faster than inflation (and inflation is almost back to normal); and our general economic outlook is the envy of most other nations around the world—much of that success does not seem to have been trickling down to most Americans.
What’s going on?
From the end of World War II right up the early 1980s, the American economic system had been working pretty well for most workers. Then, due to Reagan Administration policies (with some help from the Democrats), the flow of wealth generated by American workers started to go mostly to the wealthy and to ever-larger multinational corporations.
And it’s been getting worse ever since.
The statistics might be boring, but they are hard to ignore.
Today the top 10% own two-thirds of the nation’s wealth (and much of that is held by the top 0.1%). The bottom half of Americans own a mere 2.5% of its wealth: the American system doesn’t seem to be working that well for them.
Most Americans (60%) live paycheck-to-paycheck, while 40% of families can’t afford an extra bill of $400 in any given month. Three-fourths of Americans worry about being able to afford paying their medical bills if they got sick. College tuition is unaffordable for too many, and too many Americans must work two jobs to make ends meet. Meanwhile, many economists point to corporate power (“greedflation”) as a major component of the striking inflation of the past few years.
The imbalance of wealth and thus political power among Americans has rarely been greater: our political process gives every indication of being geared to protect the interests of the wealthy rather than those of the middle and working classes. Just look at healthcare, where corporate interests vastly outweigh those of patients.
If Democrats say they are for the working folks, why are so many working folks abandoning Democratic candidates and voting for Republicans?
It’s not that complicated.
Working folks feel that the Democrats have abandoned them.
Look at the Democratic brand, which FDR made all about supporting the (mostly White) working man. President Lyndon Johnson emphasized the need to include supporting Black Americans as part of the brand.
But since the 1980’s, that brand has been diluted by an increasing perception that Democrats are more apt to protect corporate interests than those of employees. Consider the Obama Administration, which during the Great Recession saved GM at the expense of GM workers; and which saved Wall Street financial giants while largely ignoring the millions of distressed homeowners who were underwater with their mortgages and lost their homes. And despite the real accomplishments of Obamacare, three-fourths of Americans still worry about being able to afford paying their medical bills if they get sick—even as the American health insurance industry profit soars.
And despite the multiple major accomplishments of the Biden Administration, there’s not much that has trickled down on most Americans. So we are still left with a nation where for the first time in generations many of our children will have a lower standard of living than their parents.
But it’s not just economics: Democrats have also emphasized various identity groups at the expense of White Americans—including Whites in the middle- and working-classes at the lower end of the economic scale who live paycheck to paycheck and don’t feel particularly “privileged”: what they might feel is resentment at a Democratic Party that dismisses them and their real concerns.
The genius of Donald Trump is to connect with these Americans who feel left out. And this includes not just Whites but Blacks and Latino voters, who look at all the energy Democrats expend on other identity groups and are wondering, “What about me?”
Meanwhile, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is a marketer’s dream: it invokes emotional images of someone who can connect with voters as few politicians are able, yet it lets him off the hook when it comes to actually fixing any problems (though he cleverly assures us that he will fix everything and make it all great again).
Like him or not, the phenomenon of Donald Trump is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is an economy run under rules set by our politicians in Washington that just isn’t working for most Americans, and it includes their understandable resentment at being on the short end of the stick. Clearly, Democrats aren’t connecting with voters via policy or messaging on this predicament. Time might be running out for them to correct this. Will they be able to before it’s too late?
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He nails it.