Defining The Electoral Problem

With some trepidation, I return to Erik’s discussion of remaking the Democratic Party. I too have had a couple of tabs up that are relevant. It turns out that the idea of mutual aid societies generally, and for the Democratic Party in particular, is fairly popular right now. I had a different piece on the subject, by Henry Farrell. What it says is very similar to what Erik posted from Pete Davis. I’ve seen at least one other article advocating such organizations to deal with the alienation and lonliness experienced by many people.

What I was planning to tie it to was this definition of the problem. I like to define, as much as possible, the problem before I try to work out solutions. The margin between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was less than 2%. If that is taken as the problem, then squeaking out a bit more vote, a lá James Carville, is a possible solution. If the problem is that the country has elected a declining multiple felon who has expressed the desire to be a dictator, different solutions may be relevant.

One of those solutions may be to build a more robust Democratic Party via in-person organizing, as advocated by Erik, Farrell, and others. I like this solution too.

But I want to tie it to a problem definition, and Elad Nehorai’s definition is a useful starting point. It’s a long post, and I’ll try to summarize it. I don’t entirely agree with it, maybe 75%, but it’s useful to have a starting point.

Nehorai focuses on the people who didn’t turn out to vote, in particular the Biden voters who didn’t vote for Harris. He lumps broad concerns into three categories:

• Existential Dread
• Accountability
• Deadened Hope

Under Existential Dread, he includes the COVID epidemic and climate change. The income and other support measures were well-liked.

In that moment, Americans saw how easily, how quickly, and how effectively the government could support them. Not only that, they saw how the effects were nowhere near as dire as they were told it would be. Quite the opposite. The rich stayed rich. The powerful stayed powerful.

In fact, even then the working class and other non-billionaires were still the ones taking the hits. They were essential workers, forced to work among the sick. They watched as housing prices exploded, putting whatever dreams they may have had of owning a future for their families wilt and disappear.

But still. They could pay to feed their families. They could afford rent (some of them). They didn’t have to obsess over healthcare, and in that way were maybe in some ways better off than they were before a pandemic hit them. They didn’t have to force themselves to commute to their jobs, and in the end became more productive.

And then, suddenly, all that was taken away.

Wildfires in California and floods in Spain made global warming real in people’s minds.

Traditional media only covers the drama, not the creeping dread that drives people under their covers to escape it. For those with children, the weight is unavoidable: planning futures for worsening realities, worrying about their kids’ safety in a hotter, more volatile world.

So many possibilities could be included under Accountability. We have one this week with the public murder of insurance executive Brian Thompson. We don’t know the killer’s motive, but people have been quick to assume that it is accountability for the wrongs of the US healthcare system.

Nehorai includes lack of accountability for the 2008 financial crash, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and Trump’s coups and failures of the Republican Party to convict in his impeachments.

He contrasts the early excitement over Harris’s candidacy with the reality of Israel’s war on Gaza and her not differentiating her policies more explicitly from Biden’s. People wanted something new, and she was not new enough. He then goes on to describe the Black Lives Matter movement as offering hope for basic improvements in the system, which also was lost.

All this, he says, demotivated enough voters that they didn’t turn up to vote for Harris. I think there’s a lot to this. I also think we need this kind of larger look at the election if we want to turn things around in a fundamental way.

[Since it’s come up, I’ll repeat that I’d prefer you stay on topic for the first 200 comments or so. We have some good discussions, and the way to keep doing that is to stay on topic. Over at Bluesky, I have blocked commenters for jumping to their own conversations on my thread.  I’m more generous here, but would appreciate respect for the work that goes into writing a post. Given the recent upset, I am requesting that you not replay those issues]