20 Thoughts on the Election (and the Way Forward)

After spendings 48 hours in shell-shock mode, here are some initial reflections on what went wrong and how we can defeat Trumpism:

1. Blame the Democratic Party establishment. Tuesday’s loss is what happens when you leave workers behind for decades, from Clinton’s NAFTA, to Obama’s austerity, to Schumer’s pivot to suburban professionals, to going scorched earth against Bernie’s movement in 2016 and 2020.

2. Establishment Dems also royally screwed up this cycle: it was suicidal to embrace Biden’s candidacy despite his incoherence and unpopularity. Pundits praised Pelosi and co. for eventually pushing Biden out, but it’s inexcusable that they didn’t do so a year earlier and allow for a real primary.

3. The only chance the Dems had at winning in 2024 was by running someone outside of the Biden administration, probably someone like Gretchen Whitmer. (And though Bernie was too old this time around, it’s worth remembering that he won over exactly the people Harris struggled with: workers across the country, Latinos, and Joe Rogan bros.)

4. It’s true that inflation has seriously hurt incumbent administrations worldwide. But their electoral defeat isn’t an iron law. Despite widespread inflation, Mexico re-elected its Left government because it delivered big (and communicated well) to working people.

5. Incapable of seriously looking at the Democratic Party’s flaws, many elitist liberals are already blaming ordinary people, claiming most Americans are irreparably brainwashed or prejudiced. But if this were true, it’s hard to explain why Americans elected Barack Hussein Obama in 2008.

6. Democratic hacks are also claiming Dems need to move back to “the center” because Biden’s relatively progressive domestic policies and appointments failed to deliver the goods electorally. But after decades of Democratic abandonment of working people, these steps were too little too late.

7. Had Manchin and Sinema not blocked an ambitious Build Back Better agenda capable of delivering visible improvements in most people’s lives, and had Biden been able to consistently string together coherent sentences, it’s not inconceivable that our country’s recent political trajectory might have been different.

   

8. Given that unions only represent 10 percent of the workforce and made so few attempts to recruit new members over these past four years, it’s not surprising that Biden’s pro-union policies did little to reverse the Democrats’ fortunes among working people.  

9. The sad truth is that top union officials — with a few notable exceptions — failed to seize an exceptionally favorable opening for mass unionization created by a tight labor market, a very good NLRB, and a grassroots revitalization driven by young radicalized workers. Risk-averse union leaders mostly continued with business as usual, sitting on billions of dollars that could have been used to launch and support wide-scale worker-to-worker unionization initiatives.

10. Had most unions massively invested in new organizing after 2020, this could have significantly changed the political map. Not only do union members continue to vote more Democratic, but high-profile union drives and strikes polarize the whole country around class (instead of culture wars) and expose the Republicans’ sham populism. Experiencing solidarity and collective power firsthand is the best antidote to scapegoating. There’s no path to defeating the far right that doesn’t pass through expanding and transforming the labor movement.

11. Workplace organizing will be harder under Trump, but it’s far from impossible. We should remember that labor’s current uptick began with the red state teachers’ strikes of 2018, which won big gains against Republican state governments. 

12. The Biden-Harris administration’s funding of genocide didn’t lose this election nationwide, but it was a central reason why she lost an exceedingly close race in Michigan. To get large numbers of politicians to support an arms embargo of Israel, we need to do a lot more outwards facing organizing on this issue, not just mobilize the already-convinced.

13. Trump’s election is a big blow for democracy and working people in the US and worldwide, especially the most marginalized. But we shouldn’t despair. There are good reasons to believe that this could resemble George W. Bush’s election in 2004 — which quickly spurred backlash leading to Obama — rather than Reagan’s 1980 election, which ushered in a long era of conservative policies. 

14. From a historical perspective, Trump didn’t actually win this election by much. He got about the same number of votes as last time, while Harris lost because she received millions of fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Moreover, the swing voters that Trump won over were mostly hoping he’ll be able to deliver them prosperity, an unlikely scenario given Trump’s billionaire-backed policies plus the volatility of a collapsing world-wide neoliberal order.

15. In times of crisis, people look for compelling narratives that make sense of why they’re struggling. The right wing does a great job of recruiting people to its reactionary worldview year round (not just during election season), particularly through concerted media and social media propagandizing. Because establishment Democrats have no interest in pushing the only compelling counter narrative — blame the billionaires — the Left really needs to find ways to better (and more widely) articulate our worldview to millions online and beyond.

16. By far the biggest mistake made by the Left this cycle was to not run a viable candidate in the presidential primary. We forgot the main lesson of Bernie 2016 and 2020. Without a leftist tribune in our country’s most important political contestation, we were either confined to being marginal outside critics or being uncritical junior partners to Biden-Harris. This abstention left more space for the Democratic establishment to downplay economic populism (and for it to ignore widespread anti-war sentiment). We can’t make this mistake again in 2028.

17. It's worrisome that many resistant liberals seem resigned to Trump this time around — but it's good that democratic socialists are still ready to fight and that we’re better organized now than we were in 2016. Most urgently, we have a key role to play in helping initiate big united-front mass protests capable of bringing together everybody who stands against Trump’s horrors.

18. The Democratic Party’s failure is a major opening for recruiting hundreds of thousands to the democratic socialist movement. But doing so requires that we quickly pivot away from internal-facing debates and a tendency to worry too much about whether we’re sufficiently radical. Instead, we should focus more on positively appealing to, recruiting, and plugging in our normie co-workers, neighbors, and friends. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for NYC mayor is a big opening and will hopefully inspire more socialist electoral campaigns nationwide.

19. Even though both candidates were pretty unpopular, and despite the Biden-backed horrors in Gaza and Lebanon, third party candidates’ complete marginality in 2024 confirms that there’s little space for building a Left third party under our current electoral regime. But Dan Osborn’s senatorial campaign in Nebraska suggests that independent, economic populist campaigns should be attempted again in deep red regions and other arenas where the spoiler issue isn’t relevant.

20. We’ll get through all this collectively, not as isolated individuals. I felt sick to my stomach and full of despair until I went to an Emergency Workplace Organizing Meeting last night, which re-energized me and gave me a much-needed shot of hope. If you haven’t already, you should join DSA and organize your workplace with EWOC’s help. A luta continua.