Why Did We Lose?

 After the devastating results of last week’s election it is no surprise that various and sundry talking heads and pundits have been offering their “analysis” of the cause. Turnout was down 6% in Texas even as more people were registered to vote then ever before. Nationally turnout was down about 1.5% and lower turnout is invariably bad for Democrats. 

I’ve read and seen a number of those critiques many of which blame Harris for running a bad campaign. Others say and I agree that Harris actually ran a technically great campaign yet those pundits aren’t entirely wrong. I think that Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have the best answer. Both Reich and Sanders have long promoted the idea that working stiffs like you and I are getting a raw deal from corporate interests, whether you work for one of those big corps or even run your own small business.

Businesses can right off expenses like corporate jets and even yachts if they claim they are for business use but you and I can’t even get a tax deduction for the interest payments on our student loans. Businesses can declare bankruptcy and essentially get all their loans forgiven or pay just pennies on the dollar but if you or I declare bankruptcy we still owe the entire balance of a student loan plus interest.

Reich and Sanders argue that the average American worker has every right to be fed up with neo-liberal Democrats who have passed legislation in favor of corporations while at the same time failed to pass even a long overdue increase in minimum wage. Yes, Joe Biden has been good to labor over the last four years but it hasn’t been near enough and it isn’t just his fault. Too many Democrats in Congress have been captured by the uber-wealthy donors who fund their political campaigns. It’s a lot like Stockholm Syndrome or the phenomenon known as regulatory capture, those legislators spend so much time schmoozing with big money donors that they start seeing the world through the eyes of those donors. Once their worldview aligns with big money they are more easily convinced that voting in the interests of their “friends” is a good idea.

I don’t excuse them for losing sight of the reason they were elected but I do understand how it can happen. That’s brings up another issue that Sen. Sanders points out in his analysis and has been campaigning against for a long time; which is the problem of money in politics. Campaign finance has always been problematic but ever since the Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United which overturned many of the limits on campaign donations at the federal level the amount of money donated and therefore the amount of money any campaign needs to win an election is 5 times what it was in 2000 and that’s after adjusting for inflation.

None of this is to say that Republicans have a better track record on labor issues just that Trump at least recognized it as a significant campaign issue. His “solution” was to blame immigrants just like he did in his to previous campaigns regardless of the fact that immigrants aren’t the problem. He certainly isn’t about to blame big business as those campaign donors favored him. While Trump isn’t actually going to do anything helpful many of the 60% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck voted for him because they felt he at least was listening to them and Democratic candidates weren’t.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 13, 2024