Election Day 2016 was a miserable failure for the Democratic Party. When all the votes are counted, it appears that Donald Trump will have won 30 states and at least 300 Electoral College votes. After months of tough talk, Democrats not only lost the presidency, but lost the Senate and continued to lose the House. It was a thorough drubbing. Calling it anything other than that is a damn lie.
But I must linger there for a while. The Democratic Party has mastered lying to itself and its core constituencies. It claims a progressive identity, but is as moderate and lukewarm as it has ever been on so many issues that matter to everyday people. It claims to be tough on Wall Street, financial corruption and white collar crime, but is awash in donations from lobbyists and executives in the industry. Democrats claim to be the party of working people, but so often seem to be deeply out of touch with their problems and needs.
The Party is nowhere near anti-war, but wants the undying support of peace activists. It claims to love the environment, but has spoken against the Dakota Access Pipeline with the strength of a gnat with one missing wing. Its strongest voting blocs are people of color. The overwhelming majority of white people, including women, voted for Trump, but the party insisted on having an all white presidential ticket.
Until many of them were fired or replaced after the primary against Bernie Sanders, the senior leaders and puppet masters of the party were almost exclusively white as well. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the Democratic Party, an embarrassing 1.7% of that went to contractors of color. Do the math, that means 98.3% of Democratic funds go to white businesses.
I could go on and on, but I’ll highlight one more terrible inconsistency within the party. Young people are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party. They are the idealists and dreamers. They overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, but for the first time in recent memory, the clear and obvious candidate of young people was not the choice of the Democratic Party establishment.
The Democratic Party is having an identity crisis. While the groundswell of grassroots support in its base is anti-police brutality, pro-environment, pro-immigrant, anti-war, pro-$15 minimum wage, for the legalization of marijuana, and strongly against the Dakota Access Pipeline — the party in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, lack core convictions on all of these issues and it shows. I’d be that nearly every single activist and leader in each of those niche communities will tell you that they feel like strangers in the Democratic Party.
Although it already seems like ancient history, you must remember that the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, left in a shroud of scandal surrounding emails that were derogatory towards Bernie Sanders and only confirmed the anti-Bernie bias many of us knew existed for more than a year. Three other top officials from the DNC were fired for the very same thing.
Longtime Democratic operative, Donna Brazile, was brought in to replace Wasserman Schultz. It seemed like a smart move, but further email leaks have only showed us that she, too, was a part of the problem as she continually fed the Clinton campaign questions that Hillary would receive for debates during the primary. The move has all but eroded trust in her leadership from progressives who were already deeply skeptical of the party.
Before the Democratic primaries even began or any of the candidates had their first debate, Hillary Clinton and her team had already sowed up commitments from hundreds of career politicians to serve as her superdelegates — building her what often looked like an insurmountable lead. Even in states where Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton by a landslide, party operatives routinely pledged their support to her anyway — all but ignoring the reality that Bernie was building the very type of populist movement that could have actually defeated Donald Trump.
As we now see, this election was not about high-skilled political operatives, polls or even national campaign experience. Trump had none of that. This campaign was about large crowds, big events, momentum, tone and social media. Bernie did those things well. Bernie was the anti-Trump. Trump lacks integrity. Bernie is known for his. Trump is a shady billionaire who has stiffed tons of everyday people. Bernie has spent his whole life fighting for working class folk. Trump is a liar and Bernie is known for his straight-to-the-point honesty.
Hillary Clinton was an absolutely terrible matchup for Donald Trump. I said as much in May when every poll that was released showed Bernie crushing Trump, but Hillary consistently struggling against him. Time and time and time again, polls showed Hillary struggling against Trump. Instead of taking the time to truly understand them, expert pundits and pollsters opted to repeatedly dismiss the validity or methodology of those polls. Clearly, polls like the LA Times/USC poll, which consistently showed Trump ahead, but was widely dismissed as junk science as a result, were on to something.
But that was the M.O. of the Democratic Party from the time the primaries began until we were all gobsmacked by a Trump victory — dismiss all evidence that says anything other than Hillary Clinton was inevitable. But here we are.
The Democratic Party can no longer ride the coattails of President Obama. The Democratic Party truly needs to start over from scratch and put people at its core. It clearly has no idea what it’s doing and has, as a result, put us all in danger.
