75 Comments

This is a great column, but it won't change the stranglehold ideologues have on the Democratic Party, its staffing and the think tanks and universities that feed that staffing. Their answer will always be that the US is a white supremacist hellhole so why is anyone surprised Trump won? And they'll keep losing elections as a result and people will leave the Democratic Party, like I did in 2021, until the pain gets so bad they'll have no choice but TO change. But that may take awhile.

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Trump makes it even worse. All of the energy, money and attention will be directed toward the most moralizing and extreme progressives as the loudest voices opposing Trump. Trump makes everything worse, including his opponents.

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I wouldn't be so sure. Universities are already adapting out of necessity, even before Trump won.

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This attitude is almost as unproductive as the ideologues themselves. If we don’t like how things are going, the conversation should be about how to change it, not why it can’t be changed.

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The solution is relatively simple: hire fewer leftist ideologues. Hire staffs with more diverse ranges of opinions and backgrounds and importantly hire people who have the temperament to disagree and even argue with each other on different issues in a constructive, non-toxic way.

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Not a member of the party, uninterested in how to dislodge the infrastructure they've spent decades building, which basically funnels people from universities to think thanks to a Democratic administration and then back again. Rinse and repeat.

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You are right. The Party needs to fix its priorities and particularly moderate on social issues, but that will require standing up to their left wing—who will likely be very happy to tell them to pound sand and will thus leave the Party having to find other potential allies as a replacement.

I don’t know if that means they can court center-right voters who dislike MAGA or what, but the sad fact is the Dem coalition is more fragmented and less culturally unified than the Right. So if they can’t forge alliances elsewhere, I honestly don’t know what they’re gonna do.

One thing progressives will have to accept is if they want to have any influence policy-wise at all, they can’t have everything they want, no matter how passionate or activist-minded they are. Compromise is necessary to move other shared goals forward. I don’t have high hopes for that right now, but like you say, if Dems lose enough elections (same with the Right), they’ll wake up.

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Nov 7·edited Nov 7

The trans stuff has been so depressing. I was a pretty consistent LGBT ally for years and I remember reading Singal's original Atlantic essay in the late 2010s and thinking, "hm, I'll wait for more seasoned experts to weigh in". It wasn't until he pointed his audience to a citation loop about pediatric surgery and suicidality that I realized that much advocacy for this particular treatment was, basically, a scam.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

The trans shit should be low salience, right? Like I would be very annoyed if my daughter ever had to compete for roster spots and a place on the podium with a post-pubescent male. But it’s a slim chance.

Where the Democratic coalition lost me is when they started demanding that schools not be obligated to be truthful with parents when they ask about their pronouns and counseling. “We need to protect kids from their parents.” The fuck they do. Are they gonna pay my $160/hr bills for my kid’s occupational therapy too?

The problem with the Democrats is their willingness to adapt fashionable ideas that are clearly broadly unpopular, and then seek to punish and ostracize those who question the new orthodoxy.

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As it happens, this morning one of the other dads in my kid's school gave me a fairly long explanation of why he supports Trump*. The first or second thing he said was that there are two genders. To me this is a terrible reason to support any candidate. In addition to the low importance, the President doesn't determine cultural beliefs; frankly a lot of the extreme woke stuff got worse under Trump. He can set tariffs and staff bureaucracies, he can't control what ideas 14 year olds get. But it's like most people care about what side he is on rather than what he can do.

*We are in fact in Montreal and he can't vote in American elections, but he told me that he once spoiled his ballot by writing "Make Quebec Great Again" as a protest vote. On the flip side we've absorbed American DEI content hook, line and sinker. We really need a 100% tariff on these cultural exports.

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Harris's answer about surgery for prisoners wasn't so bad because of her specific answer, but because it showed how dumb she was to get caught answering it.

She had no political future, so she would just find random interest groups and tell them what they wanted to hear. Maybe that will get her to be President.

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I think one Democrat who has picked the "do one thing really well" at least prior to this year was Gretchen Whitmer. During her first term, she went nuts with road re-construction in Metro Detroit. So when she was up for re-election in 2022, she pointed to that over and over again and it resonated with voters, now driving on smooth ass roads. She won by ten points against a decent opponent.

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Happy to hear the roads have improved since I was last there in 2015. However, this is a good example of why running for President as a governor is an uphill battle. Getting roads paved in Michigan, a bridge built in Pennsylvania or whatever Florida stuff DeSantis was selling in the GOP primary doesn’t really breakthrough to national voters.

Its not impossible, but tough

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I think that's right

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The roads in Michigan are immaculate. They also let you drive pretty fast up there.

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They didn't used to be! I remember driving over a bridge in the City of Detroit once, near Hamtramck, where the potholes were so bad, I could see the ground below, between the exposed rebar. Whitmer threw a lot of political capital at that in her first term.

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Given the awful numbers with Latinos, I hope Latinx is washed from the Democrats lexicon. I fear, giving some of the commentary I've seen that it won't be. Great column Josh!

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Nov 7·edited Nov 7

People forget - or never knew in the first place - that there are Hispanic migrations to the now-U.S. that were concurrent with or even predate the English migrations that fed the original colonies. And yet Democrats still treated this demographic as if they were all relatively recent immigrants. Not surprisingly, a lot of people found that insulting.

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This column made me think a lot about the "woman-owned-business" scam that blue-state Democrats have enabled. That is, if you have, or can make it look like you have, a woman in charge, you get to skirt the much-more-heavily-enforced rules on staffing for government contracts; i.e. x% minority staff, x% union, etc.

You can bet conservatives have noticed this and love to exploit it. My spouse's Trump-supporter mother, in CA, was more than happy to take government money during COVID because on paper, though she has no employees, technically owns an LLC and therefore was eligible for lots of incentives. She knows she's ripping the public off, but she does it gleefully.

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Interesting that you state at the beginning of your article that electing Trump is a bad thing, then you spend the rest of the post pointing out how Democrats have failed at the basics of governing in every way, which is a great argument for why it's actually a very good thing that Trump was elected. Even with all the opposition, the last time he was able to trim back government interference in the economy and pass some effective broad-based tax cuts that increased growth and employment for everyone. One of the biggest problems in America today is a tremendously intrusive government that imposes huge economic costs with overregulation and threat of rogue agency actions against business for no valid reason. I believe Trump will scale much of that back and free up our economy to grow and thrive, for the benefit of all. The legacy media will not tell this story, but it's out there.

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The problem is that Trump has shown no indication of being a good decision maker.

He's promoted a quack treatment for for COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine, and failed to model sane PPE use during the pandemic and turning it into a partisan thing when he didn't have to. He suggested injecting disinfectant as possible treatment for COVID as well. And now he's threatening to put RFK, Jr. in charge of the FDA!

He held back aid to Ukraine -- illegally -- in order to pressure Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on his political opponent, Biden. This is what led people to his first impeachment.

He hoarded huge amounts of classified documents in his personal residence, even in his bathroom, for no obvious reason, and then refused to cooperate to give them back.

He tried to steal an election by seating fake electors, and then by inciting a riot on the Capitol. Heck, if the Supreme Court had insisted on a plain-text reading of the 14th amendment instead of trying to wriggle out of it, he probably wouldn't have been allowed on the ballot.

He's kissed up to dictators. He's erratic and rambling.

If the election of a man like that sounds good to you, then you have high ignorance or low standards.

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That is the legacy press interpretation of his presidency. That's my point. All the actions you cite above as fact are only partially fact and a lot of critical opinion generated to damage his presidency. Half of the country interpret the same actions in a very different way. Your gratuitous insult to my intelligence for disagreeing with Democrat talking points is not called for and is a very good example of why millions of people voted against the Democrat candidate.

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Every single statement there is a verifiable fact. That you deny that speaks to the bizarre non factual world you live in.

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Again, a sad comment on the very different worlds that leftists and regular people live in. I will not reply any further since your side seems more inclined to insult me than to actually debate facts. Another leftist trait. When you can't argue facts, throw insults.

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You're not debating the facts he presented. You're just getting angry and calling everyone who disagrees with you a "leftist"

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That's the same generalization that many on the left make of people who voted for Trump. I am far from a leftist. I'm a registered republican. I consider myself a moderate. So let's stop the generalizations and talk about actual facts. Ramsey gave an actual list of issues with Trump. Many of those things are why I would rather vote for Harris than Trump. Trump should fit my ideal candidate: He's a moderate that makes conservatives think he's a conservative (a.la.Ronald Reagon). The problem is he seems to be too self-centered to actually play the 'I can talk big to own the libs, but I'll actually make policy compromises to solve real issues." He also seems to have little grasp on the concept of 'rule of law'. These are options, the are based on the facts that Ramsey's laid out. A good rebuttal to Ramseys is to go through point by point saying why they aren't facts (there a few low hanging fruit you should be able to push back on).

My take is this is 4 more years and then it's done. We can get back to debating policy not personality.

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'options' should have been 'opinions'...

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

I think all of those things can be true, but still tell an incomplete story. The list omits any mention of economic policy & doesn't mention the border etc...

A majority of voters decided that other issues (economy, immigration, law & order etc...) were more important to them, and while I may disagree with their interpretation I don't think it invalid.

I am curious, though, as to what you actually dispute from J. J.'s list (minus the last line). You can argue the point on "illegally" holding back aid to Ukraine as he did deliver it, but only after the whistleblower complaint. As a side note, though I think the Zelensky call reflected extremely poorly on Trump I do not think it amounted to an impeachable offense.

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"I think all of those things can be true, but still tell an incomplete story. The list omits any mention of economic policy & doesn't mention the border etc."

My list is more than enough to illustrate Trump's unfitness.

As for his economic policy? In his first term, he mostly coasted on a good economy that he inherited, plus some tax cuts (with the permanent ones being for the rich, IIRC). His border policy was a shambles. His wall would have largely been a Maginot line defense, since a lot of illegal immigration goes through ports of entry, and he couldn't get it most of it built anyway, let alone get Mexico to pay for it. Mostly what he did do was cause a lot of misery for the migrants who came. And he certainly didn't solve a lot of the long-standing dysfunctions that have made the nominally closed border with Mexico porous.

I'm not sure why you'd say that Trump's attempted shakedown of Zelenskyy wasn't an impeachable defense. He was basically trying to use his political power for his own personal gain, while threatening the security of a friendly country in the process. That's utterly corrupt.

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It is fairly obvious that Trump can make it all worse. He does not care about cities.

For what it's worth, he does not care about building more housing either. And he will impose economic costs in the form of tariffs. I assume you already forgot about balancing the budget.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

I mean, you can think one candidate/party is incompetent, but also think another candidate/party is even more incompetent. And you can also understand why people might be drawn to the more incompetent party based on their experiences.

Trump is dumb, lazy, petulant, impulsive, and corrupt. None of those are the qualities of a good leader. He's also a sexual predator with a suspicious number of ties to the likes of Jeff Epstein and Diddy, although that's admittedly not necessarily relevant to his ability to govern the country.

His presidency is going to be filled with high tariffs, rent-seeking, and regulatory capture which are going to do the opposite of "freeing up" the economy.

But the silver lining is that, again, he's lazy and dumb and he's older and has less energy than he did 8 years ago, so he might not accomplish much for those reasons alone. Plus, despite what the election results might lead some people to think, he's still broadly unpopular (53% of voters still had an unfavorable of him according to exit polls), so he's going to provide an opportunity for Democrats to quickly break the GOP trifecta. Democrats should be favorites to retake the House in 2026 without changing anything, but if they can fix their shit even just a little, they might have a decent shot at the Senate, too.

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I'll give him credit for some things - speaking up against the asymmetric trade situation with China. (and that influenced the Biden administration to act on it with the CHIPS Act and industrial policy), moving the opinion of the entire country on illegal immigration and Operation Warp Speed. I have a mixed opinion about his tax cuts. Directionally I agree with the structure of the individual income tax code and also the corporate tax code but it has led to higher deficits which he has no plans to pay for. If you don't care about Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid or Obamacare, that's fine with me but at some point those programs are going to see deep cuts to pay for those tax cuts. I would like to see Republicans defend cuts to those programs at the time.

Edit: His huge unfunded Covid relief bills also contributed to the inflation, something only Biden gets blamed for.

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Hi Deborah,

I concede the growth aspect of Trump’s tax cuts the first time around (though targeting them primarily toward the rich is certainly debatable), but even with that acknowledged and the failures of Democratic governance in the article that Josh points out, in my mind, that is no substitute for voting Trump back in.

I won’t go over the litany of behavior and lawlessness that in my view disqualifies him from ever holding the office again, but on a separate point, even if you compare Trump’s and Kamala’s policy proposals this time around, his will be highly disruptive (mass deportations) and inflationary (more tax cuts, high tariffs, pressure on the Fed to keep rates low). I am not against deporting people who shouldn’t be here, but not in the militaristic, vile way Trump plans to. And I am not opposed to tax cuts even for wealthy people and big businesses, but I don’t think it should be primarily targeted to them and I definitely think those tax cuts, regardless of who’s proposing them, should be offset with spending reduction (I highly doubt Trump will touch Social Security, Medicare, or the military. He will very likely cut Medicaid—benefits for the poorest among us).

All of that is to say, I think the choice was clear in Kamala.

The electorate obviously disagreed. I respect your disagreement and say all this in kindness of feeling. But I truly do lament, more than anything, that character seems to play no role anymore in choosing who holds the highest office in the land.

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One thing I've seen surprisingly little attention on is the truly giant shift in crime policy voting. In ten years California went from supporting Prop 47 (decriminalization of drugs and theft) by 20 points to supporting Prop 36 (re-criminalization) by 40 points. Progressive DA Gascon won by 7 in 2020, he is being beaten in LA county by a literal Republican by 22 points. I'm not totally convinced that this is a major driver of Trump's vote surge, among other things Trump's gain was weakest in WA and OR where belligerent homeless people are a very big issue, but it seems very plausible that some fraction of the Prop 47/Prop 35 voters are also Biden/Trump voters.

Also, 4 years later, it's kind of amazing how badly BLM has fizzled/backfired. Like, they've accomplished negative 500% of what they set out to do.

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My reaction to the 2024 election is so much different than in 2016 -- though in both cases I had nothing but contempt for the Democratic nominee who couldn't beat Donald Trump.

I woke up the day after the 2016 election and reacted like Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes. Trump was even worse than I imagined, but we made it through.

This time, while I have nothing but disdain for people who voted to go through *that* again, and have even lower expectations for Trump, I'm even more angry at the Democratic party leadership, The Groups, and Joe Biden (who never should've chosen Harris as VP in the first place).

I assume we'll get through it, and the midterms will put a check on President Trump. But I don't assume the Democrats will learn a damn thing. Not unless another Bill Clinton rises from the ashes.

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Thank you for your brutal honesty about poor governance in deep blue states/cities and poor policy choices made by the Biden administration. Trying to fool the voters with Dark Brandon memes and "the Fed caused the inflation" unfortunately didn't work even though I agree that the "Orange man is bad" and an unacceptable choice for me and many voters.

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The Fed is always responsible for inflation, nobody else. But stimulus made the Feds job harder.

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The Fed's job is to bring down the inflation if it's high, which they did. They did not cause the inflation.

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The Fed determines (roughly) the level of inflation. “Cause” is a bit of a squishy term.

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I’m glad in some way that voters didn’t buy this BS. It assumes that the government can act as irresponsibly as possible with fiscal policies and the Fed has to bear all responsibility for fixing the issues that arise out of it.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8Author

I think the point here is a bit semantic. It is the Fed that chooses between high inflation and high interest rates -- you can have less of one if you have more of the other. But they both make voters angry, and you need different fiscal policy if you want both inflation and interest rates to be modest. That's what only Congress can produce.

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Yes they most certainly did. The loose monetary policy was the primary driver of inflation

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I'm not sure why you subscribe to Josh Barro's substack if you don't have any interest in reading what he has to say.

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When Harris starting making her rallies a "celebrity" event she lost the average voter.

Hillary made the same mistake. Trump usually has some average person who has been wronged by either criminals, immigrants, or the government. Voters identify with someone like themselves not some high priced singer, athlete, or movie star.

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I'm glad I can talk again about the foolishness of passing more stimulus while we're already in recovery, instead of pretending that wasn't true for the last few months.

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Smart and useful essay, as always.

Question: How do you feel about the idea of this all being a vibes election? I.e. Do all the policy failings you mentioned pre-suppose a level of engagement that most voters simply didn’t have? And if that’s the case, will any policy fix actually be likely to bring anyone back?

This is something I’m genuinely unsure about.

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In organizing meetings, fellows dems were positive we'd get even more voters than 2020. There was so much excitement about Kamala.

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Why? She is the perfect example of an empty suit, she can't answer a question or string two sentences together without a teleprompter. How could she excite anyone? I would actually like to know, if there are any reasons. Any other than identity politics and DEI, that is.

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A major portion was the whiplash from the negative enthusiasm of Biden.

Also, black women. They're a major component of dem organizers.

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All fair criticisms but Trump also babbles incoherently like a low IQ person. If you think he's a charismatic speaker, you're just a partisan with very low standards for politicians that you support and can't credibly make the claims that you're making.

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I used to be a Dem political speechwriter back in the 90s. I think we made a major mistake when we stopped using the bully pulpit of office to inspire/demand more from citizens. Great global cities stay that way because citizens take pride in their communities. In Tokyo, a lot of the subway trains have wooden floors. They can do that because riders don’t treat trains like their personal garbage cans. It’s a privilege to live in a great city and the least you can do is pick up for yourself, don’t treat your city job like a no show freebie gig, maybe ask your union to cool it with the 10 percent annual wage increases and increasing political control, like we have here in Chicago. These things cost nothing, but they mean so much for the livability of our cities and the sense that those who chose to live this way feel invested here and want others to envy us.

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I agree with 99% here, but I think one of the major things democrats got wrong with cost of living wasn't just saying "look at my programs" but telling voters "No, you're wrong, the economy is great and inflation isn't a problem anymore."

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Your comments about the party focusing as much as possible on spending more money even while inflation was at its peak have reminded me anew how mad I was about the repeated attempts to have the taxpayers pay for student debt, lol.

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Agree with totally about the D’s ineptitude xand complete misreading of the electorate. But generally disagree with your fears concerning the next four years of the Trump presidency.

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