by John Bossange
If this past election proved anything, it should have confirmed the death of the Grand Old Party, the slow unraveling of the Democratic Party, and the emergence of a third powerful MAGA Party. The Electoral College landside (312-226) combined with the support of 77 million voters has positioned the MAGA party as the dominant political force in America. No question about that now.
Democrats and traditional Republicans can’t complain and continue to search for excuses for their losses. There was plenty of time for both to change their course, mission, and market their priorities differently. The Democratic Party’s massive failure made it easier for the growth of a once defeated Party to eventually control Congress, the US Supreme Court, and the White House. After Mr. Trump is sworn into office, he will also have the opportunity to select his own Joint Chiefs of Staff and control the military as well.
Once the Republican National Committee (RNC) allowed Mr. Trump to remain on stage during the presidential debates in 2015 and not declare himself a member of their Party, the door was left open. Trump skillfully nurtured populist themes of the 21st century and established himself as the leader of his new Party, MAGA, winning the presidency in 2016. After his defeat in 2020, he continued to control the political narrative by denying his loss, ridiculing President Biden, and Republican holdouts who remained outside his MAGA orbit. For four years, there was much more “breaking news” about a defeated Mr. Trump than there was about an elected President Biden and his policies.
As witnessed by the election of 2024, most Republican leaders deserted the Grand Old Party and fell into the MAGA camp. You can be sure that many did not share Mr. Trump’s values or vision of America, but as seasoned politicians, they wanted to be re-elected, valued their position power, their free, socialized health care for life, their generous pension for life, their K Street contacts with lobbyists, their Georgetown townhouses, and even their reserved parking spaces at Reagan National Airport. With no term limits and unlimited campaign financing, having the blessing of Mr. Trump must have been intoxicating, as it would for any D.C. party loyalist. The GOP lost their way, but recovered with a united MAGA Party.
For the Democratic Party, the story reads more like a political tragedy. The list reasons for their inexcusable loss include sexism, racism, the mainstream and social media, President Biden’s refusal to step aside after the midterm elections in 2022, no primary season for other candidates to emerge as the nominee, Vice-President Harris’s inexperience in a national campaign, the disappearance of her running mate Tim Walz, the failure of younger voters to become engaged in the campaign, and the loss of support from Black and Latino male voters and white suburban women. Other factors like voter’s age, gender, religious beliefs, educational level, income, and economic status are being used as excuses, but Democratic losses were everywhere in multiple categories.
Some of those reasons for their collapse were contributing factors to their loss, but the blame for this unraveling really begins with the Democratic National Party (DNC). The DNC lost their way by not remaining current with the times to reflect the values, needs and wishes of the 2024 electorate. The DNC leadership did not force President Biden to serve only one term and instead retained an inner circle of decades old advisors from the Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama years who were protecting Biden and were incapable of messaging in the 2024 age of media technology. Further, they allowed their liberal billionaire donor class to fund a campaign for an aging and declining President Biden.
Given only 100 days to campaign against Mr. Trump, who had already been at it for four years, the default candidate Kamala Harris had little chance to establish her identity and message her vision for the voters. Always under the shadow of President Biden as his Vice-President, there was no room for her to become her own candidate. Her loyalty to him was an unfolding tragedy in front of the nation.
The DNC should have foreseen this scenario. Vice-presidents have never fared well when running for office as a sitting vice-president. George H. Bush was the first to do so since 1933. The DNC should have known that too. Further, there were no “war room” responses to Mr. Trump’s continual parade of accusations and lies, and no ongoing press conferences from the Vice-President. Instead the DNC used the old democratic playbook driven by the dreadful slogan, “When they go low, we go high.”
It was that tepid, academic and elitist approach that encouraged more and more insults and alternative facts from the Trump/Vance campaign. Gone from the DNC were the harsh, embarrassing, humiliating responses and retorts sometimes necessary in the tough, dirty world of politics. Again, this was the same DNC that approved the disastrous Clinton NAFTA initiative, oversaw the shift away from the working class to a wealthy corporate donor class, and of course supported the weak response from Obama to the 2008 economic collapse on Wall Street.
The DNC leadership was still in their elite, liberal bubble world when it came to facing the key issues of the 2024 election: the economy, immigration, abortion, taxes, crime, and foreign policy. There was little organized pushback or clear responses with specific points and proposals to address each concern. What messaging and marketing there was seemed to occur through more traditional print and cable media, not with the clever use of social and technology media, the playbook of the MAGA success story. Still lost, the DNC has not yet recovered.
So both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party failed America in different ways. How long will the MAGA Party support last before it implodes, or before people wake up and see the ruse of social concerns used as cover for tax cuts and deregulation allowing the rich to get even richer? How long will the Democratic Party be buried in the past and focus on identity politics, inclusivity, and labeling themselves as a “big tent” while leaving tens of millions of Americans believing they are not a priority for the Party? It will be an interesting next four years.