This article was originally published on Kevin Ellis’s Substack Page, Conflict of Interest
By Kevin Ellis
When the Democratic Party loses my wife, you know it’s bad.
She grew up in a very Democratic family in Washington, DC but 6 AM Wednesday morning, she wrote this What’s App note to our kids:
“The Democrats’ arrogance is what’s wrong with this country. Bad food, bad education, bad healthcare… is hidden by liberal speech, Obama smiles, and more EMPTY promises, which Trump took advantage of (which any good sociopath will do). I can see now that Trump’s unscripted speech perfectly exposed the Democratic Party for who they’ve become. He is completely ungroomed and unscripted. Yeah, he’s a bad guy, but he’s REAL. Now, we have this kind of REAL to deal with for the next four years. Hopefully, by 2028, the Democrats will get off their self-righteous high horse and get REAL also.’’
This began a conversation between our four adult kids that reflected frustration with the modern Democratic party and the effectiveness of a Republican media operation built around Twitter and Fox News.
That’s a long way to travel from Kennedy’s New Frontier, LBJ’s Great Society, Clinton, and Obama. To my wife, all of that is over. She is especially done with Democratic celebrity worship—Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, the Obamas. That the Obamas cashed in on the presidency with multi-million dollar book deals and a Netflix payout is repulsive to her, and it tells us what we need to know about the loss on Tuesday night.
And then there is Alejandro. I stopped at Alejandro’s taco truck in a DC suburb on election day. He was outside cooking the meat on a skewer over propane fire. His wife and daughters worked in the truck. After spending all day working, he is off to Martin’s Tavern, a DC watering hole where JFK proposed to his wife Jackie in 1953. All these years later, Martin’s is still there and Alejandro manages their taco nights.
“I’m saving up to rent a restaurant space here,’’ he told me, sweating over the open fire.
It’s 83 degrees on November 5, when it should be 65. But Alejandro is not thinking about climate emissions. He is thinking about the cost of living and his American dream.
So when I ask about the day’s election, he says: “Trump.’’
“Why?’’ I ask.
“Because he knows the numbers.”
I am about to let him have it with Trump’s tax cuts for the rich that ballooned the deficit and drove up inflation, but he’s not having it.
“It was better under Trump,’’ he says. “Permit fees, taxes, cost of living. Under Biden, construction ground to a halt. It will come back under Trump.’’
That’s all he cared about. And so did hundreds of thousands of his fellow Latino immigrants, especially men, who take seriously their obligation to protect and provide for their families. They don’t talk about this on Morning Joe or Pod Save America – not really.
The election, which I would point out Democrats accepted without complaint, showed that Alejandro’s concerns are what Democrats should have talked about for the last 10 years. Instead, Trump won in devastating fashion over Harris and repudiated the Democratic approach. It’s not quite Reagan over Mondale in 1984, but it’s close.
There is a very long list of reasons why Harris lost. But I don’t blame her. I blame the Democratic Party. For 40 years, the party has been losing working people, more concerned with what tech titans like Reid Hoffman and Jeffrey Katzenberg think than what Alejandro thinks. They thought people really cared about climate change. (They don’t) They thought people really cared about abortion rights. (Men don’t) And they thought people really cared about Ukraine. (They don’t)
I get the argument. Sometimes, in order to do the right thing, you have to pursue change that scares people. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s forever lost the conservative Southern voter. The free trade movement (NAFTA) in the Clinton era began the resentment of working people toward Democrats.
And now Democrats have done it again. By doing the “right thing’’ on climate, protecting the civil liberties of all, and having a conversation about this country’s racist past, they pleased a wing of the party. But they lost working people.
I go back to 2008 when Wall St. gave us the deepest economic crisis since the Depression. Millions lost their jobs and their homes. And no one of any significance went to jail. Working people across America lost everything, and Wall St. tycoons took bonuses to the Cayman Islands on their private jets. Obama’s decision not to prosecute anyone for their crimes may have been the right thing but it cemented the working person’s belief that the system is rigged. And they are right.
What’s more, the political correctness police of this era have lost 30-year-old men. They are sick of “Me Too” and George Floyd and police reform and transgender kids wanting reassignment surgery.
People just want to make a living, buy a house, pay the rent, and send their kids to a school without metal detectors. But they find it harder to do so. They can’t find a house to buy, and their public school is terrible.
The system that Democrats work so hard to defend and strengthen has not worked well enough for working people. That is the failure of this election.
Trump recognized this. The Democrats missed it for years, putting up Hillary Clinton and then Harris, both of whom defend a system that most people see as corrupt and empty.
There is plenty more.
Why didn’t Harris go on the Joe Rogan podcast when Trump went on for three hours, followed by JD Vance the next day? What possible reason can the Democrats give for not doing that show, which was watched by 37 million Americans? That makes CBS News look like a small birthday party. Was Harris afraid she couldn’t answer the questions? Was her staff? It was malpractice of the first order.
Why did Joe Biden run for re-election? Why did his staff hide his diminished capacity from the people? Why did Harris pick Tim Walz and then hide him in the closet? Why couldn’t Harris describe her policy platform? Why couldn’t she tell us how she differed from the Biden agenda?
And mostly, as Bernie Sanders said so bluntly on my podcast and radio show, how did the Democratic Party lose working class voters?
“It’s the $64 dollar question,’’ Bernie said.
There is lots more where that came from.
But do yourself a favor, find the Alejandros in your life, and ask them why they voted for Trump. They will make it very clear.