Sunday morning break

November 10, 2024

Welcome, everyone! My Sunday morning routine is to send a short note to open the Comment section. This Sunday’s newsletter is longer than most. Given the continued feedback from readers about their shock and bewilderment over the election, I think most readers should skip over the discussion below about the media and go directly to Concluding Thoughts.

I include a reflection below on the growing number of op-eds that gleefully criticize Democrats for losing the 2024 presidential election. If that sounds like something that would be helpful to you today, read it. Otherwise, close your laptop or set aside your phone and go for a walk. Less is more as we recover from the shock of the electoral outcome.

I want readers to know that almost everyone I hear from has expressed profound disappointment, bewilderment, and sadness over the election results. If you are feeling that way, it is normal. Indeed, it would abnormal if you weren’t feeling that way. The simple task for the next few days is to regain our equilibrium. We can then begin to focus on next steps to resist the Trump administration’s planned assault on the rule of law and democratic norms.

We are in the majority despite the election outcome. Take confidence and strength from that fact. We will win. It is only a matter of time.

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The media is normalizing Trump's victory by “blaming Democratic elites” and criticizing the Democratic campaign.

The defining feature of Trump's campaign was its appeal to racism, misogyny, and white supremacy. He pushed those themes despite pleas from his advisers to focus on the economy. Having campaigned on themes of hate and division, he won decisively. The most compelling inference from those facts is that Trump's campaign themes appealed to a broad swath of the voters who supported him.

But the media is (again) sane-washing Trump's depravity. Rather than acknowledge—or even mention—his dominant campaign themes in analyzing his victory, the media insists that Trump won because Democrats are “elitists” who somehow “alienated” major portions of the electorate or that Democrats lost because Kamala Harris and her advisors refused to run her campaign in the manner demanded by the legacy media.

Saturday brought a new spate of such articles—many of which were forwarded to me by readers who seemed to agree with the “I told you so” tone of the articles.

Okay. I’ll play that game. Let’s assume that Democrats made mistakes in the execution of Harris’s nearly flawless campaign. Let’s assume that despite the dozens of policies designed to help the working and middle classes, Democrats are not connecting with those voters. Even accepting those assumptions, the story of what happened on Tuesday is not that Democrats deserve a tongue-lashing by professional scolds.

The story is that America elected a convicted felon for the first time its history. It is that America elected an adjudicated sexual abuser as its president. It is that America elected a man who attempted a coup and incited an insurrection the last time he was president. It is that America elected a president who declares that those Americans who oppose him are “enemies from within.” It is that the man the media is currently lionizing has threatened to shut down CBS, ABC, the New York Times, Google, and other outlets that have accurately reported the truth about Donald Trump. It is that he has promised to fire the prosecutor who is pursuing two indictments issued by grand juries of his peers.

Here's the point: Choosing to write stories that “blame elitist Democrats” ignores the real story of what happened on Tuesday. That distraction normalizes the grotesque, existential threat of Trump's electoral victory. Trump could not buy more favorable and helpful coverage if he paid for those stories with Elon Musk’s billions.

The media again fails to comprehend the moment, much less rise to it. It is like reporting on the sinking of the Titanic by criticizing the viscosity of the oil in Engine Number Two. While the Titanic’s engineers might have used underweight oil, ignoring the iceberg’s role in the Titanic’s sinking is unforgivable.

The failure of the media is even more unforgivable because Trump represents an ongoing threat to democracy. Such petty, “inside baseball” reporting is fatuous under normal circumstances. It is journalistic malpractice in this perilous moment.

It is also insulting to the millions of Democrats who worked their ***** off to help elect Kamala Harris. While it is true that the Democratic Party has high-paid consultants and political insiders, they are the tiniest fraction of the party. The real Democratic Party includes Black women who staffed nearly every polling station in the South. It includes young, first-time voters who believe fervently in the promise of America. It includes retirees living on Social Security walking precincts despite aching knees and anxious hearts. It includes young married couples, straight and gay, who are desperately hoping for a better future for their children. It includes the out-of-work middle-aged mechanic with a pre-existing condition who worries about not qualifying for health insurance on the open market.

So, when clueless but know-it-all wags criticize the “elitist Democrats,” that is who they are criticizing. In fact, those who choose to criticize “Democratic elites” are revealing their profound ignorance of who makes up the backbone of the Democratic Party.

It is especially offensive to exhibit glee while chastising “Democratic elites” when most everyone in the party is experiencing raw emotions of bewilderment and despair over the fact that America would elect a convicted felon-sexual abuser-insurrectionist as our president. So, please desist.

There will be a time and a place to discuss how Democrats governed under Biden and how they campaigned under Harris. But rubbing people’s faces in grudge-settling op-eds by smug journalists is counterproductive, graceless, and offensive. Exhibit some empathy and humanity. Rather than explaining why you believe Democrats lost, consider asking someone whose heart is broken how they are doing after giving their all in the hope that Kamala would win and that Trump would lose.

I sometimes receive criticism from readers saying that my comments are “over the top” or intemperate. That may be true. However, Rebecca Solnit (of The Guardian) feels even more passionate about this subject than I do. For those of you who know Solnit, she is one of the finest writers of our generation. See her Facebook post, link here: Rebecca Solnit – F*ck the media explanations that Trump won because of the economy . . . . For those of you who do not have a Facebook account, I have excerpted the posting in a Google Doc, accessible to all here: Rebecca Solnit Facebook Doc.

Democrats tried to stop Trump. They lost because Trump’s feral instincts knew that a substantial portion of the electorate would respond to his racist, sexist, white supremacist platform. Sadly, he turned out to be correct—for now. But he is wrong about who the American people are. When more of them vote, his dark vision of America will be repudiated, and the arc of the moral universe will once again bend toward justice.

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Concluding Thoughts

My wife and spoke to readers on a Substack livestream on Saturday. The video is below:

On Monday, this newsletter will re-enter the world of news about politics. My goal is to do so in an informative and accurate way while focusing on our ability to defend the rule of law and democratic norms.

Tuesday’s loss was unlike anything we have experienced before or will experience again. If you are devastated, that means that you fully appreciate the enormous implications of what just happened to America. That appreciation is a good sign that you are well-positioned for a full recovery.

Stay strong! I will be in touch tomorrow!

Daily Dose of Perspective

The image below is of the Heart Nebula, which is 9,500 light-years from Earth. I include it in today’s newsletter in honor of everyone who gave their heart to Kamala Harris’s campaign. Stay strong!