If we really want to get our country back, an essential first step is to face up to why so many people are so mad at the Democratic Party in general, and at the Biden-Harris administration in particular.
And, even as we acknowledge that some of these perceived grievances are legitimate, let’s also remember that none of them would justify choosing someone of Trump’s low character as president. We can grieve, we can be nauseous, we can be amazed at the credulity of a plurality of the American voters.
But we must face up to facts. Anger against Democrats arises from a smorgasbord of factors that various Trump voters (and Democrats who skipped voting in 2024) were concerned about:
- Their live in miserable economic circumstances, and Democratic elites don’t even recognize or understand their pain, let alone feel it. Anecdotal and survey evidence indicates the widespread concern over high inflation—a concern that transcends identity groups
- They live in an information environment dominated by lies, propaganda, and misdirected anger, and Democrats have ceded that information space to fascists and plutocrats—in consequence of which many are losing the capacity to tell the truth from a lie, to grasp the link between actions and consequences, to choose right over wrong, and to favor science over witchcraft as a problem solving tool
- It makes them angry that Democrats have no coherent, politically workable policy on who should be allowed to immigrate to the United States
- It makes them angry that Democrats have no coherent, politically workable policy on how to address the 11 million plus undocumented people living among us
- It makes them angry when Democrats demand their support on identity grounds, disregarding their actual views and their perceived interests
- It makes them angry that Democrats, like Republicans, have embraced neoliberalism and globalism
- Some favor Christianist nationalism over freedom of religion
- Some have extreme anti-abortion views
- Some are stone cold racists, who remain butt hurt that the South lost the Civil War
- Some boisterously embrace their toxic masculinity
- Some are addicted to conspiracy theories
- Some fault Democrats for denying that forest fires are caused by Jewish lasers from outer space
- Some are plutocrats gleefully exploiting all of the above
Facing MAGA 