What Now?
Navigating a Trump Term. Dos and Dont’s for Grieving Democrats
It’s a time of grieving for so many Democrat friends in and around San Francisco, and others spread around the US and beyond. Some will spend extra money on therapy, will consider themselves traumatized, and will wonder how the world is going to recover from this bizarre election win by an unprincipled criminal who rose to power on hate and division. Others — including myself — saw it coming, and are unsurprised but wondering what this term will look like and how it will affect us, on macro and micro levels.
Whether we’re dyed-in-the-wool progressives or moderates who lean slightly left, we’re all unhappy that Kamala lost. But we lost. What now?
Most (but not all) MAGA voters and commentators will have enough decorum to avoid rubbing it in, and will not taunt Democrats with nastiness but will instead focus on execution and the business of delivering on promises made by the MAGA candidate during his campaign. Many blue voters, sadly, will be unable to resist expressing their hatred and anger at the MAGA people. Not helpful.
Here are some thoughts on what will help the blue party gather itself and remain strong, relevant and effective through a Trump term and until it can get a candidate elected President.
Write the agenda. Stay on it. Stand FOR Something.
Do not take the bait. Do not spend your time responding to what Trump did/said today. He’s playing you. He knows how to drop a decoy and send millions of liberals into a flurry of angry commentary while he quietly signs an agreement that has profound implications on national security or the environment. We don’t even notice until the feathers have settled from his racist remarks on a TV interview. Too late.
Write the agenda that holds the Democratic Party to a strategy, not a tactical dance. Write policy on the border, immigration, gun law, the economy, jobs, public safety, reproductive rights, foreign policy, military strategy, and tax. Do not deviate.
Talk about what we’re going to do, not about what your opponent is doing wrong. Talk about working families and what your policies will do for them.
Stay away from woke stuff.
Never mind the virtue signaling of pointing out racism and vilifying some ageing rock star for something they said in 1978. Avoid associating with academics whose message is alienating to working families. You know, “all white people are racist, all men are toxic, all billionaires are evil”. This credo is not helpful for democrats wishing to elect a blue president. Drop it.
Move your HQ from DC to rural Pennsylvania.
Let go of the elite connections that damage your credibility with real people. You will still get large donations from rock stars and business moguls. You won’t have to obey them when they try to shape your message. Let go of Bernie and Warren, and anyone else who sounds like them. Elizabeth Warren’s belief system is not what wins the next election. It’s toxic material to small business owners and families working long hours to make ends meet. They want more money. More buy power. Nicer homes. Safer schools and neighborhoods. They didn’t ask to be your poster child victims as you explain financial injustice to the world. They wish they were rich. If you don’t understand that, you’re out of touch.
When you talk about crunch issues that divide people, refrain from making damning comments about the opposing view. Religious people protesting abortion are not your enemy. Talk to what you stand for, without criticizing what you stand against. We need to be attractive to more people than they are attractive to. It’s not hard.
Policy → Action
Kamala should have promised to close the border and implement a fair, efficient and effective process for US visa and asylum seeker applications. She should have promised to implement a federal system to ensure voter fraud is near impossible in America. It’s already pretty solid, but the right answer is not gaslighting the red voters who fear ballot fraud. It’s a candidate committing to investigate and fix if needed. She should have praised President Joe Biden for an excellent job during his term. She should have acknowledged that inflation is biting families whose costs have grown while their income has not. She should have promised a fiscal policy that continues to fight inflation rather than ignoring the topic and pretending the issue is fixed. She should have implored voters to resist hating each other and ask themselves what is better for America. She should never have called Trump a fascist. She should have instructed her entire campaign to eradicate such language and replace it with inclusive, all-people all-colors all-religions welcome here. Well it’s too late. She did none of those things.
Build Community, not Groupthink.
There’s a difference between like-minded individuals chorusing over their shared dislike of ‘those people’, and a true community that collaborates to build something, has a shared vision, and whose people are willing to give and take as they strive to make a difference in the universe. The Democrat voter has been busy doing the former, and needs to move to the latter. People want to join communities. They are left uninspired by opinion groups. The more we commiserate ‘those people’ and try to sound superior to them, the more we become unattractive and therefore a minority.
Nobody should lose to Trump.
Except when their sanctimony exceeds their substance. Sadly, this is exactly what happened in US Presidential Election 2024. I hope and pray we’ll take a lesson from 2024 and take 4 years to build an inclusive, liberal minded culture to replace our exclusive, illiberal culture.
