Why Democrats are in trouble, and what I think they should do if they want to start winning again

Five years ago, Raymond Teachey voted, as usual, for the Democratic presidential nominee.

But by last fall, Mr. Teachey, an aircraft mechanic from Bucks County, Pa., was rethinking his political allegiances. To him, the Democratic Party seemed increasingly focused on issues of identity at the expense of more tangible day-to-day concerns, such as public safety or the economy.

“Some of them turned their back on their base,” Mr. Teachey, 54, said.

Working-class voters like Mr. Teachey, who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 but either backed President Trump last year or, as Mr. Teachey did, skipped the 2024 presidential election, help explain why Democrats lost pivotal swing counties like Bucks, and vividly illustrate how the traditional Democratic coalition has eroded in the Trump era.

Read the rest here.

I am not and have never been a fan of the political left. That said, and writing as a deeply disaffected former Republican, here is my unsolicited advice if Democrats want to start winning elections again.

* Ditch the identitarian politics and move to the center on the culture war issues. It may play well on the left coast and in New York, but in most of the rest of the country it is driving voters away. I realize that some groups need to be reassured now and then that you still have their backs and you can't afford to lose all of their votes. But that should not be the face of the Democratic Party. There is a reason why Bernie Sanders is drawing stunning crowds in deep red states. Bernie is about class and income inequality. Stop focusing on pronouns and start focusing on paychecks. 

* Stop treating people with traditional moral and religious beliefs as kooks, or worse. It's not divisive. It's offensive.

* Stop treating crime as a subject for a sociology lecture in college. Tell people that criminals need to be locked up, and then do it. And tell the "Defund the police" crowd to shut up. You can't treat every fringe opinion as acceptable if you want to win an election. These clowns are costing you more votes than they are delivering. And they are wrong.

* Get serious about the border. You don't have to be xenophobes where the only legal immigrants being welcomed are White South Africans. But illegal immigration was out of control. Trump wasn't wrong about that and Democrats were. 

* Become what Republicans used to be... i.e. fiscal conservatives. Americans are getting seriously frightened by the national debt. And they should be. 

* Become what Republicans used to be... i.e. champions of free trade. Tariffs are a sales tax aimed squarely at the working class and poor. They are also highly inflationary. Billionaires will still be able to afford their yachts. But Walmart shoppers are going to get hurt bad.

* Become what Republicans used to be... i.e. defenders of freedom globally. Isolationism, whether political or economic, is dangerous. Despotism is a form of political cancer. If it's not checked, it inevitably spreads. Ronald Reagan called Soviet Russia "the evil empire" and won the cold war. Can anyone see Trump telling Putin to "tear down that wall?" Start channeling Kennedy and Truman. 

* Move to the center on abortion. Stop endorsing abortion on demand with no questions asked and no time limit. Unfortunately, Democrats aren't, and never will be a pro-life party. But you don't need to be the party of Kermit Gosenll. 

* Stop talking about guns. It's a losing issue outside of the most left wing parts of the country.

* Return to traditional Democratic values. Between 1932-1968 the Democrats largely owned Washington. Eisenhower was the only Republican president elected in that 36 year period, and he was not exactly MAGA. How did Democrats do it? By concentrating on core bread and butter issues. A fair shake for the working man. Good schools for their kids with the real hope that they would have a shot at a better life than their parents. And a fair tax system where the wealthy paid their share. I would wager every dime I own that Elon Musk and Donald Trump pay a lower effective tax rate than the guy who changes the oil in your car. If Americans ever came to realize how completely rigged the tax code is for the benefit of Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy, the public outrage would be felt even in Texas. 

How the War Ended from Japan's Perspective

The Emperor in August 

Something appropriate for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Vigil for the Feast of the Dormition

Trump is lobbying for a Nobel

Well this explains his degrading decision to meet with Vladimir Putin, on American soil of all places. Somebody needs to remind him that, as pointed out by unreconstructed rebel in an earlier post; Neville Chamberlain never got the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump asked Norwegian minister about Nobel Prize

Reflections on the Decline of Civil Discourse

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part I: The Problem of Dialogical Illiberalism

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part II: The Barbarians at the Gates

In the Ruins of Public Reason, Part III: When the Barbarians Are at the Gates; Fascism, Bullshit, and the Paradox of Tolerance

I found much of the above to be pretty insightful, and at times, a bit uncomfortable reading.

A Photographic Tour of 19th Century Colonial Hong Kong

Peace for our time

So; Donald Trump has invited a brutal dictator and indicted war criminal to the United States in order to negotiate the surrender of another country's territory to Russia. What could possibly go wrong?

A Trip Across America (mid 1930s)

Vigil for the Transfiguration

A quick admin note

It's been forever since I did a review of the sidebar links. And sure enough, there were a lot of blogs and websites that have gone dark. It pained me to do it, but with very few exceptions, any blogs or sites that have not posted anything new in the last three years, were removed.

What Really Happened to the USS Maine?

America's Slide Into Authoritarianism is Accelerating

Office of Special Counsel launches investigation into ex-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith

Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged,’ Fires Labor Official

Texas moves to make elections meaningless

Pam Bondi ousts ethics watchdog amid DOJ purge

Trump's authoritarian streak

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump's tariffs are the greatest act of economic and political self-harm in modern American History

Donald Trump has succeeded in forcing America’s democratic allies to their knees. His country must henceforth live with the invidious consequences of what he has done. 

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal,” to borrow a line from Henry Kissinger.

Vladimir Putin has strung Trump along for six months without paying a price. China has turned the tables, forcing the White House to hand over Nvidia H20 chips in exchange for rare earth magnets that Trump should have thought about before launching his trade war. Didn’t the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, say China was playing with a “pair of twos”?

Trump’s full viciousness is reserved for Canada, a Five-Eye and core NATO loyalist, so dependable that America can leave its entire northern border undefended. It is punished with 35pc tariffs, hit harder because it dares to differ on the Middle East, though the effects will ricochet straight back into the US economy.

US-aligned Taiwan gets 20pc and a landing ban in New York for the country’s president as Trump curries favour with Xi Jinping. The Swiss get 39pc for failing to jump smartly to attention.

Brazil is outraged by 50pc tariffs explicitly intended to subvert the Brazilian judiciary and rule of law. Years of diplomatic effort to lure India into the Western camp are squandered by petulant 25pc tariffs plucked out of thin air and a burst of hectoring posts of Truth Social.

There is hardly a better way to keep the unnatural but menacing “BRICS” confederacy alive as the epicentre of a new global power structure dominated by China. Trump is achieving the near impossible. He makes the predatory communist dictatorship of China look almost attractive.

And if I sound angry, it is because I am. Nobody will forget this disgraceful abuse of American power.

The average US tariff rate will settle near 20pc. This is comparable in nominal terms to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 but tariffs were already high before that infamous bill and the US was then a closed economy. Imports were just 5pc of GDP. They are 16.4pc today and include critical components that keep the productive machine going.

“We’re looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley,” said Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate for trade theory.

Euphoric markets are wishing away the reckless demolition of a global trade system built, led, and painstakingly nurtured by the US for 80 years. “People just keep wanting to believe that Trump is making sense, that he isn’t as ignorant and irresponsible as he seems. But he is,” said Prof Krugman.

US economic growth slowed to 1.1pc in the first half of the year. You have to combine the two quarters because tariff “front-running” distorted the GDP data. The relevant metric is that real final sales are the weakest since 2022.

“We estimate that real personal consumption has now stagnated on net for six months, which rarely happens outside of recession,” said Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs.

If you think America is booming right now, you are looking a) in the rear view mirror, and b) at the wrong data. The next year will see a drip-drip of accumulating damage as stagflation hits with the textbook delay.

Trump’s tariffs are a tax on the US consumer. Maury Obstveld, ex-chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says the pass-through from the Trump 1.0 episode was total.

“Not only did the prices of tariffed goods rise, they rose by the full amount of the tariffs. American households and businesses bore the entire burden; none was shifted to foreign exporters,” he said.

The well-informed are watching the US bureau of labor’s monthly index of pre-tariff prices for imports. This rose in June. It is the smoking gun that tells us who is really paying the tab. The Yale Budget Lab says consumers will face price rises of 40pc for shoes and 38pc for clothes.

Read the rest here.

This needs to be read in its entirety.