The President We Deserve…?
If there is any bright spot in the election of an ignorant criminal traitor as President of the United States—and the companion election of a Republican Senate (and at this writing, even a GOP House) it is that Democrats finally may get their heads out of their butts and form a political coalition that includes everyone, not just people who look and act like me.
Maybe the best quote I saw postmortem was this from an unnamed Democrat, quoted in the WashPost:
“I will say this,” one House Democrat said. “The Democratic Party has a major working-class voter issue. It started a decade ago as a working-class White issue. It’s now gotten even worse and spread across racial lines.”
It's all about execution and performance. This year—despite the intelligence, poise and attraction of Democrat Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket—the party simply carried too much baggage with it for her to win. This included a widely unpopular incumbent, a fucked-up border policy, the war in Gaza (a foreign policy monster that Joe Biden was unable to contain politically)—not to mention the effect of persistent inflation on the pocketbooks of working class voters.
As a New Yorker, may I be forgiven for likening the Democrats’ Election Day debacle to my New York Yankees humbling 3-1 loss in the recent World Series?
I was more than happy to think that the Yanks’ hitting and pitching (cf: Harris’ optimistic energy on the trail) would power them through to a hard-fought (and to us NYers long overdue) World Series win. Then, reading sportswriters more knowledgeable than I, I learned about percentages of on-field performance—and suddenly the Yankees’ game-five implosion of errors on the field, and ultimate loss in the Series, made sense (cf: political baggage for the Dems.)
Then there is Joe Biden, a man who once would have been remembered as the nation’s savior after four terrible Trump years, yet who now will remembered bitterly (along with the late sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg) as someone who stayed too late at the party—and ruined everything.
Said Maureen Dowd in the Times: “He was selfish and vain. You know he’s sitting home, polishing his own enemies list and telling Jill that he could have beat Trump and pushing him out of the race was a lot of malarkey.
“He hurt his party, his legacy and his country by not saying at the beginning of his term that he would not run for a second term as an octogenarian — in time for all the stars of the party to compete, so Democrats could choose the most potent ticket to protect democracy…”
Maureen is almost right: Biden did, in fact, say his would be a “bridge” presidency to pave the way for a new generation of Democratic presidential hopefuls. Then he went back on his word and announced for re-election even as his age and pathetic frailty became more and more evident to anyone with eyes.
Harris was nominated by her party by virtual acclimation. Lost in the Dem euphoria that the doddering old man finally was gone, was the fact that this was, in fact, an unseemly, if necessary, putsch. Here’s conservative WaPost columnist Mark Thiessen putting the worst spin on it—yet speaking the truth:
“Democrats say Trump’s election is a blow to democracy. In fact, the opposite is true. Trump faced serious, credible opposition in a Republican primary — including two sitting Republican governors, three former Republican governors, a former congressman, a sitting U.S. senator and even his own former vice president. He won the GOP nomination in a landslide.
“He then faced a general election opponent, Kamala Harris, who never got a single Democratic primary vote and was chosen by party leaders in vape-filled back rooms…”
Let me say out loud: I think Kamala was a hell of a candidate—and she probably did as well as she could have, given the short campaign she had to run. But God I would have preferred if she—and any number of other attractive Dems, male and female, had duked it out during the primaries—if Joe had only stepped aside to let it happen. But, as my wife and partner Judith Goodman said to me:
“This is not unexpected after watching what happened in the Supreme Court when a brilliant woman would not step down, because it’s really about power and we as human beings are not set up to relinquish power when we have it…”
Now Democrats going forward will have to broaden their appeal—the way FDR did with the New Deal, the way LBJ did with the Great Society and civil rights legislation, the way Bill Clinton did with his political ‘triangulation’ –-and the way Barack Obama did with his greatest legacy, Obamacare.
It won’t be easy, but the winds of change remain at Democrats’ backs, I believe. Take abortion this election day:
Missouri voters passed a ballot measure to legalize abortion 52 percent to 48 percent, overturning a strict abortion ban that did not make exceptions for rape or incest.
Arizona voters easily passed a ballot measure expanding access to abortion.
Voters in three states where abortion was already legal — Colorado, Maryland and Nevada — passed ballot measures to enshrine the right in their state constitutions. (Nevada voters will need to pass the measure again in 2026 before it takes effect.)
New York voters passed a constitutional amendment that supporters say will protect abortion rights.
Combine this with sensible environmental protection favored by most voters, a more restrictive border policy (again a political winner), as well as finally calling out Israel’s Netanyahu as a promoter of genocide in Gaza, and Democrats may find their way back to political power—provided there still is a country left to govern.
Frank Van Riper is a Washington, DC-based documentary photographer, journalist, author and lecturer. During 20 years with the New York Daily News, he served as White House correspondent, national political correspondent and Washington Bureau news editor. He was a 1979 Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
