The Price of Arrogance

4th of July parade, central New York State, 2024

This has been an exhausting week. I don’t recommend having Covid at the same time as the U.S. election. However, while getting sick was unpredictable, the results of the election were not. I’m sorry to say it, but I was not at all surprised.

We’ve all had the chance to read endless articles and op-eds about why the Democrats lost. I’ll give a short list of some I thought were the most illuminating at the end of this post. The reasons for Harris’ defeat were, I think, complex, and we all need to sit down and reflect on them for a good long while before rushing into “resistance” mode. While it’s tempting to generalize and stereotype, doing so is a disservice to both sides. Instead, I’d like to write a little bit from my own experience and observations.

I grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s in a sparsely-populated rural county of New York State where most people worked in agriculture, light manufacturing, or the local service sector - schools, libraries, town government, roads, health and safety, retail and small local businesses. A majority of my classmates in the centralized public school came from family farms; others had fathers who were truck drivers, school teachers, woodworkers, welders, mechanics, factory workers, store workers. Many mothers didn’t work outside the home unless they were single parents, which was rare. My own father was a real estate broker. The town was quite self-sufficient -- you could buy almost everything you might need in its downtown, where there were grocery, clothing and hardware stores, a pharmacy and other retail, restaurants and soda fountains, a newsstand, a bakery, a feed store and grain mill, a nice hotel with a bar and dining room. At least 90% of these families were affiliated with one of the seven local Christian denominations— in a town of 1,400 — and most attended church regularly. One of the two local family doctors was Jewish, but in our town, that family was the one exception. There was one black family of migrant workers who had come up from the south to pick beans, and stayed. In spite of significant poverty in some areas, it was, and still is, a cohesive and caring community. Multi-generational family connections have always been very strong. In my class of about 135 high school graduates, about 1/4 went on to four-year and two-year colleges. Others went into the military, got local jobs, stayed on the farms, married and had children. Most remained within fairly easy driving-distance of their original families.

What has changed in fifty years? Almost all of the manufacturing jobs are gone. One exception is Chobani yogurt, which employs a number of people and has helped the struggling dairy industry. Most of the family farms have gone out, due to corporate farming, lack of government support, debt, and children who didn’t want to do the very hard work of farming for little return. Malls and online shopping have decimated the downtown, where there is little retail left. Both partners in a couple usually have to work, often at more than one job. Single-parent households are common. Many people raise children and also take care of aging parents. Healthcare is not great. People must use the limited local options, and travel to cities for specialist healthcare, which many are reluctant to do. Poverty, obesity, smoking and accidents contribute to disability, premature aging, and ill health within the society. While in my youth nobody talked about drugs other than alcohol and dope, and crime was almost non-existent, opioid addiction and drug-related crime are now significant problems. Cutbacks in state programs have taken away more jobs. And everyone is dependent on cars to get around; there’s no other transportation, so the price of gas affects everyone. When I was growing up, there was quite a lot of wealth in these towns and it showed — farms were well-kept, houses were well-maintained. Today, this area, just south of the former “Rust Belt” of manufacturing that ran along the Mohawk River Valley across the center of the state, is definitely poorer and struggling, and you can see it easily.

New York State voted for Harris, 55.8% to 44%, but that result was driven entirely by the urban regions: Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and the Hudson River Valley, New York City and its surrounding region all went to the Democrats, though by lower margins than four years ago. Every one of the rural counties in the state voted for Trump. In my former home, Chenango County, he won by 64% to 36%.

In my own case, my mother, grandmother and great-aunts all had college educations and were Democrats. My father, a veteran of WWII with a high school education, voted Republican most of the time. It was expected that I would go to college, and my parents had begun saving for that when I was born. After graduation from university I worked for New York State in an environmental education center in my hometown, but two years later I left the area to live in a well-populated part of New England where there were greater opportunities to use my education and abilities. Americans like me — urban, educated, willing to move and adapt, facile with technology, single or with small nuclear families, often living far from their parents — have benefitted from the years of Democratic presidencies. We have the luxury, given by our privilege, to think about ideological issues: justice, human rights, democracy. But, mainly, we are OK with the status quo -- we aren’t living paycheck to paycheck. Those of us who are female, or black, or brown, belong to ethnic or religious minorities, or have a non-straight sexual orientation, may be politically motivated by the oppression and prejudice we have witnessed and faced. We’re comfortable with diversity because of our life experience with many different people in colleges and universities, in the workplace, through travel, and in our urban environments.

Where I live now, in Quebec, we talk about the Two Solitudes - the very different lives and outlooks of the French and English communities, especially in the last quarter of the 20th century, which ended in the so-called “Quiet Revolution” where the French Canadians took control of the province from the wealthier English and ended the oppressive domination of their society by the Catholic Church. What we’re seeing in America is somewhat similar: two entirely different cultures who find it extremely difficult to understand each other or to communicate across a wide divide. As happened in Quebec, one of those American cultures has considered itself superior, and acted that way. Resentment by the other has been simmering for a long time, fed by condescension, neglect, growing economic inequality, and fear of losing even more to outsiders who are given advantages that are perceived to be unfair. When a toxic leader comes along who stirs that pot, stoking the resentment by encouraging racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia, telling lies and making promises, it can boil over to catastrophic consequences.

The only thing that’s different about me from many people of my demographic profile is that I have experience with real people on both sides, and I refuse to participate in the disrespect. It’s wrong to paint all Trump voters with the same brush; they are not all Christian far-right, women-bashing, vaccine-denying white supremacists who advocate lawlessness and the overthrow of democracy, any more than all “blue” voters are all “childless cat ladies” like me, “San Francisco communists” — or all the other demeaning epithets thrown out by Trump and Vance.

Do many of the local people back in my hometown feel angry, abandoned, and left behind? Do they feel life has been stacked unfairly against them, even though they have worked hard all their lives? Of course they do. Neo-liberalism has failed them, taking jobs and self-respect away; the American dream is slipping further and further out of reach for them and their children; and the Democratic Party, once far more popular, has failed to offer them a vision for a better future. Post-pandemic, everything costs more — I find the prices in American supermarkets shocking. At the same time, it’s clear to all that the wealthy have become wealthier, and the middle class and the poor much poorer, with diminishing hope that this will change. Worse yet, the arrogance and disrespect of the liberal establishment are keenly felt by rural working-class people. Hilary Clinton was the Senator from New York before she was Secretary of State. And she’s the one who called people like my childhood neighbors and classmates — her former constituents who she should have understood far better — “deplorables.” People don’t forget that.

I have a pretty good idea who my classmates were, and who some of them are today. I know quite a few Trump voters, some working-class, and some who are very wealthy, and some who are in-between. All are decent people. It’s unfair and inaccurate to lump 64% of the county’s population together under some liberal notion of what a Trump voter looks like and thinks. What we’re learning is that the economy and immigration are at the top of the list of their concerns; they’re fed up with the Democrats’ focus on identity politics and political correctness, and they share a basic distrust of authority and governmental institutions. They feel that America should take care of its own citizens first. Socially and religiously, they tend to be more conservative, more patriarchal, and less concerned with democracy than with economic issues, gender, and personality. Was racism a factor? Yes, but remember that we did have a Black president for eight years. Was sexism a factor? Yes, and I think it was greater than race. Even among Latino and Black men, and even among women who, as one phone solicitor reported, repeatedly said they didn’t think America “was ready for a female president” and that they “couldn’t see her in the chair.” **

When people are desperate for change, they are going to vote for the person who seems to share their frustrations, speaks to their concerns, appears to respect them, and makes promises that resonate. They are most likely to vote for the candidate who seems strongest and most likely to get things done, in spite of the distaste they may feel for their style, lies, and behavior. I noted, in particular, this comment on a Facebook thread about immigration written by a former classmate of mine: “He’s (a) loudmouth bully but he’s probably the best of the crooks.”

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Tragically, the answers to some of these problems could have come from the left. The social democracy championed by progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders offers an alternative, populist, but compassionate and broadly-respectful agenda, based on the right to jobs and housing, a living minimum wage, universal healthcare and drug coverage, strong worker’s rights, inexpensive daycare, parental leave, fair taxation to address income inequality. It sounds…a lot like Canada. But in the U.S., such a program is labeled as “socialism” or even “communism.” As a Vermonter for thirty years — our state was the first to enact universal healthcare — I was well-acquainted with Sanders’ style and saw him in person several times; he too has the ability to listen to and speak to people from all walks of life, and he tells the truth. When he ran for the presidential nomination, he was extremely popular — but the Democratic establishment would have none of it. Instead we got Party insiders Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden. This week, Sanders issued a post-election statement accusing the Party of neglecting the working class and their concerns, and failing to address the war in Gaza. It was immediately repudiated by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Party chair Jaime Harrison, showing how unwilling the Party has been to move in a progressive direction, even though a majority of the country has been desperate for help, and for change. Instead, they campaigned with the Cheneys.

While pointing out Trump’s unsuitability for office and the threat he poses to democracy, Harris refused to make a significant break from Biden and the Democratic Party establishment, and didn’t clearly articulate an economic plan that resonated with working class voters. Although her support for women’s rights was a major positive that crossed party lines, her refusal to acknowledge the immorality of Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon alienated not only Arab-Americans, but many young people, and others like myself who are appalled that their tax dollars are used to support that conflict. Her gender and race were a positive draw in some sectors, and a surprising liability in others. If America is really still not ready to elect a woman president, surely this could have been predicted through polling. In the end, many people, myself included, voted for her reluctantly, wishing we had been given a better choice.

The fact is that you cannot have a social democracy and support a massive military budget at the same time. You cannot have a social safety net for all citizens, and also have a corrupt government that’s completely enmeshed with, and beholden to, corporate, military, and special interests, including foreign ones. You cannot reward corporations and the wealthiest individuals with tax breaks, power, and influence while the citizens who keep the economy going through their labor become poorer, and increasingly feel that they have no voice. And you cannot wage endless wars that destabilize other parts of the world, or fail to deal with climate change as the global emergency which it is, and expect other countries to shoulder all the burden of refugees fleeing desperate situations.

Into that situation of growing inequality, instability, fear and discontent rode Donald Trump, with his promises and lies, his anger and threats, ready to say whatever played the best to his audience, willing to subvert the law, and democracy in the process. It makes me think of a marriage that’s been failing for years, but the husband has been so busy and satisfied with his outside life that he’s refused to see the signs. Then one day, the wife comes down the stairs with her suitcase, and tells him it’s over; she’s leaving with Mr. Right. He’s astonished: “You’re such an idiot. You can’t possibly think he’s going to take care of you or treat you better than me! He’s a liar and a cheat, and everyone knows it!”

“Yes,” she says, “maybe that’s right, but you’ve been calling me stupid and fat and lazy for years. I’ve worked hard forever. I’ve told you what we needed to do to keep our marriage going, but you wouldn’t listen. There’s barely enough to pay our bills, and you’re always giving money away to strangers I don’t even know! Now I just want to feel some hope and some pride again. He may be everything you say, but he understands me, he seems to like me, and doesn’t talk down to me. He understands why I’m so angry and scared. I just want to try it. I want things to change.”

The husband can’t believe it. “What about your commitment to marriage? I thought you believed in it.”

”That’s just a piece of paper. I want to feel better.”

”Wait and see,” he says. “You’ll come running back to me. And I’m sure we can work something out.” She walks past him, out the door, and then turns for a moment, “By the way, I’m taking the car and the keys, so you won’t be able to drive for a while.”

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In my next post, I’ll try to explain what I think we need to do as individuals, and what the Democratic Party has to do to survive.

Some articles I found worth reading:

Thomas Frank, “The Elites had it Coming”, New York Times.

Sam Wolfson, “A fatal miscalculation: masculinity researcher Richard Reeves on why Democrats lost young men.” The Guardian.

John Harris, “From Trump’s victory, a simple inescapable message: many people despise the left,” The Guardian

David Brooks, “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?”, The New York Times.

**Oliver Hall, “I spent hours trying to persuade US voters to choose Harris not Trump. I know why she lost.” The Guardian.