Vincent Oriedo, a biotechnology scientist, had just such a question. What lessons have been learned, he asked, from Harris’s defeat in this vital swing county in a crucial battleground state that voted for Joe Biden four years ago, and how are the Democrats applying them?
“They did not answer the question,” he said.
“It tells me that they haven’t learned the lessons and they have their inner state of denial. I’ve been paying careful attention to the influencers within the Democratic party. Their discussions have centred around, ‘If only we messaged better, if only we had a better candidate, if only we did all these superficial things.’ There is really a lack of understanding that they are losing their base, losing constituencies they are taking for granted.”
“We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that that do not criticise the moneyed interests. They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs.”
Still one step lacking to understand what Republicans already do.
Moneyed interests are the leaders you get. Money is just one of the kinds of power, but a lot of other kinds are applied in the form of money. You can’t seriously expect to contribute energy of a negligible cost into expressing your opinion and even casting your vote, and even donating a dollar or two, and for that to somehow give real power to your side, even multiplied by millions. You are already choosing from a limited pool of people and positions to support. Defined by parties with real power before your choice. Together with a lot of other conditions of an election.
This is why the perfect, logical, supposedly honest system the more classical kind of Democrats dream about would not result into a honest democracy.
This is why the well-meaning kind of Republicans talk about checks and balances, and interpersonal connections between people having power, and gun ownership and in tech it would seem sometimes that they want to get into dystopian future faster.
That is because dystopian future may be better than dystopian past. Every day of your life is unlike any before it. It’s the same in history and good tall states with institutions and good democracies are devolving into something a bit more “1704 anno domini” all over the world. This is not anything new. The world is always changing. Unfortunately what progressives today consider progress is not the direction in which the humanity is, well, progressing.
But that dissonance is a clue for us to see. It’s not Bronze Age anymore, but humans are still eating each other. Progress is meaningful on such a scale, and so little affected by someone’s personal decisions, that any party or ideology calling itself “progressive” seems arrogant to the degree of madness.