You make the mistake of thinking elections aren’t won at a visceral level when they are. Images, feelings, etc.
We are in a post-liberal political world. Look around you and you see it everywhere. Liberal democratic institutions of the post-WWII years have been discredited by the neoliberal policy of the post-Cold War years.
People want something different than a defense of the system that has utterly failed to provide Americans with the basic standard of living that we had come to expect as Americans.
Above all, Trump offers blame and vindication. He offers a home for people who feel alienated from the status quo, which is a lot of people when society is as isolated as it has become. He offers reasons for why people’s standard of living have declined. It’s immigrants coming to steal your jobs, it’s the money given to trans people, it’s the liberal elite.
The Democratic Party offered a defense of the current system and little else. The few progressive policies offered by Harris came off as half-baked given her flip flops and lackluster messaging. This wasn’t helped by her literally embracing someone who was emblematic of the failures of American policy over the last half century: Liz Cheney.
TL;DR: The Democratic Party is still trying to operate as a liberal party at a time when liberalism has been thoroughly discredited in the minds of the average American. We are in an era where policy of left vs. right matters less than policy of pro or anti establishment.
I, of course, happen to think left policy solutions work. It doesn’t matter if we can’t win power to implement them.
How am I making the mistake of saying that elections aren't won at the visceral level when im bluntly stating that's ALL it takes to win. There is no policy. There is no direction. There is no anything that appeals to Americans any longer other than rage, blame, fear, angst, and humor. Make them laugh and make them mad. They'll do anything.
Also, this notion of a slip in standard of living is ludicrous. Im 46 and the standard of living is FAR higher right now for even the lowest members of our society than it was for the lower middle class even in my childhood.
Nearly everyone has food. Nobody is eating government cheese and peanut butter which we practically lived on. Everyone has multiple televisions and smartphones. Nobody is using outhouses...which were still a thing in my childhood in places.
Here is what middle class looked like for us:
--2 incomes afforded 1500 square feet in the country.
--we MAYBE ate out once a month and cooked every other day
--we got food help from the government
--we shared a party line home phone with our neighbors because of cost
--we worked on cars that were as old or older than my parents to stay on the road
--we gardened and canned/preserved everything to eat during winter
--no air conditioning and one wood heater in the middle of the house which we cut wood ourselves for
--one 24 inch color console tv with antenna and one 13 inch balck and white in my parents room
--one pair of shoes to start school and one more at Christmas. Never any others
--furniture was always a mishmash of handmedowns and everything was used until threadbare
That was middle class rural America in about 1985.
Those who were a notch down from us lived 8-10 people in a single wide heated by Kerosene heaters in the middle of the floor.
Where is this drop in standard of living?
