Democrats are worried about what they did to America by allowing Trump to beat them. And they really did do a number on us by not dealing with the border, food prices, and cultural issues. They all have a theory. David Frum writing in the Atlantic is typical. He writes that America is now poised to become a different kind of country, where the DOJ focuses on punishing Trump’s enemies, where Trump’s loyalists take over regulatory agencies making the nation less safe for consumers, children, and all of us, and where Trump uses foreign policy and military power to advance his personal and political goals. He might even declare a ‘National emergency” so he can use some military to deport thousands (millions?) of illegal (legal?) immigrants.

Trump is not a serious man. He loves tariffs without understanding them. Maybe he thinks they’ll get paid for by crypto, which no-one understands.

In addition to worrying about what Trump will do, democrats are trying to figure out why they lost. Why did so many Americans vote for a convicted criminal, who is dumb, mean, doesn’t read, treats women badly, and knows nothing about governing or foreign relations? When, gee, those people could have voted for Kamala Harris with her kick-a-poo joy juice.

Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, knows why the dems lost. Bernie asks whether “the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic party” will “learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign.” 

Sanders goes on as he usually does: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” He cites economic inequality across the country, the high cost of health care, and U.S. support for the war in Gaza. He’s surely right about all that.

Sanders is right about dems abandoning the working class. But it wasn’t just the dems; businesses also abandoned their workers when they abandoned their businesses. A case in point:  I grew up in a steel town. People worked making steel sheets and tubes. They were democrats for sure. (I think my father was the only Republican in town. Mom was descended from Welsh coal miners; she loved FDR. The only thing he did she didn’t like was the Daylight Savings Time nonsense. She hated that, as I do. You may have heard that other people started it but FDR actually did. I heard my mother complain about it every time the time changed.)

Then U.S. Steel failed to keep up with the technology of steel making, and the Japanese took over the world of steel. Youngstown became a ghost town, two-thirds the population gone, empty houses demolished, workers abandoned.

Former California Congressman Adam Schiff, now Senator-Elect, also knows why the dems lost. He says simply: “It’s the economy”. No, Adam, it isn’t “the economy.” The economy, the statistics, are just fine. It’s the price of groceries, Adam, which Trump talked about but Harris didn’t.

And it’s the border mess. There are many immigrants visible now in cities country-wide. Biden made this mess much, much worse, and failed to do anything about it. Harris avoided the subject like the plague, never mentioning it in her campaign. There are estimated to be more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., and there are estimated to be more than 370,000 not-apprehended criminal immigrants roaming around. (These numbers from the American Immigration Council.) Any democrat who doesn’t think this represents a huge problem that influenced lots of voters is just a fool.

So, no mystery: there are a lot of reasons the dems lost the election in a widespread fashion. Their elites abandoned the working classes, they all ignored the immigration issue, they claimed inflation was solved but the prices of things like groceries were still going up. (Actually, way up.) No mystery.

As for who is responsible for the dems loss, well that’s easy. It’s the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its Chairman Jaime Harrison. They let Biden run till he nearly fell down, and then had no selection process that might well have produced a candidate able to beat Trump. Harris was handy so they ran with her. She did well, but never had a chance.

What now for the dems? Jaime Harrison is resigning so there will be a new DNC chairman. What the dems need but don’t have is a leader who will deal with immigration, prices and the Progressives wagging the party. Imagine, say, Jack Kennedy?

The democrats won’t win next time, either, so long as they ignore the border, food prices, and the cultural changes that ordinary Americans hate. You’ll see: the next President could well be Donald Jr., Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany or Barron. Why wouldn’t Donald get one of his children nominated?

Just Sayin’.