How the Democrats (Really) Lost this Election (and Much More)

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You guys have asked me a number of questions about the future now. Particularly, about the Democrats, why they (really) lost, what they can do, will do, and what happens next. 

Questions like: 

What do you think the prospects might be for some degree of reversal/correction at the midterms? 

Close to zero. 

I’m going to explain to you what happens next, but first let me quote another question. 

What are your thoughts on whether state and/or other local governments are able to insulate their populations against what is coming? Will Democratic governors have any role, or should we expect those sorts of local political institutions to be washed over? 

I want to answer this question, but not in a simplistic way, in the way it deserves. 

Do the Democrats have a future? 

Let’s ask that a different way.  

How did the Democrats really lose this election? 

Let’s ask that in a different way. 

Who are the Democrats? 

Are they you? Are they their “base,” which didn’t turn out for them? Who is this thing calling itself a political party, anyways, anymore? 

How the Democrats Really Lost This Election  

The Dems didn’t just lose an election, as in any old one. I shouldn’t need to point out they magnitude of what they just lost. 

How did this happen? 

Obviously, they failed to address the Number One, Two, and Three Issue, which were all about the economy, inflation, the cost of living crisis, and immigration. So, like I predicted, they got blown away. 

But why did they do that? 

Where did this failed strategy come from? 

Think back with me. 

Who was it that forced Biden to step down? I’m not saying that’s the mistake here, we’re just analyzing how power works for the Dems, to understand how they ended up with this mess of a failed strategy. 

It was Ezra Klein who originally called for Biden to step down. Remember that? It’s been conveniently forgotten, but that was step one in how we got here. He said that, people objected, and then a little while later, after pressing the issue, he was able to actually make it happen.  

Now, again, the point isn’t about Biden. It’s about having that much power, as I’m going to explain. Could you make a sitting American President…step down? Who really has that much power? 

And who has the power to do what happened next? 

Kamala was chosen. But again, by whom? Not in an open primary. Not through any real semblance of a democratic process. Her message was shaped and chosen for her.  

By guys like that. 

It was the Pod Save America guys who sort of rallied to Kamala, and persuaded everyone that this was the way forward, the only option, the best choice, etcetera. And then the rest of this clique sort of joined in. 

Do you see a theme here? 

The Democrats ended up with a failed strategy for a reason. 

Around 20 years ago now, they turned to what were then a young generation of pundits. For fresh thinking, advice, the idea being that these guys were the future. Today, they’re in the clutches of these figures, this clique, this class. So much so, that this clique has come to wield something overmuch like absolute power. 

These figures tend to have one thing in common. They’re mostly bros, and they’re mostly basically neoliberals. 

As neoliberals, what have they told the Dems? 

Let me rewind for a second actually. 

It’s imagined widely that beneficent donors “control” the Dems. They don’t. Donors on the Dems side are remarkably hands-off. Big donors dictate to the other side what priorities should be. 

But on the Dems side, it’s these guys that do this work. They police the paradigm.  

They tell the Dems what to do. 

They say: this is what to do, offer, promise, this is how to campaign, this is how to reach people, this is what the message should be, these are what the policies should be. 

In Ezra Klein influencing Joe Biden—a sitting American President—to step down, you see how powerful this class has really become.  

Think about that level of power for a second. Then think about choosing the next candidate, not according to party principles, primaries, or even basic democracy, but in spite of it, and then choosing her message and policies and agenda for her. 

Think about that level of power. 

Not even Putin or Xi can make an American President step down. But pundit bros can. 

See what I mean by “something close to absolute power”? 

So. I say all that to you for a reason. This is who the Democratic Party is now. 

It isn’t about shadowy puppetmasters with Big Money behind the scenes. It’s controlled by a class of bro pundits, a clique, with something scarily close to absolute power. Power that’s so outsized that even Putin’s sort of green with envy. 

Think about it. Basically, what happened was that they told Kamala what to say, do, think, and she did it. She had to, as I’ll explain. It was their message she was repeating, not hers, really—we all sort of wondered what she stood for, around the world. It’s worse than even that. They chose her. A primary didn’t. The party didn’t. They did all that after they made Biden, a sitting President, step down. 

Again: absolute power. 

Really pause and think about that for a second. 

Do you think that’s healthy? That a bunch of pundit bros are the ones in charge of everything? Do you see how it led to where we are now? Let me make that part much, much clearer. 

The Problem is That The Guys With Absolute Power are Also Absolutely Clueless 

So what’s the problem here? 

The problem is that these guys are clueless. 

That’s not my opinion. 

This all happened exactly the way pundit bros wanted it to happen. The way they made it happen. From pushing Biden out, to choosing Kamala in a non-democratic way, to shaping her message, to policing its boundaries. Economy great, life awesome, everyone be happy. That was their thinking. 

And they lost catastrophically. 

So: it’s not my opinion that they’re clueless, it’s the verdict of history now. They got blown out of the water. The entire world is in shock. 

Why did they make all this happen? That’s the clueless part. 

We know what happens in situations like these. Long-run stagnation. Working class despair. Authoritarianism soon rises.  

This is the 20th century’s great lesson, for Pete’s sake. 

And yet these guys don’t know it. Or maybe they do, but they want to deny it. Either way, they’re just made of a kind of ignorance that’s utterly startling to behold. 

I try to teach you guys things. One of those things is how minds like Keynes rebuilt the world after the last World War. What he discovered, this link between stagnation, despair, and self-destruction—it literally reshaped the world. It’s not, in other words, some kind of obscure or weird or marginal theory. It’s the reason we have institutions like the IMF and World Bank and the global trading system and on and on and on. 

Do they even know this? How can they not? We don’t know their level of ignorance. Whether it’s willful, or whether it’s just sheer downright I’ve-never-read-a-history book stupidity. 

All we are left with is the mess they made. 

We have to pick up the pieces. 

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who’s read a history book or three should have been able to say: ignoring the economy and the working class in a time like this is going to be ruinous. You’re going to lose. Hell, I said it, didn’t I? Why did my prediction come true? Not because I have superhuman powers. But because I know the most basic lessons of history, and so should we all. 

But particularly guys like this. 

Who want to be political kingmakers. I’m not asking for a lot here. Just…that they know…the most basic lessons of modern history. That’s it. I’m not asking for pundit bros to be able to quote me the abstract points of Baudrillard’s criticism of America, or explain to me way Sartre said existentialism was a humanism. 

Just to get the most basic lesson there is. 

But they don’t even get that much. 

Yet the Democratic Party is controlled by them to the point that they can get a sitting American President to step down. 

Do you now see how this catastrophe was waiting to happen? How it really unfolded? 

They didn’t want Kamala to talk about the economy or the working class. To them, things are always great—these are the same guys that told Biden to say the economy was great, wonderful, booming. 

And so it all ended up in the shocking, insane mess of now. 

They blew it. Through this staggering level of ignorance. And worse, the Dems on the inside—the politicians?—these are the only guys they listen to. 

Who Really Controls the Democrats, and Why 

Now, we can discuss the future of the Dems in a clearer way, that you understand how power really works for this organization. Now that you grasp it’s controlled by a class of pundit bros, who don’t grasp modern history, and so fail, time and again, the question becomes: can the Democrats outgrow them? 

The answer to that is: do they want to? 

Who’s stopped reading or listening to the pundit bros, or any of the rest of this clique? You? I’m not saying you should, by the way, I’m just pointing out that they’re literally insulated from any consequences in a way so extreme that even Lenin would be jealous. 

If you or I influenced a sitting American President to step down, and then helped lose the next election catastrophically, do you think we’d still have a job? But they do. 

And they will. 

People listen to them because powerful politicians listen to them.  

Powerful politicians won’t stop listening to them, because they tell them what they want to hear. Already, they’re telling them: it wasn’t our fault, and therefore, it wasn’t your fault. American are just idiots! Why, they’re all just racists and buffoons! Blame the people, not us! Hey, we did no wrong because we can do no wrong. 

And already, politicians on the inside are falling for it. 

Have you heard anyone in the Democratic Party say, wait a minute, hold on—picture Wile E Coyote—why did we let Biden step down, anoint Kamala, refuse us a primary, and then shape exactly the wrong message, so wrong we got destroyed to the point that democracy itself might not survive? 

Nobody’s saying that. 

That’s because now power works both ways. The politicians are at the mercy of pundit bros, just as much as they’re at the politicians mercy. Get on the wrong side of these guys, and they’ll exact a vengeance worse than Trump—they did it to Biden, after all. 

So politicians are scared of them. 

And in that situation? Where there’s a deadlock? Nothing will change. Nothing tends to change. It’s just a stranglehold. 

Politicians will go on being terrified of this class of pundits, who will go on being wrong, but facing no consequences, for the precise reason that politicians are terrified of them, and that will mean people will keep listening to them, knowing that they have the ear of insiders. 

See how all that works? 

All of that tells us something that’s pretty critical, if you ask me. 

The Democrats are not going to change. 

Even if they say they want to, they won’t be able to, because no insider will challenge these guys, it’d put their own political future at risk. If you were a Dem politician, would you take on the pundit bro figures? Hell no! You’d sit there and do what they told you. 

Which is what just happened, to catastrophic effect, of course. 

And that is exactly what will keep happening. 

Sure, they’ll give a little. But not much. They’ll probably say, oh, now we to throw the working class a bone, hey, we have to talk about the economy a little bit. But figures like this, cliques like this? They exist to police the boundaries of paradigms.  

That is their real job. It is their purpose. It’s why they form and stick together. 

The paradigm in this case is neoliberalism. 

Which nobody wants. 

How Political Parties Die 

The failed paradigm is why they exist. It’s why they’re a clique. That clique doesn’t just include examples I've given, like Ezra and Pod Save, it includes various columnists and pundits and so forth. They’re a proper clique though—they all know each other, they’re buddies, they’re a class, in a proper sense, in that way. Together, they’re a nucleus that polices the paradigm for any kind of deviation or change, which isn’t allowed. 

And as a class, together, they now wield absolute power.  

So much so that they forced, let me say it again, a sitting American President to step down, then chose the next candidate, undemocratically, and then dictated what she should say, her policies, platform, and message. 

So who do you think can challenge them? 

Some…governor? Some random Congressperson? Don’t kid yourself. These are the guys with real power, and the level of power they have is orders of magnitude greater than small fry like that, who quake in their boots, and would lick theirs for an endorsement or appearance or interview. 

This is the reality of power in the Democratic Party. 

And all that tells us how the future will play out. 

Nothing will change. 

This class, this clique, which wields absolute power, will never allow a figure like Liz Warren to rise. They hate Bernie more than vampires hate the sun, because of course Bernie’s openly not a neoliberal.

To pass the test, and be allowed into power, you have to kiss the ring, but to even get that far, you have to say the right things, which is what Kamala did. Everything’s great! Economy? Awesome! Life? Excellent! Let’s all dance with joy. 

Life is great for these guys. Why would they begin to think that life is terrible for anyone else, when the only people they ever talk to are each other? 

But for precisely that reason, to even be able to kiss the ring of the pundit bro class, any aspiring politician is going to have to say exactly the same things they wanted Kamala to say. 

Only those things, as we all know now, end in catastrophic failure, because nobody believes them. 

So nothing will change. That should answer questions about “resistance,” too. It’s these guys who just blew up your future, but nobody can resist them now. If Biden and Kamala can’t, by all means, go for it, but I wouldn’t bet on it. 

The Democrats don’t have a future. Zero. There is next to no chance they will rise again in our lifetimes, and if they do, it won’t be in a way that means much, but as a shadow of what liberal democracy requires. 

The midterms? They’re going to be a rinse and repeat of all this, unless Trump royally screws up the economy, which he might, but I think he’s smarter than that, to be honest, and we’ll discuss that. On the Dems side, though, like I said, nothing will change.  

Figures will emerge who are just mouthpieces for this class of pundits, who wield absolute power, and they’ll say whatever they want them to say, which is more or less exactly what Kamala did, who was also just a mouthpiece, really, for these dudes.

The Dems are a party which is on the verge of extinction now. Pundit bros have gotten rich and famous and powerful. They don’t care if it all falls apart, because they have everything they ever wanted. They’re right there right now, not learning a thing, which is sort of shocking, but it also proves: they are not up the task before them, and they’re not interested in it, which is actually winning. 

Not just money, power, and fame for yourself. But elections, democracy, the future, all of that. 

That they’ve failed at, but they won’t suffer a consequence, because now they’re too powerful. For anybody to check or challenge to take on. Me, you, all of us, the party itself, its insiders, its politicians, all of them.

When classes and cliques grow this powerful, that they’re beyond all consequence, or even any kind of balance, then of course, nothing will change, and things will only get worse.  

And that should tell you everything you need to know about the future in this regard. 

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