Robert Reich: Pardon Me

Source:Robert Reich talking about Joe & Hunter Biden.

"My first reaction to the Sunday news that President Biden was pardoning his son Hunter was sadness.

Biden has a constitutional right to pardon his son, and I can understand his concern that Trump’s overt aim to use the Justice Department and FBI to pursue “retribution” against political enemies might subject Hunter to further charges and harassment.

House Republicans have claimed Hunter is guilty of more than the felonies he was charged with: lying on a firearms application form about his drug addiction and failing to pay taxes that he later did pay.

My sadness comes from President Biden’s suggestion that the charges against his son were influenced by Republican politicians. “It is clear that Hunter was treated differently,” he wrote. “The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.” Biden continued: “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

I can understand President Biden’s frustration, but his claim that Republican politicians were responsible for Hunter’s legal problems lends credence to Trump’s long-term claim that the justice system was “weaponized” against him and that he was the victim of selective prosecution, as Biden says his son was.

Biden’s claim also makes it more difficult for Democrats to stand against Trump’s plans to use the Justice Department for political purposes as Trump seeks to install as director of the FBI the cringeworthy sycophant Kash Patel, who has vowed to “come after” Trump’s enemies... 

But in suggesting that the charges against his son were politically motivated, President Biden has handed Trump something of a Trump card for arguing that of course the Justice Department is used for political ends, so watch me do the same.

Biden’s pardon also makes it more difficult for Democrats to criticize Trump for his use of the pardoning power to immunize friends and allies, at least one of whom he’s now appointing to an important diplomatic role.

Almost immediately after the news broke of President Biden’s pardon for Hunter, Trump used it to justify his planned pardon of the January 6 rioters. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” he wrote on social media. “Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!”

Among the people Trump pardoned in his final weeks in office was Charles Kushner, the father of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who spent two years in prison on tax evasion and other charges. Over the weekend, Trump announced he would nominate the pardoned Kushner to be ambassador to France.

From Robert Reich

"As a father, I get why Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter.  But, as president, you don't get to make purely personal decisions. This one will reverberate backward and forward in disastrous ways for Biden and Democrats." 

Source:Chris Cillizza talking about Joe & Hunter Biden.

From Chris Cillizza

From a post that I replied to David Pakman about this on Blue Sky yesterday.

David Pakman: No one is above the law (except for some people who are)

Derik Schneider: Damn, right! No one is above the law. Except the people who are. 

From David Pakman

Former U.S. Representative and 1 of the chief Never-Trumper's in America, Adam Kinzinger on President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter: 

"[Pres. Biden] was very clear that he wasn't going to [pardon Hunter Biden] then he turns around and does it," former Congressman Adam Kinzinger tells #TheView.

"It pales in comparison to, unfortunately, what I think you'll see under the Trump administration."

From The View

Whatever you think of Representative Kinzinger's (a man who I have a lot of respect for) point about this, he misses the point almost completely. (With all due respect) 

Imagine someone robbing a bank and then his case is dismissed, because the detectives on the case didn't bother to read the defendant his rights. And then someone else comes along and decides to rob a convenient store and gets caught almost immediately. And his defense is: "What about the guy who robbed the bank? If he can rob a bank, I can rob a store". How do you think that would play in a courtroom?

I agree with Robert Reich as often as Seattle sees the sun and runs out of coffee on the same day. Or as often as people get stuck in traffic in Antartica. As often as Miami Dolphins home games are cancelled due to snow. But when Little Bob is right, he's damn right. And Chris Cilliza who I agree a lot more often (than Robert Reich, even) and who I have more in common with politically and generationally, is completely right here as well.

I'm not a father, (knock on wood) never wanted to be, especially now as I push 50 years old, and I completely understand President Biden wanting to do everything that he can to protect his last, remaining son, especially as he's about to leave The White House in about 6 weeks. But as Chris Cilliza said, he's not just a father. And I would add, he's not the President of the Biden Family, or even Delaware. He's the President of the United States. And therefor is constitutionally required to faithfully execute laws of the United States, equally, for every American. 

You are not supposed to get special legal treatment in America, because your father is governor of your state, or President of the United States, especially by your governor or president. Both cases against Hunter are solid, which is why he was convicted. He even wanted to plea both of them out. 

So those are bad legal, constitutional, consequences, as as well as the bad precedent that it sets. But the political consequence might just be as worst. Very likely that the first day that Donald Trump is sworn in again as President of the United States, which will be January 20, 2025, he'll pardon all the January 6, 2021 rioters. And perhaps other political allies who were involved in that case from the outside, people like Steve Bannon. 

And Democrats will have nothing credible to say about that. Unless they were against President Biden's pardon of his son. So for example, I will be able to credibility criticize President Trump's corrupt pardons, as well as rest of The New Democrat. But any Democrat or Republican, or former Republican, who defended President Biden on this, will not be able to do that credibility. Because Donald Trump will be able to say: "Hey, if Joe Biden can pardon his son, how come I can't pardon my political allies?"

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Howard Dean: Democrats Need a 50 State Strategy

Source:Grabien- The Beat With Ari Melber & former Governor Vermont and DNC Chairman Howard Dean (2005-09)

Just to start this off, I'm a JFK Liberal Democrat. I'm a big tent Democrat. And if you think about it, that's the only way Democrats have ever won any national election, at least in the TV era. John F. Kennedy had Liberals like himself, conservative blue-collar Democrats, Northeastern Progressives, and Southern and rural Dixiecrats. And he still barely beat Richard Nixon, who was the sitting Vice President of the United States, in a very popular Eisenhower Administration in 1960. 

And people are going to say that 1960 is not 2024. And I'll respond by saying: "Well, water is not fire. But you are missing the point". Democrats will never win a national election with just white-collar, new-tech, hipsters, who drink coffee all day, from their favorite coffee house. Mixed in with militant Socialists, who want to democratically take down the American, Federal, form of government, and replace it with some type of socialist state. There just aren't enough white-collar yuppies and Socialists, for the Democrats to even win California, statewide, let alone with a presidential election and compete not just in swing states, but mainstream Democratic states like Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey. (Just a few examples) 

So, I go back to 1960, but go up to 1992 and 96 with Bill Clinton, look at Barack Obama in 2008 and 12, Joe Biden in 2020. What these campaigns had in common, is that they were all big tent campaigns. I mean then Governor Bill Clinton won Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, in 1992. Not just Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, all states that Kamala Harris lost in 2024. 

Go up to 2008, then Senator Barack Obama wins Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, to go with the Democratic Blue Wall states. 

4 years ago, Joe Biden wins Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, to go along with the Blue Wall states and got real close in North Carolina. 

And of course left-wing Democrats as well as people who I at least call Yuppycrats, are going to say that American politics has changed and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are just not the same anymore. My counterargument to that is that it's not so much that the country has changed politically. But it's the Democratic Party that has changed. 

The Democratic Party today is heavily dependent on big money, big, individual donors, who don't like MAGA and want to protect the country from MAGA. And the Democrats have taken that money and perhaps haven't replaced their grassroots organizations with all the individuals doing to the day-to-day, on the ground political work, but they're more dependent now on big advertising, in big and mid-size media markets, and do a lot less on the ground political campaigning, while relying on big name, "hot celebrities", the so-called fabulous people, to do a lot of their groundwork for them. 

So this brings me to what I think the Democrats should be doing instead. As I said yesterday, America is still 35-40% working class. 70% middle class, which combines both blue-collar and white-collar workers. The most reliable voters in America, are people who go to work everyday, who work very hard for their money, to pay their bills. Hoping to put some money away, and trying to give their kids a better opportunity at life, then they had when they started out. 

So exit polls from Statista indicate how both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris did with certain income groups in America: 

"Exit polls of the presidential election in the United States in 2024, share of votes by household income

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 46 percent of voters with a 2023 household income of 30,000 U.S. dollars or less reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, 51 percent of voters with a total family income of 100,000 to 199,999 U.S. dollars reported voting for Kamala Harris." 

From Statista

If you look at the Statista poll, only to income groups that Vice President Harris won, were people making under 30,000 dollars and over 100,000 dollars. Not what you would call high turnout, reliable voters, since low-income workers tend not to vote at all for multiple reasons and Americans who make over 200,000 dollars in America, is still fairly small to the rest of the country. Which gets me back to my point about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. 

The famous bank robber Willie Sutton coined the phrase: "Go where the money is". He was once asked: "Why do you rob banks?" With his reply being: "Because that's where the money is". Take that line of thinking up to a political sense and I would add you have to go where the votes are. American presidential elections are always decided by middle class voters and at least to a certain extent blue-collar workers. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, never get near The White House (at least as President) without these voters. 

And this takes me up to Howard Dean's 2005-06 50 state strategy, but take it up 20 years: 

"Watch: Dem leader who powered wins after Bush re-election on thwarting Trump's second term... 

From MSNBC

"Howard Dean: The Democratic Party's 50 state strategy has gone into som disrepair"

From Grabien

Now, when I'm talking about a Democratic 50 state strategy, am I expecting Democrats to win back Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia? No, of course not. 

But the last time that Iowa had a Democratic governor, was Chet Culver from 2007-11. 

The last time a Democrat won the governor's mansion in Missouri, was 2008. 

The last time that Indiana won the governor's race, was 2003. Phil Bredesen was a two-term Democratic Governor of Tennessee from 2003-11. 

Kentucky and North Carolina both have Democratic governors right now. 

Roy E. Barnes was a Democratic Governor of Georgia from 1999-03. 

There's fairly recent evidence, as well as current evidence, of Democrats not just competing, but winning in overwhelmingly, blue-collar states, that lean right on cultural issues, but where Democrats can play and win, if they focus on economic issues. The current Governor of Kansas, is Laura Kelly, she's a Democrat, she was reelected in 2022. 

The 50 state strategy is not about winning every single state and being the governing party in every single state at the same time. But instead it's about shooting for the stars and seeing how many stars that you can hit. Aiming for perfection knowing that you'll never be perfect, but doing that to see how good you can be, how close to perfection that you can get. Instead of what the Yuppycrats are doing now, which is raising as much money as possible, from big donors, in hoping of holding the Blue Wall and winning all the Deep Blue states, to be a governing party in America. 

If you look Vice President Harris's campaign message in 2024, it was mostly about freedom and opportunity. And you could argue that she made her freedom message too much about reproductive rights and let's say non-straight people rights and didn't have a broader and big enough freedom agenda, that included reproductive rights and rights for non-straights in America. And I would argue that. But her message wasn't a far-left, big government, socialist and nanny state agenda. 

The Vice President's downfall was that she didn't reach enough voters. Perhaps she didn't ignore the Clinton/Obama/Biden coalition, that had both white-collar, as well as blue-collar voters, but she didn't reach enough blue-collar voters. And it cost her and the Democrats the election. 

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Tom Nichols: Why Democracy Is Not Over

Source:The Atlantic Magazine editor Tom Nichols.

"Americans who care about democracy have every right to feel appalled and frightened. But then they have work to do. 

An aspiring fascist is the president-elect, again, of the United States. This is our political reality: Donald Trump is going to bring a claque of opportunists and kooks (led by the vice president–elect, a person who once compared Trump to Hitler) into government this winter, and even if senescence overtakes the president-elect, Trump’s minions will continue his assault on democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution.

The urge to cast blame will be overwhelming, because there is so much of it to go around. When the history of this dark moment is written, those responsible will include not only Trump voters but also easily gulled Americans who didn’t vote or who voted for independent or third-party candidates because of their own selfish peeves." 

From The Atlantic

As my colleague Fred Schneider wrote about last December on a similar issue: 

"Just to be completely honest and accurate: (not that I'm ever not completely honest and accurate) we don't know what a 2nd Donald Trump presidency would look like. And besides that, he would have to get reelected first. And he might have to do that as a bankrupt and convicted felon, whose currently confined in prison, waiting on his sentence, after being remanded by Judge Tanya Chutkan. You can look at the polls all you want, but Donald Tump has a long, uphill, road to climb, before he even gets reelected again. 

Having said all of that, I don't want to wait and find out what a 2nd Donald Trump presidency could look like. I don't think America can afford to take chance on him, because of what Jeffrey Goldberg and others have said. Which is why the U.S. Government, as well as American voters who love not just love America, but want to preserve and defend our liberal democracy, rule of law, and checks and balances, need to legally do whatever we can, to prevent Donald Trump from getting anywhere near The White House ever again." 

From The New Democrat

Tom Nichols literally wrote his article about what the next Trump presidency could look like, literally right after Election Night. And it appeared in the edition of The Atlantic that Wednesday. So maybe he wrote it on Election Night, thinking Donald Trump was going to win anyway. 

Mr. Nichols would go on to say (and I'm paraphrasing) that Donald Trump and his MAGA crew are simply too old and stupid to try to figure out how to try to transform the American, Federal, form of government, with all of it's checks and balances, (like any great liberal democracy) into a dictatorship. 

And if you think the incoming Republican Congress is simply going to let President Trump get his way on everything, just look at the Senate Republicans right now, where Matt Gaetz has already dropped out, and Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Bob Kennedy, and now Kash Patel are probably all under 50 votes right now. And House Republicans simply aren't going to have the votes to give President Trump his way on everything anyway. They'll start off the 119th Congress with just 217-435 seats. 

As my father told me, who worked for the Public Health Service at the Food and Drug Administration for 29 years, before going into the private sector, the U.S. Government is simply too big, even with all the executive orders that President Trump could sign, to transform it into a dictatorship overnight. They would need more than just the Vice President, the Congress, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, behind this Project 2025. They would need most, if not all the Federal agencies that are under these cabinet heads as well, a long with the workforce, which is around 10 million Federal employees. 

As Fred Said: 

"Having said all of that, I don't want to wait and find out what a 2nd Donald Trump presidency could look like. I don't think America can afford to take chance on him, because of what Jeffrey Goldberg and others have said. Which is why the U.S. Government, as well as American voters who love not just love America, but want to preserve and defend our liberal democracy, rule of law, and checks and balances, need to legally do whatever we can, to prevent Donald Trump from getting anywhere near The White House ever again."

Donald Trump is such a big risk, because of his narcissism, his paranoia, his incompetency, his lack of government experience at any level, let alone the Federal level, that you simply don't want a person like that to be anywhere near The White House, let alone President the 1st time, let alone back in office. But he's 78 years old, he doesn't learn from his mistakes, even when he privately admits them, and he might be too lazy to even try to make himself a dictator again. 

I'll leave you with one, positive, closing thought. The Democratic Party will be in much stronger position in 2025-26, then they were in 2017-18, the first time Donald Trump was President. 

The Democrats only had 194 seats in the House at the start of 2017. They'll have 215 at the start of 2025, with a House Republican Conference that's even more divided now between MAGA and Never-Trump. 

Yes, Senate Republicans will have 1 more seat in 2025, than they did in 2017. But it's 53 instead of 52. And when House Republicans can't pass anything on their own, that Senate majority won't be worth much on legislation anyway. Especially with Chuck Schumer and the cloture rule.

Democrats only had 16-50 governorships in the states at the start of 2017. They'll have 23 at the start of 2025. Democrats only had 19 state attorney generals at the end of 2016. They'll have 23 at the start of 2025. 

My point is that there will be a lot more accountability for the incoming Trump Administration, along with all those high-skilled Democratic, pro-democracy, private attorneys, as well as the Federal courts, to keep the incoming Trump Administration in check in 2025-26. 

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Why The Democrats Lost

Source:PBS News- this photo is not meant to be insulting. At least not on my part.

The Democratic Party is going to make a huge decision about the future of this party in February or March. Which of course will be deciding who will essentially be the leader of the party, since they're going to be out of The White House again. And that position of course will be its next Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. 

But before the Democrats do that, I think we need to look at why they're going to be out of The White House for at least the next 4 years and why they're going to be the opposition party again, as well as the minority party in Congress, and why there will even be an election to nominate it's new leader. Instead of a President Kamala Harris just appointing the new DNC Chairman, while serving as the party leader. 

I think the popular thing in American politics right after an election, is to jump right in and write your own article about what went right and what went wrong. Even do it that Wednesday morning, if not late Tuesday night (if we already know who the next President will be) and give your 2 cents (even it's not even worth a penny) about what you think went well and what went wrong about the election. But I wanted to think about it and make sure I get this right. Plus, I literally had other things to do with this blog, like setting up pages for it, which took me at least another week after the election to do, so we're ready to go completely again by December. And be ready for the return of President Donald Trump.  

So I'm going to give you a few reasons why the Democrats lost The White House in 2024. It's not all President Biden's and Vice President Harris's fault. But they're both towards the top of the list. 

Remember then citizen Joe Biden promising not to run for President in 2020: 

"Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term.

While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.

According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president.

“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.” 

From Politico

Even by October, 2023, it would've been too late for President Biden to drop out. But it would've been better than dropping out 6 months ago:

"Bill Maher called on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election, saying the 80-year-old incumbent is too old to run for president and likened him to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” mocked Biden on Friday night, describing the president as the “only democrat who can lose to Trump,” despite the men only having a four-year age difference.

“Someone has to convince President Biden that if he runs again, he’s going to turn the country back over to Trump and go… down in history as Ruth Bader Biden, the person who doesn’t know when to quit and so does great damage to their party and their country,” Maher said, referring to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ginsburg notoriously decided to not retire during the Obama administration when she could have been replaced with a liberal justice, only to die at the age of 87 in September 2020 during the Trump administration." 

From The New York Post

I don't agree with comedian Bill Maher on everything. But when he's right, he's damn right. (You put that stronger) And he called it in October, 2023: 

"The issue with President Biden isn’t if he will be replaced - it's who will replace him." 

From Real Time With Bill Maher

To put it simply: if President Biden announced let's say by April, 2023, that he promised not to run for reelection in 3-1/2 years a go to assure voters that he would pass the torch (so to speak) and because it was time "for a new generation of leadership", the Democratic Party would've had a full primary season and Vice President Kamala Harris probably wins the nomination anyway. And she would've been my preferred candidate right out of the gate. And all those townhalls, those debates, those TV interviews, that she didn't want to do this summer and to a certain extent this fall, all those things would've been taken care of during late 2023 and early 2024. 

And it's not just that President Biden broke his promise not to run for reelection. It's why he did that is even worst, his lack of reasoning for it. He made it about the economy and that he was the only person up to task of bringing down the high cost of living. When the fact is he knew damn well that his background as a public servant is not economics. He made his carer in Congress as a foreign policy and national security expert. As well as criminal justice and the Constitution. Not economic policy. 

The reason why President Biden tried to run for reelection, is the same reason why any other President who ran for reelection did that, because he wanted to be a two-term President. It's almost embarrassing for President's to not get the 2nd term. And probably feels worst when you don't bother to run. Worst than that when you own damn party doesn't want you to run for reelection. 

And to set the record completely straight: my colleague Fred Schneider from The New Democrat argued against what Bill Maher was back 14 months ago and this was his reasoning for it: 

"You can show me all the polls in the Democratic Party that suggest that President Biden shouldn't run for reelection and that Donald Trump might actually beat him. But for me at least to even take those polls seriously, you need someone besides a professional conspiracy theorist, whose in the same age range and generation as both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, to not only announce their own presidential campaign, but show polling that suggests that they could not just beat Joe Biden, but then beat Donald Trump next year as well." 

From The New Democrat

And I agreed with Fred at the time. We thought 14 months ago that President Biden was simply the only Democrat who could beat Donald Trump. But then the debate happened and that changed everything for everybody. And to Bill Maher's credit, he saw that President Biden was simply too weak at least politically, to beat Donald Trump 13 months before the election. 

And then we get to Kamala Harris who for the most part inherited a strong campaign, as far as the organization, the people, the infrastructure, the finances. What she gave it, was energy, enthusiasm, and the only way I can put this but political adorableness, where she's just so cute and sweet as a person, it's really hard not to like her, if not love here. Assuming you are not a neanderthal jackass, who thinks that the only job that women should have, is to stay home and make their husbands happy. 

On the downside, Vice President Harris not just starts off Election 2024 as an unpopular Vice President, with a approval rating at around 35%, but where maybe 1/2 American voters (depending on what poll you look at) don't even know who she is, what she believes. 

I was calling for on my Threads page back in July, that Kamala Harris needs to do a series of townhalls, maybe a week after figuring out exactly what kind of presidential campaign she wanted to run and do those townhalls in just the swing states in the beginning. So people, especially Independents and Republicans who didn't want to vote for Donald Trump, as well as blue-collar Democrats who were considering voting for Donald Trump based on the economy, could get a good idea of who she and what here values are. 

The Vice President doesn't do any townhalls until October. It's September with CNN anchor Dana Bash, before she does any network interviews at all. So it's not just running for President late, which wasn't her fault, but starting out real late in the gates to even do an interview, that I think set her back. And her first townhall at all was in October with Univision News and CNN. 

And far as as the Harris Campaign's strategy, it seemed to be about maxing out yuppy, white-collar, especially female, yuppy, white-collar voters, of all political backgrounds, including urban and suburban Republican women, to vote for her. And hope African-Americans fall in line, where they were even dragging with President Biden, who did so well with them in 2020. And as far as blue-collar Democrats, I guess they left that up to Governor Tim Walz. 

According to the Roper Center, Barack Obama and John McCain split middle-income voters back in 2008. And then Senator Obama won the union vote with 59% of the vote. In 2012, according to the Roper Center, then President Obama won the union vote with 58 of the vote and they split the middle-income vote. 

According to NBC News: "Biden won 56 percent of union households to Trump's 40 percent, according to NBC News exit polls, doubling Hillary Clinton's 8 percentage-point margin among the group four years ago." 

From NBC News

From Brookings: "The dominant post-election 2024 narrative is that Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris was delivered largely by a multiracial working-class coalition. Backed by certain numbers, this narrative has many Democrats quaking in their 2026 campaign boots. For example, the exit polls show that working-class voters, defined as voters without a college degree, split 56% for Trump to 42% for Harris. The same polls tell us that white working-class voters favored Trump over Harris by 66% to 32%, and that Trump won a larger share of working-class Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020. 

All true, but let’s put those numbers into historical context and then, starting with the white working class, dig into what the exit poll data reveal when you run cross-tabulations by education and sex.1

As I have documented elsewhere, after winning a 56% white working-class majority in 1984 with Ronald Reagan, the GOP lost the majority in the 1990s, then got back to even with George W. Bush in 2000 (50%) and again in 2004 (51%). Mitt Romney won 56% of the white working-class vote in 2012, followed by Trump with 62% in 2016, 59% in 2020, and 66% in 2024. That two-thirds share is impressive, but many other Republican candidates have done as well or better electorally with the white working class. 

For example, in 2022, working-class whites broke 66% for Republican congressional candidates—the same percentage of those voters that Trump won in 2024. And several Republican governors who were not aligned with Trump won more than two-thirds of white working-class votes. For example, in 2022, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who would go on to challenge Trump for the GOP presidential nomination before becoming his staunch ally, won 70% of the white working-class vote; and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, who received a congratulatory call from President Joe Biden the morning after his reelection win, received 72% of it." 

From Brookings

Left-wing, especially woke, PC oriented, militant, left-wing Democrats, are going to hate hearing this, but the fact is if you want to win a presidential election in America, you go where the votes are and get the voters who are most likely to show up and vote. The country is officially still 70% European racially and ethnically. More like 80% if you included Spanish Latinos who of at least some Spanish descent. As well as 35-40 working class of all backgrounds. 

You can't get blown out with working class European-Americans and then try to make it up with people who don't tend to vote, like white-collar yuppies, young people, and African-Americans, as well as center-right Republicans, who don't want to vote for you anyway. And then think you get these voters with the current "hot celebrities". Who might just want the attention and money anyway.African-Americans will always be a major part of the Democratic Party. But they're still 12% of the country roughly. And European and Asian-Americans still out vote them, at least on a percentage basis. 

Hopefully tomorrow, I'll have my 2nd piece ready for why I believed Democrats lost and where to go from here. But before you can rebuilt anything, (which is what the Democratic Party needs to do now) you have to first know why you have to rebuild in the first place and what went wrong.

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