It's wrong to blame voters for Trump win

Still reeling from the shock of Donald Trump’s resounding victory on Tuesday, a number of liberals and progressives, and other Trump foes, have chosen a "blame Americans" response. To explain why voters chose Trump, a man whom even many former staffers from his first presidential term have described as unfit for office, over Vice President Kamala Harris, some journalists, activists, entertainers and others have pointed to racism and misogyny: "I hadn't grasped how deeply the US hates women until now," wrote left-wing podcast host Emma Vigeland. Others have said that people gravitated to Trump because they like the anger and grievance he peddles, using concerns about the economy as an excuse.

But such an approach is both deeply unproductive and factually wrong.

It’s unproductive because it offers no way forward, aside from Bertolt Brecht’s old joke about dissolving the people and electing a new one. Telling Americans that they’re revolting is a sure way to get them to revolt against your party.

It’s factually wrong because it vastly oversimplifies the reality of this election.

Don’t get me wrong: While we don’t know yet what a second Trump term will look like, I think his return to the White House four years after he tried to overturn the legitimate results of the previous election and either instigated or abetted a violent attack on the Capitol is a very dark chapter in America’s history. That’s not to mention the other reasons for his unfitness.

But while much of Trump’s hard core base knowingly embraced the ugliness, many others who voted for him are lower-engagement voters only vaguely aware of his scandals and outrages. In swing states during the campaign, they faced a barrage of information that often made it hard to tell facts from smears, and simply tuned it all out. They remembered things as being fine during the Trump presidency and were willing to ignore Trump’s attempted election steal, since the transfer of power ultimately happened. They are, in many cases, deeply cynical about all politicians and don’t see Trump’s flaws as qualitatively worse.

While people who blame the voters tend to see Harris as a near-perfect candidate who ran an excellent campaign, this perception overlooks Harris’ real flaws. While her candidacy caused a surge of enthusiasm after she replaced President Joe Biden on the ticket, her inability to sustain that surge was due in large part to her reluctance, until the late stages of the campaign, to give interviews or answer voter questions. When she did, she gave wordy and evasive answers to some key questions: How would she govern differently from Biden? What mistakes had she made? Why had she flip-flopped on some of the progressive positions she held in 2019?

Lastly, it’s also misguided to dismiss economic concerns as either a cover for other motives or the result of right-wing propaganda. Harvard economist Jason Furman, a Democrat, notes that despite good economic indicators, real median household income is down 0.7% from 2019 and mortgage rates are up 3 percentage points, and while the rate of inflation has fallen many families still grapple with higher prices. Inflation — primarily the result of the pandemic — has caused an anti-incumbent backlash across the world.

None of this is to say that Trump deserved to be reelected, or that right-wing populism with authoritarian tendencies is not a danger. But if Democrats want to defeat this populist tide, which won’t end with Trump, they need to learn from their mistakes.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.