by Victor Davis Hanson
“Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
“They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” – Often attributed to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
The Democratic election postmortem immediately descended into public blame-gaming—as expected. When Joe Biden was forced off the ticket in late July, the conspirators issued a party line that he was to be praised as a veritable George Washington—in the spirit of Washington’s farewell address of 1796 about why it was a good thing for the first president not to run for a third term.
So, we were lied to that Joe, the sitting President of the United States, was not forced out by Nancy Pelosi, the Obamas, George Clooney and the celebs, and the billionaire class. We instead were lectured that Biden, magnanimously as the neo-father of our country, selflessly bowed out to ensure Kamala Harris’s elevation as the nominee and, with it, a sure Democratic victory.
But now? After the Democratic train wreck, half the party is suddenly damning George Washington Joe for sticking around too long, even though party grandees cooked up the scheme in the first place of nominating the cognitively challenged Biden in 2020 to shut out his radical (and supposedly unelectable) primary rivals.
Now that his successor Harris has bombed, in the leftist mind, Joe has gone from a Washingtonian Olympian to a veritable selfish Richard Nixon who clung to office far too long and supposedly ensured his party’s defeat.
Yet still, others now blame incumbent Vice President Kamala herself. The once “joyful” candidate, after the coup to remove Biden, was once praised to the skies as a “turn the page”/”move forward”/“change” candidate—only then to be damned as an insipid loser.
So, one postelection narrative was that Harris—we were told to recall—was always known as inept and thus originally picked as Joe Biden’s Spiro Agnew insurance policy, who would prevent his indictment, impeachment, or medical removal.
But never mind blaming either Biden or Harris or both. The left cannot fault either a lack of funds; they raised a billion dollars more than Trump. Leftists also cannot complain about 95 percent favorable media coverage, supposedly worth billions of dollars in free advertising.
They cannot regret that they did not do everything imaginable to destroy the Trump monster—given they had impeached him twice and tried him as a private citizen. They cooked up the Russian collusion and laptop disinformation hoaxes, raided his home with a SWAT team, and unleashed five criminal and civil suits designed to bankrupt, demonize, and jail him. They tried to remove him from at least 16 state ballots and daily smeared him as a fascist, dictator, and Hitler—even as two would-be assassins tried to shoot him.
So, we are witnessing the rich Democrat-media fusion blame and fault everything but themselves. In truth, whether Biden or Harris ran—it never really mattered.
Even an open convention with a “moderate” veneer nominee like a Josh Shapiro would not have saved them. The fault was in themselves: a radical Democratic agenda actualized by Joe Biden, who will leave office with an approval rate under 40 percent, and two-thirds of the country believing the country was headed in the wrong direction under his tenure.
So, what lost the election for the Democrats? Both substance and style.
The proverbial people may have agreed that Trump was sometimes crude, but they knew in his prior four-year tenure that food, gas, rent, power, and insurance were affordable. The border was finally secured. Trump did not welcome in 12 million unaudited illegal aliens. Nor did he oversee a disastrous flight from Afghanistan or watch two theater-wide wars blow up Ukraine and the Middle East as a derelict America became irrelevant.
Boys did not spike volleyballs down upon the heads of girls nor did male boxers pound the brains of women.
Nor did teenage biological males shower with young girls.
Nor did the Trump tenure witness institutionalized anti-Semitism spreading throughout the nation’s elite campuses and onto the streets. Nor did Republican party grandees obsess on race, promote reparations, demand unlimited abortions until the moment of birth, or trash fracking.
So, the message—not just the messengers—was toxic. But that said, the message was also delivered by a bicoastal elite, exuding hubris and superciliousness. This election, the left committed the two cardinal sins of American politics: one, never talk down to the American people as too stupid to appreciate the wisdom of their supposed elite betters; and two, never abandon the upwardly mobile aspirations and real struggles of the middle class.
Instead, during the campaign and after the election slaughter, Democratic grandees screamed against a supposedly racist, sexist, homophobic, nativist electorate—as if these critics were a mummified Hillary Clinton circa 2016 still pontificating about the deplorables and irredeemables or a calcified Obama lecturing on the pathologies of the clingers.
Indeed, the epitome of such hypocrisy was the late entrance of the now-plutocratic Obamas. The pair variously private jetted in from one of their four mansions to “save” Harris from her incompetent self by diagnosing the skeptics of her hard-left message as ignorant, illiberal, and suffering from Marxist false consciousness.
Thus, a week after the election, Democrats are still trapped in La La Land.
Blue-state governors now posture and brag that they will stop the newly elected Trump—but from what exactly? Will they refuse his tainted federal funds? Spit at him when they ask for disaster relief help? Declare blue America “sanctuary states” that will nullify federal law and not pay federal taxes?
What does California governor Gavin Newsom mean by calling to session the California legislature to “resist” Trump? Will he order another Steele dossier pee-pee tape? Another Hillary Clinton 2016 call to join La Résistance?
What does Illinois Governor Pritzker mean by warning Trump he will have to go through the ample governor to get to “his people?”
Coordinate more local and state prosecutors to resume where Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, and Letitia James left off?
Mimic Madonna and threaten to blow up the White House?
Emulate Kamala Harris and warn weeks of violent protests that won’t and should not stop?
So how exactly is the elected president actually stripping away the rights of their liberal residents—three months before he even sets foot in office? And what might such illiberal or extralegal Trump efforts entail?
Find another Andrew McCabe to weaponize the FBI to go after his enemies?
Discover another Anthony Fauci to stealthily send American cash to a leaky Chinese virology lab run by the People’s Liberation Army?
Draft another Lois Lerner to politicize the IRS to deny left-wing groups nonprofit status?
Rehire James Comey to get the FBI and social media together to censor the news?
Maybe rehire Loretta Lynch or Merrick Garland to sic the Department of Justice on political enemies at school board meetings?
Bring back Confederate-style nullification of federal law and open the border?
Or are Trump’s threats likely to be more existential and cosmic—like packing the court to ensure another six conservative justices?
Or, as the right takes control of the Senate, will the damnable new conservative majority abolish the ancient filibuster?
Perhaps the left is worried that now that a vengeful Trump has handily won the popular vote, he will most likely remove the 237-year-old Electoral College by sidestepping the constitutional amendment process?
Or will a dastardly Trump bifurcate some blue states to ensure their red halves become two new states and with them four conservative senators?
In sum, the left will not recover by blaming the American people and the voters for their loss. Nor will they regain power by caricaturing the supposedly illiberal and unappreciative middle class.
Nor will they reboot by blustering that they are at war with a president before he takes office as if he was not just elected by a clear majority and an overwhelming electoral college vote.
Nor will they find salvation today by blaming the “messaging,” or tomorrow Kamala Harris, or next week Joe Biden—rather than looking in the mirror and acknowledging the fault, Dear Democrats, is “in ourselves.”
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Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.
