Donald Trump has added his name after Grover Cleveland as the second American president to be elected for non-consecutive terms. Let’s talk about what we can do now.
For many, things have been a blur since the polls closed yesterday. From the start of the night, the rightward momentum was palpable, leaving many distressed about coming to terms with the reality of a Trump Presidency.
Before we explore what we can do from here, I want to first talk about what people may be feeling now. I don’t doubt that many reading this are experiencing feelings of anxiety, fear, sadness, and despair, even among this leftist audience. That is ok. Take some time for yourself, check in with your friends, stop scrolling, do something to clear your head, get some rest, and be present. Then, when you are ready, come back to this article.
Perhaps we should first talk about how we got to this point. There have been plenty of perspectives offered on how we got here. At its core, though, this election was a rejection of Kamala Harris and what she claims to stand for.
Perhaps the most salient unpopular Harris policy is her position on Palestine and the ongoing genocide, that being that there is no genocide and that we should keep sending arms to Israel. I don’t need to say more about what is happening in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, and elsewhere on Zionist-occupied land, nor do I need to say more about what the Biden-Harris administration has done to facilitate this slaughter. Perhaps instead of speaking, then, she should have listened.
Beyond this, though, Harris ran a largely unconvincing campaign for many voters; her appeals to the “middle class” largely overlooked the working class; her warmongering in Ukraine and the Middle East; her reactionary appeals on immigration and the “bipartisan” right-wing border bill; and her incessant appeals to Republicans rather than to her own base all contributed to her becoming the first Democrat to lose the popular vote since 2004.
What all of this points to is that the Democratic party’s strategy of tacking right failed. Harris’ choice to appear a moderate centrist relative to the ultra-right fascistic Trump inevitably led to her alienating supporters. Incredibly, Trump didn’t actually gain support this election; his victory margin was due mostly to the lack of turnout for Harris. Rather than support objectively popular policies, which succeeded in particular ballot initiatives on election night, Harris chose to put her eggs in the “be nice to Republicans” basket.
Here is where we need to address the response to the election thus far from liberals. Rather than blame their own corporatist party, beholden to donor interests and willfully ignorant of their constituents, the liberal impulse is to blame everything but their own hubris. The Democratic party feels entitled to the votes of all those to the left of the Republican party. Given how far right the Dems are, this means that leftists and even left-liberals are asked every election cycle to effectively set aside their principles and policy commitments for a vote for a party that ignores them and shifts to the right whenever they can. Moreover, minority voters are constantly faced with a choice between a Republican party actively hostile towards their existence and a Democratic party only passively so, unwilling to fight for them when they perceive it to be politically unpopular. Why, then, would either of these groups show up for a candidate of a party that looks down upon them? As it turns out, the brunt of the blame liberals are leveling seems to be against these very two groups.
Many liberals are raging against those who voted third-party or refused to vote for president altogether. For the third-party voters, even if you were to give every non-Trump vote to Harris in every swing state, she would still lose all of them. A vote for a third party was not a vote for Trump; it was a vote for a third party. For the non-voters, the vast majority of the millions fewer votes compared to Biden in 2020 were not cast by leftists, and perhaps if Harris had run a better campaign, she would have seen more, albeit reluctant, support from leftists. For both groups, though, it isn’t worth it to rebuke them, especially not when the thing they drew the line at is genocide.
The saying “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds” seems apt to describe the vitriol spewed by some liberals against minority groups who refused to vote for someone uncommitted to protecting their rights. In a telling display of ineptitude, liberals have been wishing terrible things upon Palestinians, Latinae voters, Arabs, those without clean water in Flint, red voters, and others. It is the fault of the Democratic establishment, not of those who are tired of their elitism, that Harris lost.
Still, if a someone cast their ballot for her because they truly believed it was the best decision to make to protect themselves and/or those they care about, I believe we ought to show them grace for acting in the way they thought to be best. After all, not all Harris voters are so ravenous as the raging masses on social media.
It can be simultaneously true that you mourn the results of the election and that you always hated both candidates; as it can be that you believe the worse side won but you never had a good option to choose from; as it can be that many people didn’t vote for her because she is a Black woman and her subject position does not stop her from being a genocidal establishment careerist politician; as it can be that America is populated by idiots and that it doesn’t have to be that way.
On the hit show The Boondocks, Huey asks his grandad Robert, “what do you do when you can’t do nothing, but there’s nothing you can do?” In a rare genuine moment between them, Robert responds, “you do what you can!” From here, then, the answer to the question of what we do now is exactly that: we do what we can. And to be clear, that’s a whole lot more than nothing until November of 2028.
If nothing else, organizing is how we can get through this. Change does not start nor end at the ballot box, nor was it ever how we were going to achieve liberation; change is of, by, and for the strength of the masses. As such, you should take all the time you need before you get going, then get going. If we all go it together, none of us have to go it alone.
Liberal movements, measures, and mediums can only take us so far; we need revolutionary people’s power and an organized working class movement. It takes a collective pressure to force politicians to listen. We need to become so strong that they cannot ignore us and our collective will. Our anger should not be directed at those living under a rigged system, rather it should be towards that system and those actively sustaining it.
There are people in our communities who care but don’t know what to do. We can mobilize them. There are people in our communities who are confused. We can guide them. There are people in our communities who are at risk. We can protect them. Joining an organization, starting a collective, engaging with the people around you, and building a base of mass support based on unity rather than division and infighting is how we win.
This was always the answer. Even if Kamala had won. We have so much to fight for. And so we will fight.
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