I’m trying to write a coherent reply about third parties and why we need coalition government in the US, and I just don’t have the capacity at this moment. But I will say that I listened to “Book of Travelers” when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that the election had indeed been called, and I am grateful to you as always, Gabriel, for your words and music and your thoughtfulness and your deep patriotism. Go hug your girls.
Dismissing the role of sexism and racism in this result is glib. More voters chose the violently misogynistic, white supremacist, serial sex offender over the highly qualified woman of color. All of that was extremely out in the open. We need to organize to survive and fight, but we can't do that by ignoring the hierarchies and hatreds that got us here.
Hi! Thank you for responding. I’m sorry if that was the impression you got from this piece; it certainly wasn’t my intention. As I wrote a few weeks ago: “To be clear, a disturbingly significant portion of the GOP base seems animated by racial animus, by sexism, by the desire to return to some revanchist era in which white men worked, women stayed home, queer folk lived in the shadows, and people of color were legally relegated to second-tier citizenship.”
I don’t in any way mean to underplay the explicit appeals to sexism, racism, and white supremacy by Trump and his allies. Indeed, those appeals, and the way they are received by the base, are precisely why it’s so terrifying—along with the threat of unchecked authoritarianism.
That said, this wasn’t a piece about MAGA or Trump. It was about the Democratic Party, my perception of its failures, and the space those failures have created for a right-wing populism—rooted in prejudice, xenophobia & hate—to thrive.
Intersectionality, as I understand it, is a political practice based on overlapping/linked modes of oppression. To invoke intersectionality (as I did in this piece) is to situate oneself in a political landscape rife with power imbalances.
Whether or not “hatred got us here,” there is, to me, an underlying question that needs to be answered: “what are the conditions that make so many people susceptible to a politics of hate?” There is no one-size-fits all answer to this. (Hence my constant drumbeat of not wanting to reduce people to a monolith.) But if we don't dig deep, and submit to self-reflection, I fear we're doomed to repeat this horror again and again.
But I would also stress that while for us, the sexism, racism, and overtures to white supremacy were on flagrant display, it's also the case that, as I wrote above, we no longer live in a media environment in which we're all seeing the same content. And it's also true that, just as I, for example, voted for Harris in spite of my profound misgivings about the Biden Administration's rubber-stamping of the catastrophe in Gaza, which I believe to be a genocide, there are plenty of Americans who voted for Trump *in spite* of everything they know is awful about him. While you or I might feel that they are implicitly voting *for* racism, misogyny, white supremacy, I don't know that we can make that claim any more credibly than someone can tell me that I was voting *for* genocide.
These of course aren't perfectly equivalencies, but they get to something I've tried to write about in this space before, which is our collective inability to place ourselves in the shoes of someone whose life experience is vastly different than ours, and to extend grace when they arrive at different conclusions/behaviors/voting patterns than we do.
Now, I realize that as we are staring down the very real threat and likelihood of living under literal fascism, extending grace may be the last thing we want to do. But I genuinely don't know how we will ever unseat the New Right unless we broaden our coalitions, and again, I believe that begins with a politics of solidarity rooted in shared material interests: living wages, affordable housing, climate justice, etc.
I hope this helps to clarify what was written hastily yesterday! Thank you again for reading and chiming in.
I agree that our information ecosystem is extremely alarming, and that's part of the reason that I don't think adjusting economic policy is going to provide the needed breakthrough. It's nice, and would make logical sense, to think Democrats can win more elections by adopting more popular policy stances, but this year's results show the electorate voting for Democratic policies while rejecting Democratic politicians. Voters in multiple states chose to protect abortion rights while electing anti-abortion Republicans. Democrats who loudly support and work for the working class were not safer--see the results for Senator Sherrod Brown. Democrats do have popular policies, but we're up against resentment against who the Democrats are. The gender gap in political preference is historically high--the racial gap has been high and remains so--and it's not because women somehow became more economically privileged than men. It's entrenched power lashing back after a period of increasing equality, the same way as has repeatedly happened throughout American history. Trump has been extremely, extremely blatant about playing to that resentment, ever since he started his political career as an Obama birther, and at his rallies and on Truth Social and on Fox News. If the WFP somehow replaced the DNC, the backlash would be redirected toward them. We have to work within that reality.
While I agree that gender & racial resentment plays a role in feeding right-wing populism, there's a degree of fatalism in that attitude—"adjusting economic policy won't provide the needed breakthrough"—that I find troubling. But more than that: whether or not it's good politics (and I think it is good politics), it's simply *the right thing to do*, ethically, to make sure that people are not living hand to mouth.
I think that where you and I diverge is that I see losses for someone like Sherrod Brown as having to do with the overall brokenness of the Democratic brand, as per my post, rather than the breakdown of the appeal of policy that helps working and poor people. But the other issue I have with your argument is that we've not just lost the white working class: we're losing working people of color as well, at higher rates with each election. There simply is no tidy/all-encompassing argument to be made around racial resentment and misogyny, even as I am certain that both are at play.
I am familiar with, and agree with the saying that "after being in power, equality feels like falling behind." And yes, Trump had (and has) a preternatural gift for playing to resentment of this nature — but the notion that this resentment plays out equally across the economic spectrum is demonstrably false. That the gender gap disappears for white people without a college degree (WaPo reporting 66% and 63% of white men and women w/o college degrees voting for Trump) suggests that there is something more going on than "entrenched power lashing back."
But I also think there's chicken-and-egg at play as well: Trump was only able to formulate his toxic playbook because the conditions were right. I believe a good deal of that was economic, and a good deal more has to do with (loss of) dignity of work, as well as the contempt that flows from elites toward those who've been left behind by globalization/deindustrialization/automation. (I think Michael J. Sandel's book, 'The Tyranny of Merit,' is one of the best on this subject. I wrote about it early this year: https://gabrielkahane.substack.com/p/curiosity-or-contempt.)
But to try to find some common ground:
I think there is truth to basically everything you are staying, at the same time that I stand by my analysis. For such a seismic shift in American politics to occur, no single explanation is going to capture the profound realignment of the parties. When I talk about intersectionality as an invitation to come together, I mean very much the fusion of everything you're talking about with class analysis. But since the end of Bernie's insurgency, with the exception of Biden's admirable but inadequate gestures toward economic populism, a vigorous class analysis—one that acknowledges that 50 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, that nearly as many don't have $400 on hand for an emergency, that many more would need to put in *100 hours* of minimum-wage work per week in order to afford a market-rate two-bedroom in many cities, that millions avoid going to the doctor because they're un- or underinsured—such an analysis is almost entirely absent from Democratic leadership.
I understand the urge to simply dismiss rural voters as beyond the pale—I'm not suggesting that you are doing this, but many are—and yet I think that any future that counts them out will be bleak, not to mention amoral. There is the possibility of a politics that begins with the idea that *none are free until all are free*, and that this requires a rededication to living wages, a strong social safety net, housing justice, and more — and, at the same time, to address systemic racism, misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, etc. But the Democrats, for several cycles, have tried to accomplish the latter without the former, and that, I believe, is where the backlash begins.
I'm not arguing against progressive economic policy on its merits; I agree it is the right thing to do. I'm arguing that it is not the territory on which this election was fought and won. Biden had one of the more progressive economic platforms of recent decades, and our economy improved under his watch. Democratic electeds talked up his economic accomplishments endlessly, and voters opted instead for the buddy of oligarchs and billionaires, who oozes contempt even for his supporters.
I'm not saying any of this to be fatalistic. Organizers in my home state taught me the framework of race-class narrative: working, organizing, and storytelling on issues of economic inequality in a way that incorporates at all points the dimension of racial justice. We've seen significant rewards of this work at the local and state level, working with the parties that we already have. It's not about doing two things at the same time; they're profoundly interwoven. I simply think it's an incomplete analysis, and will not yield results, to expect that adopting more progressive housing and tax policies is sufficient to win national elections at this point. We need to actively defend social progress when it is actively being gutted, and we need to be honest with ourselves that the Trump supporters sending lynching threats or tweeting "your body, my choice, forever" are not doing so primarily because of the cost of groceries.
In any case, I should really bow out at this point and get on with living through this horrendous week. I hope your daughters get to grow up with the bodily autonomy that was won for my mother's generation. I'll be fighting for them.
Just to say briefly—and then yes, by all means, get on with this awful week: I completely agree. I read Ian Haney Lopez’ book ‘Merge Left’ about the race-class narrative and found it incredibly helpful. It’s 100% my vibe. (To me, the race-class narrative is the most successful expression of intersectionality in recent memory.) And yes, of course I agree that those who are sending horrific messages, emboldened by Trump’s victory, are not likely going to be moved by a platform of economic populism. But those aren’t the folks I imagine reaching.
If I can push back on one last thing, it’s just to say that, again, there are no monoliths. The most reprehensible elements of the Trump coalition—and I have seen screenshots today from friends that are absolutely vile—don’t represent the outlook of all those who voted for him. And those are the folks who I think can, over time, be brought back into a coalition that brings together racial and economic justice. Anyhow: sending you love and light and solidarity in this truly awful time.
Well written. Thank you.
I’m trying to write a coherent reply about third parties and why we need coalition government in the US, and I just don’t have the capacity at this moment. But I will say that I listened to “Book of Travelers” when I woke up in the middle of the night and saw that the election had indeed been called, and I am grateful to you as always, Gabriel, for your words and music and your thoughtfulness and your deep patriotism. Go hug your girls.
Thank you, Julie. I'm shaken and moved by the idea that you listened to my music in the wake of this awful national tragedy. Sending you love.
May I share some selected quotes of this on my Instagram?
By all means!
Dismissing the role of sexism and racism in this result is glib. More voters chose the violently misogynistic, white supremacist, serial sex offender over the highly qualified woman of color. All of that was extremely out in the open. We need to organize to survive and fight, but we can't do that by ignoring the hierarchies and hatreds that got us here.
Hi! Thank you for responding. I’m sorry if that was the impression you got from this piece; it certainly wasn’t my intention. As I wrote a few weeks ago: “To be clear, a disturbingly significant portion of the GOP base seems animated by racial animus, by sexism, by the desire to return to some revanchist era in which white men worked, women stayed home, queer folk lived in the shadows, and people of color were legally relegated to second-tier citizenship.”
I don’t in any way mean to underplay the explicit appeals to sexism, racism, and white supremacy by Trump and his allies. Indeed, those appeals, and the way they are received by the base, are precisely why it’s so terrifying—along with the threat of unchecked authoritarianism.
That said, this wasn’t a piece about MAGA or Trump. It was about the Democratic Party, my perception of its failures, and the space those failures have created for a right-wing populism—rooted in prejudice, xenophobia & hate—to thrive.
Intersectionality, as I understand it, is a political practice based on overlapping/linked modes of oppression. To invoke intersectionality (as I did in this piece) is to situate oneself in a political landscape rife with power imbalances.
Whether or not “hatred got us here,” there is, to me, an underlying question that needs to be answered: “what are the conditions that make so many people susceptible to a politics of hate?” There is no one-size-fits all answer to this. (Hence my constant drumbeat of not wanting to reduce people to a monolith.) But if we don't dig deep, and submit to self-reflection, I fear we're doomed to repeat this horror again and again.
But I would also stress that while for us, the sexism, racism, and overtures to white supremacy were on flagrant display, it's also the case that, as I wrote above, we no longer live in a media environment in which we're all seeing the same content. And it's also true that, just as I, for example, voted for Harris in spite of my profound misgivings about the Biden Administration's rubber-stamping of the catastrophe in Gaza, which I believe to be a genocide, there are plenty of Americans who voted for Trump *in spite* of everything they know is awful about him. While you or I might feel that they are implicitly voting *for* racism, misogyny, white supremacy, I don't know that we can make that claim any more credibly than someone can tell me that I was voting *for* genocide.
These of course aren't perfectly equivalencies, but they get to something I've tried to write about in this space before, which is our collective inability to place ourselves in the shoes of someone whose life experience is vastly different than ours, and to extend grace when they arrive at different conclusions/behaviors/voting patterns than we do.
Now, I realize that as we are staring down the very real threat and likelihood of living under literal fascism, extending grace may be the last thing we want to do. But I genuinely don't know how we will ever unseat the New Right unless we broaden our coalitions, and again, I believe that begins with a politics of solidarity rooted in shared material interests: living wages, affordable housing, climate justice, etc.
I hope this helps to clarify what was written hastily yesterday! Thank you again for reading and chiming in.
I agree that our information ecosystem is extremely alarming, and that's part of the reason that I don't think adjusting economic policy is going to provide the needed breakthrough. It's nice, and would make logical sense, to think Democrats can win more elections by adopting more popular policy stances, but this year's results show the electorate voting for Democratic policies while rejecting Democratic politicians. Voters in multiple states chose to protect abortion rights while electing anti-abortion Republicans. Democrats who loudly support and work for the working class were not safer--see the results for Senator Sherrod Brown. Democrats do have popular policies, but we're up against resentment against who the Democrats are. The gender gap in political preference is historically high--the racial gap has been high and remains so--and it's not because women somehow became more economically privileged than men. It's entrenched power lashing back after a period of increasing equality, the same way as has repeatedly happened throughout American history. Trump has been extremely, extremely blatant about playing to that resentment, ever since he started his political career as an Obama birther, and at his rallies and on Truth Social and on Fox News. If the WFP somehow replaced the DNC, the backlash would be redirected toward them. We have to work within that reality.
While I agree that gender & racial resentment plays a role in feeding right-wing populism, there's a degree of fatalism in that attitude—"adjusting economic policy won't provide the needed breakthrough"—that I find troubling. But more than that: whether or not it's good politics (and I think it is good politics), it's simply *the right thing to do*, ethically, to make sure that people are not living hand to mouth.
I think that where you and I diverge is that I see losses for someone like Sherrod Brown as having to do with the overall brokenness of the Democratic brand, as per my post, rather than the breakdown of the appeal of policy that helps working and poor people. But the other issue I have with your argument is that we've not just lost the white working class: we're losing working people of color as well, at higher rates with each election. There simply is no tidy/all-encompassing argument to be made around racial resentment and misogyny, even as I am certain that both are at play.
I am familiar with, and agree with the saying that "after being in power, equality feels like falling behind." And yes, Trump had (and has) a preternatural gift for playing to resentment of this nature — but the notion that this resentment plays out equally across the economic spectrum is demonstrably false. That the gender gap disappears for white people without a college degree (WaPo reporting 66% and 63% of white men and women w/o college degrees voting for Trump) suggests that there is something more going on than "entrenched power lashing back."
But I also think there's chicken-and-egg at play as well: Trump was only able to formulate his toxic playbook because the conditions were right. I believe a good deal of that was economic, and a good deal more has to do with (loss of) dignity of work, as well as the contempt that flows from elites toward those who've been left behind by globalization/deindustrialization/automation. (I think Michael J. Sandel's book, 'The Tyranny of Merit,' is one of the best on this subject. I wrote about it early this year: https://gabrielkahane.substack.com/p/curiosity-or-contempt.)
But to try to find some common ground:
I think there is truth to basically everything you are staying, at the same time that I stand by my analysis. For such a seismic shift in American politics to occur, no single explanation is going to capture the profound realignment of the parties. When I talk about intersectionality as an invitation to come together, I mean very much the fusion of everything you're talking about with class analysis. But since the end of Bernie's insurgency, with the exception of Biden's admirable but inadequate gestures toward economic populism, a vigorous class analysis—one that acknowledges that 50 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, that nearly as many don't have $400 on hand for an emergency, that many more would need to put in *100 hours* of minimum-wage work per week in order to afford a market-rate two-bedroom in many cities, that millions avoid going to the doctor because they're un- or underinsured—such an analysis is almost entirely absent from Democratic leadership.
I understand the urge to simply dismiss rural voters as beyond the pale—I'm not suggesting that you are doing this, but many are—and yet I think that any future that counts them out will be bleak, not to mention amoral. There is the possibility of a politics that begins with the idea that *none are free until all are free*, and that this requires a rededication to living wages, a strong social safety net, housing justice, and more — and, at the same time, to address systemic racism, misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, etc. But the Democrats, for several cycles, have tried to accomplish the latter without the former, and that, I believe, is where the backlash begins.
I'm not arguing against progressive economic policy on its merits; I agree it is the right thing to do. I'm arguing that it is not the territory on which this election was fought and won. Biden had one of the more progressive economic platforms of recent decades, and our economy improved under his watch. Democratic electeds talked up his economic accomplishments endlessly, and voters opted instead for the buddy of oligarchs and billionaires, who oozes contempt even for his supporters.
I'm not saying any of this to be fatalistic. Organizers in my home state taught me the framework of race-class narrative: working, organizing, and storytelling on issues of economic inequality in a way that incorporates at all points the dimension of racial justice. We've seen significant rewards of this work at the local and state level, working with the parties that we already have. It's not about doing two things at the same time; they're profoundly interwoven. I simply think it's an incomplete analysis, and will not yield results, to expect that adopting more progressive housing and tax policies is sufficient to win national elections at this point. We need to actively defend social progress when it is actively being gutted, and we need to be honest with ourselves that the Trump supporters sending lynching threats or tweeting "your body, my choice, forever" are not doing so primarily because of the cost of groceries.
In any case, I should really bow out at this point and get on with living through this horrendous week. I hope your daughters get to grow up with the bodily autonomy that was won for my mother's generation. I'll be fighting for them.
Just to say briefly—and then yes, by all means, get on with this awful week: I completely agree. I read Ian Haney Lopez’ book ‘Merge Left’ about the race-class narrative and found it incredibly helpful. It’s 100% my vibe. (To me, the race-class narrative is the most successful expression of intersectionality in recent memory.) And yes, of course I agree that those who are sending horrific messages, emboldened by Trump’s victory, are not likely going to be moved by a platform of economic populism. But those aren’t the folks I imagine reaching.
If I can push back on one last thing, it’s just to say that, again, there are no monoliths. The most reprehensible elements of the Trump coalition—and I have seen screenshots today from friends that are absolutely vile—don’t represent the outlook of all those who voted for him. And those are the folks who I think can, over time, be brought back into a coalition that brings together racial and economic justice. Anyhow: sending you love and light and solidarity in this truly awful time.