Autopsy

After listening to Kamala Harris' concession speech Wednesday afternoon, I was shaken with the look of despair on the faces of many of the young women in the crowd.

In the despair of adjudicated rapist and convicted felon (but not for long) Donald Trump winning a second term as President of the United States, it's little wonder tears were falling. In the wake of the demise of Roe v. Wade by an extremist Supreme Court, women's healthcare has become a top priority.

Even now, as we speak, women are finding adequate OB/GYN care to be difficult, if not impossible, in states that have imposed severe anti-abortion restrictions. Doctors are simply leaving those states in fear of being arrested for providing abortion-like treatment.

Women are dying.

Consequently, I thought the abortion issue would carry Harris and Democrats to victory, making her the first female president in the country's history. About time, I thought.

Instead, the abortion issue was a distant third, behind the economy and democracy in voter concerns. The women who lifted the Democrats in previous off-year elections – and the general election that put Joe Biden in office – simply vanished in the face of other concerns.

What happened?

I'm only a humble observer here, not anywhere close to being an expert, but it seems that Trump was able to establish a coalition among the working class that crossed nearly all demographics. The country took a decided turn to the right.

I originally thought misogyny and racism were behind this: Harris is a Black-Asian woman married to a white Jew. In any epoch of the American story, that's three strikes against you right there. No matter how well you thought Harris conducted her remarkable 107-day campaign, her battle essentially was lost before it even began.

But even that observation, while an obvious factor to me, is too simplistic.

Harris simply couldn't divorce herself from what was perceived as uncontrolled inflation. It didn't matter that inflation was world-wide and created by the pandemic, it was just that the Biden/Harris administration was seen as unable to control the high cost of eggs and gas, among other things. The real cost of living, in other words.

Never mind that inflation today is 2.4 percent. Butter still costs too much. She couldn't separate herself from Biden (and "Bidenomics") and paid for it with her loyalty.

I also thought the role of misinformation (deliberate falsehoods) and disinformation (outright lies) was critical. For a born liar like Trump, this was his ace card. His most egregious campaign ad – and his most effective – was the ad showing that Harris supported gender assignment surgery for inmates at the expense of taxpayers.

It turns out this was a bill signed during the Trump administration and it affected only two inmates. But the ad ran 30,000 times during the NFL season and it was aimed at a male audience, and it worked. The Democrats hardly ever responded to the misinformation and suffered for it.

Side note: Transgender people are just one percent of the population. Seems to me there are deeper issues facing us than reassignment surgery.

There's no doubt the Democratic Party has to  undertake massive self-assessment and find a way to reach the common working man, who thought the Dems were mostly elites. Democrats proudly talked a lot about their ground game during the election. Now they're going to have to show us an updated version that learns what the electorate really wants.

And right now, it's not a female president. It's been tried twice, and twice defeated by the willing voters of a misogynist.

As of today, a resistance movement is already underway. The ACLU is currently making preparations to slow Trump's attempts to circumvent the Constitution. Lawyers across the country are also preparing for action. I expect demonstrations to sprout across the nation by those disaffected by his election.

But as Trump prepares to take the White House for a second time, we're still in troubled waters. We already know what one Trump administration looked like with chaos swirling about like dust devils in a gutter. This time there will be no guard rails. If we are to believe what Trump already has told us, incarcerated January 6 prisoners will be freed. Muslim bans will return. Child separation will be back. There will be detention camps and deportations. Police will be given free reign to ignore the Constitution that hasn't been reduced by 10 or 12 amendments  as he finalizes his vision of the authoritarian state. His words. He can do it because SCOTUS says he has immunity.

Welcome to Trump's America? Maybe. We'll have to wait and see. But for 51 percent of you, don't be surprised. This is what you voted for.