Democratic decline opinion | Country

Donald Trump’s spectacular election victory forces the Democratic Party to think. The Republican magnate has lost some support compared to 2020, but he has regained it in all demographic groups and in all states across the country due to the collapse of his rivals, who received about 10 million fewer votes than four years ago .

Despite not being in attendance, the first person recognized is President Joe Biden. His election as a candidate in 2020 made it possible to quickly end the cannibalistic primaries and present a well-known candidate to a very broad spectrum of potential voters, so much so that he was the most voted president in history. This was done at the cost of shutting down all internal debates. He had promised that he would be a transitional leader for the new generation and he alone is responsible for breaking his promise. His entourage was careful to downplay his physical decline until a debate with Trump in June forced an immediate catharsis. Biden left his party unscathed and a large share of the responsibility for a second term for Republicans falls on him.

History will be unfairly cruel to Kamala Harris. The vice president had barely 100 days to join the presidential race, which usually takes years. His only possible message was one of stability, but without his predecessor’s dilemma between key groups such as unions and moderate Republicans. It promised renewal without new proposals. However, it is worth recognizing Harris’s courage in taking command of a campaign that no one wanted. Men with more political experience than him, aware of the risk of political suicide, hid their heads and saved their options to compete in 2028. The other female candidates for the White House seemed to be out of a glass cliff.

But beyond the campaign’s errors, Democrats should draw conclusions from worrying underlying trends. Envious accounts with good macroeconomic data – GDP is growing almost twice as fast as the Eurozone – won’t mean much to large groups of voters if they see that their wages don’t keep pace with inflation. And the biggest event of this century happened during Biden’s presidency, although he later managed to control it. Similarly, the argument about the threat Trump represents to democratic institutions is not enough to convince those who believe the system is not improving their lives while uncertainties continue to grow.

Ultimately, this could be the end of Democratic policy focused on minority inclusion. Trump has shown that this amount does not necessarily produce a majority. If so many people voted for a misogynistic racist, it is because many have subordinated their feelings of identity to a democratic proposal that promises to solve their material or security problems. It would be wrong to think that this is a whimsical vote.

The middle class in the United States has been saying since the 2008 crisis that they are losing quality of life, a broad concept primarily influenced by wages, prices, and housing. A movement led by a billionaire surrounded by other millionaires and a group of deniers and conspiracy theorists is better able to connect with the sense of discomfort and lack of hope than its rivals. Starting their own discourse on these problems is the main task of those who take charge of the Democratic Party after the debacle.