Democrats continue to criticize why Donald Trump won the presidential election. Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, I wonder why that is? Democrats are indifferent to economic issues that matter to working class Americans.
“It's not all that surprising that the Democratic Party, which has abandoned working-class people, now realizes that the working class has abandoned them,” he said. This is a rather patronizing view for someone who claims to be a champion of workers.
Sanders believes Kamala Harris lost the election because Democrats did not speak to the working class with enough empathy and concern. But these voters are not 5-year-olds who need to behave themselves. When you respect someone, you take responsibility for their choices.
This election was not about policy. It was about fundamental principles, and voters knew exactly what they were voting for. This is a clear choice between candidates who have vowed to uphold America's founding values, democracy, and the rule of law, and populist agitators who have pandered to sentiments of grievance and promised to lower food prices. It was.
Like Mr. Sanders, it is infantile to think that the working-class voters he champions are not or should not be interested in anything like America's democratic tradition. America's founders were primarily self-taught farmers and merchants. George Washington almost have no formal education not at all. The Federalist Papers included: antifederalist essayIt was also — ordinary people discuss in coffee houses, homes, public gatherings, etc. It is often said that the working class built America, but they also helped lay its intellectual foundations.
We have remained true to that tradition for most of our history. The generation that fought in two world wars to protect democracy would have booed a candidate like Donald Trump and walked off the stage. They definitely wouldn't have elected him president.
Well, the situation is different. Voters elected an authoritarian. egg price. That's unsustainable. If a majority of Americans are willing to trade the promise of some degree of economic security, especially an illusory promise, in exchange for democracy, the American experiment is over.
Still, there may be hope. I said earlier that voters know exactly what they're voting for. They certainly could have known if they had made the slightest effort to know. But it probably wasn't.
in recent researchdespite two years of often impressive growth, 56 percent of voters believed the economy was in recession. Half of voters thought the unemployment rate was at a 50-year high, when in fact it was at a 50-year low. Half of voters thought the stock market was down this year, even though it was up more than 25% at the time of the survey.
In other words, Americans live in two different worlds with different facts.
Why is this? If you're a news junkie, you can compare multiple sources online to find the truth. However, most people get their news from just a handful of sources. one recent research It turns out that more than half of Americans get their news from social media. Even worse, 20 percent of Americans Get news from social media influencers. But more traditional news organizations curate their news to satisfy their audiences. News is now just a form of entertainment.
For example, watching Fox News gives you a completely different view of the world than watching MSNBC. in the case of one story — In the trial in which a jury found Donald Trump civilly liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, MSNBC reports that the trial will be held in the first five months of 2023 in preparation for a May 2023 verdict. Mentioned controversy 440 times. Fox News mentioned the matter seven times. This pattern is repeated We handle a full range of problems.
And when negative stories about Trump are discussed on Fox, it's often in the context of trying to explain it away. In some cases, networks simply lie to their viewers Seeking evaluation. Famously, FOX News paid $787 million. Resolve a defamation claim It stems from false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
So, as unbelievable as it may seem, many voters, especially in rural areas with fewer news outlets to choose from, may not fully understand what President Trump is saying and doing. data please bear with it. For example, only one in five voters knew that Donald Trump's claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were: his grounds for abolishing the constitution.
Although this is tragic, it is also good news. Because this is something we can solve.
If you voted for Donald Trump this November and understand that he plans to undermine the rule of law and destroy American democracy, the problem is with you. . in one investigationone in four Republicans said that if Trump loses the 2024 election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to become president. That's un-American. If you're one of these voters, you can wear red, white, and blue and wave as many flags as you like. But you are not a patriot. You are a danger to everything this country stands for.
But if you're just confused or unaware, you're not beyond help. And if there are enough of you, perhaps there is hope that Trump's victory does not signal the end of the American experiment as it seems at first glance.
There is no easy solution to this. Our commitment to a free press is one of the things that makes America an exceptional country, so whatever the remedy is, it's not censorship.
But something needs to be done before the rot becomes untreatable. In the words of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.N.Y.), we can all live happily in a country where everyone has an opinion. We cannot live together in a country where everyone has their own facts.
chris tuaxHe is an appellate attorney and served as Southern California chair for John McCain's 2008 primary campaign.
