The morning after the election I received a mass email written by my dear friend Mark Segal. He pointed out that the LGBT community has survived many challenges since Stonewall, and even made progress. Then he said, “It will take time to understand what happened in this election. Take that time—not to point fingers, but to listen.”

I agreed, except for the part about pointing fingers. I replied within the hour, expressing my fury at the Democratic Party. Later I learned that other people were in agreement with me, including Bernie Sanders. Below is my response to Mark, as well as some thoughts that I didn’t have time to include on Wednesday:

My father was born in 1912 and survived two World Wars and the Great Depression. When I was a child, our family was always just on the statistical line between poverty and middle class. Thanks to New Deal programs such as Social Security, Dad didn’t suffer penury in his old age, but was able to retire and live independently. He advised me to vote Democratic, “because the Republicans keep all the money to themselves. The Democrats let the workers have a little.”

I agreed with Dad. I have nothing positive to say about the GOP. It has always been the party of the rich and, since the early days of the Civil Rights movement, the party of the “Southern Strategy”—in other words, racism. Since the 1970s it has also been the party of anti-feminism, spearheaded by Phyllis Schlafly and her STOP ERA movement.

Starting at least in the 1980’s, however, the Democrats themselves began to abandon the New Deal and the working class in favor of corporate capitalism.

Jobs

The Democrats did nothing to stop the migration of American jobs to low-wage countries. I quote the Harvard Business Review:

“July 1985: AT&T decides to transfer production of residential telephones from its only U.S. telephone manufacturing plant, in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Singapore.

“February 1986: United Technologies announces it will close its diesel-engine parts plant in Springfield, Massachusetts and transfer operations to a nonunion plant in South Carolina and two plants in Europe.

“February 1987: General Motors plans to phase out the production of A-body cars in the United States and move it to its Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila plant in Mexico.”

The Democratic Party was just as much a part of the offshoring trend as the GOP. The NAFTA agreement, which sent manufacturing jobs to low-wage Mexico, was formulated during Bush the Elder’s administration but signed into law by Bill Clinton. According to a 2003 report by the Economic Policy Institute, “Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed…the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries…. NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits.”

The trend has only accelerated, with neither party doing anything to protect American workers. From 2001 to 2024, the U.S. trade deficit with China alone has resulted in the loss of approximately 3.82 million American jobs. And it’s not just manufacturing. Other jobs went as well. For example, if you call customer service at a big company, you are very likely to find yourself speaking to someone in India or the Philippines.

Housing

Remember the housing crash of 2008? Banks such as Wells Fargo Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, etc. had been selling sub-prime mortgages at high interest rates. When the collapse occurred, the Obama administration saved the big banks, with $1 trillion of taxpayer money. They bought up the bad mortgages and gave the banks low-interest loans. But Obama did nothing for the ordinary people who had lost their homes and life savings in the crash. Private equity companies then started gobbling up the real estate market, and continue to do so.

Here’s a quote from Hal Singer, economics professor at the University of Utah:

“In the first three months of 2024, investors bought 14.8 percent of homes sold according to Realtor.com…. Investor-owned homes hit their peak in December 2022, accounting for 28.7 percent of all home sales in America. Per MetLife Investment Management, institutional investors may control 40 percent of U.S. single-family rental homes by 2030.

“Robert Reich…explains that home ownership—the primary vehicle for accumulating wealth—is out of reach for many Americans. Investors are not randomly making home purchases across the country…but instead are targeting bigger cities and neighborhoods that are homes to communities of color in particular. In one neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, Wall Street investors bought half the homes that sold in 2021 and 2022.”

The result? More than 50% of all households spend a third of their income on rent and utilities, and around 25% spend more than half their income that way. A record number of people are homeless.

According to a 2023 survey, 39% of Americans say they have skipped meals to afford their housing payments. Among millennials that figure rose to 44%.   And all thanks to the Democrats’ response to the housing collapse.

Food

The increasing cost of groceries has tightened the belt several more notches. This year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Americans are spending more than 11% of their disposable income on food—the highest level since 1991.

Medical Care

The Obama administration gave us the Affordable Care Act, which is essentially a gift to the insurance companies. The Paragon Health Institute reports that in fiscal year 2023, federal subsidies through the ACA totaled $218 billion and “almost all flowed to insurers.” ACA insurance can be low cost for the poorest people, but quickly becomes unaffordable for anyone not in that category.

Bernie Sanders campaigned for single payer, but the Democratic Party did everything to sabotage that idea. In 2009, when the ACA was being debated in Congress, Democratic Senator Max Baucus refused to allow single-payer advocates to testify. When doctors and other health professionals did try to speak, they were arrested. Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, House majority leader, would not push debate on a single-payer bill sitting dormant in the House of Representatives. Both Baucus and Hoyer take in huge contributions from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Democratic Party insiders also sabotaged Sanders’ candidacy.

The ACA was a triumph for the Obama administration, yet nearly 60% of debtors in a 2019 NIH study said that medical expenses contributed to their bankruptcies. More than half of adult Americans (56%) have some medical debt and a nearly quarter of the population (23%) owe more than $10,000.

Where the Democrats Stand

People who write comments to NY Times articles have complained for years that the Democrats “need to grow a spine,” or that they “bring a butter knife to a gun fight [with the GOP].”

Nonsense. The Democrats know exactly what they’re doing. Any newly elected congressional representative, whether Democratic or Republican, is told by senior reps “to spend half of his or her working hours dialing for dollars at a secret phone bank near Capitol Hill. Actually…sometimes 6-8 hours a day, is spent not working on legislation. Instead, they are essentially full-time telemarketers who are told that their top priority is to raise obscene amounts of money dialing for dollars.”

They’re not calling you or me—they’re calling the people with the big bucks to give. Those people want something in return, and they get what they want. A study by Professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page showed that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

Meanwhile, those congressional reps get $174,000 in salary plus perks, including paid travel and housing costs—all paid for by your taxes.

Joe Biden told his rich donors when he first ran for President, “If I’m elected, nothing substantial will change.” He kept his word.

The Results

According to Fortune, exit polls showed that “67% of voters said the condition of the economy was ‘not good / poor,’ and only 32% thought the economy was ‘excellent/good’…. The economy ranked as a top issue among key voting groups that Trump won away from Harris.”

That’s among those who actually voted. In 2020, Trump won 74.2 million votes; in 2024, he won 74.8 million; he didn’t do much better in this election than he did back then. In 2020, Joe Biden won 81.3 million votes. So far, the Harris tally is 71.2 million. In other words, over 10 million former Biden voters stayed home this time.

There are, of course, other issues. But for most voters, nothing tops the economy.

What Next?

We all have a lot to do. I’m starting a new organizing project and will tell you about it in another post.

It’s well past time—it never was time—to settle for the lesser evil.