I WAS WRONG

     As those of you who read my blog know, I really thought Harris was going to win big.  Since last night, I’ve been thinking about why I and many other Democrats were so wrong.  The best answer I can give comes from the work of a wonderful historian, Robert O. Paxton.

     Paxton, who is now 92, was a professor of mine decades ago at Columbia.  His first book argued that Vichy France was not a nation of resisters to Nazi fascism, but rather contained many enablers and collaborators.  Since then, he has written primarily about fascism itself.  Paxton argues that to understand fascism, you need to look not at its leaders, but its followers.  What made Germany and Italy go fascist in the inter-war years, while France and Britain did not?  He concludes that the most important factor in bringing fascism into being is having a majority of the voting population believe that the current system is not only not working for them, but is actively rigged against them.

     I think this is what happened here.  A majority of white, non-college educated Americans swung the vote to Trump.  In addition, young people, most of them male, staggering under debt and unable to live on their own earnings, voted disproportionately for Trump.  So did Hispanic men, who come from a culture that has embraced patriarchy, to the point of providing the word “machismo.”  I thought abortion would win the election for women.  Instead, a number of states voted in favor of abortion rights, but against the female candidate.  I know that misogyny, which I hoped had decreased since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, was a definitely a factor, but I find that too depressing to think about today. 

     What now?  Obviously, the Democratic party has to re-group and re-invent itself.  Meanwhile, I remember Benjamin Franklin’s warning in the 18th century: “A republic” –- by which he meant a government that was not a monarchy –- “if you can keep it.”  We must work now to keep it.  And to keep on keeping on.