Yet another election postmortem (but this one is bleaker than all the others, I promise)

Voters don't like liars. Modern progressivism is full of liars.

Welp…

Yet another election in which the Democratic party failed tremendously while progressive ballot initiatives performed well, even in deep red states. The Republicans have re-taken the senate. Kamala Harris lost the electoral college as well as the popular vote, and saw a drop off of from Biden’s total that will likely be in the tens of millions. Meanwhile, pro-abortion amendments passed in Montana, Missouri, Arizona, and Nebraska. Florida’s abortion initiative failed but still got 57% of the vote. Shit… even Kentucky resoundingly rejected a proposal that would have redirected public funds to non-public schools.

And in states Kamala won, her total still lagged behind progressive initiatives. Maryland supported an amendment to protect reproductive rights by over 75%, while only 60% voted for Harris. She also finished 10+ points behind pro-abortion amendments in New York and Colorado.

But there are blips. Deep blue Massachusetts rejected a proposal to raise the minimum wage for tipped employees (imagine the horror of baristas making a whole $6.50 an hour). 70% of the enlightened denizens of California supported stiffer penalties for drug and property crimes. (Harris, a registered California voter and former prosecutor, angrily refused to disclose her vote on that particular issue). Some progressive issues simply aren’t popular or sustainable, and very little effort was put into convincing voters otherwise.

What accounts for this? Well, I’m no scientician—I’m barely literate, to tell the truth—but I think it comes down to one fundamental fact: people don’t like being lied to, and they do not trust those who lie to them repeatedly. And the state of modern Democrat progressivism, with all of its manias and obsessions regarding identity and petty cultural beefs, cannot be maintained without a steady stream of very obvious lies.

If you believe it doesn’t matter if the President of the United States is senile, say so. If you think admissions and employment should be more determined by a person’s identity markers than their competence, say so. If you feel the dignity of male rapists who identify as women outweighs the safety of female prisoners so much that you’re willing to house them together, say so. If you wish to censor political speech that harms your side regardless of its veracity in the name of fighting “disinformation,” say so. If you think there’s no dissonance in claiming to desire a ceasefire in Gaza while shipping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to Israel, say so.

Of course, they never said so. They never had to. Anyone who raised any concerns regarding these and myriad other issues is a manifest racist, sexist, transphobe, etc, and so their considerations are beneath response. Besides, these things totally never happen, even if it would be fascism if they stopped happening.

This the state of progressivism in the 2020’s: a complete abdication of persuasion, an imperious assumption that your moral righteousness is so manifest that only an evil person would ever doubt it and therefore you never need to demonstrate it. This is how the Democrats have come to defend incredibly unpopular policies in the name of Joy or other nebulous concepts while deflecting any and all criticisms of their support of ethnic genocides and brutal wars. This is how Dick Cheney and Cardi B come to share a stage with one another.

It’s too easy to point out that Kamala is an amoral cypher. Of course she is. That’s the point. That’s what establishment Dems want, and such a candidate might have persevered under different circumstances. But that’s not all of it. She’s somehow worse than that. Her entire presence is fucked. Her most vocal supporters in 2020 got banned from Twitter for celebrating the death of a white baby who was eaten by an alligator. (I’m not joking. That actually happened, and people defended it). Vibes such as that cannot be easily overcome. Her presence is an eerie portent of doom, like a demon from an old folk tale. She is the voice that calls to children from the bottom of the well.

No one actually wanted four years of that. Not even the people who voted for her.

Kamala represented a fundamental meanness that has come to define the Democratic party in the eyes of most voters—a meanness that has been viciously abetted by the party’s complete insulation from internal criticism, from their ability to lie at will, constantly and without consequence. She was the avatar of a profound and upsetting dysfunction that a vast majority of people refuse to associate themselves with. In this sense, she was really the most appropriate candidate for today’s Democrats. No one person or party has ever deserved to lose more.