If there is one lesson you take from the 2016 election, what is it? I have almost no patience for postmortems and finger pointing, but I am wondering what your vision of how to move forward from such a colossal defeat looks like.
The forces of economic and racial anxiety, if left unaddressed, are on a collision course in America. Internecine debates about which factor is stronger obscure the interconnection and thus acceleration of both. We also often miss the fact that economic anxiety is not limited to those below certain income levels.
Too often, Democrats defend the status quo, noting positive GDP and unemployment numbers instead of speaking to the underlying forces that threaten economic security. When we say our only problem is with messaging, we imply that voters are too dumb to realize how great we have been for them or would be for them. People are smarter than elites think. They already know that both parties were naïve about the costs of globalization and can see that both parties are again failing to address the impact of new forces like economic consolidation, automation, and exclusion.
Many people I meet know that Trump is full of smoke and mirrors. They recognize that he is two decades behind, and that we are no longer losing our manufacturing to China, but rather to computers. But at least Trump showed up and acknowledged their pain. As Democrats, we need to show up. We need to tell the brutal economic truth that of these jobs aren't coming back, and we need to offer a better solution than blaming minorities. We can do this.
