It will not be easy to break out of the grip of fraudsters who refuse to learn or leave. But it is important to effectively confront the coming plutocracy.
Even if you’ve spent the last month hiding under the covers, you’d still be hard-pressed to miss the arguments, including some scathing entries from my Nation colleagues — about the size of Donald Trump’s election victory and what it says (or doesn’t say) about the existence of the Republican mandate. We can all agree on this: when the votes were finally counted, (a) Trump won more than Kamala Harris; (b) but still insufficient to claim a majority, as opposed to a majority; (c) though clearly enough to win the Electoral College (which, unfortunately, still determines the winner in this country). Republicans also gained control of the House and Senate.
It’s true that on election night, when Harris remained in her bunker, Trump declared an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” But I was puzzled why so many pundits seemed to think that of all the lies in all of Trump’s speeches, this one needed to be debunked. And then I realized that this isn’t really an argument about the vote count or whether Harris, who got about 6 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020, ran an effective campaign. (Though loyal readers will recall that I believe she discarded a potentially winning economic message in pursuit of the chimera of cross-Republican votes.)
Despite appearances, this sometimes gruesome dispute is not really about the past at all. It’s really about the future and whether the Democratic Party needs a radical overhaul that would allow it to ignore the siren song of the consulting class that has now led the party to two disastrous defeats. Or, to borrow a term from British politics, all that is required to win is “one more surge”—running the same campaign but with a little more energy than last time. In fact, this was the message that David Plouffe and his colleagues offered as guests on Under to save America: Give us a chance to do it again in 2028 and we will. Anyone even tempted to recognize these frauds should listen to Plouffe’s October episode “Why You Shouldn’t Panic About the Election.”
Displacing the consulting class — and draining the cesspool of dark money that ensures their continued influence on Democratic politics — will not be easy. But it is important if there is ever to be an effective opposition to the plutocracy masquerading as populism that the Republicans are proposing. At the same time, as Terrence Wray argues in this issue, it’s just as important to resist the fatalistic temptation to simply cede much of the electoral map to Republican reaction. Because it turns out that, like communism, the “red state voter” is more of a ghost than an entity — a scarecrow whose supposed prejudices are being used to drive healthy solutions like Medicare for All and real debt relief for students (and their parents) out of bounds.
Trump shirks (or condescends) to have it both ways: a detailed manifesto in Project 2025 — which might actually give him some claim to a mandate if he hadn’t so adamantly rejected it during the campaign — and any electoral benefits derived from his denunciations. The whole exercise turned out to be another charade, as Chris Lehmann points out in a richly illustrated article by Ally Valley.
While we’re on the subject of societal rot, take a look at Eric Orner’s stunning visual memoir of the day the murder took place in his hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, and Marie Kardos-Nelson’s exposé of how colonial-era legal systems filled prisons in some African countries minor offenders. Not to mention Charles Glass on the Israeli recidivist invasion of Lebanon, Abdelrahman ElGendi on post-Gaza literature, and Jorge Cote on Alfonso Cuaron’s TV thriller Disclaimer.
Current issue
On a more elevated plane, Peter Cooper interviews — and pays tribute to — cartoonist Jules Pfeiffer; Joan Walsh reveals why she won’t be dancing at any of the inaugural balls; Chris Lehman (doubling) delves into the breakdown of our two-party system; and Kim Phillips-Fain paints an appropriately heroic portrait of the great labor historian David Montgomery.
Plus a few servings of sharp opinions from our columnists, posts from correspondents near and far and, speaking of heroism, John Nichols’ Yearbook Nation honor board. So, if you’re still hiding, it’s time to come out and join the fight. The things we care about won’t wait another four years — and neither will we.
DD Guttenplan
Editor
