Editors' Note: How was your week?
Ours, not so good. After the shock and the ibogaine wore off, we decided to find out what went wrong with the campaign to protect America from a corrupt Fascist bigoted Russian-owned sex offender. And who better to give us the one right answer than the Spy's master political prognosticator David Bloviator? After literally minutes of analysis conducted from his listening post at the National Press Club Bar, Mr. Bloviator had reached his unimpeachable and carefully-researched conclusion: it was all the fault of those Democrats. He graciously agreed to give us a few minutes of his peerless insights in exchange for an open bar tab:
TMS: Good morning, Mr. Bloviator. The outcome of the election came as a shock to millions. How could America choose a vile corrupt authoritarian with a record of incompetence in office and indictment out of it? What's wrong with America?
DB: What's wrong is that my glass is empty.
TMS: Of course. Double Chivas-rocks for Mr. Bloviator. Here's our corporate card; please open a tab.
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| The great seer knows whom to blame. |
DB: [inhales his drink] Ah, now I can share with you why the 2024 Presidential election turned out so disastrously for the Democrats.
TMS: Which is?
DB: It was all their fault.
TMS: Can you expand on that a little?
DB: The Democrats failed miserably to appeal to white working class voters .
TMS: But they supported unions, invested in hundreds of thousands of new manufacturing jobs in green energy and advanced technology. Weren't those initiatives appealing to the working class?
DB: You fool! You don't understand a thing about politics. The working class was turned off by Democrats focusing on pronouns and words like “Latinx.”
TMS: When did Harris or Walz ever use the term “Latinx” on the campaign trail?
DB: That's not the point. The point is that Democrats were perceived as pretentious elitists who used words like that and wanted 250-pound former linebackers to play on your daughter's soccer team. How out-of-touch!
TMS: Who wants that? Has that ever happened in this country?
DB: No but it could because of Democratic elitists. Speaking of doubles, I'll take another one. [Gestures to bartender]
TMS: What were the concerns of the white working class that the Democrats failed to address, besides the 250 pound trans linebackers?
DB: They didn't address the concerns of the average voter about crime. Crime is skyrocketing.
TMS: No it isn't. Most categories of crime are declining and some are at record lows.
DB: If crime is so low how come I had to wait a full minute at the Dupont Circle CVS for some menial to unlock the shampoo cabinet?
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| Voters didn't like locked drugstore shelves |
TMS: So you're saying that working class voters chose an incompetent demented insurrectionist criminal because they were tired of waiting for shampoo?
DB: Now you're beginning to see the light. Whatever else you can say about Trump, he understood those concerns and addressed them.
TMS: How? By campaigning to lock up shampoo thieves?
DB: That, and addressing immigrant crime.
TMS: But it's clear that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens, and aren't eating pets either.
DB: You don't understand. Democratic elites didn't address the concerns of working class voters about immigration, just like you're not addressing my concerns about this empty glass. [Gestures to bartender]
TMS: What concerns?
DB: That immigrants are flooding into this country, taking black jobs, getting government benefits, and filling up apartments and hospital.
TMS: Literally none of that is true.
DB: That's an even more damning indictment of the Democratic failure to get their message across.
TMS: How did the working class conclude that Democratic elites are looking down at them?
DB: Haven't you read those bloggers going on about how uneducated white working class voters are ignorant bigots?
TMS: Isn't that true?
DB: What difference does it make? You can't get anywhere by demonizing bigots and neo-Nazis.
TMS: But isn't the Republican Party really the party of rich elites who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to persuade working class voters to vote against their economic interests? Isn't Trump a supposedly elitist billionaire? Isn't he bringing in a bunch of people with elite backgrounds and billions to throw around?
DB: You must be joking. Would an elitist call his opponent retarded? Would an elitist stand up for the cats and dogs of some s***hole in Ohio?
TMS: And isn't it also true that Trump governed to protect the rich and large corporations by borrowing trillions to pay for tax cuts that largely benefited the so-called elite?
DB: But he sent out $1,500 checks with his name on them. People remember that. And you saw the same anti-elite sentiment in down-ballot races
TMS: You mean when a few plutocrats, including a guy whose company defrauded Medicare out of billions and another who made a fortune as a Mercedes dealer used their own and dark money millions to defeat more progressive candidates in Senate races in Florida and Ohio, including Sherrod Brown who spent his entire career fighting for unions?
DB: Exactly. Brown lost because he failed to garner support from working class heroes like Miriam Adelson and crypto bonus babies like the Winkelvosses.
TMS: Why do you think that Democrats didn't get any traction out of pointing out that the Republican nominee tried to overthrow the U.S. Government, was adjudicated a rapist, and convicted of fraud? Those seem like pretty big obstacles to electoral success.
DB:
Again, these were the concerns of an out-of-touch Democratic elite. The average American doesn't care if their President once tried to overthrow the government he now wishes to lead. Keep in mind that the average American can't even spell 'insurrection.'
TMS: Let's turn to the claim that the election represented a repudiation of so-called “identity politics.” Is that how you see it?
DB: Absolutely. Democrats must stop playing that game. The working class is turned off by it.
TMS: The white working class, that is.
DB: What else is there?
TMS: But didn't the Republicans play the same game, by trying to pit white people against their supposed enemies, including people of color, immigrants, and trans kids?
DB: That's totally different. As one professor has explained it, only the left can ever be accused of “identity politics:”
One more time: identity politics can only exist on the left. A campaign that degenerated entire groups of people, and is fused into white Christian nationalism, is not engaged in identity politics.
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) November 9, 2024 at 3:22 PM
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DB: The next thing you'll try to tell me is that my good Georgetown friend Maureen Dowd and her brother are indulging in “identity politics” by complaining about the Democratic base from the perspective of what we used to call in Dorchester “two-terlet Irish.”
TMS: That's what it sounds like to me. What do you say to those who blame misleading media and under the radar disinformation sources which continually painted a false picture of Democrats as out-of-touch elitists who care more about trans kids than hard-working Americans like Jeff Bezos?
DB: Isn't that what happened?
TMS: No that's not at all what happened. There's a media narrative that you seem to have swallowed like the ice in that drink that perverts the truth. The Democrats campaigned on issues that benefit the working class and others struggling like higher minimum wages, support for unions, student loan relief, and tax breaks for first-time home-buyers. But you and your fellow bloviators invented a story about a party that supposedly stressed correcting pronouns, buying dogs for immigrant dinners, and changing your kid's gender at recess. Now that the election is over, instead of pointing to disinformation, dark money and the underlying persistence of racism and sexism in American life, you amplify that ridiculous falsified tale in an effort to get Democrats to abandon their long-held positions of protecting working class families and embracing tolerance and decency. Don't you have any shame at all? How can anyone take you and your fellow gasbags seriously if all you're going to do is recycle lies and right-wing drivel? Good-bye, Mr. Bloviator [leaves in a huff]
DB: [to bartender] It seems as if our young whippersnapper forgot about his credit card. Another double Chivas-rocks, my good man.
