Byron York, the doyen of the conservative media – I can remember seeing his shaggy mane at Supreme Court Nomination Hearings for the Senate Judiciary Committee in the mid-00s – wrote a truly fascinating column recently about the Democrats’ mood post-election.
In his column, York reported:
Democrats are angry about a lot of things. But the three that have attracted some attention in the last few days are 1) the massive amount of money Harris spent and where it went, 2) the campaign role Harris gave to former Rep. Liz Cheney, and 3) the part the media played in Harris’s loss and Trump’s win. All have Democrats nearly gagging in disbelief and, in some cases, anger.
The latter two points were what attracted my attention. And both indicate that Democrats are not done falling into their Doom Loop, which I discussed in my earlier column.
A doom loop, in economics, describes a situation in which one negative economic condition creates a second negative condition, which in turn creates a third negative condition or reinforces the first, resulting in a downward spiral.
The 2024 Democrat Doom Loop I wrote about described the fact that the Democrats knew they were behind in the presidential race because of the economy, the border, the world chaos, and the left-wing and lightweight record of Kamala Harris, and how all this compared (poorly) to Donald Trump’s 2017-2021 presidential record during his term in office (minus the year of COVID). So, the Democrats were forced to lean into the “Trump is the devil” campaign they had started in 2015 to right their ship. In other words, they campaigned heavily on the idea that Trump was a crude barbarian crook who abuses women and minorities and wants to overthrow America’s democratic society in favor of dictatorship. But, because that campaign had been ongoing for almost a decade now, the gettable voters for it had already been gotten, and the charge itself had lost its impact with other voters because of “the boy who cried wolf” syndrome. But, because the Democrats didn’t have anything else to work with, and because they really believed their own propaganda, the Democrats couldn’t stop pushing the “Trump is the devil campaign,” and each time they used it, they expected it to finally stop Trump dead in his tracks.
This is why Kamala Harris and her campaign advisors chose to end her campaign with Liz Cheney. Cheney was the unquestioned Republican leader in the “Trump is the devil” campaign. So, it was quite natural (considering their logic and bias) for the Democrats to hope that Liz Cheney singing from their mutual playbook with Kamala Harris would move some Republican voters or swing voters into the Harris column.
But it (once again) didn’t work for the reasons I explained above, and now the Democrats are angry about it.
And what do the Democrats think should have been done instead? Well, according to York, “(t)he current idea in Democratic circles is that the liberal media establishment — the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, plus Hollywood, the music industry, and academia — was too timid in reporting on Trump’s liabilities.” Even their popular comedian, Jon Stewart, thinks this is true.
That’s right – the current Democrat conventional wisdom is that there was not enough browbeating of the swing voters with the idea that “Trump is the devil.” And now, to impede Trump’s second presidential term, they and their allies believe they need to talk some more about how Donald Trump is a crude barbarian crook who abuses women and minorities and wants to overthrow America’s democratic society in favor of dictatorship.
Yup, truly… fascinating. (Imagine me arching my eyebrow as I type this, a la Mr. Spock.) And very indicative of the fact that the Democrats are still spiraling down into their Doom Loop.
