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DONKEYS are reputed to be stubborn beasts. That possible misinterpretation of their instinct for self-preservation characterises a party that has utilised Equus asinusas a symbol since Andrew Jackson embraced a hostile description of himself as a jackass back in 1828.
The Democrats’ election symbol might be an insult to a species whose intelligence has been underrated since donkeys were domesticated 6,000 years ago, but its traditional implications accurately reflect the party hierarchy’s mindset after last week’s devastating defeat.
The post-mortems began pouring in as soon as it became obvious that Kamala Harris had been trounced by Donald Trump. Yesterday, the president-elect was due to be hosted in the Oval Office by a man who had described him as a dire threat to democracy.
Joe Biden’s claim wasn’t exactly inaccurate, but it ignored his own party’s contribution to the promotion of plutocracy. It may not have been initiated by the Democrats, but they ran with the neoliberal trend exemplified by the Reagan administration.
The Democrats have enabled him once more.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lent their imagined heft to the Harris campaign, and both ignored the issues whereby their presidencies led, respectively, to George W. Bush and Trump. The Clinton presidency did not deviate all that much from the Reagan era, and Obama effectively pursued both the neoconservatism and neoliberalism of his Republican predecessor.
No one can claim with any certainty that the 2024 result would have been different had Biden butted out after the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Democrats did not fare quite as badly as the polls and the mainstream media projected, but they might have made amends that bolstered their support two years later. No such luck. Biden did propose some healthy measures on the economic and renewable energy fronts, but they made no immediate difference to most of those who were suffering from the consequences of the Covid pandemic and its inflationary aftermath.
The Democrats offered no alternative to the status quo beyond gradual improvement over the years, bolstered by pundits who proclaimed that the economy was going gangbusters, with rising employment and declining inflation. Too many voters did not feel the joy that Harris sought to project, recalling that their grocery bills were lower before Biden took over. Among the many promises Trump is unlikely to fulfil, he vowed to bring down grocery bills, cut taxes and end all wars.
Back in 2016, he emerged as a potential disruptor of a status quo that wasn’t working for most Americans. He could not reclaim the perch in 2020, after four years in power. That he was able to achieve a far more convincing victory than eight years ago is a testament to the decrepitude of the Democrats.
That does not only mean that Biden ought to have ruled himself out a couple of years ago on the basis of his senescence, but also that his successor should have diverged from a self-defeating formula by offering viable alternatives to both an economy whose supposedly thriving aspects are not trickling down to most voters, and to a foreign policy that involves prolonging a nasty war in Europe and promoting a genocide in the Middle East.
