Shocked! There really is no other word to describe how I felt in early November.
I called an IRS agent about an urgent client matter and prepared to leave a message, expecting to wait days or weeks for a response. I could not believe it when the agent answered her own phone. She listened to the problem I needed to address and promised she would get back to me later that day. Not only did she call me back, but she also confirmed a resolution to our problem and faxed supporting documentation to me within just a few hours. Most Americans do not expect that level of professionalism from government employees at any level and would be as surprised as I was when it happens.
Since Election Day, Democrats have been trying to understand how they could lose a second time to a barely coherent, chaos-mongering felon. As expected, explanations for failure are focused on setting the future political agenda, resulting in a beauty pageant of moronic thinking.
Bernie Sanders and the Progressives blame the loss on insufficient Jew-hatred in Democratic policy, putting forward resolutions opposing arms exports to Israel as though the thing Americans want most is to stand shoulder to shoulder with our enemies and toe to toe with our allies.
Apparently, the Far Left has mistaken the embarrassment of a minority of college students protesting in favor of terrorism for a lodestar even as voters in that age group jump overboard.
As an alternative but equally ridiculous assessment of the election, Fareed Zakaria wrote in the Washington Post, “the first big error was the Biden administration’s blindness to the collapse of the immigration system and the chaos at the border.” His proposed remedy was that Harris’ response to what she would have done differently from Biden should have been to say, “I would have shut down the border early and hard.”
In other words, the solution to beating the Republicans is to adopt their agenda on immigration and join in propagating racist myths about rising crime. Honestly, if that is the answer, then why not just vote for the Republicans? Good thinking Fareed.
Donald Trump managed to win every swing state while increasing his share of votes across demographic groups that Democrats perceived as belonging to them. That did not happen because Democrats were too far left on immigration or too far right on foreign policy. It happened because an overwhelming majority of the American electorate thinks that Democrats are fundamentally wrong about their core belief that the government can provide meaningful solutions to the problems they face every day.
A Pew Research poll published in June reported that 76% of Americans trust the federal government either only some of the time or never. It further reported that 81% of Americans are either frustrated with or angry at the federal government. These attitudes have only worsened over time as trust declined from over 70% who trusted the government in the 1960s to today’s abysmal figure.
Democrats believe that the government is needed to address the most serious problems and to protect the most vulnerable, but even among Democrats only 35% said that they trust the government to do what is right just about always or most of the time.
That extreme level of disconnect is unsustainable for a political party that would like to return to power. The problem will become worse, however, if Democrats are deluded into thinking that the solution is merely a change in stance on one issue or another instead of wood rot across the beam of their ship.
It is simply foolish to propose sweeping new agendas like Medicare for All or Green New Deals when the overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe in the ability of their government to deliver.
Fortunately, the Republican party is gift-wrapping an opportunity for Democrats to course-correct. Donald Trump’s appointments of uniquely unqualified, dangerously misinformed cabinet officials like Peter Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Linda McMahon and Mehmet Oz give Democrats the chance to showcase how undermining government is not the same as improving it.
As secretary of defense, Peter Hegseth plans to corrupt the professional military and to effectively decapitate it by drumming out senior officers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. It is hard to imagine a more idiotic assault on the readiness of our armed forces to meet the threats from Russia, Iran and China than to engage in a Stalin-like purge.
Democrats, on the other hand, would do well to note that Pew Research also found that 60% of Americans agreed that the military has a positive effect on the country. Democrats should hold up the US military as an exemplar of professional, apolitical, national service to be copied, not destroyed.
As secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to declare war on the fictional danger of seed oils. First and foremost, in the event that the Senate confirms Kennedy, Democrats should be prepared to initiate recall elections for both Senate seats in North Dakota where 80% of America’s canola crop is produced.
Beyond that, Democrats need to prove to America’s farmers that government action on climate change and immigration will serve to reduce the costs of insurance, effectively steward water resources and protect their workforce. In other words, demonstrate that a professional government with serious, genuine understanding of the kitchen table issues people face, has the ability to make their lives better.
My interaction with the incredible professionalism of an IRS agent felt like an anomaly and therein lies the problem for Democrats. Myths about the pernicious “Deep State” manage to flourish because Americans feel alienated and underserved by their government so much that they were willing to vote for a President who vows not to make it better, but to dismantle it.
If the Democratic party wants to win the next election, it must give voters a reason to believe that a Democrat-led government can make professionalism the norm instead of a shocking surprise.
