Recommended: Democrats Are So, So Bad at This

Election day is tomorrow, and while this political season is largely in uncharted waters (there are lots of unknowns at the moment, like who will turn out to vote), my guess is that there will be no “blue wave”. Republicans will probably not only keep the Senate but even perhaps pick up a seat or two. Democrats will probably win the House by a thin margin, gaining just about what the opposition party usually gains in an off-year election (historically the president’s party usually loses about 30 seats in the next midterms) but not much more.

As I have said several times before, we badly need a viable liberal party to keep the nation’s politics in balance, and the current Democratic Party simply isn’t that party any more. In that regard, let me recommend the article today in Slate by Ben Mathis-Lilley entitled Democrats Are So, So Bad at This.

It is not of course just that Democrats haven’t learned how to get their message across; it’s also that in this election they don’t seem to have any message except outrage at Trump. If the sky had fallen and the economy plunged after Trump’s election, as liberal pundits assured us it would, outrage might have been enough. But in fact the economy surged, unemployment fell to a 50 year low, and working class wages began to rise, all a strong reversal of the anemic economy under the Obama administration. In the face of that, outrage alone simply isn’t a meaningful policy.