The party of performative meltdowns?

That will attract swing voters!

Don’t think that I don’t understand pain. After October 7, when real live men, women and children had been tortured, raped, murdered and taken hostage, I cried long into the night until I started to meet some Israelis who cheered me up. I get it. (Of course, people actually died then.)

I’ve been looking through my Facebook feed, and I was somewhat surprised to find what my Twitter feed had been talking about: liberal meltdowns.

I thought that might be a thing limited to tik toc and celebrities and things like that. But no. My real, actual friends are having giant public meltdowns over the election.

Democracy happened. Trump and the Republicans won. Decisively.

As a union organizer, you learn that mostly you win and sometimes you lose, if you’re good. When you lose, you ask yourself what you could have done better. You attempt to learn so that you win the next time.

If my Organizing Director had seen me having some kind of public meltdown after I lost, he would have kindly taken me aside and suggested I look for another career.

Seriously, y’all. The people who voted for Trump are not evil. The majority of the country is not out to get you. The Democrats just didn’t get it done. Four years of woke culture war while hard working Americans are struggling to pay the bills… didn’t cut it. It didn’t win. The numbers don’t lie.

Liberals have long looked down on the white working class. This has been true as long as I can remember and was no doubt true before. Only now, the bison have come home to roost! The regular people, not the well educated elites in their nice houses in the suburbs, not the college professors letting students terrorize young Jewish students, no, a whole lot of people were not impressed by the Democrats.

If I were in Democratic leadership, which heaven knows I am not and never will be, I would look carefully to see how to salvage this disaster. I would beseech my friends, family, followers, to behave with dignity. Reach out to the other side. And here’s a thought:

Maybe ASK those people why they voted for Trump? What are their issues? I bet you it’s the economy. And if the people I’ve spoken to for the last few years are at all representative, for a lot of men, it’s having been told that they are to blame for all of society’s ills, past, present and future. Putting people down does not get their votes. And they told you. Just now.

As a lifelong Democrat who has actually been poor and spent many years just trying to make it, I really have a hard time watching liberals prove what Republicans say about them to be true: from their place of privilege, they want to dictate for people they despise. When they call the majority of Americans who voted for Trump sexist, racist, and worse, they prove the Republicans’ point!

I think Harris did the best she could with a very bad hand of cards. I admire her attempt, and hope she can go on to a good job in the private sector. I’m sure she will be fine, and certainly won’t have trouble paying her bills. She wasn’t a bad candidate, and this isn’t a bad country. This is a country that just showed, through the democratic process, that the majority is unsatisfied with what the Democrats have offered.

Will the Republicans do better? I don’t know. If they don’t, those swing voters will swing the other way. My fantasy scenario is that things will improve but the Democrats will get their act together, go back to real liberal values like supporting working people, and make Governor Shapiro the nominee next time. Top of the ticket. Then again I, like many Jewish women, have a crush on Josh Shapiro. Then again, I am not Jewish and I mean no disrespect to his wife.

I wrote this yesterday and thought of not publishing it. I’m sure it will enrage some of my friends. I’ve gotten used to that since openly speaking out against antisemitism and for Israel, but it is always sad when someone just walks away from the relationship instead of engaging in dialogue. That’s the way things often are these days.

I woke up this morning to news of the beating of Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam. Will there be performative meltdowns over that? Actual violence against actual people? Or will we cry and scream and sit in dark rooms only when our fellow Americans peacefully disagree and vote?