Further Afterthoughts

If Democrats are less than ecstatic with the election results, they’ve a reason. The party out of power is supposed to pick up more House seats and at least a few Senate seats in the first midterm election after a president is elected. Democrats underperformed the norm on House seats and actually lost 3 Senate seats - not a rousing success.

If forced to characterize their outcome, I’d probably call it “disappointingly mediocre.” Dems of course want to see the glass half full, but the truth is they haven’t figured out how to deal with Donald Trump.

Perhaps Dems’ current identity group politics and their former class-based politics are substantially incompatible. I suspect you can do one or the other but not both.

Blue collar whites pay attention when Dems pander to the more extreme nonwhite elements in their coalition of victims. Joe and Jill Sixpac are not amused. Trump “gets” this conflict, and clearly points out how Dem policies hurt his folks.

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Several articles are “out there” which take white women to task for not hangin’ with the sisterhood when they vote. And why should they? Housing patterns tell the story.

With whom do white women live? Mostly with white men in white neighborhoods. They don’t live in women’s collectives with women of all races. I’m tempted to call it Cotton’s Law: In our culture, tribe largely trumps gender.

There are tribes, mostly in the rainforest, where people live with others of their gender, in the men’s house or the house for women and children. We aren’t one of those.