Progressive analyst John Nichols visited the Fogartyville. Here is Ramon Lopez’ report.
By Ramon Lopez
Original Air Date: December 11, 2024
Host: The big win for Trump wasn’t as big as it seems. And it’s another episode of the whipsaw politics we’ve seen for many decades now. Political analyst John Nichols spoke in Sarasota, and Ramon Lopez has this report.
Ramon Lopez: John Nichols, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation magazine, has put the presidential election of Donald Trump into perspective. He did so during a presentation and discussion at Fogartyville Community Center last Saturday night. It was a full house.
Anger and whiplash politics — that’s what Nichols called the outcome of this election. Part of a trend U.S. voters have been whipping back and forth since the early 1980s, and Trump took advantage of the angry American voters.
John Nichols: If you want to understand the 2024 election, it’s very simple. The 2024 election was the election of anger. Anger at the system, anger at how things work, anger at those who are in power, and those who seek power. It was just flat out anger. Donald Trump understood that, and the Democrats did not, and that is a fundamental reality that explains an awful lot about what just happened.
We’ve had whipsaw politics. We go back and forth. Doesn’t matter which party is in charge because it’s going to get thrown out. And the reason for that is our governance is not working in a way that makes the majority of Americans believe that the country is on their side.
A huge portion of people, many of them former members of the Democratic base, voted for Donald Trump. And why did they do so? Because, to their view, the Democratic Party wasn’t offering a sufficient alternative. And so in this dynamics, if we talk about what to think about the 2024 campaign, what you have to recognize is that the Democratic party itself has to go through a severe deep reexamination and it has to figure out, how are you gonna talk to the great majority of Americans. Who wasn’t hearing a message that resonated for Kamala Harris? Working class people.
RL: Nichols said Kamala Harris would have made a great U.S. president, but she lost the race because of a flawed campaign strategy.
Nichols
JN: The candidate of the Democratic Party for president of the United States was a black woman who was a child of immigrants from India and the Caribbean. I’ve interviewed her many times. I can tell you Kamala Harris, first and foremost, she was absolutely ready to be the president of the United States of America. She, in this campaign, was pressured to run a campaign that did not speak to the anger.
RL: At the simplest level, Nichols said we’re in a time of political chaos. He said Trump won one of the narrowest victories in American history of the presidency. Trump got a Congress that’s very narrowly on his side. There’s several members of the U.S. Senate who have explicitly opposed Trump. He believes a handful of special elections or retirements could even flip the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the course of this term.
The political commentator co-authored a best-selling book with Senator Bernie Sanders, It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism. He said capitalism is the cause of the chaos we are seeing.
JN: Our point was that capitalism had gotten out of control, that we had created a situation in this country where a handful of billionaires literally can’t lose money, right? It can’t go bad for them. And what we were trying to emphasize is, no matter what happened, the billionaires got richer.
This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. We’re not supposed to live in a country where no matter what happens, the rich get richer, and the rest of us feel more insecure, more cut off, more denied, not just of economic power, but of political power that goes with it. Something was wrong.
RL: Nichols sees a light at the end of a very dark tunnel as Democrats regroup.
JN: The fact of the matter is, there’s about a dozen Democrats who are starting to think about running. And as long as they don’t spend all the time they’re running on running, and some of the time I’m doing a critique of Donald Trump and organizing and getting people together to make sure that Donald Trump doesn’t do so much damage, they’re gonna end up in a situation where they will have united enough people in this country.
RL: This is Ramon Lopez for WSLR News.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.