By Michael J. Talmo November 21, 2024
The title of this article is the words Donald Trump spoke at one of his political rallies before the November 5, 2024 election. Let that sink in all you Trump supporters. Here is the exact quote in full:
“I don’t care about you. I just want your vote. I don’t care.”
In spite of Trump admitting this to his loyal followers, they still voted for him. In spite of running the worst campaign I ever witnessed in my 71 years on this planet, he was re-elected President of the United States. Why?
A lot of pundits and so-called experts have spouted all kinds of reasons why Kamala Harris lost the election. But I think President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) provided the correct answer in this 1952 speech:
“The first rule in my book is that we ought to stick by the liberal principles of the Democratic Party. We are not going to get anywhere by trimming or appeasing. And we don’t need to try it. The record the Democratic Party has made in the last 20 years is the greatest political asset any party ever had in the history of the world. We would be foolish to throw it away. There is nothing our enemies would like better and nothing that would do more to help them win an election. I’ve seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn’t believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article every time.”
President Truman further stated:
“But when a Democratic candidate goes out and explains what the New Deal and fair Deal really are—when he stands up like a man and puts the issues before the people—then Democrats can win, even in places where they have never won before. It has been proven time and again. We are getting a lot of suggestions to the effect that we ought to water down our platform and abandon parts of our program. These, my friends, are Trojan horse suggestions. I have been in politics for over 30 years, and I know what I am talking about, and I believe I know something about the business. One thing I am sure of: never, never throw away a winning program.”
This is why Kamala Harris lost the election and why, come this January 2025, the Republican Party will also control both the House and Senate in Congress. But it didn’t start with her. Democrats have long ago abandoned the liberal principles that got Truman’s predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), elected four times (FDR died one month into his fourth term, so he really only served three terms).
It was under Roosevelt and Democrats in control of Congress that we got Social Security, the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and other reforms that built the largest and most prosperous middle class the world ever saw. All of this was accomplished with a top income tax rate on the rich of 79% starting in 1934 and increasing to 94% in 1944 (it’s 37% today). The Republicans, the “party of big business,” as Truman pointed out, opposed all of these reforms.
After Truman became president, he was already having problems with turncoat Democrats plus a damaged post-WWII economy, which led to the Republicans getting control of both houses of Congress from 1946-1948. But it was short-lived and Democrats regained control of Congress in 1949. But as explained here and here, the 1990s under Bill Clinton began the era of the “Third Way” or “New Democrats,” which is a fancy term for the same old phony Democrats that Truman described.
Democrats of Clinton’s and Obama’s ilk give mostly lip service to being culturally liberal while being moderate to fiscally conservative on economic issues. Genuine liberal Democrats still exist at the state level, but at the federal level, the conservative corporate Democrats call the shots. Of course, corporate Democrats still win elections when Republicans mess up the economy and cause enough problems in other areas, as explained by Professor Robert Reich. But because “Third Way” Democrats just tinker around the edges and only do modest reforms while supporting and even co-opting Republican policies, they ultimately lose and the Republicans get back into power.
For example, Bill Clinton supported and enacted disastrous Republican trade deals like NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994. It’s because of trade deals like this that our manufacturing jobs disappeared. Less than a year after NAFTA was enacted, Republicans got control of the House of Representatives for the first time in over forty years.
Another example: Barack Obama was elected president in a huge landslide victory in 2008. The Democratic Party also had full control of Congress. They even briefly had 60 votes in the US Senate, a filibuster-proof majority.
Since America is the only wealthy nation that doesn’t have universal health care, one of Obama’s big campaign promises was to change that. Instead, he kowtowed to the for-profit health insurance companies and gave us the inept Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare,” which, as explained here and here, was cooked up by a right-wing think tank. Result: Democrats lost the House to the Republicans in the 2010 midterm election and in the 2014 midterms lost control of the Senate, which blocked Obama from filling a vacancy on the US Supreme Court, allowing Donald Trump to fill that vacancy after he took office in 2017.
I strongly believe that if Obama had passed universal health care, or Medicare for All, Trump would never have become president. In fact, Democrats probably would have controlled the presidency and Congress for decades to come. But it was not to be because both Democrats, like Republicans, have sold out to big business and the ultra wealthy. Both parties protect this system because it gives them wealth and power at the expense of the rest of us.
Under this revolving door system, Congressmen and other government officials can become corporate lobbyists after they leave office and make a fortune and then go back into government if they want to. Under this system, former presidents and other retired politicians rake in millions for making speeches at corporate events and charity fundraisers, even for spouting complete gibberish. They also make millions, paid in advance, for writing books that were written for them.
Bottom line: the way to win elections is to appeal to your base and to motivate people who normally don’t vote, or who never voted, to vote for you. This is politics 101. But that would mean turning our country back into a genuine democracy instead of what it really is: an oligarchy, as documented in this 2014 study published in Cambridge University Press.
Unfortunately, Democrats would rather lose elections than buck the system and give their liberal base what they want, such as making the rich pay their fair share of taxes, universal health care, world peace, and ending foreign aid to authoritarian governments.
Harris lost the election when she was on The View and was asked what she would do different from President Biden and replied that she couldn’t think of anything. She didn’t understand, or didn’t care to understand, that this election was about replacing the incumbent. Around 57% of Americans disapproved of Biden’s job performance mainly in regard to the economy, as in higher prices, but also his support for Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Harris either didn’t understand or didn’t care that when you don’t mobilize your base, they won’t vote for you.
Trump got over 76 million votes in the 2024 election and over 74 million votes in the 2020 election. But Harris got over 73 million votes in the 2024 election, while Biden got over 81 million votes in the 2020 election. Voter turnout in the 2020 election was 66.38% and 63.68% in the 2024 election. But the Democratic Party won’t learn any lessons from Harris’ defeat. Instead, they will spin her loss on not being right-wing enough and will use it as an excuse to be even more pro-war and to stop fighting for the rights of marginalized groups. This is already happening.
Most people are low-information voters. They don’t study a topic and do research; they just listen to stories and believe them for emotional reasons and repeat them. People remember that prices were lower under Trump. That’s all they care about. They don’t understand how stuff like inflation works. They don’t understand that the inflation rate can be low and prices can still be high, as explained here. They don’t understand that the reason prices nosedived under Trump was because of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. They don’t know that gasoline prices began dropping under Obama two years before Trump took office. They don’t know that other market forces can affect the price of gasoline. They don’t know that businesses are already planning to raise prices if Trump’s tariffs and mass deportations are enacted as explained here and here. Most people don’t know stuff. They just believe stuff. They don’t understand that believing stuff is not the same as knowing stuff.
When enough angry, uninformed people are conned into believing a false narrative that resonates with them, the hive mentality takes over. The false story they believe becomes more important than real life. Feelings become more important than facts. Fantasy replaces reality. Zealotry replaces truth. Winning becomes more important than playing fair. The illusion of freedom replaces genuine freedom.
Trump resonates with people who hate and fear change. He’s the potion that allows their Mister Hyde to come out and wreck havoc. He appeals to their baser impulses. It doesn’t matter to his hardcore MAGA followers if what he says isn’t true. In fact, Trump constantly lies. He lied about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. He lied about disaster relief money being diverted to housing for illegal migrants. He lied about a whole bunch of stuff. But his followers don’t care as long as they can persecute and get rid of people that they don’t like. They are so pathologically wrapped up in their own world view that they are incapable of understanding how limited that world view is. The truth doesn’t matter to them. They just want to believe what they want to believe.
A big myth that Trump supporters believe is that he’s an outsider, his own man. Utterly false. The three Justices that Trump appointed to the US Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, were selected by two conservative organizations: the Federalist Society and The Heritage Foundation. Both have powerful and far-reaching influence over government policies, which includes the rulings handed down by our court system. They are part of the vast right-wing propaganda machine that began in the early 1970s. Trump vowed that all of his judicial nominees would be picked by the Federalist Society. As for The Heritage Foundation, around 66 of its employees were hired by the first Trump administration.
And let’s not forget about the World Economic Forum. You know, the globalist organization that produced the “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy” video. In my previous articles, I reported how its founder and chief, Klaus Schwab, bragged about how his Young Global Leaders organization infiltrated governments all over the world and how they all voted in lockstep for the COVID-19 lockdowns and other restrictions.
It’s difficult to say how many in Trump’s previous and upcoming administration are among the WEF’s Young Global Leaders because it sometimes takes a lot of digging. But Trump has attended their meetings in Davos, Switzerland, as reported here. He picked former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, one of Schwab’s Young Global Leaders, though she has tried to deny it, to be director of national intelligence. Even Ivanka Trump, his own daughter and a “senior advisor” in his first administration, is one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders (see awards and nominations).
But if what I’m saying is true, why did Trump pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services? RFK Jr. is a political outsider. He is opposed to forced vaccination and has been an outspoken opponent of the COVID shots. Trump, on the other hand, bragged about launching Operation Warp Speed, which got the shots out in record time. He was even booed at some of his campaign rallies for it. So, will Trump really let Kennedy lower the boom on the powerful vaccine industry? I seriously doubt it. I think RFK Jr. is a token appointment.
Keep in mind that all cabinet appointments must be approved by the Senate, which includes a background check. The New Republic reported that Trump’s transition team is saying that Kennedy might not pass the background check for asinine stuff like dumping a dead bear’s carcass in New York’s Central Park and for thirty years earlier sawing the head off of a dead beached whale.
In my opinion, I don’t think Trump will have much of a problem getting the Republican majority in the Senate to confirm who ever he wants confirmed. It’s possible that he will secretly tell the Senate not to confirm RFK Jr. just as he told Congress not to pass the bipartisan right-wing anti-immigration bill so he could use the illegal immigrant issue against Harris. Or he could could just as easily fire Kennedy shortly after he gets appointed. As President, Trump can fire any cabinet official he wants except for the Vice President.
But the big problem we’re facing is the possibility of another world war. The Russia-Ukraine war and Israel’s genocide in Gaza, combined with its aggressive attacks on its Arab neighbors, are bringing us ever closer to that possibility. Both of Trump’s administrations have been a rogue’s gallery of bloodthirsty war hawks. When President, Trump launched more drone attacks and killed more people than Obama did. His administration also supported Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen that caused thousands of children to die of starvation. So, the right-wing talking point that there were no wars under Trump is a total bald-faced lie.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he promised to drain the swamp. Instead, he packed his administration with political insiders, corporate big shots, and billionaires just as he is doing with his current administration. Trump can’t drain the swamp because Trump is the swamp.
Of course, Joe Biden has shown us that he’s also a war-loving warmonger. He just approved allowing Ukraine to use NATO-supplied missiles that can strike targets deep inside Russia. Valdimir Putin has warned the US that this could lead to world war, including the use of nuclear weapons. Both the US and Russia alone have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world many times over. But you’ve got to hand it to Joe. That’s one way to keep Trump out of office. Start a nuclear war with Russia. If that happens, Trump won’t be president of anything because there won’t be anything left to be president of. I don’t want Trump back in office, but not at the expense of nuking the entire planet. That’s throwing the baby out with the orange bathwater.