Blame the Democratic Party establishment. Tuesday’s loss is what happens when workers are left behind for decades, from Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, to Barack Obama’s austerity, to Chuck Schumer’s turn toward suburban professionals, to the scorched earth against the labor movement. Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020.

Unable to seriously analyze the flaws of the Democratic Party, many elitist liberals are already blaming ordinary people, claiming that most Americans have been irreparably brainwashed or prejudiced. But if this were true, it would be difficult to explain why Americans elected Barack Hussein Obama in 2008.

Democratic hackers also claim that Democrats need to return to the “center” because Biden’s domestic policies and relatively progressive appointments failed to deliver electoral results. But after decades of Democratic abandonment of workers, these measures came too late. (If Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had not blocked an ambitious Build Back Better agenda capable of generating visible improvements in the lives of most people, and if Biden had been able to string together coherent sentences, it is not inconceivable that the recent political trajectory of our country would have been different.)

It was suicidal to embrace Biden’s candidacy despite his dementia and unpopularity. Pundits praised Nancy Pelosi and company for finally ousting Biden, but it’s inexcusable that they didn’t do it a year earlier and allow a real primary.

The only chance Democrats had of winning in 2024 was to run someone outside the Biden administration, probably someone like Gretchen Whitmer. (And although Bernie was too old this time, it’s worth remembering that cattle exactly the people Harris fought with: workers from all over the country, Latinos and the Joe Rogan brothers).

Inflation has seriously affected hurt current administrations around the world. But his electoral defeat is not an iron law. Despite widespread inflation, Mexico re-elected its leftist government because delivered large (and well communicated) with the workers.

The sad truth is that senior union leaders – with some notable exceptions – failed to take advantage of a exceptionally favorable opening for mass unionization created by a tight labor market, a pro-worker National Labor Relations Board, and a grassroots revitalization driven by radicalized young workers. Risk-averse union leaders mostly continued with their usual activities, sitting on billions of dollars which could have been used to launch and support on a large scale worker to worker unionization initiatives.

If the majority of unions had invested massively in a new organization after 2020, this could have significantly changed the political map. Not just union members keep voting More Democratic, but high-profile, union strikes and campaigns polarize the entire country along class lines (rather than culture wars) and expose Republicans’ false populism.

Experiencing solidarity and collective power firsthand is the best antidote to scapegoating. There is no way to defeat the extreme right that does not involve expanding and transforming the union movement.

Workplace organizing will be more difficult under Trump, but it is far from impossible. We must remember that the current rebound in the labor sector began with the red state teacher strikes of 2018, which made great advances against Republican state governments.

The financing of genocide by the Biden-Harris administration did not lose this election at the national level, but it did was a central reason why he lost an extremely close race in Michigan. To get a large number of politicians support an arms embargo on Israel, we have to do much more looking out organize around this issue, not just mobilize those who are already convinced.

Trump’s election is a major blow to democracy and workers in the United States and around the world, especially the most marginalized. But we must not despair. There are good reasons to believe that this could look like The election of George W. Bush in 2004, which quickly sparked a backlash that led to Obama, rather than the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, which ushered in a long era of conservative politics.

From a historical perspective, Trump actually didn’t win this election by much. He got about the same number of votes as last time, while Harris lost because received about 14 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020. Furthermore, the undecided voters Trump won mostly hoped he could bring them prosperity, an unlikely scenario given Trump’s billionaire-backed policies plus the volatility of a global neoliberal order in collapse. .

In times of crisis, people look for compelling narratives that make sense of why they are fighting. The right does a great job recruiting people to their reactionary worldview all year round (not just during election season), particularly through concerted media and social media propaganda. Because establishment Democrats have no interest in pushing the only compelling counternarrative: blame the billionaires – the left needs to find ways to better (and more broadly) articulate our worldview to millions of people online and beyond.

Although both candidates were quite unpopular, and despite the Biden-backed horrors in Gaza and Lebanon, the complete marginality of third-party candidates in 2024 confirms that there is little room to build a left-wing third party under our current electoral regime. But Dan Osborn’s Senate campaign in Nebraska suggests that independent, economic populist campaigns should be tried again in deep red regions and other settings where the spoiler issue is not relevant.

By far the biggest mistake made by the left this cycle was failing to field a viable candidate in the presidential primaries. We forgot the main lesson of Bernie 2016 and 2020. Without a leftist platform in our country’s most important political race, we were confined to being marginal outside critics or being uncritical junior partners of Biden-Harris.

This abstention left more room for the Democratic establishment to downplay economic populism (and to ignore widespread anti-war sentiment). We cannot make this mistake again in 2028.

It is worrying that many resistant liberals seem resigned to Trump this time, but it is good that democratic socialists are still ready to fight and that we are better organized now than in 2016. Most urgently, we have a key role to play in helping to start large mass united front protests. capable of uniting all those who oppose Trump’s horrors.

The failure of the Democratic Party is a great opportunity to recruit hundreds of thousands of people to the democratic socialist movement. But doing so requires us to quickly move away from internal debates and the tendency to worry too much about whether we are radical enough. Instead, we should focus more on attracting, recruiting, and positively connecting with our regular coworkers, neighbors, and friends. Zohran Mamdani campaign for mayor of New York City It’s a great opening and will hopefully inspire more socialist election campaigns across the country.

We will get through all of this collectively, not as isolated individuals. I felt sick to my stomach and full of despair until I went to a Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) on Wednesday, which gave me a much-needed injection of hope. Join the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and organizing your workplace With the help of EWOC it will help you have that same feeling. A continuous struggle.