Reflections

It’s a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do. It is not fun to feel accountability. It requires a mental flexibility that’s painful.
Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Washington)

A WA red-district conqueror wants fellow Democrats to look in the mirror

I was speaking to a Republican the other day, and I've come to realize why it's so painful. Washington State is the only state in the nation where Donald Trump received a lower percentage of votes cast in this most recent election than he did in 2020. Here, he slipped by about half a percent. As one might expect from what now seems to be the "bluest" state in the nation, the race for Governor wasn't particularly close; with Governor-elect Ferguson winning nearly 56% of the vote. Not a blowout to be sure, but not a nail-biter. Still, the person that I was talking to didn't seem to be particularly interested in looking in the mirror, and asking why voters in and around the Seattle area were disinterested in having Dave Reichert as Governor. Instead, it was all about how those voters were simply bad people, who didn't care about "the real issues" facing the state of Washington (those "real issues" turning out to be a series of Trumpist talking points).

It was about blaming voters, rather than taking a genuine interest in what they felt their problems were, and offering solutions that fixed those problems on the voters' terms. Which, it occurred to me, is something that is never asked, let alone demanded, of the winners in an election. Representative Gluesenkamp Perez' message was intended for national Democrats, not local ones, where their control is secure. There have been a lot of recriminations concerning the performance of the Harris campaign, but it's not like she lost across the board. Blue America was solidly in her camp; and no one expects President-Elect Trump to see what he can do to address their concerns. Quite the opposite, he's widely expected to adopt a punitive stance towards those he sees as his (and his supporters') enemies.

And this is the problem with "looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do" and why "it is not fun to feel accountability." The "mental flexibility that’s painful" is required because it demands seeing oneself as a loser. The Republican I was speaking to was more than happy to "look outward, to blame and demonize other people," because the alternative was to be a supplicant, coming to the electorate hat in hand, and asking what their votes would cost. And that's a sign of weakness that neither party's activist class (or donor class) is very inclined to tolerate. And so the parties can't really go there. Representative Gluesenkamp Perez can call the Democratic party out, because her district is primarily Red; aligning herself with their general dislike of national Democrats is going to pay dividends for her. But I suspect that if Representative Suzan DelBene were to do the same, she'd find herself with a Primary election challenger to her political left in her next election cycle.

To be sure, I suspect that Representative Gluesenkamp Perez is correct. If the narrative of this election, which is that the voters that Vice President Harris needed to turn out for her stayed home, it will be, in part, because they didn't feel that having her in the White House was going to do for them what they needed done. But the nature of modern partisan politics has created a Catch-22 in that regard. One that neither party is well-equipped to find a way out of.