On election night, 2016, Democrats were crying on live, national TV that the presidency had been stolen from their candidate, Hillary Clinton.
At the time, The Huffington Post had given Hillary a 98% chance of beating Donald Trump.
The election results were so stunning that protests broke out across DC — and to a lesser extent, the whole world. The day after Trump was inaugurated in 2017, for instance, The Women’s March on Washington was attended by an estimated 470,000 people.
Elsewhere, an estimated 2.6 million people were marching in all 50 states and 32 other countries, to protest the election of Donald Trump.
This time around, I had predicted that similar protests would break out after Trump’s victory in November. I was wrong. Instead, the opposition has been eerily quiet. What was the difference this time? It may simply be that Trump not only won the Electoral College, but the popular vote this time. The vote was, to quote Trump, “Too big to rig.”
Democrats dispute this of course. But between state election law changes and changes in mail-in ballot procedures and who knows what else, they can’t deny that between 2020 and 2024, six million democratic voters magically vaporized.
Surely there is no real magic at play here, but unfortunately, Democrats who are unable to look west of the Hudson or the DC Beltway will forever be mystified by Kamala Harris’s crushing defeat.
And for the second time in 16 years, Democrats have lost control of the DC Swamp.
Dystopian DC
Between 2008 and 2010, author Suzanne Collins gave us The Hunger Games trilogy. It is really just supposed to be a teen romance story set in a futuristic, dystopian America (called Panem). But what always struck me most was the political story underlying the series.
Collins is mum about her political ideology, but her depictions of big government and oppression certainly make loud statements, even if not partisan ones. As the prime example, she depicts the Capitol of Panem as a city of elites — the very seat of power, wealth, excess and corruption.
While the Panem Capitol is merely the creation of fiction, it is difficult to not see the parallels between it, and our own Capitol.
We know as a feature of human nature, the most unbridled, power-hungry people will always head for the seat of power. That’s not in Loa, folks. It’s in the city. Salt Lake City. Washington, DC.
Since the United States is economically the most powerful entity in the world, its capitol is the ultimate seat of power. The gravity of power there is so strong, the world’s most power-hungry people could live nowhere else!
Not so coincidently, power centers, like almost all state capitols, are overwhelmingly Democratic. Can you believe that 92.5% of the residents of Washington, DC voted for Kamala Harris? That is an astounding number. Maybe I will write more another day on how the Democratic Party has become the home of the power-seekers, but suffice it to say for now that any electoral map shows that US power centers are dominated by Democrats.
Democrats Surrendered Their Principles
Unfortunately for DC Democrats, Donald Trump is coming to town to put an arrow through the heart of the bureaucracy. Of course they think Trump is a threat!
Many fear that the Democrats’ loss of electoral power isn’t just a passing phase, as they believed it was in 2016. Their November loss has caused much hand-wringing, and even more blaming. They should introspect instead, but have shown no appetite for this. Power seekers never admit their failures and therefore never learn.
During this cycle, Democrats have had the wrong message. Their main pitch, besides abortion, was their claim that Trump was an existential threat to democracy. Polling, however, revealed that Republicans and independents worried about this too.
Why were conservatives and independents so worried? Maybe it was because the DNC tried everything to keep Trump out. Liberals charged him criminally. They tried to keep him off the ballot in several states. The DNC even failed to hold a meaningful primary within their own party! And all this while saying that Trump would undercut democracy, somehow.
Last year I wrote an article chronicling all the Democrats have done to undermine democracy, as a fight against Trump. But even worse than this has been their years-long abandonment of their most cherished principles. Previously, they championed civil liberties, equal rights and free speech. They championed democracy. Not anymore.
In their new elitist mold, they disdain the deplorable common man. Listening to Hillary Clinton, it feels like elections are a huge inconvenience for Democrats. Free speech (aka misinformation) has become a problem, now that they no longer control the media. Speaking of social media, she said in October that “if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.”
Now, Democrats have no real leader, no real message and no plan. They face an uphill battle to show they aren’t the party of the elite and powerful.
From here, Democrats can only take back DC when Republicans squander their victory — and they always do!
– by AJ Martel
Feature image caption: America’s very own seat of power: Washington, DC, pictured in August 2016.
AJ Martel – Escalante
AJ Martel is the youth coordinator at The Byway, but he is involved in most everything. He and his family live in Escalante, and they love it here! AJ has found Utah’s small towns quite inviting and under-defended, which is why he’s so involved with the paper. What AJ loves to do most, though, is serve his community. That is clear through everything he writes and does for Escalante, Utah.