The 4 Lost Liberals of the Democalypse
Looking into the mirror to understanding why Trump won again
Democrats are short circuiting, licking their wounds, hurling blame. How could Donald Trump, after doing everything he did, saying everything he said, and promising everything he’s promised not only win the electoral college, but the popular vote, too — and do so with the help of millions of minority voters, traditionally the bedrock of liberal support?
Four American friends were harbingers of this radical shift, personally exemplifying the feelings and frustrations that have forced their party to tear itself down, now build itself back up. The transformation of the national political scene has been long overdue, and like most surprises, in retrospect seems inevitable had we only listened to voices such as theirs:
Kevin
“He does bongs; they do bongs” he wrote on the chalk board in front of our senior high school English class, demonstrating the proper use of the semicolon. Prankster and savant, delinquent and disciple, Kevin is an inner city Latino kid whose single mother had hustled him into the Chicago suburbs, where he flourished as a beacon of bombast and bullshit.
By sheer chance we wound up on the same floor of the same dorm building in college. Taking his savoir-faire for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll to new heights, Kevin roomed with a like minded Illinois boy to create their party den of nonstop bong smoking, rum drinking, and heavy metal listening. We had great political convos, too, shame I don’t remember them…
After our sophomore year we scattered across the country, Kevin winding up in Flint, Michigan, and enduring the full extent of the water crisis there. Suffering from chronic health issues for the rest of his life, his anger at the government transferred into hatred for the Democrats, the party ostensibly committed to preventing such a tragedy, and supporting him afterwards.
We stayed in touch, and he even visited me in NYC, where we continued our endless conversations about science, math, and politics. Good friends until the 2016 election, everything changed when he declared himself opposed to Clinton’s presidency. Passionately left-leaning his whole life, his de facto handing of his vote to Trump felt shocking and absurd to me.
“Just think about the Supreme Court,” I implored him. “Trump wins, and he’ll have the chance to appoint one, maybe even two new justices. Nothing else really matters, and our choices are binary.” “You’re a child!” was his only response before we stopped talking, his loss of faith in the Democrats complete and damning. They no longer mattered; they had to be defeated.
At the time I dismissed Kevin as an anomaly, the weird and fun inner city kid and reefer mascot we adored in high school, a fellow science geek who fell off the deep end when it came to voting against his own best interests. But he wasn’t alone that election cycle, numerous other friends — especially those I had grown up with in Chicago — throwing in the towel on the party.
Anger also stemmed from the betrayal of Bernie Sanders, his nomination allegedly blocked by the sinistral machinations of elitist, institutional, big equity interests who actually ran the Democrats. Bernie’s mantra, echoed by Larry David on SNL — “I’m fighting for the working people of this country!”— resonated. Too bad Bernie got pilloried as a has-been socialist.
Fast forward to 2024, and the working people of this country have indeed spoken. Stunned by every segment — including women and minorities — shifting toward the rekindled and revitalized GOP, Kevin and Bernie Sanders are proven correct: out of touch with their own constituents, unable to fix a broken federal bureaucracy, the Democrats have failed.
Bonnie
Back in the 90s, the freakiest and funnest nightclub in Chicago was Vortex, located near the corner of Halsted and Addison on the north side. Such bars and discos were de facto safe spaces to meet, chat, carouse, entertain, network, make money, and get laid for gay and transgendered people still largely closeted even in the diverse, Democrat-governed American cities.
One of the many regulars at Vortex was Bonnie, a Brazilian-Mexican transgendered woman who wore many hats, and performed multiple roles: social critic, buzzing gadfly, and adept prostitute. Unlike the female impersonator showgirls from The Baton Club, or the over-the-top drag queens from the burlesque shows, Bonnie looked and acted natural.
I found her alluring, intelligent, insightful, and savvy. She hated me, and wasn’t reserved in letting me know how she felt. Despite her non-stop abuse, I remained captivated by her dual nature: on the one hand she not only criticized me to no end, but everyone else around her; on the other, she made her living as a stiff cock ostensibly camouflaged as a woman.
Top of her list, even then, was hatred of all things left-of-center. Paying her own way her own way, she had zero patience and even less tolerance of people accepting any help from anyone else, let alone the government. Top of the top of her list, she despised her fellow minorities the most, and even more than them, minority “victims” who were also gay and transgendered.
The HQ of gay rights advocacy at the time was another, far more genteel bar down Halsted Street, the showtunes playing club Side Track. Insisting she would never be caught dead in such a place, Bonnie also hated what she called “hypocrite faggot” elites who seemed to be fighting for everyone’s civil rights, while actually “making bank off queers’ tears”.
Despite being a Nice Jewish Boy from the suburbs, I sensed where Bonnie was coming from, and more-or-less understood her point of view. While she was busy fucking straight-looking and straight-acting men in hotel rooms, the self-proclaimed champions of gay and transgendered rights were raking in millions off The Street. What did they really know, or care?
I adored her shizz and rizz, and Bonnie and I have remained close friends for decades. She’s since hung her hat on hooking, gotten a degree, does hair, teaches school. She’s of course just as feisty as she ever was, and rants with even more gusto against the subsequent years of “Woke” and identity politics, with extra zeal railing against the transgender rights movement.
Her byline says it all: “I’m a Latina preoperative transsexual who identifies as a heteronormative Caucasian woman, and my preferred gender pronoun is She/Her/GoFuckYourself.” Far from self-loathing, Bonnie despises being talked down to, being patronized, being labeled a victim needing help. She is stubborn and strong, and sees the Democrats as weak and disingenuous.
Vera
“Latinx?” she asked herself, assuming I wouldn’t know the answer, and not caring. “What the actual fuck is Latinx? And who the fuck thought that bullshit up?” Like the vast majority of Mexicans, Central and South Americans, Caribbeans, and her fellow Puerto Ricans, she hated the designation, and dismissed it as elitist, out of touch, liberal buffoonery.
When still an under-aged middle school student, Vera snuck out of her parents’ house in San Juan on school nights to go hang out with the American and European rock bands performing at the music club nearby. Luckily never taken advantage of, she partied with everyone from The Scorpions to Bon Jovi, living to tell the tales, and loving la vida loca.
Her father a successful businesman, the family also lived in New Jersey, and sent Vera to a Midwestern university for her undergrad. The only Latina around, she was reviled and embraced, ostracized and welcomed, received some of the worst but mostly the best from being the attractive foreigner and exotic outsider among frathouses full of horny white boys.
Law degree from Marquette, she became a female minority success story, eventually landing a corporate attorney position back in New York. Born into a stratospheric socio-economic class compared to Kevin and Bonnie, Vega marshalled her abilities and drive to flourish within a professional community, leaping from la vida loca into living the American Dream.
Despite the many differences in her own Superhero origin story, the Democratic Party pissed her off, too. Passing the bar exam at first try, she proved herself worthy of the scholarships she deserved, then fought her way up the foodchain after moving to New York City. Meanwhile around her she saw others taking advantage of what she worked so hard to earn.
Big fans of Bill Maher, we used to watch his show from her couch, the running joke her attraction to his intelligence, fame, and money, and my jealousy of all the above. What struck me then, and resonates even more strongly now, is how she took personally the implications of identity politics run wild, and the resulting deterioration of values once held dear.
“I went into law because I wanted to become a professional advocate for women’s equality, and minority rights,” she told me in her sultry accent. But when she got into the career jungle, and started applying what she’d learned, life lessons came rapidly and decisively. “A female, a Puerto Rican, sure, I endured discrimination — my skills, my work fought it, not my vote.”
Kevin, Bonnie, and Vera represent the core constituency of the Party, and they each, for their own reasons, began to question the status quo, and started to wander years, if not decades, ago. They lived what was brewing, and so did Bernie Sanders and a few others who actually cared about their own constituents — the Democratic Disease festering, even among emigres:
Teodor
“They should arrest and deport all the campus protestors!” he declared at a recent dinner, diving into his steak. “How shameful that these disgraceful people disrupt classes, and threaten other students. No country should tolerate this kind of disrespect and unpunished anarchy, especially the greatest country on planet Earth, the United States of America.”
Teodor grew up under the regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania, and experienced the draconian effects of pure, unmitigated authoritarianism. Instructed what to do, where to go, and how to behave, any violations punishable by imprisonment and far worse, Teo made it his life’s goal to get the hell out of that truly shithole country, and eventually succeeded.
By way of Israel he wound up in Caracas, Venezuela, where tyranny again forced him to leave, this time the excesses of Hugo Chavez and his dumber, meaner protégé, Nicolás Maduro. Teo’s third, legal emigration to the States is his happiest one, his favorite saying becoming a family meme, triggered whenever he sees something great: “And that is why I love this country!”
That all said, you can understand my own wonder and frustration when hearing him rant about arresting protesters. “Of all people, you would be the last I’d expect to be in support of the police and even the military arresting our fellow citizens,” I responded, stunned. “Your entire life story is fleeing from authoritarian dictatorships, and now you want one here?”
“You are not understanding me,” he threw back, visibly annoyed at my stupidity, and naivete no doubt stemming from being bamboozled by the liberal media. He reiterated not being a Trump supporter, and recognizing that the many reasons he loves this country include our values of personal freedom, supporting endless opportunities. “You are jumping to extremes.”
“Univerisities are private institutions,” I continued, really getting on his nerves. “And even if they receive public funding, need to police themselves. If they do things we don’t like, we don’t send our kids to them. If they need help, they call it in. The government should never, ever cross that line, because that is the oldest proven tool of autocrats, to control education.”
Of course we went round-and-round, Teodor soon grimacing, shaking his head, and declaring our conversation finished. My father was also of Eastern European descent, also an authoritarian in spirit after authoritarians murdered ninety-percent of our family. The Carter-Clinton Democrats failed to sway Dad, as Obama-Biden have failed with Teo.
Teodor, similar to Kevin, Bonnie, and Vera, could and should be a die hard liberal, at least based on decades-old models of American political affiliation. Playing by the rules, he instead sees other immigrants and many of his now fellow Americans breaking the law, being absolved of responsibility and accountability by the Democratic Party — failing him, too.
Democrats are short circuiting, licking their wounds, hurling blame. Some accuse the electorate of being willfully ignorant and irresponsible, while Trump’s ascendency and the end of the Clinton-Obama Era have been written on the wall for a long time. Have any doubts about that, go ask millions of disaffected voters, like Kevin, Bonnie, Vera, or Teo.
The election bears this out, Trump assembling the largest multiracial coalition since Nixon. Macho bluster has channeled pent up frustration — but at the heart of our transforming politics is the end of American exceptionalism, a presumption fostered by elitism, and an illusion reinforced by the Democrats not listening to their own constituents.
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