The Democrats, mainstream news media and other political watchers are continuing with their postmortems of the 2024 election. Many remain confused by how the country arrived at this disastrous moment for its democracy and civil society. In a series of essays here at Salon, I have also been examining the wreckage of the 2024 election, Donald Trump’s victory and Kamala Harris’ defeat. Of course, there are the macro level explanations about the economy and inflation, racism and sexism, extreme wealth and income inequality, public opinion polls and the Democrats' and news media’s failures to interpret them properly, campaign strategy and messaging as well as a general feeling that the country is heading in the wrong direction and that the elites have failed. Of particular note, the 2024 election is part of a global move towards right-wing authoritarian populism and neofascism.
But in the month or so since the election, I have been thinking a great deal about what I learned from listening to everyday people and their thoughts about the election, politics and American society more broadly. Unfortunately, too many members of the news media and political class do not practice such close listening. They are stuck in their own echo chambers, where they impose their own meaning(s) and interpretations onto the mass public and everyday people instead of closely listening to what the American people are actually saying and experiencing. As The Independent observes in a recent story about the reckoning that the mainstream news media is facing after their failures in the 2024 election: “We were so Harris propaganda that when she lost, viewers were shocked,” one anonymous on-air pundit told the outlet. “It turned into one giant circle j**k and echo chamber. If MSNBC wants to be of service to its viewers, they can’t keep them in fantasy land.”
I am also informed by my conversations with sociologist Arlie Hochschild and her rigorous practice of what she describes as finding “the deeper story”:
Your working-class background gives you access to an important mode of communication — one that many if not most journalists and reporters do not yet have. One of the reasons I wrote “Stolen Pride” is to help us all become bilingual by understanding the language and logic of Trump and his appeal. You can take what Donald Trump says literally, and by doing so miss what is being said emotively. In red states, and Appalachia in particular, that I write about in "Stolen Pride," there is a story of struggle, loss, poverty and addiction….
To answer that question, we have to look at politics as felt, and sometimes the best way to convey feeling is through a deep story. So, if you’re a Trump voter, here’s your deep story: You’re waiting in a long line leading up to the American Dream. The line is not moving. You're not looking at the long line of people behind you, instead you are just looking ahead, and you see you're not moving. Then you see people you perceive as “line cutters": women, Black and brown people, immigrants, refugees, and well-paid public servants. You notice a bad bully in line who is helping these undeserving line-cutters. But — hey — there is the good bully, who is going to help people like you. Yes, he has flaws, but he is still your bully: Donald Trump.
People on the left are aghast and decry the bully and yell about how he or she is a bad person. The Trump voters........