I’m a political person, but I try to keep it out of my Substack. Let me shout the following analysis into the void just to get it out of my head.

Trump represents those whose default is victimhood - and it’s a powerful message that resonates in America. If you need more proof, look at the election results from Tuesday.

It doesn’t matter that Trump is the opposite of a victim and more of a perpetrator - his message was one of an aggrieved and wronged person battling a cabal of elites out to get him (never mind that he is, in fact, one of those elites.)

Victimhood is easy - it’s much more difficult to objectively wonder how one’s own actions have led to their place in life. Everyone’s situation is a combination of forces outside of their control and those within their control. Many of us ignore the second one in favor of the first.

Things like globalization, America’s maturing economy into a services-based model, free trade and the swift exit of American manufacturing have all been forces outside of the control of many Trump voters who - justifiably! - feel victimized by these unseen, but very real, economic and sociological forces at work in our country.

Trump speaks to those people (again, never mind that before 2016 Trump was one of those people ushering in the kind of economy that has left a large swath of Americans behind.) He gives them a message of returning to the good ole’ days, when globalization was a theory and free trade made goods at the local chain store cheaper, but hadn’t decimated manufacturing yet. They are lies, but they play well.

What do Democrats do? Call those voting for Trump deplorable or garbage, which just feeds the leviathan of MAGA victimization. Instead of listening to their (again, justified!) grievances with the evolution of the American economy, Democrats look at their overt racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism as the disease and not the symptom of a population scared of innovation, change and progress. Instead of explaining how a rising tide will lift all ships in layman’s terms that we can all understand, they chastise them for not parsing the economic and geopolitical landscape a modern American finds itself in and understanding why things like tariffs or mass deportations would absolutely ruin their economic situation.

Granted, there is a core in America that is simply angry and racist - you will never change these people’s outlooks. But they’re a smaller group than you think. By not meeting the people adjacent to them on their level, you allow those racists and xenophobes to win the messaging war instead of creating a buffer around them via better messaging and economic opportunity.

This, I believe, is the fundamental failure of today’s Democratic party and the Republicans have zero compunction of getting in the mud with Trump to win power.

Until the Democratic Party begins to actually listen to working class folks who are trying to find their way in an American economy - one fully bought into late-stage capitalism and globalization - instead of putting them down, they will continue to leave the door open for Republicans more than willing to seize the moment speaking the language of racism and xenophobia of their increasing base with absolutely zero intent of actually improving that population’s prospects in America.

Let’s end with a prescient quote from LBJ, an avowed racist himself who understood the politics of it: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”