Blame Is Not Productive

Organizing is

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

We’re just one week into the reality our fellow citizens created for us—not remotely enough time to come to terms with what we are facing. As I talk to friends and colleagues, I’m hearing a wide range of reactions to the election and what lies ahead. Some of these may reflect the stage of grief they find themselves in, and no doubt a lot of it reflects their personalities.

I’ve spoken to people who believe nothing significant will change in the United States. I’ve been in conversations that assume a normal political future, with talk of how Democrats are primed to win big in the 2026 midterms and who should be the 2028 Democratic nominee.

And I’ve talked to people who are worried about their safety and the safety of their children. People who are fatalistic about what’s to come. People who are making plans to leave the country.

I can’t gauge how much of this is denial on one hand or overreaction on the other. We are genuinely in a perilous place. But I know it’s much too soon to expect people to have digested the painful reality that we have let someone who assaulted our democracy back in the front door, with far fewer checks on his ability to act than last time. That’s a lot to absorb and people need time. I’m finding it helpful to regard much of what I’m hearing as an outward manifestation of grief and fear.

One all-too-human way to react to a loss of this magnitude is to point fingers. Of all the ways we can cope, I find this to be the most counterproductive. If you are reading political news this week, you’re probably coming across stories about Democrats leveling blame at one another for their loss. I’m not going to link to these stories because I find them deeply unhelpful, except maybe to help those making the accusations feel better about what happened.

Kamala Harris is not to blame for Trump’s election. She ran a historically excellent campaign after being placed in a position that most politicians would find impossible to navigate. She had only months to build a campaign where most candidates have years, after taking over for an incumbent who had been bludgeoned from the race by his own party. All she did was energize a disaffected base, raise a billion dollars, and outmaneuver her opponent every step of the way. She was remarkable.

It’s not her fault that she ran into headwinds from a post-Covid economy which have been decimating incumbent parties of the left and right around the globe. While the erosion she experienced with voters was the smallest in the world and even smaller in the swing states where she campaigned, it wasn’t quite enough in a closely divided nation that’s not quite ready to elect a women of color.

If I had a say about it, I would like to see her continue her campaign. There has been a void from our side in the past week as attention naturally turns to the presidential transition, but it only serves to amplify the frightening voices of those who want us to be scared. Harris could fill that void, giving those determined to oppose Trump a high-profile platform akin to a shadow presidency.

Imagine if we dared to shine a light into the darkness. Imagine if Harris kept holding boisterous rallies as a way of establishing herself as the voice of the opposition while loudly professing that Trump may have won the election but he cannot extinguish our joy. It would empower tens of millions who are feeling lost as they try to cope with what happened and focus public attention on the alternative it could have had.

This is not to suggest that Democrats cannot learn valuable lessons from the campaign, but learning from failure is different than leveling blame. And it takes time to learn wisely. As Chris wrote yesterday, we don’t have enough data yet to draw firm conclusions about what happened.

We can certainly get to work on what we do know—it’s painfully clear that efforts to reach white working class voters in red states are not succeeding, just as it should be evident that Democrats have no good way to address the misinformation and disinformation that’s smothering our society. Urgent discussions are needed to address these significant shortcomings. Beyond that, we need to wait for all the votes to be counted and the exit polls to be finalized before we have the framework to analyze why a campaign that had all the hallmarks of winning fell just short.

Then you can address these issues with strategy, not recrimination. These are matters to organize around, just like Democrats have to be prepared—and fast—to confront efforts we know are coming to repress dissent and frighten us into obedience.

As we take the time to work through our personal reactions to what happened, we need to begin organizing and planning our first steps for pushing back on an authoritarian administration. The quirky American system gives us two and a half months to get ready, which affords us the luxury to come to terms before we have to act.

So let’s allow ourselves a little time to fall apart. We need it. But then we must come together.