by Tyler Johnson

With another Donald Trump presidency on the horizon, many Democrats and even establishment Republicans are finding themselves asking how this could happen. To find the answer to this we must go back eight years to the 2016 election cycle and examine the monumental paradigm shift in American politics that was the Trump campaign. 

Trump’s rise to public favor was heavily supported by his debate tactics. Gone were the days of Obama-Romney era civil arguments. Trump would usher in the age of personal insults and populist rhetoric. In the Republican primaries there was a now-iconic moment in which Trump addressed the audience of lobbyists, calling them out, insisting he did not need their help. This is, of course, completely false as he has taken from a plethora of bourgeois donors like Elon Musk, the McMahons, and Timothy Mellon. 

It wasn’t about the facts. It was about the appeal to the American public. By the time Trump secured the Republican nomination he was in full attack mode. He repeatedly called on Hillary Clinton to be arrested. He infamously brought the many sexual assault accusers of Bill Clinton to the presidential debate. He was not running on policy; he was running on populism. He was able to convince millions of hard working Americans that immigrants were stealing their jobs. He was going to build a wall between America and Mexico with Mexico’s money. Does it matter that the wall just abruptly ends and has been proven scalable?  Does it matter that American taxpayer money is what funded it? No, it doesn’t. What mattered was that someone was “fighting the system.”

The Democratic Party has refused to acknowledge the growing resentment of the upper class in this country. They continuously fight on behalf of the establishment. Politicians like Bill Clinton condemn working class Democrats for supporting Palestine. These politicians can act as if they are for the people, but actions show otherwise. Kamala Harris can say she’s for the legalisation of marijuana, but in her stint as district attorney she won more than 1900 marijuana prosecutions. It is precisely this hypocrisy that repeatedly costs Democrats these elections.

There is one man who could have posed a challenge to Trump in the 2024 election. Bernie Sanders is the Vermont senator who has fought on behalf of the working class of America for half a century at this point. Politicians of the Democratic Party have repeatedly torn this man down for years. But as you can see in the 2016 debate his rhetoric is very similar to Trump’s. He wants to fight for the American people. He wants to tax business owners. He wants to raise the minimum wage. The key difference in the two candidates lies in policy. Sanders had very clearly defined policy and plans for the American people, whereas Trump merely had, in his own words, “Concepts of a plan” and left many of his policies such as the repeal of Obamacare and the unfinished border wall, unfulfilled. 

Even in the 2024 election Sanders did all he could to support the Democratic Party, which wouldn’t support him back. Sanders released a video in which he empathized with voters who were against Harris for her support of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. He fought for what he thought was best for the American people, even when it meant supporting those who tore him down.

Both Bernie and Trump shared a base of support predicated on rhetoric as opposed to policy, including Joe Rogan who was an outspoken Bernie supporter before moving to the right and even platforming Donald Trump. Other podcasters such as Theo Von have platformed both of them and expressed the sentiment that they are the only two who fight for the working class.

The only way Democrats can win back this growing voting block is by opposing the upper class. If there’s one lesson Democrats could learn from this loss it is that they must not only appropriate the populist rhetoric of Donald Trump, but have the policy to back it up. They must appeal to the people of this country. They must not lecture the public. They must empathize.