The Liberal Elite Have Fallen

I spent the remainder of the first week post-election listening exclusively to liberal broadcast personalities: Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, Joy Reid, Savannah Guthrie, Sunny Hostin, Jimmy Kimmel, Joe Scarborough and his rotating stable of guests, etc. They are not included in my usual repertoire of news sources, as I prefer to read my news, rather than listen to it. What did I conclude from this roughly week-long information gathering? A lot more self-reflection is warranted on the part of many liberal talking heads.

Creeping Determinism and Blame Deflection

To reckon with the red wave that swept the 2024 U.S. election from the Presidency to the Senate to the House, liberal pundits appear to be doing one of two things: either resorting to creeping determinism (the “knew-it-all-along” effect), or trying to deflect blame wherever possible. Are these unpersuasive tropes the only tools in their toolbox? I certainly hope not! Why? Notwithstanding the notion that they failed to apply the necessary foresight in any impactful manner over the last several years, I saw no healthy exchange of perspectives with conservative pundits. Instead, it was endless expressions of inwardly focused self-soothing, among members of the same liberal media fishbowl. The result: creeping determinism. Suddenly, all these liberal mainstream media (MSM) personalities were proclaiming “as I said many times before. . . .” The fact remains, if they truly “knew it all along” then none of them should have been so surprised by the election results. In reality, perhaps this retrospective distortion of their own past viewpoints is a coping response, facilitated by selective memory recall. After all, if these newfound insights were so obvious and predictable to Democratic party leaders and liberal pundits prior to November 5^th, then the Democratic Party would not be in the state of chaos that it is currently in.

“Ism-ed”

These same liberal media personalities appear to genuinely believe that their newfound understanding accurately reflects the reality behind the Democrats’ humiliating loss. I found they typically concluded that racism, sexism, genderism, and misogyny were all to blame. Yet, those same individuals also demonstrated a tendency to fail to recognize their implicit biases, thereby betraying their very own racism, sexism, misogyny and elitism in their blaming of “uneducated” people – especially non-college educated white women, white men, Latino men and Black men. So, as they “ism-ed” everyone who disagreed with their point of view, they displayed a profound lack of self-awareness which skewed their assessment of the intergroup conflicts that exist in America. These pundits would also likely have us believe that implicit and explicit bias are primarily “white people” problems, preferring to disregard colorism in the African American community, or the notable rifts between Blacks and Latinos. To his credit, the Rev. Al Sharpton has acknowledged some of these issues during various media appearances, including on Joe Scarborough’s Morning Joe show. The same cannot be said of several other liberal media personalities. As a result, there is an asymmetry in their collective “objective” assessment of self-bias versus bias in others.

Identity Politics

Other liberal pundits identified a large disconnect between the Democratic party, its pundits, and the American people. More specifically, greater than 50% of Americans appear to disagree with the Democrats’ policies on immigration, the economy, inflation, criminal justice reforms, and targeted benefits for marginalized groups. Rather than speaking to the nation as a whole (young and old, rich and poor, college educated or not), Democrats selectively spoke to cherry-picked factions of the population: women (abortion), the transgender community (Title IX and gender affirming treatments for minors), initiatives for the Black Community, etc. In so doing, they failed to address the needs and concerns of the largest cohort – working-class Americans. This group has been unceremoniously abandoned by the party that once represented them. As a result, there was no cohesive, unifying message, aside from “save our democracy” and “restore Roe v. Wade.” Unfortunately for the Democratic leadership, only hindsight has enabled them to begin to grasp that their definition of democracy differs from that of the average Joe and Jane, and Roe v. Wade did not motivate blue votes to the degree they had counted on.

Perception that Americans are too Dumb to Understand the Issues

There was a great deal of talk and categorization associated with “educated” vs. “uneducated” Americans. I found the jargon of their assessment (“Educated Americans, of which we are a part,” and “They simply don’t understand the gravity like we do”) to be disparaging and insulting, and I hold three advanced degrees! As they condescendingly talked down to working-class Americans, it was as if they were just trying to pacify each other’s anxieties and frustrations. When one spends so much time preaching to and affirming others when they are all swimming together in the same highly exclusive fishbowl, it is easy to see how such verbiage comes so naturally to them.

Higher education was discussed on a few occasions. I believe it was Joe Scarborough who mentioned that he has friends whose college-age children feel they are unable to voice their true opinions on their respective college campuses. Any conservative student will tell you that this is not a new, or isolated, phenomenon. In a study conducted across the University of North Carolina college system (2022), researchers documented that over 50% of conservative students reported self-censoring on more than one occasion.

Liberal Professors’ Antipathy Toward Conservative Colleagues and Viewpoints

It is well known that liberal professors outnumber conservative professors on today’s college campuses. However, what many may not realize is the degree of incongruence that exists, and the antipathy to leveling the playing field. In 2022, Harvard surveyed their faculty to assess its ideological composition. They discovered that more than 80% of the surveyed faculty identified as liberal. Even more disturbing was that a whopping 31% of the respondents opposed hiring more conservative professors to increase political diversity among faculty, while only 25% supported doing so.

Several of the liberal media personalities that I listened to were educated at so-called elite Ivy League universities. Given the overwhelming lack of tolerance or acceptance of political dissent within the faculty community, it is no wonder these liberal pundits use condescending language when speaking to “uneducated Americans.” They were very likely educated by professors who influenced not only their political ideologies, but also their verbiage – “I know bigger words, so I know better.” Interestingly, when I was in graduate school, I periodically filled in as a substitute instructor for my program director. After one particularly trying class, I explained to my director that I simply could not answer a student’s question to satisfy her comprehension of the topic. His reply, “then you don’t know it well enough yourself.” He also articulated that if I decided teaching was in my future, I needed to learn to sense when the class was not comprehending the material, and to take steps to correct my approach. The ability of academic professors to connect with their students is frequently noted in reviews on the website Rate My Professors. Regardless of the difficulty of the class or a student’s final grade, instructors who are able to teach and not simply lecture at their students generally receive positive reviews. Maybe the liberal MSM pundits who have dismissed the greater than 50% of Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 as “uneducated” need to heed the wise advice from my former director. To those pundits I say: if the American public was your classroom, you have done an exceptionally poor job as a teacher, and you would not fare well on Rate My Professors.

Democratic Divisiveness

How are we, as a society, expected to close the divisiveness gap when our elite educators not only don’t tolerate dissent among their faculty, but implicitly inform their students that opposing viewpoints will be punished with lower or failing grades? Then, we have the Harris Campaign that aired commercials featuring celebrities telling women to hide their vote for Harris from their husbands (Julia Roberts), and advising men to hide their Harris vote from their male friends (George Clooney). That is the answer America – lie and deceive those closest to you. And the pundits wonder why Harris lost the vote. Could it have anything to do with her moral failings, proclivity for “word salads,” long history of deflection, assailable and chaotic leadership style, poor communication skills, lack of accountability and wishy-washy decision making on policy issues during her 30 plus years in CA politics? No. Why? Because the Democratic party and its pundits were too eager to overlook all of these, and other obvious deficiencies in their rush to frighten the voting public with the spectre of the “fascist,” “democracy-killing” Donald Trump.

The Failure of the Democratic Party and their Surrogates

Well, you all failed! The Democratic National Committee failed. The leaders of the Democratic Party failed. And so too did the liberal MSM pundits. Truth be told, the Republican Party was telling them all along that they were failing the working class, and that Joe Biden’s mental faculties were declining. To their disgrace, the vast majority of Democrat strategists and pundits dismissed the warnings. They all took the stance that they, with their college degrees, knew better than the rest of America. You sure did! So, as you retrospectively ponder the question, “how did Donald Trump get elected,” just take a good long look in the mirror, and congratulate yourselves on a job well done. The Republican Party is grateful for your assistance.

Some Four-Year Degrees May Not Even Be Worth it Any Longer

As non-degree manufacturing jobs move to Asia along with degreed technology jobs, more and more people find themselves out of work. Many Gen Zers are encountering difficulty finding employment in their majors. Forty and fifty-something year olds are being laid off, with many forced to reinvent themselves late in their careers after countless job applications prove fruitless. As a result of these and other factors, fewer and fewer parents have the financial resources to pay for their kids’ college education. University of California, Berkeley computer science professor James O’Brien raised the alarm when he informed the tech community that whereas not long ago, even an average Berkely computer science student could expect multiple job offers, now “outstanding students, like those with a 4.0 in-major GPA” are getting no job offers at all. Mass layoffs in the tech sector, from internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) to entertainment companies (Movie Studios and Gaming Companies), have impacted all levels of employment from the young, entry-level worker to the older, experienced worker, with the latter often supporting the former. So, when Democratic pundits ponder aloud the inability of the “uneducated” working class to grasp the reasons why they should not have voted for Donald Trump, they are really displaying their own ignorance. Many college-educated people, unable to find employment in their chosen fields, are now resorting to removing higher-education from their resumes, so as to not be perceived as “over-educated” or “over-qualified,” simply to get a job to put food on the table for their families. How is that for a return on higher education investment?

Big Words Don’t Make You Smart

To all the self-righteous, elitist Democratic pundits making six and seven-plus figure salaries: stop spewing your pretentious gaslighting long enough to go out and listen to the uneducated deplorables that you and the Democratic Party pushed away. Since artificial intelligence, even in its infancy, has already come for many jobs, by all accounts it will likely come for more as its algorithms continue to learn. Where will that leave many college-educated individuals?  Will a higher education continue to yield the same economic advantage that it did for the last century? Or will technical and community college degrees become increasingly in demand, and more financially prudent? If so, the endless rhetoric espoused by the Democratic Party and its pundits will need to change, else they too will be out of job.

Summary

For those who prefer a condensed CliffsNotes summary of the election news: the post-election analysis by the Democratic Party and many of its liberal surrogates consisted mainly of an exercise in performative finger-pointing. Their idea of self-reflection practically always fell short of any acknowledgement that “It was our fault.” In a notable exception, a handful of media personalities – Bernie Sanders (politician), Chris Matthews (news reporter), Charlamagne tha God (radio host and television personality), and Stephen A Smith (sportscaster) all identified the most logical answer: “it’s the economy, stupid” (a phrase coined by political Democratic strategist James Carville in 1992). These more astute individuals also rebuffed weeping assertions by their fellow liberal pundits – nearly all of them attorneys by training – that racism, sexism, and an uneducated America, incapable of understanding what they have been trying to tell us all along, is what energized MAGA republicans and mobilized a sizeable proportion of Americans overall to vote for Donald Trump. Maybe those attorney-pundits need to watch a few episodes of the legal drama Bull. Perhaps then they will learn a lesson or two about understanding their jurors, the American public, that they obviously slept through in law school.