The people have spoken... And never has the rest of that legendary phrase by American political consultant Dick Tuck been more apt.
In this moment of gloom after Trump’s landslide, let’s look back to an era when politics seemed more fun than the scary Maga movement could ever imagine.
Tuck, a Democrat strategist, played a series of pranks – mostly at the expense of Richard Nixon.
After the famous television debate between Nixon and JFK, he hired a little old lady actress who afterwards tugged at Nixon’s sleeve in full view of the cameras.
“Don’t worry son,” she said. “He beat you tonight but you’ll get him next time.”
In 1962, when he was governor of California, Nixon was facing criticism that his brother had received an interest-free loan of $200,000 from the millionaire Howard Hughes.
On a campaign trail in San Francisco’s Chinatown he was greeted by a number of Chinese schoolkids bearing signs of “Welcome Nixon” in English. But Tuck had also arranged for some Chinese characters on other signs which read “What about the Hughes loan?”
When it was translated to Nixon, he was so angry that he grabbed one of the Chinese signs from a child and ripped it to pieces – the entire scene captured by the television cameras.
During the 1968 campaign, Tuck hired a heavily pregnant black woman to walk around the Republican convention wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Nixon’s the one”. He’d had a series of badges made with that phrase in different languages, but Nixon was so paranoid that the Chinatown stunt would be replicated, he had them all destroyed.
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It was when he stood as a candidate himself in 1966, and was roundly defeated, that Tuck uttered the immortal phrase that is surely resonating with the Democratic Party, who are said to be operating a circular firing squad of blame.
Joe Biden did give a lesson in political good manners – alien to Trump – when he talked about the need for a peaceful transition of power. But he can be blamed for the size of the defeat by sticking around too long to allow a proper succession contest.
He and wife Jill – who pointedly wore Republican red on voting day – are said to be still angry at his ousting. If he still believes he could have won, then he is even more confused than he appears.
There’s been a lot of criticism of pollsters for getting it wrong and for journalists in the mainstream media wanting a Harris win so badly that it coloured their judgement. It was wish fulfilment, and tuning in to American television on results night, it wasn’t hard to see that Trump was kryptonite to the main channels like CBS and CNN.
Most of the hosts looked ashen when they were relaying the news of Trump’s victory. There would be no late surge: Trump had won so roundly he and his supporters could stop claiming fraud.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” was the phrase uttered by Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, Jim Carville, back in 1992. It’s plainly still the economy, but the Dems didn’t get the memo, and we all got carried away by the reporting on demographic groups, Latinos, black men, the young and middle-class white women, worried about reproductive rights.
Under Biden wages are up, inflation is down, and interest rates are dropping. But people don’t feel it yet. And when Trump repeated the Reaganite line “Do you feel better off now than four years ago?” the answer was a resounding No.
Trump is obviously a felon, sexist, racist and not in full possession of his marleys. But the US electorate don’t care.
Harris should have spoken more about her plans to double the minimum wage from its current miserly $7 an hour and less about whether Trump was a fascist.
When Trump’s tariffs start to raise the price of goods, maybe people will learn lessons. But the Democrats need to learn them faster.