Here’s a warning and an admonition written in January 2019 by author and organizer Jonathan Smucker: “If the Dem Party establishment succeeds in beating down the fresh leadership and bold vision that's stepping up, it will effectively enable the continued rise of authoritarianism. But they will not wake up and suddenly grasp this. It's on us to outmaneuver them and win.”

There are a million surface-level reasons for Kamala Harris’s loss and systematic underperformance in pretty much every county and among nearly every demographic group. She is part of a deeply unpopular administration. Voters believe the economy is bad and that the country is on the wrong track. She is a woman and we still have some work to do as a nation to overcome long-held biases.  But the real problems for the Democrats go much deeper and require a dramatic course correction of a sort that, I suspect, Democrats are unlikely to embark upon. The bottom line is this: Democrats are still trying to run a neoliberal campaign in a post-neoliberal era. In other words, 2016 Bernie was right.

The lie that fueled the Iraq war destroyed confidence in the institutions that were the bedrock of this neoliberal order and in the idea that the U.S. could or should remake the world in our image. Even more devastating, the financial crisis left home owners destitute while banks were bailed out, revealing that there was something deeply unjust in a system that placed capital over people.

These events sparked social movements on both the right and the left. The Tea Party churned out populist-sounding politicians like Sarah Palin and birtherist conspiracies about Barack Obama, paving the way for the rise of Donald Trump. The Tea Party and Trumpism are not identical, of course, but they share a cast of villains: The corrupt bureaucrats or deep state. The immigrants supposedly changing your community. The cultural elites telling you your beliefs are toxic. Trump’s version of this program is also explicitly authoritarian. This authoritarianism is a feature not a bug for some portion of the Trump coalition which has been persuaded that democracy left to its own devices could pose an existential threat to their way of life.

On the left, the organic response to the financial crisis was Occupy Wall Street, which directly fueled the Bernie Sanders movement. Here, too, the villains were clear. In the language of Occupy it was the 1% or as Bernie put it the millionaires and billionaires. It was the economic elite and unfettered capitalism that had made it so hard to get by. Turning homes into assets of financial speculation. Wildly profiteering off of every element of our healthcare system. Busting unions so that working people had no collective power. This movement was, in contrast to the right, was explicitly pro-democracy, with a foundational view that in a contest between the 99% and the 1%, the 99% would prevail. And that a win would lead to universal programs like Medicare for All, free college, workplace democracy, and a significant hike in the minimum wage.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump emerged as a political juggernaut at a time when the party was devastated and rudderless, having lost to Obama twice in a row. This weakened state—and the fact that the Trump alternatives were uncharismatic drips like Jeb Bush—created a path for Trump to successfully execute a hostile takeover of the party.

Plus, right-wing populism embraces capital, and so it posed no real threat to the monied interests that are so influential within the party structures.

The Republican donor class was not thrilled with Trump’s chaos and lack of decorum but they did not view him as an existential threat to their class interests

The difference was that Bernie’s party takeover did pose an existential threat—both to party elites who he openly antagonized and to the party’s big money backers. The bottom line of the Wall Street financiers and corporate titans was explicitly threatened. His rise would simply not be allowed. Not in 2016 and not in 2020.

What’s more, Hillary Clinton and her allies launched a propaganda campaign to posture as if they were actually to the left of Bernie by labeling him and his supporters sexist and racist for centering class politics over identity politics. This in turn spawned a hell cycle of woke word-policing and demographic slicing and dicing and antagonism towards working class whites that only made the Democratic party more repugnant to basically everyone.

The path not taken in 2016 looms larger than ever. Bernie’s coalition was filled with the exact type of voters who are now flocking to Donald Trump: Working class voters of all races, young people, and, critically, the much-derided bros. The top contributors to Bernie’s campaign often held jobs at places like Amazon and Walmart. The unions loved him. And—never forget—he earned the coveted Joe Rogan endorsement that Trump also received the day before the election this year. It turns out, the Bernie-to-Trump pipeline is real! While that has always been used as an epithet to smear Bernie and his movement, with the implication that social democracy is just a cover for or gateway drug to right wing authoritarianism, the truth is that this pipeline speaks to the power and appeal of Bernie’s vision as an effective antidote to Trumpism. When these voters had a choice between Trump and Bernie, they chose Bernie. For many of them now that the choice is between Trump and the dried out husk of neoliberalism, they’re going Trump.

Maybe I will be just as wrong as I was about the election but it is my sense that with this Trump victory, authoritarian right politics have won the ideological battle for what will replace the neoliberal order in America. And yes, I think it will be ugly, mean, and harmful—because it already is.

Fox host Bret Baier texts internally that night: “There is NO evidence of fraud. None. Allegations — stories. Twitter. Bulls---. Nothing concrete. That will affect the spread in any of these states.”

While texting about Trump and his business ventures, host Tucker Carlson says: “All of them fail. What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong. It’s so obvious.”

Bartiromo speaks with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on the phone, and Giuliani acknowledges he “can’t prove” that Pelosi has an interest in Dominion, according to a tape of the conversation unearthed by MSNBC. Giuliani also says it’s “a little harder” to prove allegations against Dominion than other claims.

Carlson texts, “With Trump behind it, an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.”

Host Neil Cavuto cuts away from a news conference after White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says Democrats are “welcoming fraud” and “illegal voting.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto says, adding, “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.” An employee on Fox Corp. executive Raj Shah’s team emails Shah and others about Cavuto, labeling it a “Brand Threat.”

After Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checks a Trump tweet mentioning Fox’s coverage, Carlson texts, “Please get her fired. Seriously. … It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Also internally, Ingraham calls Powell “a complete nut” and says: “No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson responds: “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it. … She’s soliciting ‘millions of dollars’ in checks made out to her personally.”On her show that night, Ingraham refers to “affidavits from people who have been working in ballot counting for 20 years, who cited really disturbing things that they had seen.”

Pirro executive producer Jerry Andrews emails Fox executives Meade Cooper and David Clark, saying Pirro’s upcoming monologue “is rife w conspiracy theories and bs and is yet another example why this woman should never be on live television.”Fox internally fact-checks Pirro’s upcoming monologue, designating a claim about Dominion’s ties to Venezuela as “INCORRECT/CANNOT CONFIRM.”Nov. 21Return to menuPirro makes the claim on her show anyway, saying, “The president’s lawyers [are] alleging a company called Dominion, which they say started in Venezuela with Cuban money and with the assistance of Smartmatic software, a back door is capable of flipping votes. And the president’s lawyers [are] alleging that American votes in a presidential election are actually counted in a foreign country. These are serious allegations, but the media has no interest in any of this.”

Fox anchor Eric Shawn does an on-air fact check of Trump’s claims about voter fraud and a “massive dump of votes” in key states, calling Trump’s allegations “false and unsubstantiated.” In an email exchange about the segment, Scott tells Cooper that segment was “bad for business” and notes it clashed with other Fox programming. “This has to stop now,” Scott says.

In an email exchange with Ryan, Rupert Murdoch says, “Wake up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers!”

In an email to Scott, Rupert Murdoch proposes having Fox’s three prime-time hosts combine to say something to the effect of “the election is over and Joe Biden won. We are all disappointed, but it happened.” He adds that it “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen. And the basis of his 2024 campaign.” The hosts never deliver such a message.