1 week Ago
WILLIAMSTOWN — The results of the presidential election eight days ago have surprised, embarrassed and demoralized Democrats. As the sting begins to ease, absorption of such stark proof of the party’s colossal failure to “read the room” has begun. One result to be hoped for is that never again will Dems’ electoral map-reading glasses be so polarized as to render them colorblind to red.
Also, regional and demographic political preferences might be moved closer to center-stage as “blues” plot future electoral strategy. More than one pundit’s take on this topic is: Relatively few middle-class working people have the time or inclination to listen to and/or consider the import of spoken or printed words, discouraging or otherwise. For one thing, they’re too busy.
For another, trash talk is available in multiple media by the long ton; it’s become ambient noise. The severity of the above-mentioned “sting” varies widely by region and state. Predictably, as it has in every presidential election since 1984 when Bay Staters favored Republican Ronald Reagan over Democrat Walter Mondale, Massachusetts voters in 2024 favored the Democratic presidential nominee by a wide margin.
Vice President Kamala Harris polled 61.3 percent (2,072,671) of the vote to 36.5 percent (1,234,961) for former President Donald Trump, a difference of 837,610.
In 1984, Williamstown favored Mondale, who received 1,980 votes to Reagan’s 1,726. The 2024 margin was far wider: 2,886 votes (83 percent) for Harris and 484 (17 percent) for Trump. The former president’s 2024 showing was considerably stronger in North Adams, where he polled 1,753 votes to 3,678 for Harris, a percentage margin of 34 to 66.
Theories abound as to Democrats’ next steps. A sampling is to be found in the The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter published by the eponymous magazine. In a Nov.
11 article , Lora Kelley explores and evaluates various options. My first votes were cast in the election of 1972, which pitted the GOP’s Richard M. Nixon against George McGovern, a Democratic U.
S. Senator from Minnesota. I was 19.
After McGovern lost in a landslide — Nixon got more than 60 percent of the vote — scores of vehicles bearing Massachusetts plates were seen sporting a bumper sticker that read: “Don’t blame me. I’m from Massachusetts.” I did not yet own a car, so there was no need to confront the minor moral dilemma presented by the fact that I’d voted for Nixon and was thus deserving of a measure of the blame for his mis-, mal- or nonfeasance in office.
My support of Nixon was grounded in the belief that his grip on foreign policy was stronger than McGovern’s, who also struck me (as Charlie Brown impressed Lucy) as being “wishy-washy.” Primarily, I believed that Nixon’s chances of extracting American forces from Vietnam were better than McGovern’s, confidence that turned out not to have been misplaced, later events on the domestic scene notwithstanding. Since then, I’ve voted for Democrats in presidential elections, although in state contests, I’ve been generous with the GOP, voting for, among others, John A.
Volpe, Francis W. Sargent, Edward M. Brooke, William F.
Weld and Charles Baker. When the smoke cleared last Wednesday, I battled the urge to settle into a blue funk, stare skyward and repeatedly ask “why?” Many cogent answers to that have emerged over the past week; I don’t believe I’m alone in thinking that they’d been hiding backstage all along. They’d just never been summoned forward by (unsettling) questions.
Empowered by gratitude for living where I do — the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights speaks louder than ever — and relieved that the poisonous notion that American elections are rigged has been thoroughly dissipated, I can resume the work of citizenhood..
