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Democrats have engaged in many election post mortems, but they are either unable or unwilling to come go grips with the real reasons why they lost the 2024 election. One of many cases in point is this op-ed by Rahm Emanuel in The Washington Post. Emanuel’s theme is that the Democrats are too nice, and too joyful, for their own good. The Post’s subhed for the piece is “Campaigns of joy in an era of rage don’t win elections.” Which means that the Post can’t tell the difference between joy and gaslighting.

Emanuel writes:

When Donald Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he was channeling a nation’s fury. The online cheerleading for the killer of a health-care insurance CEO in New York City is just more evidence of this seething, populist anger.

Right: Donald Trump and Luigi Mangione, two peas in a pod. Memo to Rahm: Luigi is on your team, not ours. Just like every other assassin and would-be assassin of recent years.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has been blind to the rising sea of disillusionment. In today’s America, aspiration and ambition have been supplanted by anger and animosity.

Emanuel presents a weirdly off-kilter recitation of recent American history, beginning with the Iraq war, which was, per JD Vance–quoted for this limited purpose only–a “disaster.” He then skips to the banking crisis of 2008, which was an artifact of terrible government policy implemented by the Democratic Party, but which Emanuel blithely attributes to “unchecked greed” on the part of bankers who made the loans that the federal government pressured or required them to make.

Emanuel’s historical narrative ends before it gets to the Biden Administration, whose debacles led directly to President Trump’s victory (and Republican victories in the Senate and the House). Like nearly all losing politicians, he blames defeat not on bad policies, but on messaging, saying Democrats need “messengers and messages that meet the moment.” Only briefly and grudgingly does he acknowledge the substantive issues that led Democrats to defeat:

Crime, immigration, homelessness and a fentanyl crisis are, understandably, on the minds of millions.

Do tell. But, on how Democrats can change their policies to effectively address crime, immigration, homelessness and the fentanyl crisis–Emanuel doesn’t mention the cost of living, probably the number one issue in the election–he is silent.

The Democrats can’t get past their framing of the election as pitting the candidate of joy–Kamala Harris–against the candidate of rage–Donald Trump. One can only wonder whether they actually observed any of the campaign; in particular, any of the candidates’ many rallies. It is hard to imagine a less joyful group than Harris and her entourage. (To be fair, Tim Walz was so “joyful” that a great many observers thought he was gay.)

Likewise, Donald Trump, the candidate who is full of rage, is entirely a figment of the Democrats’ imagination. It was Trump’s rallies, not Kamala’s, that were joyful. Many thousands of people stand in line for hours to get into a Trump rally. Democrats should ask themselves why. People love to attend Trump rallies because they are fun. And they are fun, in considerable part, because Trump is funny. Until the Democrats acknowledge that, and abandon their self-serving caricatures of the candidates and the parties they represent, they can’t begin to understand why they were clobbered in November.