Blame is a waste of time. But Democrats do have to learn from this gutting loss | Opinion

Like a lot of you who hoped for a different result , I went to sleep early Wednesday sick at my stomach over Donald Trump's decisive victory, and woke up the same way a few hours later.

My heart breaks for all of us on this planet together , as well as those of us in this American experiment together, no matter who you supported. And I'm shattered for Ukraine, which won't survive the fact that Putin's friend has been returned to power with a result so convincing that even Trump cannot pretend to have been cheated.

The blame being apportioned after Kamala Harris' loss is predictable; it's what we humans do. But it's also a waste of time. Latino men could not be haragued into compliance, and 54% of them voted for Trump. Same with the 52% of white women who keep voting Republican, even if some of them are also pro-choice.

I never believed that the hoped-for army of women who didn't dare tell anybody that they disagreed with Daddy would materialize; talk about condescending.

I did dare to hope that at long last we had had enough of Trump's disgraceful behavior and general disregard for laws and people, but that didn't happen, either. Instead, he massively expanded his support, and won the popular vote for the first time.

And I'm sorry, friends, but those of you blaming Maggie Haberman or Joe Kahn first of all must not be reading the same New York Times I get delivered to my door every morning. You also are ignoring that Kamala Harris and Democrats lost ground nearly everywhere and with nearly all groups compared to Joe Biden.

You can blame Biden, too, of course, for not stepping aside earlier, or claim that if only Harris had chosen Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, well then America would have done the right thing.

But I do not blame the president, who has served us so honorably for so long. Nor do I blame Harris, who ran a campaign of which she and we who voted for her can be proud.

You can blame Trump voters all day long, though my guess is that calling them a bunch of fascists and haters won't have the hoped-for result, either. Yes, some are plagued by sexism and racism, which as it happens I do not have to be told are all too real.

But others who voted for this person whose reelection I so lament are not twisted in those ways. Which I can say for sure because they are, as Harris said of those who disagree with her, my "family, neighbors, classmates, coworkers" and fellow Americans. When we lose sight of that, we really are done as a country.

Trump even won Jackson County, narrowly

Obviously, there is something bigger at play: Trump gained support in 90% of counties, including our own. Yes, he won Jackson County, Missouri, narrowly, and given our demographics, that is remarkable.

America's college graduates love ya, Democrats, but its working people no longer do, and that is more than the messaging problem that you want to believe it is.

Democracy, the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution that I think are so paramount and that Trump says he wants to terminate? Those are not, alas, issues that the outcome tells us resonated with people who think of Democrats as elitists out of touch with the price of eggs and gasoline.

Maybe that shouldn't be the case. After the pandemic, prices went up around the world, nowhere less so than here, where inflation has been brought back down more so than in other countries, but prices still remain painfully high. And that the hefty tariffs on foreign goods that Trump is proposing would supercharge inflation has not mattered to this conversation. Nor has what would happen to prices if he kept his promise to round up and deport the undocumented immigrants whose unfairly cheap labor also keeps housing and other costs down.

Yet that's the fine print to the deeper thing that I have seen going on for at least 20 years, which is that working people too often do not feel that they have a lot in common culturally with the same Democrats who see themselves as their champions. Yes, this perception is constantly stoked and exaggerated by conservative media and politicians.

The disconnect is real, though, and telling people who don't love being lectured about pronouns or any number of other things that they're not only mistaken but are terrible people is only compounding that problem. Yes, even when those railing against the elites include the hypocritical likes of our newly reelected Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, of Stanford, Yale, and St. Paul's .

Just as I admired the way Kamala Harris promised not to punish critics in her closing argument, so was I glad that she said in her concession speech that one way we must fight back against this outcome is "by treating one another with kindness and respect."

Some of those in her audience were in tears, and she told the young people among them in particular, "Please know that it's going to be OK. ... This is not a time to throw up our hands. It's a time to roll up our sleeves." To which all I can say is, amen.

Navalny showed how to resist without bitterness

I'm reading "Patriot," the memoir of the martyred Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who has a lot to say to those of us who want to roll up our sleeves in this moment, even if none of us will ever have to do what he did, somehow keeping his sense of humor in a gulag north of the Arctic Circle.

After being poisoned in 2020, Navalny returned to his beloved country the next year, knowing he'd almost certainly be arrested for his opposition to a ridiculous and rotten regime.

Why not live out his life in the softness of exile instead? "I have my country and my convictions," he wrote. "I don't want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary. ... I traveled the length and breadth of the country, declaring everywhere from the stage, 'I promise that I won't let you down.' By coming back to Russia, I fulfilled my promise to the voters. There need to be some people in Russia who don't lie to them."

He asks his countrymen and women, and all of us, really, to refuse to lie to ourselves or others. His call to conscience is a compassionate one: "Today you are brave. Tomorrow they seem to have scared you a bit. And the day after tomorrow they have scared you so much that you despair and become brave again."

But his ultimate refusal was the refusal to become embittered. Instead, he made jokes, befuddled his keepers, and amused himself by memorizing Hamlet's soliloquy in English while spending long days sewing on a wooden bench lower than his knees. His final message to his supporters was this: "You're not allowed to give up."

That's what Harris said after her loss: "Sometimes the fight takes a while," she said, but "do not despair," and "don't ever give up." Unless we want to become what we stand against, then we are not allowed. Nor, I think, are we allowed to keep marching without reckoning with what we – not others, but we – need to do differently next time.