A large percentage of those gleefully playing this blame game right now, including here on my feed, are white men, young white men at that.

Here's the response of a young Black leader, Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott, to these folks:

"It is really on my heart this morning to say that as a man, but more importantly as a Black man, that this country does not deserve Black women or Black people, but specifically Black women."

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"The unfortunate reality is that this country is still steeped in racism, sexism and misogyny. I am personally proud of her, and I know that so many others are the same. We appreciate her tenacity, her focus, her decency and how she handled herself throughout this campaign. And I don’t want to hear anybody saying that they should have done something different, she should have been running longer."

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"The fact is, is that they did everything that a campaign can do and more. But we as a country really have a lot of soul searching to do.”

But what Black people have to say isn't really important to a lot of us, right? Never has been. Never has been taken as seriously in the opinion pages of our major media outlets as the verbiage of any white person anywhere. Right? And it's never about racism or misogyny even when it's always about them.

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Another piece of eloquent testimony from a brilliant Black man that won't be taken seriously by lots of us as we engage in the futile game-playing of the circular firing squad:

"America deserves everything it is about to get. ...

The conversations about who is to blame, the hand-wringing about who showed up and who failed the moment are largely academic and pointless."

~ Elie Mystal

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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-is-america-not-a-fluke/

"America did this. America, through the process of a free and fair election, demanded this. America, as an idea, concept, and institution, wanted this. And America, as a collective, deserves to get what it wants. ...

Now that he is here, we deserve our fate, because the most fundamental truth about Trump’s reelection is that Trump was right about us."

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"He will be president again because he, and perhaps he alone, saw us for how truly base, depraved, and uninformed we are as a country. Trump is not a root cause of our ills. He did not create the conditions that allowed him to rise. He is, and always has been, a mirror. He is how America sees itself."

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And from Black historian Jemar Tisby:

"I find most of the postmortem pontificating about why Democrats lost the presidential election unpersuasive.

The reason, not the only one but a major one, Democrats lost the presidential election is disinformation and misinformation super-charged by billionaires and Russia through a network of right-wing media outlets and institutions."

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https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/why-democrats-lost-the-2024-presidential

From Wajahat Ali, son of Pakistani immigrants:

"We knew exactly what we were getting. And despite everything he’s done, millions of Americans would rather have a cruel, aging vulgarian than a competent Black woman become President. This is more a revelation of their lack of character than anything else. They chose to vote for him. No one forced them to do it."

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https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/america-shit-in-its-milk-but-the

"This includes a majority of white men and white women. Without that bloc, Trump never comes close to being President. This bloc also includes margins of Latino, Black and Asian men. The two groups that understood the assignment were 90% of Black and Jewish women who voted for Harris. A majority of Black men also came through. The two religious groups that voted for Harris were Jews and Muslims, although many defected from Muslim and Arab communities due to the Gaza war."

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And a Jewish American voice, Steven Beschloss:

"Now we have more evidence that the appeal of authoritarianism is on the rise, in America as well as globally."

He cites a poll last year by Open Society Foundations polling 36,000 people in 30 countries, which finds commitment to democracy strong but waning globally.

Two key findings that bode ominously for the future of democracy in America:

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https://www.americaamerica.news/p/what-i-wont-get-over-and-some-of

"An average of 86 percent of the global respondents said it is important to them to live in a country that is democratically governed, yet only 80 percent of Americans did. That put America in the bottom five of thirty countries, below Turkey, China, India, Egypt and Mexico, to name just a few.

Just 57 percent of 18- to 35-year-olds said democracy is preferable to any other form of government; 71 percent of older respondents said the same."

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"And more alarming: Asked for good ways to run a country, 42 percent of those 18 to 35 globally believe the answer is 'army rule' and 32 percent of that age group believe it’s 'leaders who do not bother with parliaments or elections.'”

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I mean, part of this comes down, I think, to the failure of the neoliberal consensus to actually improve the lives of most people. Especially when people are told capitalism and democracy are intertwined (they really aren't, but that's the narrative), then feel the negative effects of capitalism, why wouldn't they reject democracy?

I have long been critical of neoliberalism. I also think that it's a miscalculation to say that the choice of increasing numbers of people to swallow fascist ideas is entirely rooted in economic malaise.

why do you insist on calling it by the wrong name? neoliberalism is the conservative policy since the 1800s. look it up!

Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Neoliberalism is often associated with a set of economic liberalization policies, including privatization, deregulation, consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending.

Thank you. Yes, I know very well what neoliberalism is and what it stands for, and I have long been highly critical of the neoliberal project.

fine, as long as you understand that it is not a democratic or labour label, it is what is today more of a far right Tory or GOP position.
Even as the Clinton/Obama Blair/Corbyn eras moved closer to the center