Terry Prone: The problem with Democrats? They like to lecture but don’t listen

That last one may be a function of her team, rather than her on her own, but who picked the team? Plus, she was a prosecutor, which means she knows how to cross-examine and draw conclusions from the evidence provided. Of which one factor was outstanding in the selection process: Tim Walz honestly told the Democrats that he wasn’t good in debates. Now, that’s the point where the selection process should have ground to a screeching halt, because that confession reveals so much. Debating isn’t an inherited trait like red hair. It’s a skill to be learned. Especially if you’re in politics.

For a 60-year-old to confess to poor debate skills is endearing but that doesn’t outweigh its threat level. Why is he not a good debater? Could it be that he folds in the face of hostility? Or folds in the face of better argumentation?

 Either way, if a debate with a younger man of proven intellectual competence is going to be a part of the pathway to power or obscurity, this news was not good. Especially not good because the Democrats had already failed on the communication front with Kamala 

At no stage did she articulate a vision for America that would make sense to any other than the already committed. Nor did her celeb/Democrat supporters. Barack Obama lectured black male Americans on their duty to vote, Michelle Obama was warmly vaguer, and Kamala’s showbiz supporters made unhelpfully imprecise supportive noises. Harris didn’t have a vision that could be picked up and promoted even by the stars willing to be helpful to her. Yet nobody within the Democrats seemed to register this fundamental problem.

Of course, the late withdrawal of Biden hampered her positioning, and his willingness to help her out was as helpful as a mis-directed cannonball. However, Biden’s age was inescapably obvious from the moment she was announced as Vice President, and his decline palpable over the last two years, yet Harris does not seem to have had a contingency plan for his removal, nor to have worked out what she was going to say when presented with self-evidently failing policies on the part of the Biden administration. Bluntly, the dearth of each of these is a disqualifier.

Fast forward to Trump’s victory, which was as badly managed by the candidate and the campaign as almost everything en route. She didn’t turn up at her own party. She took forever to concede. She took forever to talk — badly — to her supporters.

Democrats (and Democrat-leaning commentators in this country) promptly went into Apocalypse Now mode. Woe is us. Armageddon is nigh. We who are about to die, etc. Now, Democrats and Democrat-leaning commentators had spent many of the previous weeks defining democracy and its importance. 

Yet, when a majority of Americans told the Democrats to stick it, did those commentators repeat their reverence for democracy? No, they were too busy rubbishing those who exercised their democratic right to vote for Trump and too busy being outraged

 Which offers a lesson to Mary Lou McDonald in our current election: Outrage is like hypochondria. It may be based on evidence, but over time it gets wearisome.

Lecturing the electorate

Outrage against Trump was plentiful during the campaign, as was the evidence to support it. We were reminded, again and again, that this was a convict, a repeated bankrupt, a sexual predator, a coarse unprincipled fascist. Those reminders were often clothed within a condemnation chimera. Meaning that if you were a Trump voter, it was hinted that you were at best thick as a plank, at worst a sharer in all he is. 

This was counter-productive. Humans are notoriously averse to being lectured about their own faults, especially if the people doing the lecturing are folks they can’t stand at the best of times. From Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” right through to Joe Biden’s “garbage" supporters, the Democrats have overtly and covertly characterised and disrespected more than half of American voters.

That’s the nub of the Democrats’ problems. The double nub. They love lecturing and they don’t listen.

They love lecturing because of a visceral conviction that they themselves are simply better, more virtuous, more admirable politicians than any other. They’re not alone in this. The Labour Party here tends to have the same deeply rooted self-regard; they may acknowledge that other parties sometimes do good things, but underpinning that rare acknowledgement is the belief that the other parties do it by accident or because they were made to. Never mind the occasional good deed: those other parties are still a lesser species with a lower moral endowment.

Because they love lecturing, the Democrats repeatedly make rookie errors. This time around, it was talking constantly about the threat posed by Trump, rather than going future tense and specific about their own offering.

 Nobody had a rashers about the America Kamala planned to build — and, in an uncomfortable echo of that Trump line about not understanding one sentence Biden had uttered in his disastrous debate outing, and being pretty sure Biden didn’t understand it either — it’s doubtful Harris had a rashers about the differences she would drive

Currently, she and her party face an unwelcome but crucial opportunity to reset. What may inhibit a good reset is that Democrats, much as we may prefer them to the Republicans, are lousy at examining their own conscience.

When you’ve been as badly beaten as they were in this election it is time to do radical conscience-examination, instead they emitted the greatest load of self-comforting guff. Kamala’s tardy contribution was generalised bull, while Biden suggested that it was how you picked yourself up after a fall that defined you. Meanwhile Walz tweeted thus: “Chin up, team. Take some time. Take care of yourself. Take care of your loved ones. Take care of your community ... Get back in the fight when you’re ready. And know that, whenever you are ready, I’ll be ready to get back in with you.” Hell of a reassurance, that, from a man who lost his own county in the election.

It’s time for the Democrats to hear smart supporters like Professor Drew Weston, who, a decade back, warned of the need to stop lecturing, lose the conviction of their inherent righteousness and start listening to floating voters. Looks like they’ll have plenty of time for that.