Inclusion vs. Policy

It feels like all week I keep seeing a new spin -- and I mean it in the good way -- on last week's election and the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president.  Something we had not thought of much, or something that is simply another way to look at what we already saw.

I saw some Democrat or other on one of the cable news programs, talking about what to do now, at least for the party that lost a terribly winnable election for them.  The most telling point, he or she said, and the most important thing for the party, was to "promote an agenda of tolerance and inclusion", or something like that.

Dear Lord, did the Democrats learn nothing at all?

Clearly they have learned nothing, since it is evident that they will be influenced by the rioters in the streets in cities in this country, rioters who (or those who paid them to riot) were obviously motivated by views of Donald Trump that don't really jibe with reality.  But this isn't really about Mr. Trump, who is now President-elect Trump.

You see, the problem is that "tolerance and inclusion", although being nice, feel-good concepts that get people sufficiently riled up to riot in the streets when told to (or paid to), well, they are not policy.  And policy is what people vote on, not feel-good concepts.

Now, if the Democrats want to go all "tolerance and inclusion" on us, and nominate a bunch more lefties who can parrot that story but still don't have any policies that, you know, work in real life, they are going to continue to lose to Republicans who are offering actual governmental and legislative approaches that do work.

So maybe it is a bit about Trump.  After all, amid all the tweets and perceived (and somewhat exaggerated) bluster, Trump put down some markers on policy -- secure the border, lower our taxes, lower corporate and individual taxes, repeal and replace Obamacare -- that resonated.  We knew what Trump was going to try to do quickly as president.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, put forth, as her most prominent rationale for voting for her, her possession of a uterus.  Yes, she had lots of plans on her website, but who goes to websites for candidate policies?  And it wouldn't have mattered, because none of that stuff was new if you had even bothered to look it up; it had all just failed massively over the past eight years, much of it overseas, on her watch.

By following up with more intent to run on nebulous concepts like "inclusion and tolerance" (ahhh, throw in "diversity" while you're there), the Democrats are simply talking past the American electorate that just threw them out of the White House.  You remember the concept, where you keep talking about something that is the wrong response, skewed completely from what the other person said.  (Note -- in the linked piece, I also said that Trump would not get the nomination, so I had to have learned that lesson also -- but at least I did).

The electorate was saying that it wanted lower taxes, secure borders, jobs, etc.  All the things that Trump said he would make a priority, and that he would hire good leaders to help him deliver them -- America first.  The left missed all of that, leaping to the Hillary approach that you would defeat Trump by vilifying him.  Unfortunately, by focusing on the man and not what he was actually saying, they missed where, while his approach and his slogans resonated, his policies did, too.

The Democrats don't get it.  I have not heard any Democrat point to the Trump agenda -- economic revival, strong borders, that sort of thing -- and say that his agenda was simply better than theirs.  So they are heading back to their same old playbook.  And I'm happy to let them.

This was a really striking election, and who fails to learn the right lesson from it does so at his own peril.

Or hers.  Just being, you know, "inclusive."

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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