Ø days without nonsense

There’s a lot of dis­course in left­ist cir­cles (left­ist, not lib­er­al, there’s an im­por­tant dis­tinc­tion) that Pales­tine is Why the De­moc­rats Lost.™ And I know this is go­ing to be a con­tro­ver­sial take, but I ac­tu­al­ly disagree.

I cer­tain­ly agree that it’s one of the rea­sons why the de­moc­rats lost, as in, for some peo­ple it fac­tored in to how they vot­ed. But I think it’s only one of many, many rea­sons why they lost, and while about, oh, a good 90% of why the de­moc­rats lost is def­i­nite­ly their fault, a very im­por­tant 10% was not.

I’ll ex­plain.

First of all, I don’t think that many peo­ple care that much about Pales­tine. There. I said it. I hon­est­ly think your typ­i­cal ⚪️🇺🇸, re­gard­less of their so­cioe­co­nom­ic stand­ing, does not ac­tu­al­ly give a gen­uine shit about Pales­tine, no mat­ter what they try to say. 

(Please no­tice that I am tak­ing care to specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress ⚪️🇺🇸s. We make up 71% of the pop­u­la­tion, so this is go­ing out to us.)

Right now you may be any­where be­tween shrug­ging your shoul­ders and ac­cept­ing that as a pos­si­bil­i­ty and fum­ing that I dare sug­gest such a thing. Both re­ac­tions are un­der­stand­able. I’m also will­ing to ad­mit that I may be paint­ing with too broad a brush. 

Sure­ly there’s a ⚪️🇺🇸 out there some­where who gen­uine­ly does care about Pales­tine! Like a pro­fes­sor of Arab Amer­i­can re­la­tions. Or some­one mar­ried to a Pales­tin­ian-Amer­i­can. What­ev­er. We do not need to hone in on those hy­per­spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als who I’m sure do ex­ist and ac­tu­al­ly do care far more than the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the gen­er­al populace. 

I agree that we should care a whole fuck­ing lot about Palestine. 

And I’m also sure many peo­ple be­lieve in their hearts that they do. 

But here’s where I think the left­ist ar­gu­ment that Pales­tine is Why the De­moc­rats Lost™ (i.e. so many peo­ple cared so much, they just couldn’t cast their vote in sup­port of Har­ris copy­cat­ting Geno­cide Joe) falls apart: 

Ac­cord­ing the of­fi­cial cen­sus web­site, in 2023, there were 36.8M peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty. That’s rough­ly 11% of the pop­u­la­tion. So more than one in ten peo­ple. But fed­er­al pover­ty thresh­olds are ab­surd­ly low and unrealistic.

The fed­er­al pover­ty guide­line for a sin­gle per­son in 2025 is $15,650 and for a fam­i­ly of four (FOUR!) it’s $32,150. My friends, I don’t know any sin­gle peo­ple who are able to sur­vive on $32,150 let alone a fam­i­ly of four. And 26.9% of peo­ple fell be­low twice the pover­ty thresh­old – $61,800 for a fam­i­ly of four. 

That’s still bare­ly scrap­ing by. In 2024, half of Amer­i­cans polled agreed with the state­ment, “I am liv­ing pay­check to pay­check,” and Amer­i­can house­holds col­lec­tive­ly owe over $18 tril­lion in con­sumer debt. 

We are the only high-in­come, in­dus­tri­al­ized na­tion in the world that does not pro­vide uni­ver­sal health care or na­tion­al paid fam­i­ly leave. 

We also have the high­est stu­dent debt load. And Amer­i­cans spend more mon­ey on health care on a per capi­ta ba­sis than peo­ple in any oth­er in­dus­tri­al­ized na­tion, yet we rank last in life ex­pectan­cy and avoid­able deaths.

At the same time they’re de­fend­ing the ar­gu­ment that Pales­tine is Why the De­moc­rats Lost,™ left­ists also ar­gue that de­moc­rats aban­doned the work­ing class and don’t rep­re­sent your av­er­age American. 

And this is fun­ny to me, be­cause based on every­thing I just laid out, I don’t see how your av­er­age Amer­i­can could pos­si­bly spend five min­utes of their day think­ing about Pales­tine let alone car­ing enough to fac­tor that into their de­ci­sion for vot­ing when they are strug­gling and don’t feel represented. 

Some­one who is liv­ing pay­check to pay­check, is bare­ly above the pover­ty line or even bare­ly above dou­ble it, is get­ting sent to col­lec­tions for un­paid med­ical bills in the thou­sands, is work­ing two jobs, hasn’t paid the elec­tric bill in two months, hopes and prays every day that their one ve­hi­cle doesn’t die on them, buys their kids’ clothes at sec­ond­hand stores, shops at Wal­mart and Dol­lar Gen­er­al, can’t af­ford their meds, and feels like they will nev­er be able to re­tire, is not go­ing to sud­den­ly feel in­spired to vote for the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date if they did an about-face, start­ed speak­ing out against geno­cide, and promised to stop fund­ing Israel. 

Your av­er­age Amer­i­can doesn’t re­al­ly care about Pales­tine be­cause they do not have the time, en­er­gy, at­ten­tion span, fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty, emo­tion­al re­serves, men­tal sta­mi­na, or any oth­er ex­cess of ex­pend­able re­source to ac­tu­al­ly care in a way that can make a difference. 

By no means am I say­ing that the de­moc­rats would have done fuck all for the work­ing class had the elec­tion gone a dif­fer­ent way. We’ve seen from past be­hav­ior that they don’t, and they won’t.

Four years of Biden did not save us from this and the un­for­tu­nate truth is that four to eight years of Hillary would not have saved us from this either. 

I know peo­ple des­per­ate­ly want to hang on to that and I get it, but it would have sim­ply just de­layed it a lit­tle longer. We’ve been head­ing in this di­rec­tion since be­fore I was born (1982) and the one par­ty we stead­fast­ly cast our votes for time and time again ul­ti­mate­ly did noth­ing to pre­vent this, all in the name of com­pro­mise, reach­ing across the aisle, work­ing to­geth­er, re­spect­ing prece­dent, and every oth­er flim­sy bull­shit ex­cuse they could drum up while per­for­ma­tive­ly “re­sist­ing” to the pub­lic be­fore they go rub el­bows with con­ser­v­a­tives at the golf course or the vineyard. 

That oth­er 10% of the rea­son why de­moc­rats lost that I brought up in the beginning? 

That’s the 77.3M peo­ple who de­lib­er­ate­ly cast their vote for Trump de­spite us hav­ing al­ready been through this once. 

No amount of pan­der­ing to those peo­ple would have made a god­damn bit of a dif­fer­ence, and there is a fair ar­gu­ment to be made that pan­der­ing to the right is al­ready some­thing the de­moc­rats have been try­ing for years and it hasn’t worked.

I don’t know what you do about 77.3M aw­ful peo­ple. And I also don’t know what you do about an en­tire gov­ern­ment body that has no in­ter­est in mak­ing an earnest at­tempt to stop what’s go­ing on. Not stu­pid lit­tle signs or red lip­stick or pink clothes. I don’t know what you do about a jour­nal­is­tic body that won’t tell the truth. 

And this is way be­yond the point of protest­ing at per­mit­ted events where there are por­ta pot­ties and po­lice pres­ence, hold­ing up a clever sign you spent sev­er­al hours mak­ing with $47 of art sup­plies from Michaels. On a Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Es­pe­cial­ly when it’s in front of a build­ing that holds a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic su­per­ma­jor­i­ty. Some­where near­by there is like­ly a drum cir­cle. Maybe your kids had a great time. So­cial me­dia cred. This is not re­al­ly “good trou­ble” or even trou­ble at all.

But some ac­tu­al se­ri­ous shit needs to start hap­pen­ing, FAST. The type of shit that makes some peo­ple clasp their pearls and go “this is not who we are!”

And I don’t know what to do about any of it. I am at a to­tal fuck­ing loss. 

But when left­ists (and I am one but ob­vi­ous­ly I split with them on this) try to say Pales­tine is Why the De­moc­rats Lost,™ it of­fends me and makes me re­al­ly an­gry be­cause feels like they’re just us­ing the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple as a prop for their own disin­gen­u­ous su­pe­ri­or­i­ty while ig­nor­ing the very real fact that most Amer­i­cans are strug­gling just to make it through the fuck­ing day and can’t think straight.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2025 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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