This has been the year of ejection elections. Across the democratic world, incumbents have been thrown out and insurgents have triumphed. And nowhere has the establishment been so humbled, the insurgency so resurgent, as in the US – still the world’s greatest democracy.
For Democrats, it is mourning again in America. Just as in 2016, it is not just their candidate who has been defeated but their beliefs about their country. There are lessons for them, and for all political actors across the West, in Donald Trump’s victory.
The failure of the Democrat campaign shows the folly of telling voters what they should think
The Democrat campaign was premised on a series of assumptions: that you could win an economic argument if you had the better statistics; that concerns about migration were misplaced at best and fascist at worst; that abortion was the most important issue for female voters; and that wayward rednecks would repent of their darker prejudices when educated out of them by the enlightened.
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