Mocking voters won't win their support

It was highly amusing watching former president Barack Obama tear into Donald Trump in the closing days of the U.S. election, gleefully delivering a series of zingers he'd obviously been itching to unload for quite some time.

Obama is excellent on a platform, and skilled at mimicry. Jerry Seinfeld even included him for a spot in his lineup of comedians driving around in classic cars, getting coffee. But a nervous sort might have wondered about the wisdom of another slick, wealthy left-winger firing off insults about people who don't live like they do, just days before those people hit the polls to cast their vote.

If you want an inkling of what made election night so nail-bitingly uncertain, cast your mind back to the Democratic debates, in which Elizabeth Warren specialized in ripping opponents to shreds. A Massachusetts senator with a background at Harvard, a prof for a husband, a million-dollar income and a tongue like a stiletto, lecturing the world about the right way to live and the wrong things to do. She single-handedly eviscerated her billionaire rival Michael Bloomberg right there on live TV, leaving him bleeding on the floor of his campaign. If you think it was going to win support for Democrats out there in the great wide swath of America that stretches between the Democrat-heavy coasts, you're not paying attention.

Joe Biden had a lot of hurdles to overcome Tuesday, and the biggest might have been the left flank of his own party, an increasingly loud, radical and influential body of activists, academics, urban sophisticates and their broad support group across campuses, the media and celebrity influencers.

If there is one thing that binds together the sort of people who turned out in large numbers for Trump on Tuesday, it's the sense that their world is crumbling around them, and no one in Washington cares. You think Nancy Pelosi understands Kansas and what drives the people there? That she puzzles over it while lounging at her vineyard in Napa? Stand in the middle of the country and look east or west and you see a Democratic party increasingly enamoured of bright young stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad, four women on the left edge of an increasingly left-wing party, all of whom endorse an agenda that promotes an upending of the world millions of Americans desperately want to preserve.

Trump won 60 million votes in 2016 and Tuesday showed that four years of chaos in the White House did nothing to change many of those minds. Democrats spent most of those years trying desperately to reverse the decision of the ballot box by whatever means possible — inquiries, impeachment, attacks — and still found themselves on election eve scratching and scraping for votes over a candidate they hold in utter contempt. There was no sign in Biden's campaign that he'd come to understand the cult-like fervour of Trump supporters. Other than a pledge that his administration would govern for a single America rather than the warring camps of red and blue states, he had little to offer. His biggest struggle was convincing voters not to believe Republican warnings he'd shut down the country, take away their livelihood and impose a new socialist order in which they would have no part to play other than as potential recipients of government handouts. It terrifies them and they'll even vote for Donald Trump to block it, if they have to.

Erin O'Toole, the new leader of Canada's Conservatives, has been giving speeches in which he attests that “middle-class Canada” has never received the benefits promised by globalization. The idea that trade deals and open markets would spread the wealth fairly among all classes has proved empty and ill-considered. Instead, manufacturing has died a slow death, jobs have gone to cheaper labour in other countries, and private-sector unions have withered while “progressives” respond with free tuition and daycare pledges for people who would prefer just to have a decent job to support themselves.

It's a faint echo of the angst that has turned wide swaths of America against the “elites” they see as robbing them of their country and their values. The fact Democrats so obviously disdain those values does nothing to loosen their determination to hold onto them. On late-night programs hosted by enthusiastic Democrats they are portrayed as ignorant hillbillies hanging out in their pickup trucks, wearing MAGA hats and trading hoax stories. Take a look at the crowds at Trump rallies and you can see what they mean: hordes of people jammed in together, maskless and sharing COVID with one another. One study estimated Trump rallies led to 30,000 COVID cases and 700 deaths.

It's madness, yes, and typical of Trump's ruthless dedication to himself, first and always. A better solution than mockery, however, might have been a determined effort by Democrats, during their years in opposition, to develop policies and programs that address the angry, the frightened and the disenchanted, rather than writing them off, in Trumpian terms, as losers and suckers.

Trump's support is overwhelmingly based among whites, more among men than women, and the less well educated they are, the firmer their devotion. Rather than appeal to them, Democrats have scared them off. The results on Tuesday showed what a flawed and risky approach it is. If they want future elections to reflect the same level of uncertainty and discord, they just have to keep it up.