Not everyone expecting a strong night for former President Donald Trump was a Republican. I’m the former vice chair of the Oahu County Democrats, and I did, too. Now an independent, it bemused me to see what’s become of a once great farmer’s-laborer’s party.
The Democratic Party of Hawaii did away with its frenetic but grassroots presidential preference poll, in favor of a scheme dependent on girthy private donations to fund a mail-in ballot election, eliminating all face-to-face contact. When that putsch failed as cost-prohibitive, the party in 2024 reversed and managed to only attract about 1,500 votes statewide in the old cafetorium meetings. It voted for a mixture of President Biden and “unaffiliated,” protesting Gaza’s destruction. Though the party’s turnout collapsed from 2008-2016 to 2024, the party’s elite continues to applaud itself.
Lo and behold, the Republicans have now gained seats in both houses of the state Legislature.
The national party shares the same delusional arrogance. Nationally, President-elect Trump gained votes in every major bellwether district and state of the country, while Vice President Kamala Harris was not nominated in an open primary, the democratic way, but only after the president’s implosion on TV occurred too late for a competitive primary.
It’s easy to heap blame and over-attribute the facts. The vice president received about 1 million more votes than did Hillary Clinton in 2016. The former president grew his coalition explosively among the first recorded young generation to be more conservative than its predecessor, Gen Z, especially men, as well as Latino and other minority men.
Harris might have done better were she not set up to fail by a president who changed his mind about a one-term pledge, and had she not been forced into a truncated campaign, by a party obsessed with control and appearance over virtue.
As the Democrats bemoan young men voting against women or LGBTQIA or immigrants, they all too frequently ask nothing of themselves. Why does Democratic Michigan still have a $7.25 minimum wage? Why is suicide a leading cause of death for younger men? Why are women graduating with college and graduate degrees at rates multiple of men in most fields? Why are so many Muslims and minority men supporting a president whom Democrats claim hates them?
Democrats have become a consortium of interest groups — and in Hawaii, many leeward and North Shore and especially Polynesian voters don’t feel the aloha.
If the media had any honesty, they would acknowledge that the state Legislature and the City Council (now paid 64% more) are now populated by the sons of millionaires who lecture honest working people about equality and diversity, while forfeiting none of their own privilege or aggrandizement.
Democrats have made of themselves a farce — a bunch of upper-middle class snobs, and country club baby boomers and ??trustifundarians??.
They allege that Trump’s character and criminal convictions made him deserve to lose. Their tragedy is that they did not recognize their own unworthiness in feeling entitled to victory.
Democrats in failing to understand their enemy set up the greatest comeback story in American history. They foolishly called the bluff of an anxious, demoralized, struggling and suffering majority of Americans.
President-elect Trump may not deserve victory, but Democrats deserved to lose. Hopefully they will fire their incompetent and corrupt leadership and start listening to those of us who level, who care and who try. They didn’t. As always, we will pay the price.
Dylan P. Armstrong, an independent, is former vice chair of the Oahu County Democrats and former chair of the Manoa Neighorhood Board.
