November 5, 2024, may turn out to be the worst day of my life concerning politics and the values I’ve tried to work for all my now pretty long life. I wrote this, the day after, on the train back from Philadelphia to Boston after canvassing voters there for three days to turn out to vote. Clearly, we didn’t do a good job on that.

I’m sad for all the working class and poor people whose wages won’t get better from the new Trump administration’s promised policies that instead will mostly aid the wealthy and large corporations, as happened in his first term. I’m sad for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants who will face deportation and how that will rip apart their families and relationships. I’m sad for women who will not have access to reproductive services. I’m sad for transgender youth who were demonized so much in Trump’s political ads and have such a hard road to walk.

Democrats must have countless conversations with some Trump supporters to hear their concerns. Some issues we won’t agree on but some we are not far apart if we are talking to each other. Who knows, but if the other person feels seen and respected in direct conversation, they may be open to considering at least some of why some things Trump says are just not true. And we’ll learn things listening to them, too.

Democrats can’t win elections nationally or in the battleground states by being a party mostly of people of color and the college-educated citizens. The majority of Americans are not college graduates. And Democrats have lost so many white working-class people and now so many Latinos, too.

Yes, the destruction of unions by corporations over the last 50 years has hurt a lot in terms of people not having good wages and benefits.  Going from one-third of people belonging to unions representing private sector workers to six percent doing so is such a huge blow.  And a cultural one, too, as fewer and fewer attend union meetings and union-affiliated social activities.

A lot of Trump voters are in gun clubs, which also means they hear the National Rifle Association’s line that’s in full support of the Republican Party’s agenda on everything, not just on guns. There’s a vast array of radio, TV, newspapers, social media, book publishers, policy think tanks, and white evangelical voters supporting the Trump and Republican agenda. Much more than Democrats and progressives have.

In Dorchester, Trump won one of the two precincts at Florian Hall (16-12) and one of those voting at the Adams Street Library (16-9). The other 57 Dorchester precincts voted for Harris/Walz. But Trump got more votes than he did in 2020.

I’m so mad at Presidents Clinton, Obama, and candidate Hillary Clinton for leading Democrats to do such a poor job representing the interests of working-class people over the last 30 years.

Clinton’s NAFTA trade deal lost manufacturing jobs, his deregulation of the financial industry contributed to the Foreclosure Financial Crisis of 2007-2012, and his philandering with women helped in Gore’s defeat in 2000 and his own wife’s defeat in 2016. Hillary Clinton continued similar positions on trade, made the rounds speaking to major corporations for big fees, and said, “one-half of Trump supporters are a basket of deplorables," and didn’t campaign in all the battleground states. 

Barack Obama bailed out the banks during the financial crisis but did not save millions from being foreclosed on by those banks. And saying about white working-class people, “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

President Biden let us down, too. He did a good enough job to defeat Trump in 2020 and deserves our thanks for that. He led passage of many important bills to strengthen the economy and families. But for years, his saying the economy was great and let’s call it Bidenomics fell short with most people. And how we left Afghanistan was shameful. And he ran for re-election when he’d been falling apart in the way we saw at the disastrous presidential debate in June.

I think Vice President Harris did a good job in running a national campaign in such a short amount of time. But she did say in one interview that she couldn’t think of anything she’d do differently from what Biden did the last four years. That became a constant Republican TV ad. Why couldn’t she have said: “The Biden-Harris Administration has done these things to improve our country’s economy and its standing in the world. But too many people are still hurting, so I’m going to do these specific things on jobs, wages, housing, immigration.”

Of course, the Clinton, Obama, and the Biden-Harris administrations had some very important accomplishments, respectively on a lowered poverty rate and the Earned Income Tax Credit (Clinton), the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure bill and CHIPS Act (Biden). The Republican presidents, the Bushes and Trump, favored the rich and corporations in their polices, had less successful economies than the Democratic presidents, and got us into or prolonged forever wars.

I know we need to stop mourning and get up and organize. There are no barriers to working for changes we need at the city and state level. President-elect Trump will be able to pass much of his agenda and appoint a lot of judges, but with 60 votes required to pass something in the Senate, he won’t get everything he wants. But it will not be good.

Last Saturday, this happened. A new neighbor I hadn’t met yet came by and said in person and in a note, “Seeing your Harris-Walz lawn sign over the past few weeks has meant a lot. We came so close to something incredible. We will get there some day.” And she also gave me a bag with a package of great cookies and a flower. Talk about brightening up your day.

There’s a lot of political soul searching and work to do to reach those who didn’t vote for Harris or didn’t vote at all. There’s nothing else to do than to get up and begin doing that.

Lew Finfer is a Dorchester resident.