By Stephen Macaulay

After Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican Party performed what was described as an “autopsy.”

They wanted to figure out (1) why they lost the election (remember, Romney’s bona-fides were much more substantial than Obama’s were, and if nothing else, Romney looked (and looks) absolutely “presidential”) and (2) what they needed to do so that the next time they would be successful.

So there was the “Growth and Opportunity Project.”

And arguably Donald Trump, who is not known for being a big reader, didn’t bother with it and he went his own way, which proved to be rather successful as he completely upended the conventional thought about presidential politics.

While the conventional Republicans talked about the importance of a “big tent,” Trump manifests images of luxury Palm Beach living for people who would be more likely to vacation in a tent rather than in a beach-side condo.

What Trump was selling was making regular people’s — as opposed to the political class — lives better. He was going to “Make America Great Again,” and as those folks are “America,” that meant them.

(If we go back to one of the causes of Romney’s loss was because he seemed to plugged in to the financial class, something that regular folk have a hard time with as they only deal with banking institutions when trying to get a home equity loan to finish the basement. The whole notion of “capital” is completely foreign to them. While it might be thought that Trump’s wealth would have been a negative, given that he spent money on what the monied class would consider outré, he was someone the regular folk were fine with because they knew if they had a chance. . . . Which goes to explain why some $270 million in lottery tickets are bought each day in the U.S. — nearly one $1 ticket for every American over the age 18.)

After Kamala Harris’s loss the Democrats are undertaking their own version of the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” trying to determine why, given all of the apparent flaws and flubs of Donald Trump, he was able to trounce the Harris-Walz ticket.

Which will undoubtedly become a document that will be better ignored by the next set of Democratic candidates.

What appears to be incomprehensible to many of the people who are hand-wringing and excoriating Trump’s pre-inauguration picks, policies and positions is that with few exceptions, the regular people don’t care.

During the campaign the Democrats talked a lot about “saving democracy” and how “Trump represented an existential threat.” (1) Most people didn’t see Hamilton. (2) And even more people have no idea who Jean-Paul Sarte was/is.

Trump, on the other hand, talked about how he was going to turbocharge the economy and make it better for people. That is something people can not only understand but get behind.

Consider this: Harris, apparently, felt constrained about criticizing Biden’s policies. Bidenomics — vis-à-vis the regular folks, not those who have invested in the markets (yes, yes, people who have 401(k) plans from their employer makes them investors in the market, even though they might not be aware of it) — wasn’t showing up in the form of better prices at Kroger or Walmart. That is what people know and understand.

Would Trump, had he been in the same position as Harris, hesitated to make it clear that it was going to be his way, not his predecessors?

Damn right.

Trump consistently said he will make things better for people. While that may or may not be the case, what is the case is that people felt the odds would be better for them by electing someone who talked about that rather than someone who generally gave that a swerve.

Today Trump says he’s going to straighten out the media. Given the state of newspapers in the US, for most people the “media,” a word they’d be unlikely to use, is what they see on Fox News because if a newspaper still remains in their locale, it is become ridiculously expensive — and when is the last time you saw a kid on a bike flinging papers on porches? They simply don’t care. It is not them. It is not anyone they know. It doesn’t make a difference.

There is consternation about the flaunting of political norms. Given that those norms have been kicked to the curb since 2015, isn’t it fair to say that they are no longer norms?

Maybe instead of hiring high-priced consultants and analysts if the Democrats want to win the next time out, the party pooh-bahs need to spend more time with the regular people in ways that governors and mayors do in their states and cities. What matters are things like roads (and while the Biden administration has done a great job in this regard, what percentage of regular people know that today?), schools teaching math and science, and the ability to take the family out every now and then at a place somewhat fancier than the local McDonalds. Things like that.

When people are wearing ballcaps with a politician’s slogan on them long after the election you’ve got to realize that there is more there than is likely to be sussed out by a think tank.

-30-