Two days after the election Tanya Vyhovsky spoke at a Ukraine Solidarity Campaign event attended by 60 international activists on the theme: Trump and US election results – what will they mean for Ukraine?
The US election outcome felt catastrophic. The autopsy has to cover a lot of things. More people didn’t vote than did vote. Many feel so left out and alienated they didn’t feel able to vote. It was worse than 2016. The worst since Reagan’s assaults on the working class.
The instinct of establishment Democrats in the face of Republican opponents seems to be to lean into the right, to Republican talking points and Republican policies. This is well illustrated by the use of Liz Chaney to try to pick up moderate Republican voters. Instead of leaning left to popular socialist policies that would actually put food on the tables of people struggling and who would not turn up to vote
The other thing I’ve long said concerns messaging. The right are winning the war of messaging and not that of policy. The election really highlighted this.
When people are saying “I can’t feed my family” the Democrat response has been to bring in a Harvard economist to explain why this economic plan is better than the right’s plan. This misses the mark. It’s not speaking to real tangible issues but to hypotheticals and theoreticals and it disenfranchises people.
I see a population in despair, and it is easy to weaponise their feelings. We saw in 2016 and 2020 that despair breeds a hatred that the right has been really good at feeding. It’s easy to say you are struggling because of this person or that group.
20 million people did not vote in this election as opposed to 2016. These are people we can reach with a socialist policy. This is what we are going to fight for you.
Also, across the country most state legislatures turned right. We lost huge ground. It’s the most successful result for Republicans in over a decade in Vermont. Even we lost on messaging.
That said, in Vermont and across the country leftist Democrats won. Even in counties where it’s been more centrist. We picked up seats in Wisconsin and Missouri.
I’m on a stream with over 104 left democrats. All of them won and we made gains. Things like rent controls overwhelmingly won votes.
We’re not losing the war on policies. People don’t support the right’s policies in a lot of instances. People don’t know the policies candidates are running on. In a two-party system people don’t need to run on policies. Candidates just say you have to vote for me because the other person is bad.
The global implications for Ukraine, Palestine, trade, global security are enormous. So much is at stake. And it’s very easy to feel despair.
But as I dug deeper into the results, I see a lot of space for leftist organising, for solidarity and building a movement that pushes against the status quo. People rejected the status quo.
There has been division over Ukraine. There still exists a fairy tale view that Russia is some sort of socialist Disneyland. Whilst there is a long-standing view on the left about the importance of solidarity with Gaza we have a situation where many leftists can’t even find Ukraine on the map.
The situation is dangerous and urgent and terrifying, but we have an opportunity to build, to organise to push policies that build international solidarity and put food on people’s tables.
It’s very bad with right-wing control of Senate, House and Supreme Court but there are spaces to work in.
People power is more important than any institution or organisation. We now need to build across the world. Just now I don’t know what the result means for Ukraine and Gaza, but I do have faith in the people.
Tanya Vyhovsky was re-elected as a Democrat senator for Vermont