In My Secret Life
I'll be marching through the morning, marching through the night.
What's the best Leonard Cohen song? You will not induce me into that conversation. I could give thirty plausible answers.
But to the extent that Leonard Cohen songs are, ultimately, psychic excavations of one sort or another, the song that I can't navigate away from is "In My Secret Life."
A spare drum machine plays at a slow tempo. The first voice you hear is the song's co-writer Sharon Robinson, intoning the mantra-like phrase of the chorus. The next thing you hear is the two of them duetting — the geriatric recording (in Cohen’s case) recalling the haunting Richard and Linda Thompson ballads “Dimming of the Day” and “A Heart Needs a Home.”
“In My Secret Life” first appeared on his 2001 album Ten New Songs. By this time, he had made many proclamations about many things: the worthiness of man, the mystery of women, democracy, not-democracy, the end of all things and the beginning of others.
On “In My Secret Life” he has, in some ways, moved beyond all of this. When Cohen sings:
I bite my lip
I buy what I'm told
From the latest hit
To the wisdom of old
He is of course describing us, now, becoming what we are. The crucial lyric, of course, is “I buy what I’m told.” Distinct, but also un-distinct, from the more familiar “I do what I’m told.” Compliance in the high consumer age requires far more than obedience — it requires every kind of tithe we can reasonably or unreasonably afford.
It is hard, in retrospect, given the extent of measurable suffering that most Americans feel economically, to understand why the high gloss, celebrity-centric approach of the Harris campaign seemed like a good idea at the time. But it seemed like a good idea at the time! Or at least a rational response to the tragically catatonic shape of the Biden reelection campaign. But in the absolutely crucial campaign post-mortem — and I sincerely resent progressives who suggest any post-mortem is inherently wrong — it needs saying that too few people benefit from the current American economy. Democrats have volitionally let go of the always difficult obligation of coalition-wrangling across class and racial lines in favor of courting an educated, upscale suburban vote, which makes for a rad dinner party but doesn’t comprise a workable majority.
Look through the papers
Makes you want to cry
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die
This is Cohen’s saddest, truest lyric. No poetic curlicues or narrative cul-de-sacs. No scarlet women, meditation sessions or deep delves into the mystic. Just a simple home truth that feels more crestfalling than ever. Here's to what’s left of the people. If there were still papers, they’d make you want to cry.
A post-mortem is absolutely necessary and due. After that we part ways.
"Most Americans" is a vague measurement but if it means more than 50% I suspect that it's not true. And if it is true, it was Harris's "celebrity centric" campaign that offered real relief with incentives for housing starts, help with purchasing houses, tax credits, subsidized child care and more while Trump's "economic package" consists of tax cuts for the rich and tariffs, which are a hidden tax on everybody at amounts never before seen if he is to be believed (admittedly no sure thing). I'm still waiting for a good explanation of why an economically motivated voter would vote for Trump.
One also has to grapple with this fact: 40% of North Carolina voters voted for Mark Robinson for governor. There has probably never been a more unqualified, unacceptable, outrageously extreme, personally flawed candidate for major office in the US and the man still got 40% of voters to vote for him. One can argue about what that means, but to me it means that we can count on 40% of the population to vote Republican no matter who the candidate is or what the issues supposedly are. I'm sure it's not materially different for Democrats; the point is not to blame unthinking Republican automatons, it is to observe that the number of voters who actually vote based on measurable criteria is vanishingly small, and that's before one considers that 1/3 of eligible voters didn't even vote. Were they protesting? Are they fat and satisfied? Nobody knows. But w/out knowing, it is truly impossible to say that "most" American voters were motivated by economic hardship and that most of that most concluded that the Republicans offered a better chance for relief.
It is apparently a truism that Democrats courted upscale suburban voters. If one takes their platforms seriously it is hard to see how the Republicans courted working class and middle class voters, and more importantly, how the Democrats did not. Reproductive rights is for some reason widely seen as a "suburban women's" issue but I am hard-pressed to understand why. As noted above, only one party crafted a package of economic initiatives aimed at the working and middle classes and it wasn't the Republicans.
The Democrats definitely need a serious post-mortem and self-examination. But imho, the explanations I've read so far, including the ones offered by you, Elizabeth, miss the mark.
This no-none sense analysis is first rate.