NEVER CHANGE, BERKELEY.

The university's newsroom asked its faculty to describe, using their discipline's conventions, the ways in which Donald Trump is awful.  Seriously.  "UC Berkeley scholars say the economy, sexism and conspiracies fueled Trump’s reelection."

I offer excerpts below the jump, with wisecracks to suit.  It might be prudent to finish your coffee first.

Here's sociologist Raka Ray, dean of Social Sciences.

I would never discount the racist and misogynist rejection of a Black and South Asian woman; the deliberately circulated fears and lies that fed the wounded racial and masculine identity of particular demographic groups; the willingness of some immigrants to shut the door behind them; and the bogey figure of “trans” that came to stand in for historic changes that were hard to grapple with. Neither would I discount the effect of the global conflicts in which America is implicated.

But at the end of the day, I do not believe that these results would have occurred if large populations of Americans did not worry about the cost of groceries, utilities and rents. The success of a political party depends on its responsiveness to its constituents — not just as a pool of votes, but also to the social and political movements through which they express themselves. There are lessons here that the Democratic Party has, unfortunately, consistently failed to heed.

Tell me your priors are more, much more, important than the evidence without telling me how important your priors are.

Next batter, political scientist Lisa García Bedolla, vice provost for graduate studies and dean of the graduate division.  I include the question she's responding to.

Before the election, a Berkeley IGS Poll found that even in California, support for Kamala Harris was significantly less than Joe Biden’s 2020 support among Asian American and Latinx voters, and particularly men in those communities. An exit poll this morning showed that Latinx men really moved toward Trump. Do you have any insights as to why so many in these communities turned from Harris or were drawn to Trump?

There has been much discussion this election about growing support for Trump among non-white voters, but little focus on the ongoing and growing support for Trump among white voters, particularly white women. Many pundits assumed white women would turn out for Harris because of their concerns about reproductive justice. Yet, we must remember that white women have only voted Democratic once in the past 50 years: That was in 1996, in favor of Bill Clinton.

Looking at voters of color, although it is true that Latine men seemed to be more supportive of Trump this cycle, I would be very skeptical of exit poll results that are significantly different from high-quality survey results taken shortly before the election. Exit polls have many methodological problems and are particularly bad at identifying trends within ethno-racial subpopulations. In October, Latine polling by Equis Research found about 55% Latine support for Harris in the battleground states, with stronger support among Latina women. There is no reason to believe things looked significantly different on Election Day.

A more useful question is to consider the reasons underlying Trump’s appeal to voters. Many pundits have questioned how voters could support Trump in spite of his racist and misogynist statements. I would argue that many voters supported him because of these assertions. It was not only that many saw those controversial words as proof of his willingness to speak the “truth.” For some voters, Trump’s words made them feel powerful, gave them someone to blame for their problems, and made them feel confident he could fix them.

Latinx, Latine, Latina, reproductive justice, and the voters are stupid.  And Democrats wonder why they fail, and academicians wonder why they are in such low estate.

Psychologist Laura Kray, with the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership in the Business School.  Again I include the question.

Democrats have nominated women as their presidential candidates twice in the past eight years, and both have lost. To what extent do you think gender played a role in the outcome, especially this year?

Among the many sociocultural factors affecting presidential elections, gender has been a defining dynamic for the last three cycles, with voters facing choices between male and female candidates for both presidential and vice presidential positions. The gender dynamics of the most recent election were intensified by contentious debates over reproductive rights and their disproportionate impact on women, as well as by one candidate’s explicit embrace of hypermasculinity.

Two fundamental questions emerged: whether voters would choose between dominant versus prestigious leadership styles, and whether America was ready to advance toward greater gender equality by electing a woman to the world’s most powerful position. The results appear to confirm that most American voters still implicitly endorse traditional gender hierarchies in political leadership, maintaining a system where men hold predominant power and authority.

The voting patterns across these recent elections reflect deeper societal dynamics around gender and power, suggesting that our society remains more comfortable with women in supporting roles rather than as the primary decision-maker, metaphorically preferring men at the helm while women occupy the passenger seat. While Americans may support women’s advancement in principle, electoral behavior continues to reflect weak implicit (and explicit) associations between the concepts of women and power.

Reproductive rights again.  That second paragraph might be a reproach of the Republicans excusing Nikki Haley, although that "hypermasculinity" talk could be a tell: Normal guys are tired of being thought of as toxic or dull.

Eric Stanley holds a chair in LGBT equity, no departmental affiliation given.

Ironically, many conservative commentators spend more hours per day talking about gender than I do as a professor who studies it. Of course, much of what they say is factually incorrect. However, they own the means of distribution, and so it is received as truth.

That said, anti-trans antagonism is a bipartisan affair. While the Republicans have been loud and clear about their will to eradicate trans people, Democrats have remained mostly silent. One could speculate that they fear the vitriol many of us survive, or perhaps they passively agree. Either way, it is illustrative of the Democratic Party’s move further toward the right which helped them lose the election.

Joe Biden pretended to be a centrist Democrat, pushed through social legislation at the margin of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, followed a Weimar personnel policy and issued ukases favorable to the lavender lobby, and it's a "move further toward the right" that got Donald Trump re-elected.

There's a lot more at the link.  I'll close with historian Daniel Sargent, who helps direct the Institute of International Studies.

Donald Trump’s election fits a pattern of populist-nationalist insurgencies that have roiled democracies in the decade since Britain’s choice for Brexit. Populist-nationalists, as I would call them, have won elections in Europe, Latin America and South and Southeast Asia. Their insurgencies reflect impatience with incumbents and prevailing policies, but not with democracy itself. Democracy encompasses many varieties of politics, after all, and what we see in this populist-nationalist groundswell is a majoritarian reaction against the liberal-democratic synthesis that achieved broad global influence in the late 20th century.

Put in broader perspective, the efforts of populists like Trump to “take back control,” reestablish borders and draw hard lines between insiders and outsiders aren’t novel; they’re doing what nationalists do. Liberals (like me) lament the populist-nationalist phenomenon, but we should hope — now that Trump has won — that populist-nationalism brings some benefits, especially for those Americans who have borne the brunt of globalization’s downside.

My deeper worry is for world order: Liberal policies and commitments sustained a tolerable peace and bolstered global prosperity over the past half-century. If history is any guide, the rise of populist-nationalism risks escalating international strife.

As does the exhaustion of the existing values regime, er, liberal-democratic synthesis, but where's the grant money in submitting proposals that the World Health Organization or World Economic Forum or United Nations or any of the other impedimenta of the so-called rules based international order is past its sell-by date?