The American left elected Donald Trump.  They've been voting for him for decades, and at last they've succeeded.  If the left's post-election behavior is any indication, they intend to keep doing so.

I write metaphorically, of course.  Few leftists actually voted for Trump, but as sure as the sunrise, they elected him.  The fact is hardly debatable, as principled leftists like Noam Chomsky, Joan Williams, and Chris Hedges have said.

Here's one example of the process in action: shortly before Election Day in 2000, polls had Green Party candidate Ralph Nader garnering 5%-9% of the popular vote.  He got 2.7%.  Where did all those votes go?  They went to Democratic nominee Al Gore.  Liberals who said they were voting Green succumbed to the "lesser of two evils" argument.  They didn't like Gore, but they voted for him because, in that year's timeless phrase, "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." 

Democratic strategists knew they would.  The idea that blacks and liberals can be counted on to vote Democratic, irrespective of the actual candidate, has made up the core of the party's strategy since its takeover by the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985.

Back then, Democrats were taking a beating by the GOP because the party was seen to be too liberal, too soft on crime, and insufficiently bellicose.  So the DLC moved the party to the right on those issues, secure in the belief that liberal (and black) voters had no choice but to vote Democratic.  Bill Clinton's election in 1992 proved the DLC right.  Even as Clinton signed NAFTA and the most draconian crime bill in recent memory, and slashed welfare benefits for the poor, leftists marched zombie-like to the polls, pulled the Democratic lever, and celebrated the resulting "victory."

Tea Party Republicans know better.  They built a conservative base within the GOP to oppose mainstream candidates who said the right words about lower taxes and smaller government but voted for budget-busting expansions like Medicare Part D.  The Tea Party has demonstrated the power that adhering to one's principles can have.  Its members don't go along to get along and will attack a mainstream GOP candidate even if it means a Democrat is elected.  In so doing, they've amassed power far beyond their numbers in society.

Liberal Democrats haven't a clue.  Indeed, their embrace of neo-liberal policies of increasing military budgets, free trade agreements, stagnating wages, lower taxes, and the largest prison population in the world legitimately raises the question of whether there is an American left at all.  If so, it certainly wouldn't be recognizable to FDR or LBJ.  It is precisely the failure of Americans who call themselves liberals to act on liberal principles that elected Bill Clinton and Barack Obama but defeated Hillary Clinton.

This year, Democratic constituencies since the 1930s – unions, blue-collar workers, the "little man" – had finally had enough.  More importantly, they had someone to vote for who at least seemed to care about their many problems.  Neo-liberal policies have dealt a body blow to the standard of living of blue-collar Americans, but Democratic Party strategists, in keeping with DLC doctrine, figured it wouldn't matter.  Bernie Sanders told them it did, but the party didn't listen.

Apparently, they also figured the swelling chorus of liberal voices calling those once core Democratic constituencies "racists," "sexists," "bigots," or just plain stupid wouldn't matter, either.  Democrats' disdain for their own voters was never supposed to reach the public, but, thanks to WikiLeaks, it did.  Email dumps revealed a shocking level of contempt by Clinton campaign operatives for Democratic voters.  Liberals were "self-righteous whiners," and Latinos were "needy."  Catholics were so disdained that they called on campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri to resign.

That contempt was a direct result of the original DLC strategy.  It's a short route from taking voters for granted to looking down on them.

Following the dramatic repudiation of the Democratic electoral strategy, we might expect the party to be reassessing same.  Maybe it is, but I doubt it.  Here's why:

Leftists greeted the election results by rioting in the streets, outraged that traditional Democratic voters would dare to spurn their chosen candidate, a person whose every word and deed shouted "more of the same" – more war, more wage stagnation, more disdain for ordinary Americans.

Far from learning a lesson, the American left are doubling down.  They're essentially promising to back the party's next neo-liberal candidate even though neo-liberal policies have done such damage to the standard of living of countless Americans.  Surely Democratic Party strategists are taking note.

For over two decades, they've taken the left for granted.  Liberals are now saying loudly and clearly that they were right to do so and may continue. 

High in Trump Tower, our next president is smiling.

Robert Franklin, a Texas attorney since 1980, also writes for the National Parents Organization on the subject of family court reform.