Some thoughts on the US election.
First, there’s no way to sugarcoat this. It’s a Trump win. Not only did he win the electoral college, but it looks like he will win the popular vote this time. However we feel about it, it is a decisive win.
Strangely enough, I’m not as shell shocked as I was back in 2016. I think because back then, I never really thought Trump would win. This time I was dreading it for most of the year, although I’ll admit to becoming a little more hopeful in recent weeks, but the dread never entirely left.
It became clear to me very early last night that the Democrats were in trouble. Trump was expected to win Florida, but in winning he outperformed both his polling and 2020 numbers, a harbinger of what was coming. As other early states came in, it was clear that the polls had again under measured his support. It was within the margin of error, but the error seemed pretty consistent in one direction. I went to bed early with a pretty good idea of what I’d wake up to.
Why did Trump win? I’m seeing a lot of analyses. Much of it focused on the way the campaigns were run. I think that’s a mistake. From all accounts, Harris’ campaign was well run. (Some on the left disagree, but the details always seem to involve not catering to their specific interests.) And Trump’s campaign was hampered by a chaotic candidate. He is very skilled at appealing to the base that has repeatedly gotten him the Republican nomination. But after that, he turns off most people. Yet many of them voted for him anyway. Why?
Some are despairing that this just shows who America really is. While I can understand the impulse, I don’t think it’s a productive line of thought to settle in for any length of time.
Allan Lichtman is a historian that every four years predicts who will win the presidential election. He usually gets it right, although he was wrong this time. But I think his approach, looking at the fundamentals: economy, international successes and failures, etc, is basically sound. He likely missed this year because he misread the conditions. For example, he observed that there wasn’t a recession, but didn’t take into account the pain from inflation.
Under this fundamentals view, Trump’s victory was sown in the international supply chain structures that became snarled in 2021 and 2022. Inflation was widespread internationally during this period, with consequences for incumbents who had to face voters.
But the US was particularly bad, which may have been from an extra stimulus package passed at the beginning of 2021 that many economists at the time thought was unnecessary. Larry Summers in particular warned that it could lead to inflation. To be clear, Democrats likely would have been in trouble even without that last stimulus. But the stimulus may have exacerbated the situation. Regardless, after waiting too long for inflation to disappear on its own, the Federal Reserve was forced to raise interest rates and keep them high until recently. For a while, we had high inflation and high borrowing costs.
You can see the effects of this in the exit polling (Reuters, ABC). The economy was one of the highest concerns of the electorate, and the people who raised it broke heavily for Trump. (The actual top concern was democracy, which gave Democrats a lot of hope early on, but I suspect the way those polls were weighted made a difference.)
Another issue high up on the list was immigration. The Biden administration, unfortunately, allowed the situation on the border to metastasize and become a major story. When Congress failed to pass an immigration package, Biden did issue an executive order. But by waiting until the middle of an election year, it just looked like political pandering.
The left usually thinks of the immigration issue as a racism one. And frankly Trump does make it into one. But for working class Americans, it’s also an economic issue. It’s often said that immigrants take jobs Americans don’t want. In reality, they take jobs Americans don’t want at the wages immigrants will accept. Cheap labor leads to lower cost services for many of us, but it also crowds out working class Americans who might be willing to do the work for a higher wage.
To be sure, not everyone felt the pain from these issues, but it was widespread enough to make a portion of the population vote for change. We can express moral outrage that they focused on their pocketbook rather than how dangerous Trump is. I desperately wish they hadn’t. But I also know that people struggling to buy groceries or pay their mortgage don’t care about my wishes.
If this is right, rather than months of campaigning, Harris and Trump could have each sat on their front porch, the way early presidential candidates did, with mostly the same result. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure, so no one is going to try it.
In any case, we’re back to a situation where the Republicans own the White House and Senate for at least the next two years. They probably will also own the House, but that isn’t determined yet. I’m not going to try to make predictions this time. Trump made a lot of ominous promises about going after enemies, and sure seems to want to rule as a strongman. It’s scary. We can only hope the guardrails hold again, but it seems aggressively naive to just assume they will.
It is worth noting that Trump was mostly inept in his first term. He was able to appoint lots of conservative judges, issue executive orders, and accomplish other straightforward tasks. But ironically given his old reputation, with few exceptions, anything that required skillful negotiation was mostly stillborn. (Remember “Infrastructure Week” which was always right around the corner?) It’s possible we’ll get more of the same. But it’s also possible Trump learned from that first term and now knows how to successfully get around the institutional obstacles that frustrated him last time.
It’s also worth noting that if the Republicans do retain the House, how dysfunctional they were over the last two years. There’s some concern they may struggle again to select a Speaker. Trump can probably help break the stalemate, but it’s not clear they would then be any more effective than they were before. So major legislation, aside from the standard Republican tax cuts, may not be much of a thing.
Or maybe I’m just engaging in wishful thinking.
SelfAwarePatterns 
I’m not as shell shocked either. Far less than 2016. Which is a bit of a relief, I guess.
I think it’s because I’ve learned some things from last time. First thing I learned, people don’t tell the truth when it comes to polling. When they say they care most about the issues, I don’t believe them for a second. Another big problem that polls fail to account for is shame. People who like Trump may not want to admit it, so they’ll pretend they’re undecided. I could see that shame just by taking a walk around my (suburban) neighborhood. Biden signs were everywhere, but there was only one small Trump sign hanging inside someone’s garage. That doesn’t reflect the way my neighborhood voted, I can assure you.
Then the Dems picked Kamala, which I saw as a desperate and terrible move. I think she would have done an okay job, but she was too reminiscent of Hilary and she made the big mistake of running on a single issue: women’s rights. But identity politics is exactly not the way to go. I have yet to hear a single mainstream media pundit say anything about this, even though they go on and on about the battle of the sexes and pretend it’s completely mystifying as to how this split came about. So I can’t say I’m disappointed because I fully expected this outcome. If anything, I’m disappointed that voters have failed to surprise me.
Well, let’s cross our fingers that rational people are around to put Trump in check. That’s all we can do at this point.
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I agree with a lot of this. I actually initially wrote in the post that it was kind of a relief, but then worried people would misunderstand it. So I know exactly what you mean.
People here generally aren’t afraid to admit to voting for Trump, but then this is a deep red state. But I know what you mean about undecideds. A lot of the time it does mean they just don’t want to defend the choice, maybe not even to themselves.
It might well have been better if Biden had dropped out early enough for a competitive primary. But as I noted in the post, I doubt it would have made much of a difference. The economic situation had just poisoned the well. I don’t think there was anything Harris, or any Democratic nominee, could have done to overcome it. What’s unsettling is that it was mostly out of their control.
Right. All we can do is hope it isn’t as bad as we fear.
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I kinda agree that Kamala overemphasized women’s rights, but only because she underemphasized the economy. I’ll make my own comment with more detail.
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It’s probably never going to happen, as Trump will consolidate his own power now, but the two parties seem clearly split extremist lines. The Dems have been criticised for ignoring the everyman. You need a splintering and two new parties: a centrist Left and centrist right. Bernie can lead the far left and Donald the far right. Americans would at least have more choice. Or feel as if they had. But I’m an Aussie: we have a completely different system We have one where Independents can have a sizable influence, in certain climates. Unfortunately, Trump is going to affect everybody’s economy.
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Unfortunately there are structural issues that largely make additional parties a non-starter here. People have to work in one of the coalitions and try to change them from the inside. Trump actually made attempts decades ago to run as a third party candidate and got nowhere. It was only when he ran in the Republican primary that he became a political force.
Yeah, I hate the effects we’re probably about to have on the world. They probably won’t be good for anyone.
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As a Canadian, I don’t have a view from the thick of things. I wasn’t subject to what I understand was a constant barrage of advertising from both parties, for example, and I have no idea of their tone, although I bet it was mostly negative. But I could see (from my house, as it were) that Trump ran on some very simple messages.
The most offensive of them concerned immigration. I understand that an aspect of this issue is whether “Americans” (meaning who, exactly?) can find work, and at what pay (an extremely important complication). But for Trump, this was a sidebar at best; his problem with immigrants was that they were murdering American families (again, who exactly do we see in our mind’s eye?) in their kitchens, and then eating their pets. It was a disgusting message of hatred, which apparently didn’t bother enough people to keep them from voting for him.
On jobs and the economy, he had another simple message, which is that he would make America great again by imposing stiff tariffs on other countries — 100% if necessary (that particular figure was bluster, of course). It was similar to the promise in 2016 to make Mexico pay for the wall. If he does impose tariffs, they will of course drive prices even higher for Americans. With its offshore-based production and rusted manufacturing base, the U.S. will not be able to revive a self-sufficient economy and bring jobs home without going through a period of severe pain.
From here, these seemed to be the two specific planks of his domestic platform, besides draining the swamp (again) by installing his people throughout government (including the courts). He would also stop throwing money at Ukraine, give Israel carte blanche to wipe out those nasty Palestinians, send Iran back to the stone age, bully China into submission, and no doubt turn North Korea into a pussycat.
His overall message was exactly this simple. America was in the toilet, thanks entirely to the Democrats, but he would magically make America great again. He left out the word “magically,” but the appeal was to magical thinking. In a time when America is indeed in long-term decline, he presented himself as a strong father-figure, in the style of Ben Cartwright on the old TV show Bonanza: loving but firm, tough with his enemies and protective of his family (especially the womenfolk). He was playing the classic strong man. What he might do in his private when the lights were out — well, that was his business, he’s a man, nobody expects perfection.
Kamala Harris, by contract, came off as needy (I began noticing this tone in her voice late in the campaign, but it was there in the debate, for example in her protest that “Nobody wants that!”), and she wouldn’t take strong positions on anything except abortion, which made her look afraid of offending anyone (except I suppose those Palestinian sympathizers in Michigan).
The election was, as usual, about images and archetypes. The issues were window-dressing.
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I think a lot of this is accurate. Strangely enough, unless you live in a battleground state, you don’t really see that many ads. Most of the ones I saw were from shares on social media. But I do know the six or seven battleground states were inundated.
On immigration, I actually think the economics is at the heart of it. But presenting it that way would sound nerdy and whiny. Which is why I think Trump presents it as an existential racial threat. It allows people to be against something they feel threatened about, but for something more manly, like being against crime.
I’m not convinced America is in decline. But there’s no doubt that for a lot of people, their lives are worse than they were decades ago. Trump’s solutions are mostly asinine. I guess if you’re in one of those groups losing ground, you’ll take whatever you can get.
I thought Harris did as well as she could. But the deck was thoroughly stacked against her from the beginning. I’m not sure it would have been different for any Democrat in this election. Their best hope at this point is regaining ground in the mid-terms.
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Your optimism is admirable. For my part, I think things will get worse before they get better.
You’re right that the economy was an issue. The price of food has risen considerably, due to factors beyond anyone’s political control: the damage to businesses and supply chains done by Covid, the rising standards of living in countries where labour was once dirt cheap, the ravages of floods and droughts on an increasingly unstable agricultural system, beset on the one hand by climate change and on the other by the monocultural practices of industrial-scale farming. But people chose Trump, not because he has a good answer to these problems, but because he laid the blame for them on immigrants, China, anywhere he could redirect and focus anger, and Americans, innately great as they are, found this theory appealing. American exceptionalism has always plagued its policy decisions. This is nowhere more true than its its delusional “realpolitik,” which often in recent decades has shown poor judgement.
If Obama had been the candidate, the Democrats would have fared much better. This is because, like Trump, he has charisma. Unfortunately, under the present system, he could not run a third time. It will be interesting to see whether Trump suggests revisiting this rule.
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Oh, I wouldn’t describe myself as optimistic. But there’s a danger of giving in to despair and assuming everything is going to go to hell. Maybe it will, but I don’t think we know that. Not that we don’t have some rough years ahead.
Obama was charismatic, but he also was running against an incumbent party that had led us into a contrived war, bungled the Katrina disaster, and with the economy in a tailspin. He had all the fundamentals in his favor, at least once he secured the Democratic nomination. And he had legislative successes and an improving economy for his reelection.
Revisiting term limits would involve a constitutional amendment, which would require two thirds of congress and three fourths of the state agreeing. And Trump’s age is getting on up there. That is likely to cause problems, but at least limits the amount of time we have left with him.
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“It’s the economy, stupid.” – It looks like Democrats still do not understand it. Moreover, they need to learn that it is a global economic cycle. The outsourcing cycle, which began in the 1980s, is complete, and a cycle of insourcing and friendsourcing is taking over.
During the outsourcing cycle (from the West), several things happen – (a) the West benefited from relatively low prices of goods and services, (b) the West companies became richer, (c.) the standard of living of people in the West who lose their jobs or salary lowered, (d) the economy and wages were going up in countries which were targets of outsourcing. Due to (d), outsourcing became much less profitable, which led to the cycle change.
In a new cycle [insourcing], several things happen – (a) prices of goods in the West growing faster, (b) more jobs are created in the West, (c.) the economy in countries that were targets of outsourcing will grow less or stall, (d) people in countries which were targets of outsourcing will lose their jobs.
Those cycles do not depend much on which Administration is in the White House or European parliaments. However, the Administration (analytics and politicians) should understand the situation, try to ride the wave or mitigate its consequences, be decisive, and react quickly.
Democrats did not do the job (Obama, Biden, majorities in Congress). They did not react to the economic cause. Instead, they gave in to the political pressure from the far left (support of movements like “Black life matters,” support of excessive immigration, support of antisemitism, etc.). That did not pay well. In the 2024 elections, more Blacks, more Latinos, and more Jews voted Republicans. Democrats also did not show they could be decisive and react quickly. For too long, Democrats have had a geriatric problem on the top political levels. Generally, too-old politicians are less inclined to be decisive and react quickly.
I wonder if Trump’s advisers know about those trends. Still, they, at least, tried to ride the beast (change in the global economic cycle) – see the slogan ” Made America Great Again.” Trump showed he could be decisive and quick, and authoritative (which people like in turbulent times).
In addition, when asked about her flaw in one meeting, Kamals acknowledged she could not think fast on the fly. And it shows during her campaign. Such politicians should never be close to the top level.
Now, what is ahead?
Due to items (d) and (c.) in the insourcing cycle, the Global South (BRIC and much more) is very worried and tries to mitigate it by consolidating. As a result, in politics, the previous global political order with one dominant power (USA) and general acceptance that wars between major countries should be avoided is over. That order existed for about 80 years – from Yalta in 1943 and the U.N. foundation in 1945 to Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now, we have a de-facto multi-polar world with major players, the Global West and Global South.
Still, a repositioning of the world order is only in its beginning stage, and significant fights and agreements are still ahead. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are also not the last wars. The major turbulence is still ahead.
In such times, the demand for leaders who understand the situation and can use it authoritatively and quickly will continue. If Democrats do not understand it and adjust, they will lose more elections.
P.S. All my life in the USA, I voted for Democrats. Not in 2024.
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Interesting analysis. With some exceptions, there’s a long tradition in both parties of having people in the internationally facing roles that understand “realpolitik”. Trump broke with that in his first term, with very mixed results. He’s signaling that he’ll break more with it this time. I have no faith that he knows what he’s doing. I think his view is more like old school mercantilism, and he’ll run into the same problems that old view had.
Your criticism of the age of Democratic leaders is interesting, since Trump just became the oldest person ever elected to the presidency, against a candidate who was decades younger. And Hakeem Jeffries took over from Nancy Pelosi and is much younger. Chuck Schumer is getting up there, but still younger than Mitch McConnell, who is just now hanging up his hat. I wonder how much of an issue Trump’s age will be in the coming years.
I actually value people who think through decisions. Certainly that can’t take forever, but I’m not a fan of people who shoot from the hip, at least outside of situations where it’s the only option. I agree being able to do that, when necessary, is a requirement, but only when necessary. In his first term, Trump often tweeted policy changes none of his staff knew anything about. I can’t see that as a virtue.
But maybe I’ll be completely wrong. Who knows? I hope I am.
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About politician’s age – Some old people can be sharp and decisive, but that is an exception. An example is Reagan, who was 77 years and 349 days old after his second term in January 1989.
On a much broader scale, strategic analysts, at least in the West (which I know better), for the last several centuries, often made mistakes and huge mistakes because they did not consider long-term horizon situations.
Let us, for a moment, put aside the question of whether top politicians or rulers will want and be able to implement solutions (taking into account long-term analysis).
Then, I think, the awful state of the world (starting from colonial empires decisions) is mostly due to bad analysis by strategic analysts. I slightly touched this topic in my latest book “Directionality of Humankind’s Development. History.”
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While at the Value Village today, I came across a copy of On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. I didn’t buy it, I just left it prominently placed. He gives the highlights at his Substack page; well worth looking up, especially now. The disturbing point numbered 18 caught my eye:
“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.”
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The why is immaterial. This is our reality.
Humanity does not deserve what a truly democratic, rational society might bring. It doesn’t. Humans are base creatures that require subjugation.
Freedom? The U.S. had peak freedom under Obama. The decline since marks the beginning of the end.
If you have brown skin, beware.
If you speak a language other than English, beware.
If you need medical care and cannot pay, beware.
If you are a woman, beware.
The Red Tide that consumed the nation is telling. It will represent the blood of women who foolishly voted against their own welfare & protection.
The Incoherent Bloviating Imbecile will:
* exonerate all MAGA inmates.
* nullify all claims and cases against him.
* surround himself with true, impotent sycophants (as opposed to his first term, where folks actively thwarted his ludicrous decisions).
* with both the Senate and House under his control, will begin dismantling the Constitution.
* will load the Supreme Court with even more puppet judges.
* will use the DOJ and Military to actively hunt, prosecute and imprison all opponents and detractors (political and media).
* will secede from NATO.
* will levy foreign tariffs driving prices beyond comprehension.
* will begin oppressive deportation programs.
* will be assassinated June 2025 leaving that incompetent Vice in charge — that may be how we survive.
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Mike, delete this if you find it too inflammatory or inciteful.
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I won’t delete it, unless you want me to. All I’ll say is I hope it’s not that bleak.
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I read modern history at Oxford and so the Trump story is, to me at least, a very familiar pattern. The rise of tyranny which gave you such luminaries as dear old Dolphie, Stalin, Mao and so on and so on.
Turkeys vote for Christmas – that has been proved time and time again.
And now we have The Donald. An illeducated, stupid, bigoted criminal.
I would say “good luck to you”, you idiots chose him. But of course only half of you did (or thereabouts).
I am glad I am old – or at least old enough to retain an equanimity and to smile at the stupidity of our species.
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Yeah, all those of us in the other half can do is hope it won’t be as bad as we fear.
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Harris’s campaign was not well run – it was better run than Trump’s, but that’s an awful standard. It was missing an appeal to working class and middle class voters in terms that would resonate. They could have done this without being more dishonest (or even as dishonest) than they were.
Some of the biggest price increases – eggs and meat, for examples – occurred in industries with high concentration. Harris (and Biden) should have made this a central campaign issue. Trump’s funders are afraid of Lina Khan for good reason. Meanwhile, jobs and wages have grown strongly under Biden/Harris. If you start the comparison before the pandemic, real incomes for working class employees have grown. Americans have highly favorable views of unions, and so does Harris; Trump not so much.
I agree that Allan Lichtman’s forecasting has the right idea (it’s the economy, stupid). The problem is that his measures are based on the real economy, without including the reported economy. As in, reported on the news. When inflation hits, or drags on, the news is all over it. When unemployment hits, and drags on – not so much. Overall, most Americans are doing better than pre-pandemic, but the way the media reports on it influences the weight they give to rising wages vs rising prices. Indeed, major media outlets often report on rising wages as if they’re a problem, not a good thing.
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Be careful in assuming that when people express economic pain, that they’re just being fooled by the media. I know some people who are retired on fixed incomes. (I was almost one of them but decided to hold out for a few years.) They got nothing from the rising wages. They lost a lot of purchasing power in the last few years, which they’re never going to get back. All but one of them voted Republican this time.
As I noted in the post, I’m not sure how much control the Democrats, or anyone else, had on this issue. But they had some.
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Sure, retired people with fixed pensions have taken a big hit. (Note, Social Security gets adjusted for inflation – and a lot of people don’t have pensions.) Of course, many of those people have children and grandchildren making wages, so they might want to take a balanced view – if they are aware of the employment situation.
But many Americans have unrealistic views of economic performance. Ignoring the technicalities of defining “recession” – a stupid gotcha game where the reporter compares economists’ definition to people’s verdicts as if there were no translation problem – look at what people said about unemployment:
Now that’s just plain error. And it has a lot to do with reporting, or lack thereof.
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These people are on a state retirement pension that, unfortunately, is not adjusted for inflation. The only time it happens is when the state legislature votes to raise it, which they rarely do. And I know other people on private annuities that aren’t inflation adjusted. Some of them do have social security too, but not much. So basically they got screwed.
And it almost happened to me. Honestly, the attitude of many Democrats during the inflation period, constantly calling on the Fed to lower rates before inflation was completely under control, left me feeling pretty alienated, despite my preferences for liberal policies. And I was far from alone. It’s what clued me in to the danger Democrats were in.
Definitely there is a lot of misinformation out there. But using that to rationalize away real economic pain is also error. And it’s not like the left is immune to their own types of misinformation, although it’s definitely far worse on the right.
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I’m honestly still too stunned to even begin to think how bad these next years are going to be for you in the US, and the world at large as we try to deal with the fires this idiot is going to start.
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I hear you. Maybe a little comfort is that as I get older, I’ve learned that things are seldom as bad as we fear. (The flip side is they’re seldom as good as we hope.) But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a long four years.
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I’m in Brazil, but am Australian, and back home there’s a mad panic going on as China will now almost certainly try something with Taiwan next year. The US, under Trump, will almost certainly ignore all mutual defense treaties, so that leaves just Japan, South Korea, the Phillippines, Australia and New Zealand to help defend Taiwan. It will be ugly.
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Yeah, I fear both Taiwan and Ukraine’s prospects are now shakier. Given Trump’s completely bungling of the Covid response, I can’t see him managing a war, even if he was inclined to.
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From my perspective it does not look as complex as you and some of your followers suggest. A Democratic centrist white man beats Trump in 2020 taking even the red states of Arizona and Georgia. His Vice-president, a Democratic centrist—and former chief law enforcement officer of her home state—woman of color who will more or less continue the White man’s centrist policies loses handily.
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I hope Democrats don’t take that as the lesson here. Even if Biden had withdrawn and another white male had won the nomination, I think they would have lost this year. Harris had much better favorability numbers than Trump. But people’s pocketbooks mattered more to them.
There’s a Gallup analysis this morning which reaches similar conclusions to mine, but with more data.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/653303/political-fundamentals-foreshadowed-trump-victory.aspx?utm_source=tagrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syndication
In my view, the only way Democrats could have improved their chances was more aggressive action against inflation and illegal immigration in the last three years.
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I’m not persuaded, Mike. Considering the history of the U.S. including a civil war over race, segregation, disenfranchisement and a legacy of extreme violence against minorities, and the long battle to pass the 19th Amendment at the beginning of the 20th century, I don’t buy that race and gender are less than significant factors of the election. The coded (and sometimes not so coded) racist language of the Trump campaign. I think not for no reason did Trump go there and become so vulgar and misogynistic in the last few weeks of the campaign. A little over 60% of the U.S. population is white. Trump got 85% of his votes from white people. A majority of white voters voted for Trump. Pro-life folks like to put a bumper sticker on their cars saying “I’m pro-life and I vote.” Racists don’t do that. Nor do they admit as much to a pollster. Nor do mysogynists. The deep analysis is just beginning but here is a preliminary set a data that supports race and gender as significant factors—I submit it was enough to sway a close election. https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12
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The key points made in that article sync with most of the other stuff I’ve read. The stark truth is Trump grew support among hispanics and blacks from his previous elections. Was there a portion of the electorate that voted against Harris because she was a woman and black? I don’t doubt it. But I question how much of that group would have voted Democratic in any case. I’m sure there is a segment like that, but I’m not sure how big it is.
I remember my dad in 2008 worrying that the Democrats had thrown the election by nominating a black man. It seemed inconceivable to him that the country would vote for him. It’s easy to forget that Obama just barely won that nomination. But once he did, the fundamentals were at his back (unpopular war, bungled disaster recovery, tanking economy, etc).
Ultimately the only way to test your hypothesis is to see what happens when a black woman runs where the fundamentals do favor her that year. The Gallup piece shows how the history looks with the fundamentals, but they obviously don’t have that scenario yet.
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Mike, I think this is one analysis of the election that is dead on! Perhaps you may be put off by the author, a Jesuit, and the Catholic publication. I ask you to look beyond that.
https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/five-larger-trends-make-sense-2024-election
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Thanks Matti. I think he gets a lot right. I would note that most of the developed world saw inflation, with consequences for incumbents in those countries. Harris and the Democrats actually came closer to winning than the others. And the clip I saw of Harris’ response to those hecklers had them chanting, “Lies, lies, lies!”, not affirming Jesus.
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What struck me about the article was how closely it tracked an analysis about Democrats written 8 years ago (2016) by Thomas Frank. This complaint about tone-deaf Democrats is not new!
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
https://a.co/d/9FVmW05
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It’s not new, and given that they won in 2020, I think we should be cautious about these kinds of analyses. Everyone is interpreting this election like the Democrats lost by 20 points or something, and using it as a basis to argue for their favorite positions. It’s worth remembering that 48% of the electorate voted Democrat while 50% voted Republican (at least according to the latest numbers on Wikipedia).
When the country is split like it is today, something like a bad bout of inflation and illegal immigration is enough to swing the outcome. People don’t seem to want to accept that how people’s lives are going, according to their own perceptions, matters. Fine tuned messaging may make a difference in an environment where the fundamentals are perfectly balanced, but that seems rare.
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I don’t disagree Mike. But with built-in problems like an insidious racism which already handicaps Democrats, they cannot afford to ignore the perceptions of the white working class. I think the choice of Walz’s everyman persona was a nod in the right direction of messaging. But, apparently not enough. I cited the Thomas Frank book because it is an easy read. However, Frank’s analysis of the Democrats is not new within the academic community. By that I mean there is good reason to take it seriously. See, e.g., the very recent work by Micheal Sandel, a political philosopher at Harvard, The Tyranny of Merit (2020), and the older work by the late Christopher Lasch, an Historian at Rochester, The Revolt of the Elites (1995).
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Right. But as I discussed in my Myth of Left and Right post, the problem is that political parties are messy coalitions of interests. And those interests are always opposed by some other constituency. So these coalitions always exclude people. The trick when balancing between the groups is how much can you cater to one constituency without alienating the others.
So yes, the Democrats took the working class for granted, but they have to balance what they do to get them back against the other constituencies, some of which they gained from Republicans, like college educated professionals. And of course the Republicans aren’t static, appealing to those same constituencies in their own way. With the advent of computer modeling, it seems like this has been optimized far more than it used to be. Which is why we’ve been balanced at roughly 50/50 for the last 25 years, with the outcome of elections due to slight variations from current conditions.
I work in central IT at a university. Years ago we were doing a project for the Parking and Traffic management department, and the Director mentioned what it took to manage football games. He was asked how often he had to deal with fights between the fans of different teams. He noted that it wasn’t that bad when the score of the game was lopsided. But when it was close, emotions were high and there was often trouble. I frequently think about that comment, because it seems like the US has been in a closely scored political game for decades now, and it’s making each side increasingly outraged about the other.
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— If you don’t rely on emotions —
Voters punished Biden-Harris for (a) high inflation, (b) high immigration, and to a lesser extent (c) foreign policy failures in the previous 4 years. High inflation was not caused by Biden’s policies (see https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2023/beyond-bls/what-caused-inflation-to-spike-after-2020.htm#). Big immigration and foreign policy are Biden policy failures. The problem of high inflation was successfully addressed (by FED) by the end of Biden’s term, but the average voter is not interested in such details.
Because of his personality, Trump is largely unpredictable. Voters voted for a change. Voters preferred Trumps’s unpredictability to the predictability that emerged under Biden.
One thing is clear – the next 4 years will not be boring.
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That article actually seems to point to the pandemic as the main culprit.
Which fits with the fact that inflation happened in several countries. And most of the incumbents in those countries paid for it at the polls.
I do think Biden made the mistake of that gratuitous stimulus. And while he supported the Fed in their tightening policy, I don’t think it was enough. The Fed waited too long to act for one thing. And the federal government could have helped on the fiscal end. Of course, this is all 20/20 hindsight. But it’s likely why Democrats are in the political wilderness now.
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>”I do think Biden made the mistake of that gratuitous stimulus.”
It depends on people’s perspective. It is well documented that COVID-19 vaccines have reduced the severity of the consequences for people who get COVID-19. Me and my wife are in our late seventies, and we have some severe health problems. I’m not sure we would be alive today if we had not taken four anti-COVID vaccines, which our daughter, a doctor, highly recommended to us.
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Definitely. But I wasn’t referring to the vaccine. I know funding for it was in that early 2021 package. That was totally necessary. What wasn’t was all the additional spending they added to it.
Although in truth we were going to get inflation no matter what. Most of it came from the supply shock. And whichever party was incumbent was going to get the blame. (That’s been the pattern in other countries.)
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@selfawarepatterns.com I think you are accurate in you assertion of why Trump won, but a more simple way to put it in my mind is that he won because people didn’t like how things were going and they had 2 choices: go back to the other guy who I remember doing better under even if I dislike him, or stay with the same administration I have now which I don’t like. The most insidious problem in American politics is bipartisanship.
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I actually think the most insidious problem is a failure to see those we disagree with as people with their own needs. If we keep veering every few years between satisfying one half of the country at the cost of the other, then the reverse, it seems like we’ll eventually tear ourselves apart. We have to figure out a way for each side to get what they need without depriving the other, or at least minimizing the deprivation. And that does require looking for bipartisan solutions.
Not that I expect much of that in the next couple of years.
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@selfawarepatterns.com I agree with that but two things can be true at the same time. The issue with that, as I see it, is that both parties necessarily put themselves before the good of the nation, and the changes necessary to stop polarization would weaken them both, and so I don’t see the solution ever coming from within congress. But voting in third parties, even if it’s just at the state level to begin with? That will put a fire on their asses for sure.
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Unfortunately the structure of the US government (separation of powers, staggered terms), which is locked in by the constitution, pretty much makes the two part system inevitable. Even when one of the parties has died in US history (the Federalists and Whigs), things always resettled back into a new two party setup within a generation.
The best bet for anyone who wants to be effective is to work within one of the major parties. Trump actually tried running as a third party candidate years before he won the Republican nomination but got nowhere. It was only when he worked within one of the parties that he got traction.
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Here is an opinion of Peter Thiel –
What’s especially striking is that back in 2016, Republicans were seen as the party of white and older voters who would soon die and give way to Democrats’ younger, more diverse electorate. This was the main argument of the theory “demography is destiny.” In eight years, many of the 2016 Republican voters have indeed passed away. And in order for Trump to win by an even larger margin in 2024, he would have to change the minds of millions of people.
This completely disproved the myth of “identity politics” – the idea that your race, gender or sexuality is more important than rational arguments. Trump made a case, J.D. Vance made a case—they made a compelling case. But the Democrats had no arguments – just emptiness, no ideas.
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Most of the analyses out there are acting like the Republicans won by 20 points. It’s worth noting they won by less than 2% of the popular vote, and their margin in the House is razor thin. If there hadn’t been a worldwide surge in inflation, we’d likely be having a very different conversation right now.
As things stand, based on the clown show Trump is nominating for his cabinet, I may stop paying attention to the news next year. I’m already rationing my exposure to it.
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In 2016, Trump got 46.1% and Hillary 48.2% of the popular vote.
In 2024, Trump got 49.92% and Harris 48.27% of the popular vote.
For Trump, that is an increase of 49.92/46.1 * 100% = 8.3%.
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This hit me harder than 2016. In 2016, I could understand why people didn’t want to vote for Hillary. I live in Pennsylvania, and this year I was seeing Harris/Walz signs freaking everywhere. Every once in a while, you’d find one very angry looking house covered in Trump flags, but Harris/Walz stuff was everywhere else. And whenever I talked to people about the election, people seemed genuinely enthusiastic about voting for Harris, and they were so done with Trump. It just seemed blatantly obvious to me that she was winning this state, and everyone kept saying whoever won PA would win the election. But it turns out the county where I live lurched hard to the left this year while the rest of the state was leaning right.
I agree with you about Allan Lichtman. I think his 13 keys thing is a good heuristic to help understand elections, but when you dig into the specifics of his system, there’s a lot of subjective stuff. It’s not an exact science, but I still think it’s useful.
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I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in the battleground of battleground states. Louisiana is never in that category so we only ever see ads that make it to the national networks, or go viral on social media.
I think part of what drove my anxiety this year was that I could see that inflation had taken a toll, and that too many Democratic partisans had a history of being dismissive of it. I’m not sure anything more could have been done to resolve it quicker, but even acknowledging it more and at least trying more to fight it more visibly could have made a difference. It left the impression with too many people that they were fine with it.
I’m with you on Lichtman. He doesn’t like to admit that his keys take judgment. Unfortunately it’s causing him to come up with dubious theories about why he was wrong this time. I think he just needs to adjust his economic recession key to a more general economic pain one, maybe reviving the old misery index from the 70s.
Gallup has a simpler approach that ended up providing clues. They asked people what the most important issues were and who they trusted more to handle each one. The economy ranked number one, and more respondents trusted Trump to handle it, despite liking Harris more.
In the end, it was a bad year for incumbents in most countries this year, regardless of ideology. Democrats just had to bad luck to be the incumbents here.
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