Some early, difficult thoughts (based in part on these exit poll data, which obviously could be revised):
- On the what it means side of things, it appears that Jan. 6, Trump’s obvious inability to function, and his law breaking simply didn’t matter to enough Americans–or that they really didn’t believe those things were real.
- Related to the above, a whole bunch of people, from the Jan. 6 defendants to a bunch of other odious people, will get away with it. This is catastrophic for the rule of law.
- The inability of Democrats, starting two to three years ago to mount a coherent economic message that resonated with people certainly didn’t help–and I don’t think that can be blamed on Harris. When you do good things–and they did–you tell people about them.
- Related to the above, the inability and unwillingness to blame problems on the Trump administration was a major factor here. The de facto ‘looking forward, not back’ approach failed, and they needed to start blaming Trump for everything (Trump inflation, Trump crime surge, etc.) in 2021, especially on inflation. Mid-2024 didn’t cut it.
- Harris did better among late-breaking voters, so, again, I don’t think her campaign was the issue.
- The unwillingness of two Senate Democrats to make the COVID era relief payments permanent really fucked Democrats over, and no campaign strategy is going to overcome that. And Sinema isn’t a senator anymore, and Manchin lost, so good job everybody. Really, I think a lot of people think Biden took away ‘Trump’s payments’, even though it was a couple of Senate Democrats who failed here.
- While we can second-guess Shapiro versus Walz (maybe, but that wouldn’t have helped in Wisconsin), the big issue in hindsight was Biden deciding to run in the first place.
- This is part of a larger trend of governments that are deemed responsible for pandemic-associated inflation failing.
- On the policy front, this is a disaster, from health policy to environmental policy. RFK Jr. might be controlling healthcare policy, which will be catastrophic.
- Related to the above, we’re going to have two years of Republican judges.
- As a D.C. resident, we might lose Home Rule, either de facto or de jure.
- If exit polls are to believed–if–then we really need to fundamentally rethink the Latino/Hispanic vote. In many battleground states, Latino voters voted majority for Harris, but not by very much. In Michigan, they supported Trump, again according to exit polls. Latino men majority voted for Trump. As the kids like to say, we’re going to have to sit with that.
- On a bright note for my landsmen, Jews did go 79-21 for Harris, so we can retire the Jews are voting Trump canard at least. We know who men like Trump are.
- Speaking of religion, White born-again Christians were 22% of the electorate, and that’s higher than 2020. We’ll need more data, but that’s the election right there to a considerable extent (if that result holds up).
- The entire Democratic consultant class needs to be fired into the sun. You can’t blame “ButtTwinkie420” on Bluesky for this. They had the money, the ears of nationally prominent candidates, and other resources. This is their job and they failed.
- Regarding age, where Harris did the worst was among 45-64 year olds. Harris actually outperformed Biden among 65+ voters.
- The one policy-related prescription I have right now is Democrats need to give Republicans nothing. If Democrats control the House, they must take a page from the Republicans’ playbook, and obstruct Trump whenever it will hurt Republicans, policy be damned.
I have some other thoughts right now, but they’re not very temperate, so I’ll keep them to myself.
mikethemadbiologist
Had a disturbing thought on the walk into work this morning. What if… Trump isn’t Hitler, he’s Ernst Roehm. It’s JD Vance who is the stand in for Hitler here. Too many parallels to list but it made me pause.
“Regarding age, where Harris did the worst was among 45-64 year olds. Harris actually outperformed Biden among 65+ voters.”
This is that “gen x doesn’t matter” thing that’s been, well, a thing for a while. Esp in the mainstream media where you can see generation demographic data and it goes straight from Boomers to Gen Y and Millenials and we’re just not on the list at all. We don’t exist.
The Democratic Party has been pushing the top and bottom – their core national level politicians and leaders remain boomers or older, and their superstars are younger. And we’re sitting here going “uh, guys, tap tap is this thing on?”
Republicans however have tended to promote their gen-x.
Johnson (52) is House Speaker, while Jeffries (54 – a month older than me) it seems only got it because (like with McConnell’s plan to be ‘stepping down’) Pelosi didn’t want to be a minority leader. If Democrats still held the House, our feeling is that Pelosi might not have stepped down.
We’re not represented visibly in the party, but rather it seems have been told to know our place (in our parents basement, still?), and so an apathy has been bred that didn’t need to be.
A couple of things that can be blamed on Harris:
Her decision to cozy up to some really slimy Greedy Oligarchy Party “leaders.”
Her decision not to distance herself from Biden’s support of fascist Israel.
Both were very bad ideas, and I suspect both cost her important support (e.g., for the latter, in Dearborn, Michigan.)
I gotta say, the reactions from liberal pundits, talking heads, bloggers, etc. has been rather frustrating, including what you posted Mike about Democrats’ messaging on the economy.
Exit polling and interviews point to one overarching factor in this election outcome, i.e., the economy. And more specifically, it’s about people’s “personal economies”.
All year I kept seeing Dems pointing to how great the economic indicators are….inflation rates declining, interest rates declining, strong jobs market, strong stock market, and steady GDP growth. While all those things are certainly true, they don’t mean anything to most working folks’ personal economies. So when they’re asked how they feel about the economy, they don’t take any of that into account, and instead answer in the context of their personal financial situation.
And from the perspective of a lot of working class folks, the economy isn’t as good as it was when Trump was President. Rents are way higher, groceries are higher, gas is higher, insurance rates are higher, and housing is out of reach.
THAT’S what matters to most folks outside the investor and business class, and no change in the “messaging from Dems” on the economy can change that.
This is all yet another result of our economy being deliberately skewed to the wealthy, corporations, and investor class, where when the overall economy improves most of the gains go to the top, while the working class improves only marginally.
Bernie put out a statement today that I think everyone should read. The only thing I would add to it is to point out that in this highly skewed economy, the super wealthy have managed to convince the working class that the reason they’re still living on the edge isn’t due to 40+ years of economic skewing, but is instead because of immigrants.
This election was much less about race, ethnicity, or sexism and was much more about economic class.