I have a post all teed up about Why Kamala Lost, but I can't quite pull the trigger on publishing it. Here's why:
This is not the Democratic (popular vote) winning margin each year. It's the change from the previous election. For example, Joe Biden won by 4.5% in 2020 and Kamala Harris lost by 1.5% in 2024. That's a change of -6.0%.
The House vote barely changed at all in 2024. In 2022 Democrats lost by 2.7%. This year they lost by 3.0%.
These are just not world historical changes, especially in a weird election that featured a global mutiny against incumbents and a JV candidate hastily subbed in three months before Election Day.
In other words, there may not be an awful lot to explain. Maybe Democratic losses were just the result of a routine pendulum swing and the breast beating over causes is overwrought.
I do think there are some lessons for Democrats in this year's election, and I may yet write about them. But at this point I feel like every theory should be treated as highly provisional. Election results bounce around all the time, and this year's bounce wasn't wildly out of the ordinary. Maybe it really was just the price of eggs.
Or, perhaps, Harris's loss is a clear sign that a plurality of American voters are either deluded fools or suicidal cultists.
Both, and.
And luckily for Trump looks like deluded (or at least racist) fools and suicidal cultists were this year's global trend.
After reading many essays about why Trump won, I've concluded that THE MAIN REASON was:
inflation
immigration
progressive stances (e.g. trans, homeless)
appeal (for some) of Trump's bro culture
traditional misogyny
siloing by half the nation
Trump-Vance lies
worldwide kick-incumbents-out (b/c COVID response, inflation, etc)
Biden senescence
Musk
impossibly short time for Harris to campaign
- in other words, no monocausal explanation
Which is why it is a terrible time for navel gazing. The people who are encouraging Dems do that are Republicans who want to demoralize and confuse Dems.
You need only two words to write about: Race and Misogyny
Nah. All Republicans are racists and misogynists. The question is, why did they pick this one?
You missed the point. *Democrats* stayed home or voted for Trump rather than vote for the Black woman.
Exactly. Biden couldn't imagine himself as a 1-term president and only bowed out under duress. This made a primary season impossible and the D constituency were not able to actually pick their favored candidate. What they ended up with was a candidate who didn't make it to the first debate in 2020.
Harris needed - or thought she needed - or her handlers thought she needed - Biden's endorsement so she did very little to distance herself from Gaza, or even Cuba for that matter. Angry or simply disappointed, many voters who would have voted D stayed home. 5 million of them, I understand.
Primary season has no positive impact on the General. No evidence for your assertion.
You're joking, right? You are saying that a primary season with some number of televised debates and a buncha caucuses and primary elections has no effect on which candidate gets selected at the National Convention? Must be a Russian bot.
You're joking, right, you think 'trust me, bro' is an assertion?
"Harris needed - or thought she needed - or her handlers thought she needed - Biden's endorsement"
She absolutely did need his endorsement. Jfc, can you imagine the shitstorm that would have erupted had Harris appeared to push Biden out? If Biden refused to say nice things about Harris publicly? Recall that, even with an approval rating in the mid 40s, Biden was accordingly well-liked by the great majority of Democrats. How many voters would have stayed at home if they felt that Harris had stabbed Uncle Joe in the back?
"so she did very little to distance herself from Gaza"
You and I may not like it (and for the record, I don't) but more-or-less blanket support for Israel is very, very popular in America. From an electoral standpoint, Harris played that one correctly. And, for those who (a) disagree, and also (b) made Gaza of all things the single-issue they'd vote on, it was pretty damn foolish of them to stay home, as it was ridiculously clear how much worse Trump was than even a straight-line continuation of the Biden admin as regards Israel-Gaza. If there are fingers to point, it's not at Harris.
I totally believe that there are Americans who are comfortable with the IDF saying "all you Gazans get into this U.N. school" and then bombing the school, but they are not in the majority. "Support for Israel" is not the same as "happy to pay for the bombs Israel is using to bomb the shit out of Gaza for 13 months straight."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/27/us-poll-israel-gaza/
https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/2/27/voters-support-the-us-calling-for-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza-and-conditioning-military-aid-to-israel
https://abcnews.go.com/538/americans-israels-war-gaza-year-after-oct-7/story?id=114489775
And, again, the point is that about 5 million people who voted for Biden appeared to have sat out the most contentious, high-states election in decades and it matters why. Sure, some people who voted for Biden 4 years ago voted for Trump this time around but I haven't read anything to suggest they number in the millions, and surely some people who voted for Trump 4 years ago voted for Harris this time.
Exit polls are subject to error, but at present they're all we have.
According to this year's exit polls, 44% of this year's voters said they voted for Biden in 2020. Of those people, 93% said they voted for Harris; 6% said they voted this time for Trump.
That would mean that something like 4+ million of this year's voters switched from Biden in 2020 to Trump.
As noted, exit polls are subject to error.
(Also in this year's exit polls: 4% of people who voted for Trump in 2020 voted for Harris this time.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
Obviously, an exit poll isn't going to talk to a person who voted in 2020 but sat out the 2024 election. It would be interesting to get a number for how many people voted for Biden in 2020 and didn't vote at all in 2024.
That would mean that something like 4+ million of this year's voters switched from Biden in 2020 to Trump.
Exit polls are indeed subject to error, so I wouldn't bet my life that is the accurate number. But I would bet my life that substantial numbers of 2020 Biden voters voted for Trump this cycle, just like substantial numbers of 2016 Trump voters voted for Biden in 2020.
Weirdly, no on in the administration said that's okay.
The incoming administration otherwise...
I think margin is not a very useful metric. Look at absolute numbers. Harris lost because of turnout. Whatever the reasons, Trump boosted his turnout and lots of Democrats decided they didn't actually feel like voting.
Was it racism and misogyny? Undoubtedly that played a part, but how much is hard to tell. One thing for sure: the oft-praised Democratic "turnout machine" was a bust.
> I think margin is not a very useful metric.
Absolutely right. Changes in "Democratic margin" could be due to differences in Democratic turnout, or Republican turnout, or people switching sides, or any combination of those. Not useful.
Harris lost because of turnout. Whatever the reasons, Trump boosted his turnout and lots of Democrats decided they didn't actually feel like voting.
I don't think so. Harris's margins held up well outside of areas where voters rightly surmised their votes wouldn't alter the outcome. Last time I looked her totals exceeded Biden's in 6 of the 7 swing states. Where it counted, Trump simply persuaded more people than Harris did.
Inflation has a much greater impact on voter sentiment than most of us realized (or recalled: inflation was last problematic nearly half a century ago!). I read somewhere that a truism among political operatives is: "Recessions weaken administrations; inflation ends them."
Mind you, if we take a wholistic view of national conditions, things are obviously far from terrible. And if the electorate looked like that of the 70s or 80s, Harris would have won.
But that points to the real under-the-radar issue that decided this election: thermostatic effects. For the first time since the 19th century, the White House party has lost three presidential elections in a row. And this flows from the highly even nature of our political polarization: Trump and Harris each had something like 47% of the electorate in their pockets headed into this election. Which means the winning margin isn't very large.
So yes, national conditions are pretty good, but Trump only needed to convince about 5% of the electorate otherwise, and you're probably always going to be able to count on 1 in 20 voters believing that things suck. Fifty years ago, that wasn't a big enough chunk to swing an election. But in 2024 it is. I fully expect Democrats to win in 2028 for the same reason, which would be the first time the White House has changed hands four times in a row since 1896.
Republican voters picked Trump because he told them what they want to hear - that it's OK to be bigoted. Also the election of Obama, mostly because of the ongoing 2008 crash and the war bungling of the Bush administration, was a big red flag to racists. Trump took advantage of this with his "birtherism". That and racist xenophobia were what won for him in 2016, not economics.
In US elections, racism+misogyny > racism > rationality.
Republican voters picked Trump because he told them what they want to hear - that it's OK to be bigoted.
Well sure, that's why they're Republicans. If their worldview were different, they'd be Democrats. What this truism doesn't explain is the voter shift, which certainly will have included a fair number of Biden voters who went the other way this cycle.
Poll after poll said it was the economy, which people mistakenly believed was bad. That shouldn’t be surprising given all the Chicken Littles in our media burying positive news of the economy — and there was a lot of it — but obsessing about inflation, even after it had returned to near normal levels. The media gave the impression that Biden had caused the inflation which was international. They also downplayed or just flat-out ignored the fact that for over a year wages were rising faster than inflation with the greatest gains for the lowest incomes. They also downplayed the fact that we have had the best job market in over 50 years, with record low unemployment for African American males.
Contrary to what the media clearly believed — and some seemed to want — we didn’t need to have a recession to get inflation under control. We were able to do that while still continuing to grow our economy.
Blaming inflation for people’s misperception of the economy doesn’t cut it either. Polls repeatedly showed a strong majority of Americans said they were personally doing well financially but that the national economy was bad. Cleary they didn’t get that “vibe” from their own experience.
It's not even race, it's just misogyny, or at least the unwillingness of a substantial portion of the electorate to elect a woman to the American presidency. And that includes a lot of women. We've tried it twice now, with superbly qualified candidates, and both times they lost to the worst candidate ever.
N.B.
Harper’s Index (Nov 2024 issue):
Factor by which Americans are more likely to disapprove of a woman’s election to the presidency than a person of color’s: 3
(Source is NORC (National Opinion Research Center) University of Chicago)
Don't begin to think that I mean to suggest that Trump was qualified let when I ask this, nor that there were no qualifications among Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, but seeing the choice of wording I have to ask what exactly were the "superb" qualifications of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris for the presidency?
Both legislative (US Senate) and executive (Secretary of State and California Attorney General) experience; both had won elective office. I don’t know if I would describe these as ‘superb’, but they are certainly broader than many candidates for the Presidency have had.
I give Clinton credit for at least completing one full term as a US Senator.
Obama only served a partial term, and had not served in any executive position. He achieved a goal that Democrats had pursued for decades — a significant expansion of health-care coverage. Not yet ‘universal health care’, but a huge step. Speaker Pelosi and VP Biden did the heavy lifting on the legislative effort, President Obama was the public face ( I don’t mean this in any way to minimize that role, it was an uphill struggle as well).
What IS unusual this time is not Harris; it's Trump. He is the exception to every previous rule in American politics. Imagine any other candidate running on a record of 34 felony convictions, 2 civil suits for over $500 million, one of which adjudicated him a rapist, running on a platform based almost exclusively on otherizing and hating significant demographic blocks of the American population. We've never seen anything like it before.
I'd be interested in seeing the same graph for Republicans since 1980.
+1
You missed:
Already tried to seize power by violence.
Complete contempt to the constitution.
Complete contempt to the concept of truth.
Not to mention a decade of primetime television playing the reigning genius of American business.
Thanks to more editing than a Stanley Kubrick film.
https://cinemontage.org/editing-trump-reality-tv-star-who-would-be-president/
We’ll likely have more of it in the future. Once Republican candidates learned they can do all these things and face no consequences for it - and actually win trifectas despite it all - there will be no incentive not to let their inner assholes out. There is no bottom for a political party in a 2 party electoral system already structurally weighted to allow you to win with less than half the vote in a country where only like 60-70% of eligible voters vote anyway. Eventually the voters turn on the incumbents - no matter how much good* they do - and vote for Change and then you’re back in.
*this is also likely the end of Good Governance model of governing in the US. Why should Dems kill themselves to pass laws and fund programs when the beneficiaries don’t reward them by turning out and always voting to keep them in power? Might as well just smash and grab what you can for your donors and then ride out the periods when you’re out of power, resting assured that the 2 party system will eventually return you to office.
Because doing the right thing for the whole community is what makes us Democrats. I would like to see a reversal of Citizens United and a much more constrained role for Big Money in political campaigns, but I also recognize that there are many wealthy people who show concern for the general welfare of the populace. May their tribe increase.
+4
Kevin,
You are most likely correct that the election does not represent a significant cultural change among the famously fickle American public.
Even so, I feel like many Democrats are ignoring the elephant in the room, which is why such an obviously unsuitable candidate won. This, I'm afraid, has nothing to do with policy, which most Americans, anywhere on the political spectrum, are woefully ignorant of. After all, if voters really wanted an anti-immigrant, anti-NATO, anti-government populist, they could have chosen several more qualified candidates.
The real reason why Trump won is *vibes*. Trump won because he inspires rabid personal devotion and a level of trust that most politicians can't dream of. This is why it's impossible to argue with Trump voters: they will trust Trump more than the New York Times, more than Fox, but also more than their own eyes and ears. He can do this thanks to his "star power," his background is show business, and his extensive professional history in lying and taking advantage of people.
Democrats need to find someone with charisma; someone that people actually want to listen to, and will believe. *What they say* is beside the point.
We had a referendum, Fandom v. Politics.
Fandom won.
If you think Harris doesn't have charisma, you didn't pay attention.
I was paying attention. I listened to her speeches. I watched her interviews. I even went to a rally.
It was the usual, vague, anodyne things that politicians always say. For the record, that's fine with me: I like when politicians are boring. But it failed to engage the electorate in the way that Trump has.
Voters (for better or for worse) want a parasocial relationship with their politicians. Doing a 3 hour rambling interview on Rogan was Trump's best move. Kamala should have done the same, but she doesn't have the confidence to appear personable.
Call Her Daddy podcast:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_KCRsjPCiCI&t=20s
The JV candidate dropped out, tho. Harris was anything but a JV candidate. I thought she did a stellar job and while I never seriously thought I would vote for her in any of the primaries she ran in previously, if she were to run in the 2028 primary she'd get serious consideration from me.
Although I think the party in general needs to be more aggressively campaigning on emotions and less on policies. Instead of spending 100% of the economic energy on "I'll fix this", it needs to be mixed with highlighting the things that are wrong and calling them out as wrong. In short, there need to be more vibes about eating the rich and the corporate welfare recipients.
It really was just "the price of eggs", where the price of eggs is a stand-in for general economic discontent. I know that discontent doesn't show up in your preferred charts, but it's there and it's been growing in intensity for those who are dissatisfied. It's easy to see how the US economy is doing just fucking great, but most people don't see any improvement - they're just treading water, and that water is filled with garbage. They want to feel like they're able to get out of the water, but the system is rigged against them.
That rigging is one of my pet theories for why the electorate is (still, nowadays) functionally thermostatic in spite of the obvious unsuitability and insanity of one entire party.
"I thought she did a stellar job" It's delusions like these that can be most damaging to the democrat party. No one is a worse campaigner than Harris. There is a reason she didn't last to the primaries in her one primary campaign. And her 2020 belief that the path to the whitehouse was from the left side of the democrat party shows truly abysmal political judgement. No democrat has ever won the presidency from the left side of the democrat party.
It was actually a slow steady decline in her support. The more people got to know her, the more they disliked her. Exactly what had happened in her 2020 primary campaign. She had a big surge for accusing Biden of racism on 1970s era bussing (which Biden had been 100% correct on) followed by steady erosion to the point that she became a non-enitity.
Citation not found.
https://www.vox.com/2019/11/20/20953284/kamala-harris-polls-2020-election One of the first hits with a web search of "kamal harris polling 2020 election"
Yes even with my misspelling her first name...
Worst campaigner? A recent Democratic candidate never polled above single digits in a primary season, and dropped out after a 1% finish in Iowa. That would be Joseph Robinette Biden in 2008, the only Democrat to have beaten TFG, and the current President. As with portfolio managers, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
So, was Obama to the right of Hillary in 2008, then?
I don't disagree that Democrats AS A WHOLE mis-stepped in 2020. Including Biden.
Harris still did a goddamn stellar job in a 100-day campaign. The election was closer than it would have been. That's not what I felt or believed from July up through a couple of days after the election, based on reporting and data at the time, but the more actual voting data that I see (as opposed to, you know, delusions that spur me to call other people delusional), the more I see how any Democrat at all was going to be the extreme underdog in this election. That's not the world I want to live in, given who and what that means people are voting for instead, but it's the world that we do live in.
You go ahead and try to craft an argument that squares Harris/Walz outperforming the overall rightward shift in the electorate in the swing states with your claim that they didn't run a good campaign. I won't hold my breath.
The fake news by the conservative machine didn't help any.
The thing I have yet to see any explanation of, let alone one that's convincing, is why after 3 months of absolutely stable polling with Harris about +3, did the polls shift in the last week to 10 days to give Trump a small lead?
I mean, granted it isn't a big movement in the grand scheme of thing, but it sure doesn't look like noise. Where did it come from?
The issue is that political polls nowadays are just noise. Pollsters are prohibited under federal law from using automated dialing systems to call cell phones. But they can use auto-dialers to call landline phones. So guess which small and shrinking demographic is drastically overweighted in polling samples? As cell phones become more and more ubiquitous and landline phone near extinction, pollsters are having to make bigger and bigger extrapolations from a smaller and smaller slice of the population. We reached the point years ago where polling is more guesswork than anything else.
I've decided that until something fundamental changes in the polling business, I'm going to pay more attention to political betting markets than to polls. They did a much better job this year. And that last-minute shift that you reference was probably just the pollsters noticing that the betting markets saw things differently than they did, and they adjusted accordingly.
You can count the number of pollsters who use random digit dialing as a primary contact method these days on....we;;, pretty much on the fingers of an amputated hand.
There are a LOT of methodological problems for pollsters these days.....over-reliance on landlines is definitely NOT one of them.
I agree that random-digit dialing is nonexistent. But that's irrelevant because pollsters use automated dialing.
To me, "noise" means something quite specific, and it looks like something specific. And that poll movement does not look like "noise". It is not at all consistent, even as noise, with the prior 3 months. It looks like something specific happened.
You might be trying to say, "polls are meaningless. I'm ignoring them, so should you". Ok. I can see where that's coming from. I don't agree though.
Well, I was using noise to mean horse-race commentary.
To be clear, I don't blame the actual pollsters. Their job nowadays is to make huge extrapolations off of tiny data sets. Even the best are just throwing darts at a chart at this point.
The federal law banning auto-dialing of cell phones is a good law in most respects. But it did have this side effect of wrecking political polling, which is a problem.
Polls are meant to confound. Take this one from Lake Research:
🔵 Harris +4 (50/46)
🔴 Vance -5 (42/47)
🔴 Trump -6 (46/52)
That's favorability. Date is last week, 11/18.
...why after 3 months of absolutely stable polling with Harris about +3, did the polls shift in the last week to 10 days to give Trump a small lead?
The polling did not "shift in the last week to ten days to give Trump a small lead."
The vast bulk of reputable polls showed a gradual tightening of the race over the course of October, with Harris's lead dropping from around three points to around one point. But she did in fact have still maintain a modest polling lead on the eve of the election.
The real question to ask is, why did polls underestimate Trump's support for the third consecutive time?
What this election tells me is that at least half the country doesn't pay attention to anything beyond their own nose which they will then cut off to spite their face over something that isn't even true.
Beam me up, Scottie.
(Un?)fortunately, I think it's more like about 10-15% of the country.
It's just that there's a baseline of about 30-35% of the country who are absolute fucking morons who joined a death cult.
It’s hard to imagine democrats doing anything differently next time. They will campaign on cleaning up whatever messes trump has made by 2028. Hopefully there are lots! God forbid his presidency is just run of the mill corruption with tax cuts for the rich. No one would notice.
The last big swing in American politics happened between the Johnson and Reagan administrations. This is when the White Supremacist voting bloc switched from Democrat to Republican. There was an intermediate stop with George Wallace, who was an open advocate of "segregation". He got 13.5% of the vote in 1968, when Nixon and Humphries were virtually tied - this gives an idea of the minimum size of the hard-core racist vote and how decisive it can be. Reagan captured that vote in 1980 with dog whistles and was thereby able to pass a radical Voodoo Economics program (although other factors beyond the control of Carter were involved in the 1980 election).
This swing did not lead to a permanent Republican majority, but it shifted economic policy considerably. As Kevin says there has been mostly back and forth in elections since then, often decided by economics, or at least perceptions of economics, especially the false idea that Presidents immediately control the economy.
And Trump has not changed the electoral balance very much - so far. The bigotry is more open and vicious, but that trend began long ago with the development of right-wing media and politicians like Newt Gingrich. The trend toward greater partisanship has led to more tolerance of authoritarianism. We'll see how far that goes.
If Democrats are ever going to get a majority large enough to enact the reforms that are needed, they need to solve the problem of the influence of bigotry, although such a majority might only be temporary. If there is a very bad recession people's real economic problems may make them forget their cultural grievances. But whoever is in power when that happens will probably be out.
I remind you, Democrats lost control of all branches of government. That's not nothing.
Everything goes back at least to 2023. The message war, on inflation, the economy, and immigration, was already being lost back then. The MSM routinely just retransmitted his false statements, in headlines no less, with a small mention that they were false. Democrats did not effectively counter with narratives that undercut Trump's. And we can see this through polling on subject matter and Biden approval.
People insisting that the economy was strong missed the point; it's how you use that knowledge to nuance your message to undercut the false narrative. Citing the fact that the economy was historically strong just doesn't undercut or counter Trump's narrative. And if you can't figure it out, you're neither the strategist nor the communicator the Democrats need.
Yes, and this was Biden's biggest failing. He should have been out there connecting with the voters and telling our side of the story on a daily basis. But he was mostly invisible to the public and never really countered the Trump/Fox barrage of lies. He either couldn't or wouldn't make the case front and center.
Imagine if Trump had been in office the past four years. He would have made damn sure that he didn't get the blame for inflation or anything else. He would have found a scapegoat and pounded on it relentlessly. He would have made sure the attention always came back to him.
He should've been doing what he did? And forcing Fox news to air it how?
How are Democrats supposed to counter the false impression that conservative news viewers have?
Picking one cause why Trump won this time is a fool's errand. There are lots of voters and everyone thinks a little differently. I strongly suspect a lot of the voters really could not be counted on to accurately explain why they voted the way they did; a lot of people are either not very self-reflective, do not care too much, or like to fool themselves. Add to this the gradual change in the voting population and short term vs. long-term causes and the absence of good polling data on the matter and really, and, well, ascribing it to one cause is hard to support.
A lot of what people use to explain it reflects as much on the person making the comment as much as it does "reality" such as it is.
The last (and only) Democrat elected to succeed another Democrat in the White House was Martin Van Buren in 1836. The only time post-WWII than anyone was elected to succeed a president of the same party was GHW Bush in 1988. It is an exceedingly hard thing for the incumbent party to win an election unless the incumbent is on the ticket.
When the Dems decided their incumbent had to step aside, the party gave up its biggest advantage for winning another four years, incumbency. Would a healthier and more vigorous Joe Biden been able to win in November? I think he'd have had a much better chance.
Fact is, he was not healthier and more vigorous, so you can say a change was needed anyway. An alternative scenario: he steps down in 2023, Harris runs as president with a record of lower inflation and a border under control (both of which happened); then maybe she allays voter doubts and wins in November.
Anyone arguing that Harris blew it because of the campaign she ran needs to explain why Trump won while running what was likely the most terrible campaign in American history.
Trump was not running for reelection but had been president for four years and voters may have given him the benefit of the doubt (or "the devil you know" advantage) that incumbents usually get.
That's one of many explanations for what happened, which may be useful (depending on your guests for Thanksgiving) without getting into the "voters are idiots" (or "voters are racist, sexist idiots") argument.
When the Dems decided their incumbent had to step aside, the party gave up its biggest advantage for winning another four years, incumbency.
Joe's numbers were consistently worse vis-a-vis Trump than Harris's. The most plausible scenario in which the president is the nominee is that Trump still wins, but by a somewhat larger margin, and with somewhat longer coattails.
Would a healthier and more vigorous Joe Biden been able to win in November? I think he'd have had a much better chance.
Fact is, he was not healthier and more vigorous, so you can say a change was needed anyway.
I'm not ignoring the need to replace Biden. I'm pointing out that incumbency is a huge advantage and trading out one candidate for another comes at a cost. It completely changes the dynamics of the race.
I'm pointing out that incumbency is a huge advantage
Traditionally that's true, sure. And I would have agreed with this statement as recently as four months ago. But it really seems highly doubtful incumbency is now a "huge" advantage. The last three elections have seen the White House party lose. That hasn't happened since the 19th century. And the 2020 election saw an actual incumbent fail to deliver a second term for his party. That hadn't happened since 1980. Our hyper-even political divide means things don't work like they did in the second half of the 20th century.
trading out one candidate for another comes at a cost.
Again, I doubt in 2024 it was a "cost" on net to Democrats. We'll never know for sure, of course (I don't have a crystal ball to peer into the parallel universe where Biden stayed on), and it's possible Biden would have done better than Harris. Possible! I just think the limited evidence we do have suggests Democrats did a bit better with her than they would have done had they stuck with Joe.
I think it was more a problem with Democrats than Harris herself.
Harris did great during the convention--when her message dominated the airwaves. Then Trump's stunts took over and he dominated the airwaves by being outrageous, and the media went along.
So California has finally finished counting all its ballots then? …
We're waiting for Utah and Mississippi. Alaska finished yesterday.
This is a great graph to capture the question of not why Kamala lost but why dems have been eroding for most of the last 7 elections
White flight.
Also, both times Trump won, he ran against a woman. A significant portion of the electorate that may otherwise vote for a Democrat will not vote for a woman for president. For other offices, sure. Women run and win even in red states.
But for the commander in chief leader of the free world job, they still want a man, preferably over six foot.
When you see statements like "Trump made gains among black and Latino men" what that means is that a percentage of those demographics are not going to vote for a woman for president.
The chart doesnt show that at all.
I think you are misreading, or not understanding what the chart is showing.
Two disastrous performances in 1984 and 1989 make 1992 or 92/96 appear to be highpoints.....but that's not an accurate reading of what the data is telling us.
Which is ... ?
The graphic Kevin created isn't really a good one to draw many conclusions from.
He is showing the CHANGE in the Democratic Presidents popular vote MARGIN OF VICTORY from the previous.
In 1988 Dukakis loses by -8 a big loss, but this looks good on the chart because 1984 was an even bigger loss.
In 1992 Clinton wins by +5.6, but it looks very good because 1988 was a big loss.
In 1996 he wins by +8.5, a bigger victrory, but it doesnt look good on this chart.
In 2008, Obama wins by +7.2, bigger than the 1992 victory, but it looks less impressive in the chart.
In 2020 Biden wins by +4.5, not much different than the 1992 victory, but it looks much less impressive on the chart.
The chart is kind of useless.
+1
The challenge, as I see it, every four (maybe eight) years the Democrats get someone like Biden or Harris, and hopefully the House. Every four years Republicans get W Bush or Trump, or similar with the House.
Further, given the structure/bias of the Senate, the GOP is more likely to retain the Senate under all circumstances. Further, the Supreme Court, for the near term will have a strong GOP lean.
Basically, the aforementioned scenario is far from ideal from my point of view.
There have been at least 5 republicans on the supreme court contitnously since 1972 when FDR's 2nd last appointee left. (That is the last time there was not a republican majority of the supreme court, two of FDR's appointees were amongst the democrat majority.
Let me know when a Democrat wins a forth Presidential term...
Are you saying Trump and Bush are similar?
I agree with D_Ohrk_E1....Biden throughout his presidency was a poor messenger of the really good work that his administration had accomplished.
Biden was just bad at messaging...terrible would be a better word, no one, not even me went out of their way to listen to him speak....Biden in fact was a great President but his blind spots were political malpractice...
Immigration, everywhere in the world is an issue, the English channel, the Polish/Belarus border, Myanmar Rohingya, Australia/Indonesia, etc, etc...
I have repeatedly posted most everywhere coherent plans to resolve the issue....this, along with His (Biden's) inability to construct coherent sentences was fatal to him and Ms Harris.
On the other hand, I argued strenuously with 5 Evangelical women that Trump was the Anti-Christ, with appropriate Biblical references, and they didn't care...they simply could not see Ms Harris in That Chair (there is very little sisterhood...a shocker but many, many of the women I know voted for Mr Trump). Traveller
How should he have messaged?
Because it seems you want him to do what his team was doing 'just better'.
Go look at the last few years of his Twitter feed, his news releases, heck, you can ask the Whitehouse for a copy of his speeches.
What was he doing wrong?
"How should he have messaged?" Constantly point out his great economic numbers and constantly point out that Trump's numbers were the 2nd worst in all of US history. If repeatedly lying can convince people of false facts, constantly telling the truth has to be equally good.
But they were doing this. Much of America doesnt appear to care about what is actually happening in America.
I'm a little suspicious too of the messaging complaint, especially since I got excited about Harri's campaign. She had, as one problem, that defending Biden's record could be construed as still more of Dems telling boters they're stupid.
But what sticks in my mind even more is Kevin's post about citations of "inflation" plummeted after the election. Of course, the problem is not just Fox and the NY Post as propaganda organs, but also the mainstream media. While much of that is false balance and sheer complicity, a feeling they have to repeat even complaints they later dismiss. The NY Times was talking up inflation almost from the day after Obama took office.
That's in part because our paper of record depends on cultivating contacts. For business news and reports assigned to the business pages, that means corporate insiders. It gets them a reliable stream of stories.
But that means it's tough to think what messaging can work. You can give a couple of speeches a day and TV ads that reach some voters maybe once a day, but this is like having pro-Trump ads running 24/7.
Could just be that Trump really is the most remarkable politician of our lifetimes.
Also, on election day, Michael Tracey's Twitter feed featured photos of Pennsylvania voters with small blurbs featuring a quote about why they were voting for their candidate.
One woman's reasoning: "I'm on Social Security, and it doesn't last. I kept trying to read about her [Kamala] ... she never said what she was gonna do"
Her main issue is preserving Social Security benefits and she's voting Republican. That's the level of economic sophistication of the average voter.
Just as Hitler was of his, which is why trump's rallies chock-full of racist hatred & obsession with crowd size followed the Nazi's methods. He really used the formula he found in his book of the Fuhrer's speeches.
No more words about Trump the Labor Hater since Lori Chavez-DeRemer?
No snark teed up about loyalty since Pam Bondi?
Maybe it's time to admit that your framing of politics in 2024 is simply broken, as I have been trying to tell you for over a year? You keep trotting out some obsolete analysis (Trump hates the working class, Trump will only ever hire those obsessively loyal to him, the election was all about inflation, only racists vote Republican) only to have each successive analysis shown to be even more flimsy than the prior.
Maybe it's time to admit that you need to re-analyze from the ground up what is going on?
Your bulk commenters cannot analyze beyond screaming "racist, sexist, fascist" like a manbird in heat, but you, Kevin, you have a functioning brain. It's time to switch it on.
Maybe if you weren't so busy pushing a false narrative, you'd have something to say.
+1
You're too funny. You think his labor secretary is going to push policies that are worker friendly under a Trump presidency? Are you seriously that naive? As for Bondi she's already saying the prosecutors are going to be prosecuted, just what Trump wants. What is the color of the sky in your reality? JFC you're a waste of space.
+1
You do realize the sole reason Bondi was picked was her history of taking bribes, in particular bribes from Trump. Trump would never consider an AG pick who was not a habitual felon.
+1
I decided the day after the election to ignore all of the analysis and wait at least for a few months for the dust to settle. It's clear that no one knows, but everyone has a theory. I stand by my decision.
This is definitely my take—Harris actually did better than most incumbents have this year—and I’m sick of seeing all the navel-gazing. One thing I am wondering, haven’t seen anyone asking this, is if we’re in for a period of repeated anti-incumbency. Biden’s election was largely a reaction against Trump’s mismanagement of Covid, while Trump’s re-election was largely a reaction against inflation and immigration. I think we may be seeing the beginning of a lot of instability, in which oligarchs/GOP weaponize our anti-majoritarian institutions to defeat efforts to address pressing problems (climate change, immigration, pandemics, etc), and the public, not understanding the political problem, just repeatedly votes against incumbents out of frustration with the continuing problems.
+1
Elected to break the things they were elected to fix, the Republican platform in a nutshell.
For the past four years every news report was filled with stories about Trump, colorful and entertaining stories, and relatively little about Biden, aside from the tedium of things people who are into politics and government might be interested in.
Trump dominated the news entirely as if he were the current president. Harris meanwhile cut a really low profile as VP.
So, I would say, Trump won because a lot of people voted for the familiarity of him, or did not want to vote for the relative unfamiliarity of Harris.
If she'd had six more months, or even three more months it could have made the difference.
She'd still be a woman. Our country can't handle that. The Idiocracy is here.
"If she'd had six more months, or even three more months it could have made the difference."
Maybe. But, counterpoint, if you look at the crosstabs from exit polls, undecided voters broke harder for Trump the closer we got to election day. In other words, there is data supporting the idea (insane as it may be) that the more undecided voters got to know Harris, the more they preferred Trump.
Definitely agree that a major problem is that Trump received constant, outsized, and generally positive coverage for years (on any given day, the number of "Trump" mentions on the front page of the nytimes far exceeded the number of "Biden" mentions). There was also an embarrassing tendency for media to adopt his idiotic terms and repeat them over and over, often even without ironic quotation marks (Biden crime family, drain the swamp, crisis at the border, etc.). It's worth thinking critically about how much mainstream media normalized Trump by parroting his ad copy.
Yes, and my impression of those undecided voters is that they felt they wanted to do something but had no clue at all about what they were looking at, saw the rallies Harris was having and thought she was the obvious winner, but then they, the alienated late deciders, also thought they weren't the kind of people who were obviously all-in for Democrats, people who seemed to know why they were there, and felt alienated from this too, and maybe a little insulted, and more confused, by their not sharing the joy, and so they toss in for Trump as a protest vote. A protest vote of nothing at all except as a projection of their own confusion and thoughtlessness made in the confidence that nothing would come of it, as nothing comes of almost everything else for them, and they hit the jackpot.
My two tarnished cents: Yep, it was the misogyny, A-one, pure and simple. Also: Abortion rights (i.e. women's rights, aka human rights) is thoroughly mainstream and not a fringe left issue. Make of those two facts what you will.
There are far too many successful female politicians, including ones who are complete looney tunes, for mysogyny to still be a big thing. Howerer, Harris lost the popular vote by 1.5% and there is enough mysogany for it to be decisive.)
So if absolutely nothing else changed, but Kamala was Kendrick, you think Trump loses?
I just don't see it.
Like I said, my tarnished -- and very biased -- two cents. YMMV.
Of course, I'll be proven right later on 🙂
Yes.
Thought provoking comments and certainly leaving me with angst for the next election. Lets break this down a little
Racism? Kamala is a very light skinned black. Many people viewed her as white.
Misogyny? Probably right. Nikki Haley had everything going for her - white, conservative, a governing record - and got her ass handed to her
Was it poor policies? I liked her platform but the middle and upper classes did not. Todays middle class believes it is totally dependent upon the upper class doing well.
Or has the electorate gone "stupid" on us?
Look - our population is getting older - yet - too many believe Trump will be better for SocSec than Harris. When Trump said we may need to default on our debt everyone who supports Trump stood up and cheered. Yet they did so because the Chinese and the Saudi's hold a LOT of US government debt. The biggest domestic holder of US government debt is the Soc Sec Trust fund. We default and Soc Sec goes broke, but voters don't see it that way.
Trump is the school yard bully that gets away with everything then brags about it. Other bad kids are jealous and the good kids wish they could be more like him.
He's appointing idiots to his cabinet. Ordinarily that would be a problem but Trump will save us.
Trump doesn't go to church - yet his SCOTUS judge picks ended abortion. Say what you want about public opinion - but killing a BABY is a much more effective message than giving a women a choice - especially when women are looked at as second class citizens by Trump and his followers. The born agains and a MAJORITY of non born agains happened to agree with him. This doesn't make it right but it is what it is. Christians are loathe to give women their due because children are more important in the eyes of God. Think about this. Trump raped and then painted women out to be bad - so the women voted for him?????? Yup, they sure did.
Trump will continue with the decades long mantra of starve the beast (Or their version of what the beast is). THEN they will declare insolvency and paint it to be the ONLY way............and everyone will believe him.
Misogyny and racism are too simplistic reasons. It goes much deeper than that. "WE" have become way too tolerant of stupid voters...........
"Many people viewed her as white." Sorry, nobody views her as white. She ain't remotely that light skinned. Many bought Trump's bald face lies that she had never identified as black and it was common for people to view her as Asian.
I am always amazed by the number of people who refer to Donald Trump as a “businessman”. Trump is not primarily a businessman (although he did play one on TV) but rather a salesman. More precisely the type of grifter conman salesman who is willing and able to say anything no matter how outrageous to close the deal and get what he wants. Trump closed the deal with a slim plurality of American voters by selling them the concept that all the nation’s problems are due to immigrants, transexuals, fake news, intellectual “experts” and other internal enemies, and that the solution was to remove all these troublemakers. Mindful of the old saying “you can’t cheat an honest man”, I can’t help but wonder how many voters bought into Trump’s scheme because it also conveniently absolves them of any guilt for their own racist sexist homophobic xenophobic beliefs.
"...A JV candidate hastily subbed in three months before Election Day."
This is a pretty snide and condescending comment coming from a guy who didn't just want Joe Biden to step aside, but demanded he resign the office of the President, over the summer.
Kevin finally agrees with what I've been saying since November 6. To put it another way, this was the election result one would have expected in 2020 absent the pandemic. 2020 was a black swan election which saw millions of first-time voters support Biden (but not House Democrats), presumably in protest at "the government's" handling of the pandemic. Having concluded that this government's handling of inflation had been no better than the other mob's management of the pandemic, they decided this voting thing was a mug's game and stayed home.
Pundits and "Democratic strategists" devoting words beyond number to a discussion of "why Harris lost ______ voters" are on a fool's errand. If you drew a trend line from 2000 to 2024 but omitted 2020 as an outlier, she did remarkably well. As others have observed, the crucial question is not why Harris lost but how Trump induced 11 million first-time voters to turn out for him in 2020 despite his bumbling response to Covid.
Those millions of first time voters probably voted because it was made easier with mail-in ballots.
I wonder what turnout would look like if we did that again. It's not a very mysterious wondering - evidence (and common sense) says that making voting easier means more people vote. Not having to actually physically go somewhere to vote on a specific day during specific times, but instead just dropping your ballot in the mail whenever is convenient for you, is a ton easier.
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/10/09/states-that-send-a-mail-ballot-to-every-voter-really-do-increase-turnout-scholars-find/
"which saw millions of first-time voters support Biden (but not House Democrats)" Biden won the popular vote by 4.5% whereas house democrats won by 3.1%. The small difference is most likely entirely the result of Trump being fundamentally more criminal than most house republicans. "Trump induced 11 million first-time voters to turn out for him in 2020 despite his bumbling response to Covid." Trump only got 10 million more votes in 2020 than 2016. Some of that would be simply natural population growth. And in today's world, you can't gin up your own base without ginning up the enemies. The Trump increase in 2024 was entirely the same as the overall population growth, i.e. Trump got the same percentage of eligible voters in 2024 as he did in 2020.
The figures speak for themselves. In 2020, Trump got almost 18% more votes than in 2016. Compared to McCain, Romney or Trump 2016, it was obvious he'd attracted a cohort of first-time voters to support the Republican Party. They stuck with him.
McCain 2008 59,948,323
Romney 2012 60,933,504
Trump 2016 62,984,828
Trump 2020 74, 223,975
Trump 2024 77,000,000 (est.)
Any theory that doesn't account for how this has happened in so many other countries over the past decade is wrong. That includes all the ones predicated on some assertion of something the Democrats did wrong.
Not the price of eggs- keep looking
50% of American voters watched this guy for 8 years, and reelected him
No second thoughts- recent poll shows 59% approval with his cabinet selection
Serious nose holding ?
Or are our values that for down the toilet?