So, this is the spicy part. This is the part where I get frank and unfiltered about why we lost.
First, let's review the demographic data I ended with last night again. Joe Biden won 2020 with 82 million votes. While the results are not finalized, Harris stands at 68 million votes. I am sure she will break 70 million by the time all is said and done, but what happened to the other 10 million? And I'll be honest, they stayed home. They didn't turn out, and as such, while Trump was able to turn his base out, Harris was not able to turn out the democrats.
I've been saying it all along. ELECTIONS ARE WON BY ENTHUSIASM! And our enthusiasm was just...through the floor. We couldnt turn out our base. Because they didn't have someone to vote for who they were enthused to vote for. Democrats can lecture and moralize about the virtues of lesser evil voting, but as I always say, democrats are not entitled to votes, they have to earn them, and Harris (nor Biden), didn't earn them.
This was a very red leaning year. In a sense, I predicted in 2020 this would happen. Because I know how electoral cycles work. Party takes power, wins presidency, house and senate. Loses house in the mid terms. Comes back, wins the presidency in the second term by a smaller margin than the first. Second mid term elections are a bloodbath and other party sweeps both houses of congress, and then finally the other side wins the house, senate, and presidency in one fell swoop. Barring potential party realignments, which can energize a coalition to make its cycle last a lot longer than the normal 8 years, that's normally how things go.
Except...we are in uncertain times and possibly undergoing a realignment. In 2016, Trump won narrowly. I thought it was a fluke at first, driven by low democratic turnout. In 2020, Biden got the most votes of any presidential candidate IN HISTORY but barely eeked out a victory vs Trump. Trump has insane energy and is very hard to defeat. In 2024....that coalition didn't hold up. Just as I kind of anticipated. Because if you won 2020 by the kinds of margins Biden did, that's not gonna bode well for reelection.
Because here's the thing. Biden was a milquetoast centrist. And while yes, he's more progressive than i gave him credit for, he barely passed anything that made peoples' lives better, and then his coalition stayed home in 2024.
Now, to get into a few reasons why people on the internet are saying she lost, that I will address. A big one I'm seeing is that she's a woman, she's a black woman, blah blah blah. A lot of dem establishment people seem to be leaning into this one. STAHP. NO ONE GIVES A CRAP ABOUT HER GENDER AND THOSE WHO DO ARE JUST DIE HARD TRUMPERS. I've been following polling all election cycle. Harris polled far better than Biden did the entirety of this election cycle. I have the numbers to prove it:
Biden did terrible the whole time. That dip to rock bottom before dropping out was the debate, but his campaign was long struggling before that. The second harris dropped out, it energized the base where they were actually competitive and brought the race to a functional tossup. If Biden remained in the race, he would AT BEST do AS WELL as Harris, and probably worse. And he was a white male. An ancient one, yes, but look at his relative recovery from say, March until June. That due to him having a commanding presence at the state of the union, proving, for the time at least, he was still up for the job. And his performance there was....about where Harris ended up doing. So yeah. I stand by my beliefs. Harris did at least as good if not better than Biden would have, and Biden was the white male who brought out 82 million people last time.
This election was a referendum on Biden and the democrats. And because people weren't happy with their leadership, they lost, it was really that simple.
In all fairness, I do think there are reasons Harris declined going into october that relate to this. Early in her campaign she was an unknown element. She was a progressive, she was a moderate, she was what anyone wanted her to be. She was obama 2.0, hope and change, baby. But then, like all candidates, she had to make decisions. She had to have a platform. And that platform sucked. She went in the milquetoast, technocratic, centrist direction and that was a MASSIVE enthusiasm killer. And I kind of feel like I followed the trend with everyone else. heck I soured on her before everyone else. I soured on her by the convention, where she started doing the work circlejerking and removing any decent healthcare from her platform. This is my own biases, but I didn't feel like Harris would actually make my life appreciably better. And neither did anyone else, apparently. Yes, she had policies. But her policies were milquetoast, moderate, aimed at only certain people under certain conditions, and they didn't connect.
Here's the thing about trump. Like in 2016, we acted like it was about the jobs. But I said back then, no, it isn't. Jobs arent the answer, they never were. Now, I can articulate these concerns because im a free thinker who doesn't give a F about what society thinks, and I'm educated enough to be able to come up with my own vision for how things should be, but with trump in 2016, it was about neoliberalism. The jobs thing was a symptom of the problem. We had the recession in 2008, we had this rather milquetoast recovery. by 2016, the numbers were good, but people werent feeling the numbers, and I'll tell you why, because they dont actually related to peoples' lives very well, and they aren't FEELING the numbers.
The jobs we had were poor. They were of low quality. They paid badly. They had no benefits. They were run by abusive bosses who monopolized our time. We were told we were lucky just to have these jobs, because we could be out on the street. And that's the true nature of jobs. So why do we clamor for more of them? because we have this picture in our head of a better america in the past where we could afford things better, and work and make ends meet, and life was simple if you did what you were supposed to and kept your nose clean. People romanticize the past, gloss over its problems, and even if things are good, they don't feel good, because things simply weren't all they're cracked up to be. Not that things didn't decline. And that's why Clinton lost in 2016. it wasnt about the factory work. It was about the feels of being able to make one's way in the world comfortably, or at least idealize what our parents did that many of us never went through ourselves.
So okay, trump inherited Obama's economy, and then things were good. To some extent, this is, once again, feels. This guy reassured them, marketed a vision to them, and they bought into it. Then COVID happened and that brought its own set of problems. Conservatives and moderates rebelled against the status quo of lock downs claiming we're infringing on their freedom to work and enjoy middle class luxuries. Biden still gets elected, since faith in trump wavered enough for him to lose, but he BARELY lost. he maintained a strong and passionate base of followers to the end. And those followers stormed the capitol when he cried the election was "rigged", because they bought into his vision with such cultish devotion they believed him. This is, btw, where i realized trump was too dangerous to really win again.
Biden....he came in, and he had to handle the recovery. The vaccine launched early in 2020 and within 3 months of his presidency i was getting vaccinated and things were returning to normal. Originally he had high marks, but then inflation hit. First it was supply chain issues, but then it was corporate price gouging. Conservative misinformation began and people believed it. They blamed Biden for spending too much money, when the real problem was the supply and demand shocks associated with reopening the economy. Closing the economy in 2020 led to a mini great depression. Reopening it led to an inflationary wave. Previous realignments were decided by such crises. The great depression led to FDR's new deal. Stagflation in the 1970s led to Reagan's "morning in america". The great recession arguably gave us Trump. And now, inflation gave us trump again.
Through 2021-2023, prices spiked, people couldnt' afford things, pay was relatively stagnant, and people felt like they were struggling to get by. Yet the democrats just ended up refusing to admit the problems, claiming that doing so would make them look bad. They dont wanna admit they have a bad economy, they have to pretend like its good, because their guy is in charge. So they kept going on about how many jobs they created, and how the chips act and other things are bringing back the manufacturing work, and how inflation is coming down (and it did), and none of it mattered, because PEOPLE DIDN'T FEEL LIKE THEY WERE DOING GOOD.
Democrats are like this meme. This is why they lost 2016, and this is why they lost 2024. They argue with people and lecture them about how they're stupid for not appreciating Biden's economy without acknowledging that people feel pain. Again, it's not about the jobs. We keep acting like the good life is everyone has a good job and it pays well but the economy just can't deliver that. Jobs suck, they've always sucked, yet we keep romanticizing them like a really crappy ex, and honestly? The Biden economy was, by all "conventional" metrics, the best we're ever gonna get. And Biden, being a milquetoast candidate, dug us into a hole.
Further digging us into that hole was his lack of legislative accomplishments. He had a policy agenda that while i wouldnt call "bold", at least did some good things. But let me ask you this, do you feel like YOUR lives have improved due to most of his policies? Probably not. Democrats do technocratic policies that sound good on paper, but they dont connect with people. Republicans, they give tax cuts, no tax on tips, blah blah blah. They are basically promised MORE MONEY by voting republicans. More money means buying more things, means their lives are easier. But...you invest $80 billion in some act to create factory jobs, and is anyone gonna actually notice? It's not actually about the jobs, it's about how people feel. They vote for candidates that make them feel good, or otherwise are percieved as materially improving their lives. FDR's economy was garbage but he moved mountains with his new deal to improve peoples' lives and it made people FEEL good. People could connect FDR's policies in their head to improvements in their lives. That's also why the new deal coalition fell. But the end of its life cycle, people didn't feel like government did anything for them. It just took tons of money out of their paychecks for benefits they didn't actually notice, and if anything, they felt other people got but they didn't.
But heres the thing, Biden wasnt bold enough in proposing things that mattered, and if the things that he did try to pass, he was railroaded by congress and the courts. Checks and balances effectively sabotaged the Biden administration.
So, what happens when you have a democratic government, it's not doing anything for you, you dont feel like they're helping, if anything you feel like their policies are hurting, and it comes election time? Why, you either vote against them, or you don't come out at all. What really killed Harris's campaign was the latter. Like 10 million people didn't show up. And Trump won. Again, lack of enthusiasm.
People want solutions, and many of them dont care about the intricacies of passing things, and how its SO HARD, and to some extent it looks like weaponized incompetence. And to some extent it is, the centrist wing of the party doesnt want nice things either. They want diet republican. And harris ran like a diet republican. A last generation republican with some milquetoast policies here and there. SHe embraced democratic centrism, when people want a bold agenda.
Not that it would have mattered, because Harris ended up being tied too closely to Biden. people wondered, in addition to how her policies would help people, why isnt she doing them already? By being associated with biden, she was associated with his failures. And she did little to really move away from Biden. She said in one interview she wouldnt do anything differently. If any moment probably killed her campaign, it was that. Because PEOPLE DON'T WANT 4 MORE YEARS OF JOE BIDEN! They dont want his VP either, who is running on the same policy agenda. I keep saying it, democrats are in the uncanny valley of suck. They're gonna be screamed at as being radical leftist by any right winger and they'll never vote for her anyway, but the democrats WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT aren't gonna turn out for her either. So we get trump. The lack of enthusiasm killed her campaign. And I just explained WHY people weren't enthused, as someone who myself wasn't enthused.
We live in an age of populism. We live in an age where people want bold action. Trump wins because of populism. We lose because we lack it. This is 2016 again. it's just that this time, we're on the other end of the phillips curve. In 2016, the specter of the great recession was still fresh in peoples' minds and the concern was jobs. This time, the specter of the post covid inflationary wave is in their mind, and they want to be able to afford things.
I admit, being on this side of the phillips curve is bad for dems. Democratic policies work better when the state of things errs on the side of unemployment, because they make peoples' lives better that way. Btw, wanna know what won obama in 2012 to me? Extended unemployment. People got money in an era where there were no jobs to be had. Romney wanted to take that away and give it all to rich people who were the "job creators" and clearly that wasn't working. In 2024 though, giving people money is a tough sell because inflation and people thinking government spending money contributes to it. That's why ive been panicking and being leery to embrace UBI fully in the 2024 election cycle. In retrospect though, I think that might've been a mistake on my part and probably harris's as well. I mean, no tax on tips, vance's baby bonus, and lower taxes are more money in peoples' pockets. ANd the real solution to inflation is ultimately raising living standards. We cant go back to deflating things, so we DO need more money in peoples' pockets. The right argues tax breaks, the left has to argue social programs like UBI.
Heck I do think my original vision is the solution here. Policies like UBI and M4A are simple enough where if implemented, yes, people will see more money in their pockets. And if we can pull those off without causing MORE inflation, we can actually win people over. And people will be more enthused and vote for us.
So yeah. Democrats, get to populism and grand visions to improve peoples' lives. Bernie was right, he talked about how democrats just didnt connect because they didn't offer a solid vision for people. And they didn't. They offered more milquetoast piecemeal solutions that didn't resonate. Because democrats dont understand how people think and don't care.
If this election is a repudiation of anything, it's a repudiation of the centrism the democrats have been trying to force on us for a decade now. Running to the center to win over fricking Dick Cheney doesn't win elections. And the whole strategy of relying on minorities + suburbanites just FULL STOP collapsed on them. Because no one actually wants this crap.
The democrats need to clean house. They need to fire their entire leadership and abandon centrism. We're getting destroyed by the GOP. 2016 was a realignment. Trump tapped into something. And it;s resonating. Meanwhile what we're doing isn't. We lost in 2016. We lost in 2024, we ALMOST lost in 2020. Trump is popular, we are not. Democrats dont understand modern politics, and the boomer leadership needs to just retire and ride off into the sunset already. And by that, i dont mean we should replace Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer with like....Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg who embrace the same boring brand of politics. We need a new generation of political thinkers, and the democrats need to embrace people LIKE Bernie sanders (who they rejected in 2016, never forget, bernie would have won). Or people like AOC. Or someone like Andrew yang, who while lacking a populist instinct actually has it more right on policy than anyone else.
The fact is, IF democracy survives trump, we need to completely revamp our strategy and realign ourselves. We need to abandon this loser fricking strategy of abandoning the rust belt to win the sun belt. because now we're losing both. This election was so bad, that it actually showed weaknesses in DEEP BLUE states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. That Biden polling showing those as swing states was ACTUALLY ACCURATE. THAT'S HOW BAD WE WERE DOING.
If we don't completely reimagine ourselves as a party, we are going to collapse. We're already starting to. This election shows me what we're doing isn't sustainable. This was a repudiation the democrats havent seen since 1988. And we might be SCREWED in the long term if we can't figure out how to come back from this. We just got DESTROYED. And the sad thing is, this happened at the worst possible moment. Because trump actually is that dangerous. I hope he doesnt actually destroy democracy, but I fear the worst here.
Either way, until THAT happens, we need to regroup and rework ourselves so we can come back next election and hopefully have a chance. Because this realignment is NOT going well for us.
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