So many of the Dems' biggest problems are downstream of them embracing their new role as the official party of America's sneering, out-of-touch Brahmins who cannot, not even for just five goddamn minutes, conceal the fact that they feel superior to all the proles because they've undergone the ritual cleansing process that is college education, which in their view rids the soul of racism, homophobia, and sexism, and which the proles are too inferior and/or poor to have undergone. Not since 18th century France has the Western world seen such a completely delusional ruling class. Never before have so few Americans wielded so much power to such quixotic, demented ends.
One problem with Harris' campaign (aside from the obvious fact that it lost decisively) is that she didn't stand for anything, so it's impossible to know what to fix. Progressives will say the problem was that she ran to the center. Centrists will say the problem was that no one could forget the Harris of 2019. Everyone can say that this loss proves their particular theory of the case, making it really hard to know where the party should go from here. It seems to me that "less smug, more curious" would be a good starting point, but it's hard to get there from "most Americans are idiots who want fascism," which I fear is what we're going to be stuck with because many on the left refuse to believe that condescension isn't particularly persuasive.
Her best bet was abortion, and she did bring it up.
Maybe, though, the general populace isn't *that* worried about it. It seems that the general populace doesn't like the more restrictive laws that the Republicans want, but it doesn't bother them *that* much. Most countries place restrictions on abortion, right? Anyway. "Bring down inflation and I can afford condoms again."
The fact they're melted into the mainstream media means they never have to hear facts they don't like.
"Maybe, though, the general populace isn't *that* worried about it. "
If you google image search "pro-life protest", you will see photo after photo - a collective sea of women - loudly voicing their pro-life stance.
Yet my social media bubble consists of nothing but otherwise intelligent people framing the issue as something "old white men" do in the name of "oppressing women".
In Montana, we voted for a constitutional amendment to specifically protect abortion to the tune of 57%, which is 4 points above what anti-abortion candidate Tim Sheehy got (winning with 53% of the vote). It does matter to people, but they have conflicting feelings about policy vs. the candidates they vote for. Sheehy is also not great for public lands and stream access, which is probably one of the top issues for Montana voters. Neither is Ryan Zinke, who is also terrible for home affordability in Montana, which is a huge issue. And he beat out Monica Tranel, again, who is explicit about her desire to protect public lands and bring down housing prices.
I think so much of this comes with the stink that hangs around the Democrats, particularly with their ignoring of working class and rural voters rather than what voters want for policy. You don't want to vote for someone who looks down their nose at you. It doesn't matter if they support things that will help you if they aren't interested in communicating with you as an individual.
I'm also from Montana. I did not vote all 'red' yesterday. A couple points.
First, this statement from Jesse really resonated with me: "They — okay, back to we — consist disproportionately of highly educated, intellectually self-satisfied individuals who are confident in the moral and intellectual rectitude of our worldviews." While I make a decent living here in Montana, I'm much more 'normie' than 'elite,' although I fully recognize that my income probably differentiates me from a lot of the friends I have a beer with on Friday night.
But I've practiced law for over 30 years (yes, in backwards Montana, but I've been relatively successful). I stay reasonably well informed. I obviously have a college degree, and I've run several businesses.
So when someone from a larger area looks down on me because I went to a 'state school' (Go Griz!), it really doesn't do much for me. To all of the so-called coastal elites, let me just tell you something. You're not that smart. Great, you can discuss literature, and you can liberal arts me to death, but when a 35 year old pundit on a news station sounds like he's talking down to me, it doesn't have the same effect he THINKS it has.
And, the so-called elite in this country isn't doing all that great of a job. Let's see, we've got a migrant crisis, we're 35 TRILLION in debt, a lot of my friends work their asses off to make ends meet and one half of the country hates the other half. That's not exactly hitting it out of the park, so please forgive me if I do not genuflect to your Ivy League degrees.
And yeah, Trump is an ass. But, in some respects, that's a feature not a bug. In my many years of practicing law, I've had the opportunity to deal with countless government employees at the local, state, and federal level. I've met many, many wonderful, hard-working people in government, and I almost always make sure to make their bosses know it.
But I challenge you to try to resolve some stupid-ass federal regulatory matter for your 70 year old client without breaking the bank (hell, I challenge you to get a call back!). Then, maybe after that, you can explain to me how there is no "deep state" and "government is just another word for you and me."
Sometimes you need an ass, a wrecking ball, to get things done.
I apologize for the rant. Now, here's a feel good angle: I volunteered at our local polls last night. Montana has same-day registration. The lines were horrendous. People were waiting 6, 7, even 8 hours to vote yesterday. And even so, they all smiled and got along, and in a whole day, I did not hear ONE PERSON argue or grouse about who the next person in line might be voting for. That's America, not the bullshit that the elite media feeds us.
They make it clear as crystal that they want to take down white males a peg or three. Any white male who votes for Democrats is objectively voting against his own interests.
I think that takes it too far, especially in a state like Montana. Voting for a Tester or a Tranel over a Zinke or Sheehy isn't "voting against the interests of white men" or "taking them down a peg or three." Tester is literally a third generation Montana farmer and notorious average white man. Tester and Tranel are actively for the interests of the average white man in Montana. White men want to be able to afford homes here (they can't at the moment, not on average Montana salaries) and access public lands and streams (Zinke and Sheehy are not public lands supporters).
While I'm sympathetic to the fact that national Democratic politics has a specific message that is identitarian and hostile towards average people, my point was that taking that national message local prevents people from voting for their interests. "Voting for Democrats" being labeled as hurting the interests of white men rings hollow when your Republican senators and governors don't care about making sure there are the same kinds of logging, construction, and service jobs that hold up your community, or that those jobs pay enough so that you and your family can afford housing (as in renting), let alone being able to afford to own a home.
Gianforte (R Governor) wants to overturn access to public lands and streams, making it more difficult to hunt, hike, and fish. He doesn't care about housing prices. He doesn't care about keeping clean air and water. These all matter to the average Montanan. The national politics of whateverthefuckelse shouldn't matter when filling in a bubble next to (D) Ryan Busse, other notorious white man, whatever number generation Montana rancher, and safe gun advocate and hunter who wants average people to be able to afford to live here. Otherwise, Montana becomes a playground for people who want second homes in a California with snow and the rest of us get shafted.
Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully. Indeed, I should have specified that exceptions exist and when those exceptions make it clear that they are exceptions it improves their electoral chances.
In a rare moment of honesty and coherence from Trump, during the debate he was pretty much dead-on that Harris wouldn't be able to do anything about abortion.
We have been writing and writing in every message board available that we were going to lose. Been doing this for a year and a half.
The reason why isn't wrapped up in political science or economic jargon, but is wrapped up in psychology.
And here is one, of many psychological observations: "Progressives" are not interested in winning. Instead they are interested in the self-serving feeling of being right.
So, they got what they wanted. Article after article this morning about how they were 'right" about Trump and Trump supporters. "Sexists" and "misogynists." "low information" "voting against their own interests (because they are stupid)" etc. etc.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk: our greatest attachment tends to be to our opinions.
.....and we old time Democrats were more attached to the vulnerable who we protected, including to blue collar workers who were at the mercy of corporation owners.....i.e., Trump voters, to minorities, to women's rights, etc. We want our old beloved party back
The "low information voter" thing is especially galling. It's usually coming from media personalities who fly in a triangle from NYC, to DC, to LA and back. There's a whole country with a whole range of interests that is missed by national media figures.
"Article after article this morning about how they were 'right" about Trump and Trump supporters. "Sexists" and "misogynists." "low information" "voting against their own interests (because they are stupid)" etc. etc."
Only time will tell. If Trump follows through on his campaign promises, Democrats will have been proven correct.
What if, and I know this is going to blow your mind, most people don't want to live in a country overrun with foreigners on welfare and with drag queens teaching kindergarteners about how they like to fuck.
"... immigrants and their children are projected to add about 18 million people of working age between 2015 and 2035. This would offset an expected decline in the working-age population from retiring Baby Boomers.... immigrants today account for 14.3% of the U.S. population, a roughly threefold increase from 4.7% in 1970. The immigrant share of the population today is the highest since 1910 but remains below the record 14.8% in 1890." (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/).
As for drag queens teaching kindergartners about how they like to fuck: I'm no fan of drag queen reading hours in libraries, but I don't believe there have been any instances of them teaching children about fucking. If there have been, please share a link with the information. I'd be very interested in seeing where this happened.
I'd rather the population of the USA decline then for our country to become a dumping ground for the world's refuse, and I'm not alone. Don't bother with the Ellis Island crap you're about to type. You know, I know and everybody knows that they are not coming here for the American Dream, they are coming for EBT cards.
I don't know...Kamala Harris really did not run an identitarian campaign, nor did she spend the majority of her time telling people how racist Trump is. Sure, she said he is unfit for office, but she also focused on the policies the man would bring with him: cutting Medicaid, fucking with the Affordable Care Act, raising prices by implementing tariffs, etc.
I don't want to speculate too much on the day after the election--there's so much we just do not know--but I have a feeling this election wasn't about Harris or even Trump. Incumbent governments all over the world seem to be suffering at the hands of voters, and the United States now joins that luckless company. I'm thinking this is pandemic aftershock mixed with populism, getting voters to make foolish choices. (My thoughts on this are still a bit vague, admittedly.)
And, make no mistake, putting a convicted felon in the White House is a foolish choice. No amount of voter anxiety or anger makes it otherwise. Blaming Democrats, or crediting Republicans, isn't a good way forward, either. Sometimes the voters just get it wrong. Like yesterday.
TrackerNeil, Harris didn't need to run an identitarian campaign because those dedicated to Democrat Party loyalty became surrogates. The surrogates' insufferable insistence (for at least the past 4 years) that Western values are the cause of all that ails the world turned life-long, left-leaning voters like me away. I didn't vote for Trump, but I also could not vote for Harris. The left's overreach did that to me.
> The surrogates' insufferable insistence (for at least the past 4 years) that Western values are the cause of all that ails the world
The Biden administration has spent copious amount of capital, monetary and political, trying to keep Ukraine in the western sphere, so that's obvious crackpot bullshit from you.
Inflation the whole world over does a number on incumbent governments. I have a lot of criticisms of the way the Democratic Party comported themselves over the past 2 or so years, but it's probably that simple.
"Convicted felon" leads me to one of those criticisms. Every time you do that to someone who looked into that court case, you risk making another Trump voter.
Yes, Trump has been doing scummy, gray-area, and illegal things for decades. But (1) so do thousands of other scummy business people and (2) it wasn't a coincidence that he was finally prosecuted as he prepared to run for President in 2024. This was a perfect example of the term "lawfare" and the use of that term to describe the coordinated and selective legal attacks on Trump certainly resonated with me.
Judicial and prosecutorial independence are so valuable and I absolutely despise their politicization. I am hoping that the Trump administration doesn't do the same (with law, but also the IRS and finance), because an escalating tit-for-tat lawfare/IRS/finance war would be the most corrosive thing I can imagine for what's left of our republic.
And all you can do is hope at this point, right? 2016-2020, Trump threatened and didn't do anything. 2020-2024, filled with lawfare of varying legitimacy. (Some of the more legitimate ones were turned away, which his conviction was pretty convincingly horseshit and will probably be overturned on appeal)
Now you just have to hope Trump doesn't take 2020-2024 and turn it back on his enemies. G'faw!
Although it was a "bad idea" in that future negative externalities could be substantial, I can see the incentives that would drive an ambitious prosecutor or judge in a deep blue area/social milieu to pursue all the prosecutions (even the ones that were obviously BS or inflated to felonies). If a prosecutor/judge values fame, adulation, praise, romantic/sexual opportunities, etc. more than the possible future adverse expected value to the stability of our republic...
It wasn't a novel theory. This gets repeated endlessly by the apologists, but it is not true. It was a unique fact pattern, but the legal theory is well established.
This is a good breakdown of the case, but doesn’t go into the novelty of charging someone with a felony when he hasn’t been convicted of any specific underlying crimes- crimes that were unspecified until closing arguments, BTW:
A PBS Q&A that demonstrates the legal novelty of the case, and presumes the need for arguing that Trump was guilty of a specific underlying crime, which the prosecution never did.
What’s very weird about this, is the hush money payments had to be in service of another crime to be a felony. What’s the other crime? Who cares? Probably something though, right? It’s hush money, so Michael Cohen said it was to protect his chances of winning the 2016 election (forget that the payments were made in 2017, after the election was over.) Maybe it was an unlawful campaign contribution to… someone? Maybe tax evasion? Who cares. But there were 34 hush money payments, and that was probably in service of some other unnamed crime.
There were 11 hush money payments. But there were also invoices (11) and ledger entries (12). Yes, that's right. Donald Trump was convicted of falsifying invoices his business *received* from Michael Cohen. Anyone defending this case is either bad faith or doesn't actually know that much about it.
With respect, the amount of "official" campaign messages were drowned out (read: screamed out) by surrogates, pundits and general public rhetoric shouted by blue-robed icons. That's exactly the issue Jesse is pointing at here... Not official campaign messaging. "Team Blue" gleefully helped the campaign lose.
You're right, they ran decently on-message (what that message was, I don't know) and kept their noses fairly clean from culture war stank. Maybe too much as it ended in a vacuum of memorable, viral moments. She was not even a little bit likeable by swing voters. "Team Blue" shoved the rest off the popular cliff.
This is one of the very few times I'm going to largely disagree with you, Jesse. To be clear, I mostly agree with your overall thesis that the anti-Trump movement is an utter failure; I think it's hard to conclude anything else if you're at all thoughtful and observant. What I'm going to disagree with is the idea that this election specifically proved that in any meaningful way.
What the results of this election proved are that Kamala Harris never had a decent chance in the first place. That was ensured when:
1) President Biden announced to the world that his running mate would be a woman of color. Many much smarter people than I have pointed out just how badly this set up whomever was to be chosen in terms of public perception. There was no way anyone was going to know for sure that whoever he chose wasn't a DEI hire once he said that.
2) President Biden and his closest advisors clung to the fantasy that he could somehow win and chose to have him run again. The fact that he and they allowed him to string that out as long as possible only to eventually be embarrassed on the debate stage ensured Harris wouldn't have one of the most valuable resources in a campaign: time. She had virtually no time to tinker with her messaging, to gather data and adjust accordingly.
3) President Biden endorsed her. This undermined her even further, as not only was she now a DEI hire, she was also handed the nomination without anything faintly resembling a competitive primary. There was no reason for anyone to think she earned anything at all.
I suspect Harris wouldn't have had a good shot under the best of circumstances, as she's transparently fake and unappealing. But this election didn't prove anything about the anti-Trump movement broadly; it just proved that Biden royally fucked over her and anyone who doesn't like Trump.
Fwiw, I actually have mostly liked the Biden presidency from a governance standpoint. I'm bitterly disappointed that nobody seems to notice that he did most of the things us lefty types have been bitching for years that dems haven't done recently. Antitrust enforcement, labor solidarity, climate change legislation, the list goes on, and nobody seems to know it. What a sad waste this has all been.
I think the DEI hire thing only remains salient if it becomes clear that she wasn't otherwise a good choice or a talented politician.
Nobody really talks about KBJ being a DEI appointment to the supreme court anymore, even though Biden did the same bullshit to her, because she's been a very competent, impressive and thoughtful supreme court justice.
Agreed on all your points. It was practically a campaign promise of Biden's that he would only serve 1 term and would spend a good amount of that promoting and strengthening the next generation of Democratic leaders. Kamala Harris didn't convince people that she could lead on her own because she was never given a chance to lead on her own.
I think the crazy-making on the left has just been too much for normies over the last four years, and all those red arrows just indicate a flee from the woko-locos to something voters can understand (build the wall, use tariffs, it's the mexicans).
The best possible face I can put on last night is that Trump was the reason it was even as close as it was. In a year where incumbent leaders have been knocked on their asses all over the world and right-wing populists are in the ascendency, a "normal" Republican - assuming any still exist - would likely have won by much more.
Inflation and immigration had Democrats on the back foot, and unfortunately there was undoubtedly racism and sexism working against Harris. (What Democrats must come to terms with is that this racism and sexism came not only from white voters but also from minorities, among whom Trump did shockingly well for a Republican.)
That's my general feeling, but it's hard to tell. I don't doubt that essentially all Trump voters would back him over Harris. But I wonder about the ability of a normie Republican to motivate turnout. Trump does seem to motivate low propensity voters much more than other candidates (I assume we will see more content on this in the coming weeks).
I think the first woman of color President will be a conservative Republican. (Mind you, I used to say the same about the first Black man elected President. Colin Powell could have won in 1996 or 2000 had he gone for it.)
I'd actually really love that, if just for the mental knots progressives would have to tie themselves into. Given my druthers, this race would have been Shapiro v Haley.
I couldn’t make it all the way through this article. The “anti-Trump movement?” Really? Go cry with Dick Cheney. The rest of us are interested in dealing with reality. Let’s forget for a moment what side the war mongers were on, and contemplate all those poor kids gaslit into thinking they are the other sex, and then being permanently mutilated for fun and profit. There’s an entire NGO complex devoted to this and other manifestly unscientific ideas, ready and willing to shut down any dissent. That doesn’t even begin to touch the obvious hatred the blue blob has for ordinary Americans, so much so that they are willing to help millions of unvetted military men cross our borders. But let’s not forget that by electing Harris, the unelected bureaucrats behind the scenes would have a free hand to crush anyone who objected to whatever the hell they wanted to do. The administrative state and its covert directors are a cancer on this country, with Harris as their willing figurehead.
Excellent article, and hard agree. One issue the Democrats really need to work on is the very strong anti-American vibes that a lot of the contemporary progressive movement gives off. It's one thing to say that America isn't perfect, there are issues and injustices we need to address, etc. It's quite another to describe America is irredeemably and irreparably flawed by its origin in the original sins of "settler colonialism" and slavery; to describe its economy as a "capitalist hellscape"; and to act as though we're only ever one election away from concentration camps for various minorities. It's very easy to imagine that the Democratic Party doesn't actually like America, or Americans, all that much, because a lot of its voters don't seem to do so.
I'm old enough to remember (but not have voted in) the 1980 election in which Reagan crushed Carter. The vibes that the Democratic Party was giving off then--shame, malaise, weakness--are very similar to the vibes it's giving off now. It took more than a decade before the Democrats recovered from that debacle and regained competitiveness in Presidential politics; hopefully there won't be such a long sojourn in the wilderness this time.
The Dems problem is that we aren't a party of ideas. We are a party of "The other guy fucking sucks so vote for me instead." We need to be a party who tries to do concrete things to make people's lives better. It starts at the local level. Lower someone's tax or energy bill. Fix a pothole. Politicians who do that get elected.
That attitude was embodied in Clinton's retort to "Make America Great Again": "America is already great!" This from the party that was swept into power in 2008 with the slogan "CHANGE".
It may have been a winnable election against *Trump*, considering how disliked he is. The math suggests many of the people who voted for him held their notes while doing so.
Against any normie Republican, assuming any still exist,I think it would have been a total wipeout.
I think the problem will continue to be that the major offenders in the anti-Trump movement will continue to only talk to each other when they try to do a most-mortem, and will refuse to actually learn any lessons.
If you're looking for a bright spot, I've been pretty well convinced by the Dispatch guys that governing the country is typically politically damaging. Had Harris won, Republicans probably would've gained quiet support on state levels of government.
I would make a distinction between saying things that are true and saying things that are politically effective. If you’re talking about politicians and activists, then it’s totally valid to critique their rhetoric on the basis of its electoral effects.
But if you’re talking about anyone else, maybe you’re giving them advice on how to be better at something that isn’t really their job in the first place (even if they think it is). I want Joy Reid to say what she truly believes about why Trump won, even if saying so isn’t good for getting more votes. The question I would ask is not “is this rhetoric effective?” but “is this analysis accurate?”
Maybe you come up with the same answer to both questions, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that those are, in fact, different questions.
"There has been a lot of strategic investment in a deliberate project of narrowing the progressive tent both by purging a few and by intimidating others out of speaking their minds and it’s basically worked."
And also shaming, constantly, many people based upon their sex, ethnicity, etc., with their only accepted route forward in the world being to constantly admit guilt and try to atone for it (but never successfully, because...one can't change these things). Unless one is born the right way, one is just a second class somewhat tolerated person whose thoughts are not considered to have much value...as the value of ideas depends primarily upon the identity of the person who has them, of course...sigh.
This is not supporting those having a bad time and/or suffering from racism, sexism...or liberal democracy.
More than half of America believes Trump's lies and loves his misogyny, racisim, mean-spiritedness, xenophobia, anti-wokeism and all his other hatreds and resentments. The America Trump attacked relentlessly during his hate-filled campaign does not exist; it is a creation of his reptilian imagination.
Anti-Trumpers are not responsible for this defeat. We're victims and so is every person who voted against Trump. Dems could purge their platform and politics of support for DEI, immigrants, gender identity ideology, multiculturalism., gay rights, abortion and all the other things Trump loves to hate on, and Trump would still demonize us.
He is a profoundly evil person who is irrational, doesn't care about America and captured the presidency solely to exact revenge against his imaginary enemies, who include our Western allies, bask in the admiration of dictators, enrich himself and his family, evade criminal liability for his political crimes against the nation and destroy or subvert the institutions of the federal government.
This is not the Reagan revolution. This is a coup at the ballot box by an illiberal madman who is going to cause great suffering and hardship if he is able to make good on his harebrained ideas and vicious threats.
I can't stand Trump, but you are exactly the type of person Jesse is talking about. Your smug, unreflective self-righteousness and demonization of every member of your out-group is exactly why normies are fleeing to the Trump, who is basically the living embodiment of a middle finger to people like you.
"More than half of America believes Trump's lies and loves his misogyny, racism, mean-spiritedness, xenophobia, anti-wokeism and all his other hatreds and resentments."
More than half of America doesn't even vote. To think that there aren't some party-loyal voters who are holding their nose and pulling the lever for Trump is silly.
There's a segment of the population that has a weird, unhealthy, almost religious love for Donald Trump. But when you start talking in terms of "Evil" and "Reptilian" I think you might want to take a step back.
Yes, I decided to lay off the math lesson because the innumeracy is such a minor quibble in the context of the above. But 71 million Trump votes thus far is <<<<< half of the ~340 million US population.
262 million Americans are of voting age. The total vote so far is (rounded off) about 139 million. Half of that is 69.5 million. So with approximately 73 million votes, Trump won more than half of the voting population. There.
That's not how math works. If you wanted to change what he said to "half of Americans who are eligible to vote love daddy Trump" then your voting benchmark would be 131 million, not half of voter turnout.
This comment is a perfect example of the loser style of thought and argument Jesse diagnosed. Someone who votes for Trump must love "misogyny, racism, mean-spiritedness, xenophobia, anti-wokeism" and various other "hatreds and resentments." They couldn't POSSIBLY have any other motives, including feeling a fair number of "hatreds and resentments" directed at them from the people who call themselves Democrats or progressives or liberals or leftists or whatever. The left has developed the very, VERY bad habit of dismissing anyone who doesn't vote for their candidates as hopelessly immoral and stupid. Which is why the Democrats are steadily losing their ability to win national elections; you don't win those elections by openly despising the people whose votes you need.
(And for what it's worth, I'm a very frustrated Democrat who voted for Kamala).
I would actually go further and say that many elements of the Left feel the same way toward other less left leaning individuals, even if they do vote the same way. Its kind of like an internal witch hunt or inquisition...everyone has to love the ideas more and take even more extreme positions or risk being purged.
Honestly...how much better off would Harris have been if she had not felt the need to take such stupidly left positions in 2020? If she could have been more like Clinton and taken her role as a prosecutor proudly, I am guessing that alone might have put her over top.
People will always take the low-resistance path. If they don't have to admit a mistake, they don't. If they don't have to feel bad about something they don't.
I think a fair number of Trump voters are avoiding bad news by thinking they can tariff their way out of something, or "it won't be that bad," but the post is about the Democrats' refusing to face some painful truths.
Ollie, if Trump was even a tenth as bad as you say he is, this election should have been a tap-in for the Democrats, despite the piss-poor condition the country is in owing to their disastrous policies. Do you have any inkling of how historically bad a candidate Harris had to be to lose to him?
So many of the Dems' biggest problems are downstream of them embracing their new role as the official party of America's sneering, out-of-touch Brahmins who cannot, not even for just five goddamn minutes, conceal the fact that they feel superior to all the proles because they've undergone the ritual cleansing process that is college education, which in their view rids the soul of racism, homophobia, and sexism, and which the proles are too inferior and/or poor to have undergone. Not since 18th century France has the Western world seen such a completely delusional ruling class. Never before have so few Americans wielded so much power to such quixotic, demented ends.
Red pilled. Duly noted.
One problem with Harris' campaign (aside from the obvious fact that it lost decisively) is that she didn't stand for anything, so it's impossible to know what to fix. Progressives will say the problem was that she ran to the center. Centrists will say the problem was that no one could forget the Harris of 2019. Everyone can say that this loss proves their particular theory of the case, making it really hard to know where the party should go from here. It seems to me that "less smug, more curious" would be a good starting point, but it's hard to get there from "most Americans are idiots who want fascism," which I fear is what we're going to be stuck with because many on the left refuse to believe that condescension isn't particularly persuasive.
One problem with her campaign was that she really didn’t campaign. Not in any way that was recognizable to me, anyway
She ran the same sort of basement campaign that Biden ran in 2020. She just didn't have the "ground game" (cheating) that his team had.
Maybe her team had an over representation of Forever Maskers and that's why they "couldn't" campaign
Her best bet was abortion, and she did bring it up.
Maybe, though, the general populace isn't *that* worried about it. It seems that the general populace doesn't like the more restrictive laws that the Republicans want, but it doesn't bother them *that* much. Most countries place restrictions on abortion, right? Anyway. "Bring down inflation and I can afford condoms again."
The fact they're melted into the mainstream media means they never have to hear facts they don't like.
"Maybe, though, the general populace isn't *that* worried about it. "
If you google image search "pro-life protest", you will see photo after photo - a collective sea of women - loudly voicing their pro-life stance.
Yet my social media bubble consists of nothing but otherwise intelligent people framing the issue as something "old white men" do in the name of "oppressing women".
If you’ve ever been around any pro-life movement people, the ground troops are middle aged to older women who love them some babies.
In Montana, we voted for a constitutional amendment to specifically protect abortion to the tune of 57%, which is 4 points above what anti-abortion candidate Tim Sheehy got (winning with 53% of the vote). It does matter to people, but they have conflicting feelings about policy vs. the candidates they vote for. Sheehy is also not great for public lands and stream access, which is probably one of the top issues for Montana voters. Neither is Ryan Zinke, who is also terrible for home affordability in Montana, which is a huge issue. And he beat out Monica Tranel, again, who is explicit about her desire to protect public lands and bring down housing prices.
I think so much of this comes with the stink that hangs around the Democrats, particularly with their ignoring of working class and rural voters rather than what voters want for policy. You don't want to vote for someone who looks down their nose at you. It doesn't matter if they support things that will help you if they aren't interested in communicating with you as an individual.
I'm also from Montana. I did not vote all 'red' yesterday. A couple points.
First, this statement from Jesse really resonated with me: "They — okay, back to we — consist disproportionately of highly educated, intellectually self-satisfied individuals who are confident in the moral and intellectual rectitude of our worldviews." While I make a decent living here in Montana, I'm much more 'normie' than 'elite,' although I fully recognize that my income probably differentiates me from a lot of the friends I have a beer with on Friday night.
But I've practiced law for over 30 years (yes, in backwards Montana, but I've been relatively successful). I stay reasonably well informed. I obviously have a college degree, and I've run several businesses.
So when someone from a larger area looks down on me because I went to a 'state school' (Go Griz!), it really doesn't do much for me. To all of the so-called coastal elites, let me just tell you something. You're not that smart. Great, you can discuss literature, and you can liberal arts me to death, but when a 35 year old pundit on a news station sounds like he's talking down to me, it doesn't have the same effect he THINKS it has.
And, the so-called elite in this country isn't doing all that great of a job. Let's see, we've got a migrant crisis, we're 35 TRILLION in debt, a lot of my friends work their asses off to make ends meet and one half of the country hates the other half. That's not exactly hitting it out of the park, so please forgive me if I do not genuflect to your Ivy League degrees.
And yeah, Trump is an ass. But, in some respects, that's a feature not a bug. In my many years of practicing law, I've had the opportunity to deal with countless government employees at the local, state, and federal level. I've met many, many wonderful, hard-working people in government, and I almost always make sure to make their bosses know it.
But I challenge you to try to resolve some stupid-ass federal regulatory matter for your 70 year old client without breaking the bank (hell, I challenge you to get a call back!). Then, maybe after that, you can explain to me how there is no "deep state" and "government is just another word for you and me."
Sometimes you need an ass, a wrecking ball, to get things done.
I apologize for the rant. Now, here's a feel good angle: I volunteered at our local polls last night. Montana has same-day registration. The lines were horrendous. People were waiting 6, 7, even 8 hours to vote yesterday. And even so, they all smiled and got along, and in a whole day, I did not hear ONE PERSON argue or grouse about who the next person in line might be voting for. That's America, not the bullshit that the elite media feeds us.
They make it clear as crystal that they want to take down white males a peg or three. Any white male who votes for Democrats is objectively voting against his own interests.
I think that takes it too far, especially in a state like Montana. Voting for a Tester or a Tranel over a Zinke or Sheehy isn't "voting against the interests of white men" or "taking them down a peg or three." Tester is literally a third generation Montana farmer and notorious average white man. Tester and Tranel are actively for the interests of the average white man in Montana. White men want to be able to afford homes here (they can't at the moment, not on average Montana salaries) and access public lands and streams (Zinke and Sheehy are not public lands supporters).
While I'm sympathetic to the fact that national Democratic politics has a specific message that is identitarian and hostile towards average people, my point was that taking that national message local prevents people from voting for their interests. "Voting for Democrats" being labeled as hurting the interests of white men rings hollow when your Republican senators and governors don't care about making sure there are the same kinds of logging, construction, and service jobs that hold up your community, or that those jobs pay enough so that you and your family can afford housing (as in renting), let alone being able to afford to own a home.
Gianforte (R Governor) wants to overturn access to public lands and streams, making it more difficult to hunt, hike, and fish. He doesn't care about housing prices. He doesn't care about keeping clean air and water. These all matter to the average Montanan. The national politics of whateverthefuckelse shouldn't matter when filling in a bubble next to (D) Ryan Busse, other notorious white man, whatever number generation Montana rancher, and safe gun advocate and hunter who wants average people to be able to afford to live here. Otherwise, Montana becomes a playground for people who want second homes in a California with snow and the rest of us get shafted.
Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully. Indeed, I should have specified that exceptions exist and when those exceptions make it clear that they are exceptions it improves their electoral chances.
In a rare moment of honesty and coherence from Trump, during the debate he was pretty much dead-on that Harris wouldn't be able to do anything about abortion.
Harris didn't bring up abortion? So the dead women whose stories Harris told time and again were just victims of high deductibles?
"Her best bet was abortion, and she did bring it up."
Agree.
We have been writing and writing in every message board available that we were going to lose. Been doing this for a year and a half.
The reason why isn't wrapped up in political science or economic jargon, but is wrapped up in psychology.
And here is one, of many psychological observations: "Progressives" are not interested in winning. Instead they are interested in the self-serving feeling of being right.
So, they got what they wanted. Article after article this morning about how they were 'right" about Trump and Trump supporters. "Sexists" and "misogynists." "low information" "voting against their own interests (because they are stupid)" etc. etc.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk: our greatest attachment tends to be to our opinions.
.....and we old time Democrats were more attached to the vulnerable who we protected, including to blue collar workers who were at the mercy of corporation owners.....i.e., Trump voters, to minorities, to women's rights, etc. We want our old beloved party back
The "low information voter" thing is especially galling. It's usually coming from media personalities who fly in a triangle from NYC, to DC, to LA and back. There's a whole country with a whole range of interests that is missed by national media figures.
(Mourns the death of robust local reporting)
iron law of institutions
"Article after article this morning about how they were 'right" about Trump and Trump supporters. "Sexists" and "misogynists." "low information" "voting against their own interests (because they are stupid)" etc. etc."
Only time will tell. If Trump follows through on his campaign promises, Democrats will have been proven correct.
You still aren't listening to the people. They have resoundingly said they do not want a "progressive" country.
You are hopeful for a late 4th quarter come back. It's better to have had a great game plan by disavowing ALL "progressive" nonsense.
No, it's the voters who are wrong.
voters.....who......are.....wrong.
Wow. What superiority.
https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/308356003/No-its-the-children-who-are-wrong
It's too bad I can't put you on ignore. You are making no sense
What if, and I know this is going to blow your mind, most people don't want to live in a country overrun with foreigners on welfare and with drag queens teaching kindergarteners about how they like to fuck.
"... immigrants and their children are projected to add about 18 million people of working age between 2015 and 2035. This would offset an expected decline in the working-age population from retiring Baby Boomers.... immigrants today account for 14.3% of the U.S. population, a roughly threefold increase from 4.7% in 1970. The immigrant share of the population today is the highest since 1910 but remains below the record 14.8% in 1890." (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/).
As for drag queens teaching kindergartners about how they like to fuck: I'm no fan of drag queen reading hours in libraries, but I don't believe there have been any instances of them teaching children about fucking. If there have been, please share a link with the information. I'd be very interested in seeing where this happened.
I'd rather the population of the USA decline then for our country to become a dumping ground for the world's refuse, and I'm not alone. Don't bother with the Ellis Island crap you're about to type. You know, I know and everybody knows that they are not coming here for the American Dream, they are coming for EBT cards.
A declining population will mean a decline in standards of living.
Baseless conjecture. More and cheaper housing, higher wages, less strain on infrastructure would also be aspects of population decline.
Assuming it's even happening and the "experts" aren't just lying their asses off again.
Time for addition through subtraction; kick out the wokes, the Hamas simps, the "fascist" shouters, etc, and make a positive case for the party.
Don't forget the neocons like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. What were they thinking, courting those endorsements?
“Look, even Republicans that everyone hates are voting for us!”
Touting the "Satan" endorsement was... a choice.
It really would be that simple, and yet it still seems like an unlikely outcome
I don't know...Kamala Harris really did not run an identitarian campaign, nor did she spend the majority of her time telling people how racist Trump is. Sure, she said he is unfit for office, but she also focused on the policies the man would bring with him: cutting Medicaid, fucking with the Affordable Care Act, raising prices by implementing tariffs, etc.
I don't want to speculate too much on the day after the election--there's so much we just do not know--but I have a feeling this election wasn't about Harris or even Trump. Incumbent governments all over the world seem to be suffering at the hands of voters, and the United States now joins that luckless company. I'm thinking this is pandemic aftershock mixed with populism, getting voters to make foolish choices. (My thoughts on this are still a bit vague, admittedly.)
And, make no mistake, putting a convicted felon in the White House is a foolish choice. No amount of voter anxiety or anger makes it otherwise. Blaming Democrats, or crediting Republicans, isn't a good way forward, either. Sometimes the voters just get it wrong. Like yesterday.
TrackerNeil, Harris didn't need to run an identitarian campaign because those dedicated to Democrat Party loyalty became surrogates. The surrogates' insufferable insistence (for at least the past 4 years) that Western values are the cause of all that ails the world turned life-long, left-leaning voters like me away. I didn't vote for Trump, but I also could not vote for Harris. The left's overreach did that to me.
Agreed. For the first time in decades, I abstained on principle.
> The surrogates' insufferable insistence (for at least the past 4 years) that Western values are the cause of all that ails the world
The Biden administration has spent copious amount of capital, monetary and political, trying to keep Ukraine in the western sphere, so that's obvious crackpot bullshit from you.
Inflation the whole world over does a number on incumbent governments. I have a lot of criticisms of the way the Democratic Party comported themselves over the past 2 or so years, but it's probably that simple.
"Convicted felon" leads me to one of those criticisms. Every time you do that to someone who looked into that court case, you risk making another Trump voter.
Yes, Trump has been doing scummy, gray-area, and illegal things for decades. But (1) so do thousands of other scummy business people and (2) it wasn't a coincidence that he was finally prosecuted as he prepared to run for President in 2024. This was a perfect example of the term "lawfare" and the use of that term to describe the coordinated and selective legal attacks on Trump certainly resonated with me.
Judicial and prosecutorial independence are so valuable and I absolutely despise their politicization. I am hoping that the Trump administration doesn't do the same (with law, but also the IRS and finance), because an escalating tit-for-tat lawfare/IRS/finance war would be the most corrosive thing I can imagine for what's left of our republic.
And all you can do is hope at this point, right? 2016-2020, Trump threatened and didn't do anything. 2020-2024, filled with lawfare of varying legitimacy. (Some of the more legitimate ones were turned away, which his conviction was pretty convincingly horseshit and will probably be overturned on appeal)
Now you just have to hope Trump doesn't take 2020-2024 and turn it back on his enemies. G'faw!
Maybe it was a bad idea to do that, guys.
Although it was a "bad idea" in that future negative externalities could be substantial, I can see the incentives that would drive an ambitious prosecutor or judge in a deep blue area/social milieu to pursue all the prosecutions (even the ones that were obviously BS or inflated to felonies). If a prosecutor/judge values fame, adulation, praise, romantic/sexual opportunities, etc. more than the possible future adverse expected value to the stability of our republic...
LOL, true. Good idea for an individual, maybe.
Eugene Debs was a convicted felon, too.
It's not hard to tell yourself that the conviction was politically motivated. Especially when the prosector politically campaigned on doing it.
And charged him using a "novel" legal approach in order to turn a misdemeanor into a felony.
It wasn't a novel theory. This gets repeated endlessly by the apologists, but it is not true. It was a unique fact pattern, but the legal theory is well established.
It was, in fact, a novel case.
Here’s an argument from someone who likes the outcome but still admits the novelty of the case. (Prosecutorial discretion be damned)
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/4702835-alvin-braggs-prosecution-of-trump-was-novel-and-correct/amp/
This is a good breakdown of the case, but doesn’t go into the novelty of charging someone with a felony when he hasn’t been convicted of any specific underlying crimes- crimes that were unspecified until closing arguments, BTW:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theory-behind-people-v.-trump
Here’s a Syracuse law professor who’s written a few pieces about it:
https://law.syracuse.edu/news/proferssor-gregory-germain-writes-the-manhattan-district-attorneys-convoluted-legal-case-against-donald-trump-gets-more-convoluted/
A PBS Q&A that demonstrates the legal novelty of the case, and presumes the need for arguing that Trump was guilty of a specific underlying crime, which the prosecution never did.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/how-trumps-alleged-hush-money-payments-led-to-his-charges-in-new-york
What’s very weird about this, is the hush money payments had to be in service of another crime to be a felony. What’s the other crime? Who cares? Probably something though, right? It’s hush money, so Michael Cohen said it was to protect his chances of winning the 2016 election (forget that the payments were made in 2017, after the election was over.) Maybe it was an unlawful campaign contribution to… someone? Maybe tax evasion? Who cares. But there were 34 hush money payments, and that was probably in service of some other unnamed crime.
There were 11 hush money payments. But there were also invoices (11) and ledger entries (12). Yes, that's right. Donald Trump was convicted of falsifying invoices his business *received* from Michael Cohen. Anyone defending this case is either bad faith or doesn't actually know that much about it.
With respect, the amount of "official" campaign messages were drowned out (read: screamed out) by surrogates, pundits and general public rhetoric shouted by blue-robed icons. That's exactly the issue Jesse is pointing at here... Not official campaign messaging. "Team Blue" gleefully helped the campaign lose.
You're right, they ran decently on-message (what that message was, I don't know) and kept their noses fairly clean from culture war stank. Maybe too much as it ended in a vacuum of memorable, viral moments. She was not even a little bit likeable by swing voters. "Team Blue" shoved the rest off the popular cliff.
This is one of the very few times I'm going to largely disagree with you, Jesse. To be clear, I mostly agree with your overall thesis that the anti-Trump movement is an utter failure; I think it's hard to conclude anything else if you're at all thoughtful and observant. What I'm going to disagree with is the idea that this election specifically proved that in any meaningful way.
What the results of this election proved are that Kamala Harris never had a decent chance in the first place. That was ensured when:
1) President Biden announced to the world that his running mate would be a woman of color. Many much smarter people than I have pointed out just how badly this set up whomever was to be chosen in terms of public perception. There was no way anyone was going to know for sure that whoever he chose wasn't a DEI hire once he said that.
2) President Biden and his closest advisors clung to the fantasy that he could somehow win and chose to have him run again. The fact that he and they allowed him to string that out as long as possible only to eventually be embarrassed on the debate stage ensured Harris wouldn't have one of the most valuable resources in a campaign: time. She had virtually no time to tinker with her messaging, to gather data and adjust accordingly.
3) President Biden endorsed her. This undermined her even further, as not only was she now a DEI hire, she was also handed the nomination without anything faintly resembling a competitive primary. There was no reason for anyone to think she earned anything at all.
I suspect Harris wouldn't have had a good shot under the best of circumstances, as she's transparently fake and unappealing. But this election didn't prove anything about the anti-Trump movement broadly; it just proved that Biden royally fucked over her and anyone who doesn't like Trump.
Fwiw, I actually have mostly liked the Biden presidency from a governance standpoint. I'm bitterly disappointed that nobody seems to notice that he did most of the things us lefty types have been bitching for years that dems haven't done recently. Antitrust enforcement, labor solidarity, climate change legislation, the list goes on, and nobody seems to know it. What a sad waste this has all been.
I think the DEI hire thing only remains salient if it becomes clear that she wasn't otherwise a good choice or a talented politician.
Nobody really talks about KBJ being a DEI appointment to the supreme court anymore, even though Biden did the same bullshit to her, because she's been a very competent, impressive and thoughtful supreme court justice.
Harris' poor results in her presidential bid in 2019 made it salient.
Agreed on all your points. It was practically a campaign promise of Biden's that he would only serve 1 term and would spend a good amount of that promoting and strengthening the next generation of Democratic leaders. Kamala Harris didn't convince people that she could lead on her own because she was never given a chance to lead on her own.
I think the crazy-making on the left has just been too much for normies over the last four years, and all those red arrows just indicate a flee from the woko-locos to something voters can understand (build the wall, use tariffs, it's the mexicans).
The best possible face I can put on last night is that Trump was the reason it was even as close as it was. In a year where incumbent leaders have been knocked on their asses all over the world and right-wing populists are in the ascendency, a "normal" Republican - assuming any still exist - would likely have won by much more.
Inflation and immigration had Democrats on the back foot, and unfortunately there was undoubtedly racism and sexism working against Harris. (What Democrats must come to terms with is that this racism and sexism came not only from white voters but also from minorities, among whom Trump did shockingly well for a Republican.)
That's my general feeling, but it's hard to tell. I don't doubt that essentially all Trump voters would back him over Harris. But I wonder about the ability of a normie Republican to motivate turnout. Trump does seem to motivate low propensity voters much more than other candidates (I assume we will see more content on this in the coming weeks).
I think Nikki Haley, woman of color, would be picking Kamala Harris out of her teeth this morning if she had been the nominee.
No way to prove that, though.
I think the first woman of color President will be a conservative Republican. (Mind you, I used to say the same about the first Black man elected President. Colin Powell could have won in 1996 or 2000 had he gone for it.)
I'd actually really love that, if just for the mental knots progressives would have to tie themselves into. Given my druthers, this race would have been Shapiro v Haley.
For a preview check out some of the things lefties are saying about Kami Badenoch across the pond.
I don't want to, lol. I like her, she seems very smart and competent. I'm jealous for America's conservatives.
Somebody's probably going to drop in and tell me something horrible I didn't know about her.
She’s very socially conservative.
I couldn’t make it all the way through this article. The “anti-Trump movement?” Really? Go cry with Dick Cheney. The rest of us are interested in dealing with reality. Let’s forget for a moment what side the war mongers were on, and contemplate all those poor kids gaslit into thinking they are the other sex, and then being permanently mutilated for fun and profit. There’s an entire NGO complex devoted to this and other manifestly unscientific ideas, ready and willing to shut down any dissent. That doesn’t even begin to touch the obvious hatred the blue blob has for ordinary Americans, so much so that they are willing to help millions of unvetted military men cross our borders. But let’s not forget that by electing Harris, the unelected bureaucrats behind the scenes would have a free hand to crush anyone who objected to whatever the hell they wanted to do. The administrative state and its covert directors are a cancer on this country, with Harris as their willing figurehead.
Trump's gonna start a war with Iran. He already tried!
Excellent article, and hard agree. One issue the Democrats really need to work on is the very strong anti-American vibes that a lot of the contemporary progressive movement gives off. It's one thing to say that America isn't perfect, there are issues and injustices we need to address, etc. It's quite another to describe America is irredeemably and irreparably flawed by its origin in the original sins of "settler colonialism" and slavery; to describe its economy as a "capitalist hellscape"; and to act as though we're only ever one election away from concentration camps for various minorities. It's very easy to imagine that the Democratic Party doesn't actually like America, or Americans, all that much, because a lot of its voters don't seem to do so.
I'm old enough to remember (but not have voted in) the 1980 election in which Reagan crushed Carter. The vibes that the Democratic Party was giving off then--shame, malaise, weakness--are very similar to the vibes it's giving off now. It took more than a decade before the Democrats recovered from that debacle and regained competitiveness in Presidential politics; hopefully there won't be such a long sojourn in the wilderness this time.
The Dems problem is that we aren't a party of ideas. We are a party of "The other guy fucking sucks so vote for me instead." We need to be a party who tries to do concrete things to make people's lives better. It starts at the local level. Lower someone's tax or energy bill. Fix a pothole. Politicians who do that get elected.
I don't think there have been too many ideas from either side.
I guess tariffs are technically an idea...
That attitude was embodied in Clinton's retort to "Make America Great Again": "America is already great!" This from the party that was swept into power in 2008 with the slogan "CHANGE".
Hubris has a huge cost. The Democrats made the wrong choice at almost every turn, from Biden's election to last night. Losing policies. Losing people.
This was as winnable an election as you will ever see. And they lost in an historically decisive manner.
It may have been a winnable election against *Trump*, considering how disliked he is. The math suggests many of the people who voted for him held their notes while doing so.
Against any normie Republican, assuming any still exist,I think it would have been a total wipeout.
My schadenfreude doesn't extend to you, Jesse.
I think the problem will continue to be that the major offenders in the anti-Trump movement will continue to only talk to each other when they try to do a most-mortem, and will refuse to actually learn any lessons.
If you're looking for a bright spot, I've been pretty well convinced by the Dispatch guys that governing the country is typically politically damaging. Had Harris won, Republicans probably would've gained quiet support on state levels of government.
I would make a distinction between saying things that are true and saying things that are politically effective. If you’re talking about politicians and activists, then it’s totally valid to critique their rhetoric on the basis of its electoral effects.
But if you’re talking about anyone else, maybe you’re giving them advice on how to be better at something that isn’t really their job in the first place (even if they think it is). I want Joy Reid to say what she truly believes about why Trump won, even if saying so isn’t good for getting more votes. The question I would ask is not “is this rhetoric effective?” but “is this analysis accurate?”
Maybe you come up with the same answer to both questions, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that those are, in fact, different questions.
"There has been a lot of strategic investment in a deliberate project of narrowing the progressive tent both by purging a few and by intimidating others out of speaking their minds and it’s basically worked."
And also shaming, constantly, many people based upon their sex, ethnicity, etc., with their only accepted route forward in the world being to constantly admit guilt and try to atone for it (but never successfully, because...one can't change these things). Unless one is born the right way, one is just a second class somewhat tolerated person whose thoughts are not considered to have much value...as the value of ideas depends primarily upon the identity of the person who has them, of course...sigh.
This is not supporting those having a bad time and/or suffering from racism, sexism...or liberal democracy.
More than half of America believes Trump's lies and loves his misogyny, racisim, mean-spiritedness, xenophobia, anti-wokeism and all his other hatreds and resentments. The America Trump attacked relentlessly during his hate-filled campaign does not exist; it is a creation of his reptilian imagination.
Anti-Trumpers are not responsible for this defeat. We're victims and so is every person who voted against Trump. Dems could purge their platform and politics of support for DEI, immigrants, gender identity ideology, multiculturalism., gay rights, abortion and all the other things Trump loves to hate on, and Trump would still demonize us.
He is a profoundly evil person who is irrational, doesn't care about America and captured the presidency solely to exact revenge against his imaginary enemies, who include our Western allies, bask in the admiration of dictators, enrich himself and his family, evade criminal liability for his political crimes against the nation and destroy or subvert the institutions of the federal government.
This is not the Reagan revolution. This is a coup at the ballot box by an illiberal madman who is going to cause great suffering and hardship if he is able to make good on his harebrained ideas and vicious threats.
I can't stand Trump, but you are exactly the type of person Jesse is talking about. Your smug, unreflective self-righteousness and demonization of every member of your out-group is exactly why normies are fleeing to the Trump, who is basically the living embodiment of a middle finger to people like you.
It’s like Jesse made an alter to prove his point about anti-Trump shrieking.
"Evil". "Reptilian". They use the language of Hitler without even the slightest tinge of irony.
New epithet just dropped! Add "monster" to the list.
"More than half of America believes Trump's lies and loves his misogyny, racism, mean-spiritedness, xenophobia, anti-wokeism and all his other hatreds and resentments."
More than half of America doesn't even vote. To think that there aren't some party-loyal voters who are holding their nose and pulling the lever for Trump is silly.
There's a segment of the population that has a weird, unhealthy, almost religious love for Donald Trump. But when you start talking in terms of "Evil" and "Reptilian" I think you might want to take a step back.
Yes, I decided to lay off the math lesson because the innumeracy is such a minor quibble in the context of the above. But 71 million Trump votes thus far is <<<<< half of the ~340 million US population.
262 million Americans are of voting age. The total vote so far is (rounded off) about 139 million. Half of that is 69.5 million. So with approximately 73 million votes, Trump won more than half of the voting population. There.
That's not how math works. If you wanted to change what he said to "half of Americans who are eligible to vote love daddy Trump" then your voting benchmark would be 131 million, not half of voter turnout.
Of course, you’re right. I misspoke. I meant to say that of those who voted, Trump won more than half.
Ah, okay. I misunderstood.
Pedantry is such a bore.
This comment is a perfect example of the loser style of thought and argument Jesse diagnosed. Someone who votes for Trump must love "misogyny, racism, mean-spiritedness, xenophobia, anti-wokeism" and various other "hatreds and resentments." They couldn't POSSIBLY have any other motives, including feeling a fair number of "hatreds and resentments" directed at them from the people who call themselves Democrats or progressives or liberals or leftists or whatever. The left has developed the very, VERY bad habit of dismissing anyone who doesn't vote for their candidates as hopelessly immoral and stupid. Which is why the Democrats are steadily losing their ability to win national elections; you don't win those elections by openly despising the people whose votes you need.
(And for what it's worth, I'm a very frustrated Democrat who voted for Kamala).
I would actually go further and say that many elements of the Left feel the same way toward other less left leaning individuals, even if they do vote the same way. Its kind of like an internal witch hunt or inquisition...everyone has to love the ideas more and take even more extreme positions or risk being purged.
Honestly...how much better off would Harris have been if she had not felt the need to take such stupidly left positions in 2020? If she could have been more like Clinton and taken her role as a prosecutor proudly, I am guessing that alone might have put her over top.
People will always take the low-resistance path. If they don't have to admit a mistake, they don't. If they don't have to feel bad about something they don't.
I think a fair number of Trump voters are avoiding bad news by thinking they can tariff their way out of something, or "it won't be that bad," but the post is about the Democrats' refusing to face some painful truths.
They just elected themselves a president who is a monster. Let's see how well he does in meeting their needs.
How's your strategy working?
Ollie, if Trump was even a tenth as bad as you say he is, this election should have been a tap-in for the Democrats, despite the piss-poor condition the country is in owing to their disastrous policies. Do you have any inkling of how historically bad a candidate Harris had to be to lose to him?