There were many theories about how this election would turn out. I catalogued almost a dozen myself.
But in the end it turned out to be about the fundamentals. No party had ever won a presidential election when its incumbent president had approval ratings this low. Joe Biden’s approval hovers around 40%. Most elections are about the economy. So was this one. The economy was identified as far and away the biggest issue for voters. Despite a lot of great top-of-the-graph numbers, too many voters were still smarting from inflation. And finally, no party has won a presidential election when this many voters — three-quarters — thought the country was headed in the wrong direction.
All of that turned out to be more than Kamala Harris could overcome. But I thought she turned out to be an excellent candidate who ran a pretty much flawless campaign. She worked hard. I thought she had the right message. She didn’t lack for money or organization. As Democrats start to point fingers in the coming days, you won’t find me pointing one at her.
Democrats, including me, hoped and thought (turns out there was more hope than thought going into that) that abortion would be the big motivating issue for voters despite how they felt about the economy. I also hoped that Harris had left Biden’s poor approval ratings with him and chartered her own image. And I thought that half of those who thought the country was headed in the wrong direction thought that because a man like Donald Trump could be the nominee of one of the major parties.
We were wrong in all cases.
Now the question becomes the survival of American democracy. Trump has a mandate to do something about the economy, though exactly what isn’t clear. Inflation is pretty much under control now, unemployment is low, real wages are doing better, the stock market is at record highs. It’s not clear to me what exactly the problem is that Trump has to fix. And slapping on more tariffs while deporting 11 million members of the work force will not help.
What Trump does not have is a mandate to dismantle our system of government. I admit that I just can’t get my head around voting for a man who talks about using the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents and using the U.S. military to quash domestic protesters, a man who refers to journalists as “enemies of the people” and uses language reminiscent of Hitler. I get that half the nation is frustrated. But frustrated enough to vote for this guy? Apparently so.
What I don’t know is how many Trump voters just don’t take him seriously when he talks about these things, how many disapprove but look the other way, and how many actually support his authoritarianism. I guess we’ll find out.
And here’s the best thing I’ve read so far in the postmortems. It comes from center-right New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who voted for Harris.
The dismissiveness with which liberals treated these concerns was part of something else: dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes. Concerned about gender transitions for children or about biological males playing on girls’ sports teams? You’re a transphobe. Dismayed by tedious, mandatory and frequently counterproductive D.E.I. seminars that treat white skin as almost inherently problematic? You’re racist. Irritated by new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive but feels as if it’s borrowing a page from “1984”? That’s doubleplusungood.
The Democratic Party at its best stands for fairness and freedom. But the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity. It also, increasingly, stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms on hundreds of millions of Americans who want to live and let live but don’t like being told how to speak or what to think. Too many liberals forgot this, which explains how a figure like Trump, with his boisterous and transgressive disdain for liberal pieties, could be re-elected to the presidency.
Today, the Democrats have become the party of priggishness, pontification and pomposity. It may make them feel righteous, but how’s that ever going to be a winning electoral look?
I voted reluctantly for Harris because of my fears for what a second Trump term might bring — in Ukraine, our trade policy, civic life, the moral health of the conservative movement writ large. Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
“But I thought she turned out to be an excellent candidate who ran a pretty much flawless campaign.”
Not seeing that, not even in the least. Is that just my failing? I’m not alone
From Jack Marshall @ethicsalarms.com: “my insistence several months ago that the ugly mess Democrats had made during the past four years, the cover-up (and not a very good one) of Biden’s senility, the gaslighting, hypocrisy and lies by the party and its media allies, and most of all, the Soviet-style elevation to attempted anointed leadership of a DEI radical leftist without any genuine qualifications for President would end in a national election rebuke.”
It gets worse:
“the Democrats lost because they ran a terrible candidate who ran a terrible campaign, and they still thought they could get away with it because they think the public is stupid. They thought that ‘she’s sort of black and female and not Donald Trump’ was all they needed to win the White House. It was an insult.“
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Yes, it turns out slightly more than half of the US wouldn’t know a decent honest person if they ran for president and surely don’t have the decency to be gracious winners even….
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You’re claiming that the 45% of Hispanics, ~24% Black males, and sundry other non-white demographics who voted for Trump wouldn’t, to borrow a phrase, “know a decent honest person if they ran for president“
Priceless!
“don’t have the decency to be gracious winners even….”
You want ungracious? Head over to neighborsnextdoor (THEY Report/YOU Decide) and report back with your observations of graciousness.
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that is so very true, I held my nose, and voted for the Donald. because the other option was so much worse.
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You aren’t the only one C_G. I’ve commented multiple times on this site about Harris’s vacuity.
Dave, question for you. Why do Dems think democracy is so fragile it won’t survive a second Trump presidency?
I am extremely grateful to see that the DNC strategy of abortion, not Trump and we’re shoving this empty pantsuit down your throat strategy was spectacularly unsuccessful. Parading around Cheney and other R neocons put an exclamation point on this.
Dave, the majority of people do not believe in the bilious output of the BS factory from the government on any statistic. Many people are suffering financially. Real wages are flat, at best. Lawfare, which Biden’s administration has been endlessly pursuing, endless wars, censorship, DEI etc, etc etc were seen for what they are. The priggishness adds the second exclamation point.
As I haven’t seen much in the way yet of honest deep soul-searching, I don’t see the Democrats coming out of this in one piece. Many of the D leaders and sycophantic press are scared sh*tless that their tactics are going to be used against them. I hope they can get back to their roots, but I don’t think that’s realistic in any sense.
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Paul Fanlund did a nice job of summing up why this feels so bad. This time people knew what they were getting with Trump and they voted for him anyway, which tells me an awful lot about the people in this country.
https://captimes.com/opinion/paul-fanlund/opinion-face-it-donald-trump-s-cult-is-now-an-american-majority/article_014c6530-9c62-11ef-9224-2fac9676ad58.html
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Joe Scarborough Admits democrats Are ‘RADICALLY DISCONNECTED’ From Americans
Et tu, Joe…?
MONEY QUOTE: “TAKE A GOOD HARD LOOK […] There are so many questions for the democrats to answer, but one of them, the one that I just saw, THAT WILL BE STARING THEM IN THE FACE if they don’t do something about it, is that 45% OF HISPANICS VOTED FOR DONALD TRUMP.” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
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Fanlund does an excellent job of demonstrating why the dinosaur that is mainstream partisan media is dying a long slow painful death.
“I have no time for those who today might now try to assign blame to Democrats.”
“And Harris should be celebrated for her heroic, passionate and error-free 100-day campaign that came up short.” Wow. Error-free because it was content-free.
Democrats, very sadly, are constitutionally incapable of taking a good long hard look in the mirror.
I genuinely mourn the demise of the party I supported for 30+ years. We need a party that is a bulwark against the neo-cons. Unfortunately, that party does not exist.
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Well, sir, you did it the nail on the head. I voted for the Donald, because there was no one else to vote for, until the Democrats wake up, and smell the coffee, they are living in a fantasy world.
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I agree with Bret Stephens’s analysis and vote. As a centrist Democrat, I have both right-of-center views and left-of-center views. I find the far Left to be a pack of insufferable nincompoops. They have undeserved influence in the Democratic Party and have cost us dearly in our elections. The phrase “Defund the police” was one of the greatest gifts that the Left ever gave to the Republican Party. It is a gift that keeps on giving. In the last half of my career as an IT project manager, I had the great fortune to work with police officers and Sheriff’s deputies. They were the finest professionals I ever met.
Like Bret Stephens, I voted for Harris for the same reason that he did. With Trump’s election, Ukraine is dead. NATO is dead. Russian tanks will head west with little opposition. China’s power will increase unchecked. America under Trump will become isolationist and will withdraw from the world until both the Chinese and the Russians are at our doorstep.
I understood and respected the old Republican Party. They, more than anyone else, understood that the Russian empire has never been, and will never be, our friend. Under Trump, the Republican Party is no more. The only branch of government that will exist after the Electoral College votes are counted will be the Executive Branch, and only one person’s opinion will matter.
With unchecked power, Trump will answer to no one, not even to the people who think that they are his allies. He demands loyalty and gives none in return. He may implement some of Project 2025’s greatest hits, but he will also get us all killed.
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Those in here that call Harris an unqualified DEI hire remind me of the fundamental reasons that this election turned out like it did. Racism and sexism. If one simply compared resumes and bios with no names, race, or gender attached, it would be Trump that is more unqualified and Trump who got ahead in life more based on his identity than his talents.
Yeah, there are people posting here that don’t like being associated with racists or sexists and blame the people who point it out rather than the people who act it out. They are acting like snowflakes who are afraid to be honest with themselves. Or working on a cover up of reality.
I support democracy and respect the will of the majority even when I disagree. I’m also free (for now…) to describe the majority using words that accurately reflect reality. Sorry if it makes you upset.
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https://www.unz.com/article/the-politics-of-cultural-despair/
Chris Hedges:
“In the end, the election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering. Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable. Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power.
This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides — especially among middle-aged white males — morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires. These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.”
Boiling down the results to racism and sexism is childishly simplistic.
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Occam’s Razor, the simple explanation is often the correct one. For all that I agree with in your comment, Trump isn’t a solution to any of those issues either. He is literally a liar.
After saying “I didn’t vote for Harris because of issue X,” the immediate logical next step is “Trump is preferable to Harris on issue X because…”
But most stop before taking the next logical step. Commenters on this blog say they didn’t vote for Harris because of issues that reflect similarly or worse on Trump: “Harris’s vacuity” “empty pantsuit” “Lawfare” “censorship” “incapable of taking a good long hard look in the mirror” “living in a fantasy world” “they think the public is stupid” “cover-up of senility” “the gaslighting” “hypocrisy” “lies” “without any genuine qualifications for President”
Even on most policy positions (which are conspicuously few in the critiques in these comments), I can certainly understand disagreeing with Harris’ policies. But then you have to turn to Trump, who is remarkably incapable or unwilling to coherently discuss policy whatsoever. He doesn’t even demonstrate any understanding of what his few clear policy positions will require, entail, or result in (tariffs, deportations for example). The only clear set of policies are written in Project 2025, which to highlight his incredible capability for lying, after saying he didn’t know anything about it will indeed be the administration’s blueprint. And guess what, the policies in Project 2025 that could perhaps address real problems in our society (I’ve read it, there’s actually stuff in there I agree with) will be exactly the ones that are skipped over.
Come on folks, be honest. Why hold Harris to a different standard than Trump? Racism + Sexism
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