The election was in many cases inevitable. Incumbents lost around the world, far worse in places like Britain, due to runaway inflation. This was somewhat "delayed" by the Dobbs decision in 2022, which converted a likely red wave into a trickle, and clearly put Dem cheerleaders into a state of false hopes. For one, midterms, and Dems should be poised for a comeback in '26, feature high-propensity voters in a larger way. They are more educated, and afluent. In the general, you get the "rank and file," people who don't bother to vote otherwise. In the case of Trump, who has solely been responsible for an unprecedented turn out with his base for three general's now. Yes, Harris improved slightly on some Biden demos, but lost on others. Most of those losses wound up being in blue states (more on that later), and did not affect the outcome very much. This was the case with the "red" Latino shift. No, what got Trump elected was what worked in 2016. He pushed a simpler message, albeit intertwined with idiocy and intolerance, but populism DOES work, to some extent. That resulted in large-scale growth of his base, but he also mastered independent, late-deciding, and most of all, "new voters." I myself will take the hit for dismissing the scattershot Musk-led approach of pushing low-information, low-engagement people, particularly younger men, into voting Trump. This was highly evident in the large number of ticket splitting and Trump-only votes cast in BG states. Harris and Democrats deserve credit for bucking a lot of this, to ensure that numerous Democrats won razor-thin races in Congress, which she lost.
So what did it? Well, I have digested copious amounts of Monday morning quarterbacking the last few weeks, and the consensus doesn't move far from the mean on what I feel are these main points....
1. Joe Biden lost this election. Trump did a lot, as I point out above, to get the numbers to win it in a more decisive fashion, and a hand-cuffed Harris did all she could, in a comically short amount of time. In reality, she had no chance. Joe Biden passed some significant legislation during his first two years, no question, but most of it has and will continue to take time to get going. Still, he made several poor decisions during that time which came back to haunt him. All of which resulted in a horrible "wrong track" and Pres approval rating which NO incumbent party or Pres has ever won on.
a. Inflation. Biden insisted on the massive "American Rescue Plan," a $1.9 TRILLION dollar stimulus, which on top of what Trump had doled out, likely superheated the economy, and exacerbated inflation. Economists of all stripes warned against this. Biden calculated that job growth was more important than anything, and while he still might be correct, the public was hit with inflation that half or more of the population had never experienced before. I was a wee toddler when Carter's inflation broke his administration, and allowed Reagan to breeze in.
*I would point out that the Federal Reserve increased inflation by purchasing debt securities as protection against pandemic economic downturn.
b. Dysfunction. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a complete fiasco. Yes, Trump set that on its way with his Taliban deal, and yes, the Afghan Army had given up. However, bipartisan Congressional panels found that the US military's recommendations were countermanded by Biden's own impatience on the subject. In the long run, the USA is better off being out, but the perception of dysfunction was very damaging. Biden's foreign affairs continued to take a hit, when his initial Ukraine successes have morphed into a near three-year stalemate, as he's kept Ukraine from neither advancing nor ceding the battlefield, out of concern over a wider conflict. Biden's strategy has been a failure, because Trump is likely months away from shifting course entirely anyway. On Gaza, Biden's hard line against the IDF's systematic destruction of the Palestinian enclave, followed by attacks in Lebanon and Iran, have all followed Biden's hollow admonishments. He and by virtue, Harris, have shown to be largely ineffective on the world stage. Not that strong man Trump was any better prior, but world events have not gone their way.
There was of course, nothing more dysfunctional than Joe Biden's immigration policy. After the health order was struck down in 2021, his administration made an absolute, buffoonish move to take America's limited, and extremely specific asylum language, and throw it out the door. This was down without Congressional approval, and resulted in a non-stop border incursion that officials did nothing to stem. The policy completely blew up in their faces when DeSantis and Abbott decided to bus migrants to Northern "sanctuary cities," which were overwhelmed, and pissed millions of people off, primarily working class voters of color. The lack of a plan or any kind of structure made Biden again look totally inept.
c. "Lawfare." The four-sided indictments handed Donald Trump, a weakened candidate who was unsure of his future, and trailing Ron DeSantis badly, the GOP nomination. Now, I don't know if you can "blame" Joe Biden for this or not, directly, but he certainly could have made a call, and not allowed it to happen. I said at the time, this was risky. The GA and NY cases were a complete joke, and one will never see the light of day, and the other is likely to be thrown out on appeal. Those Democratic prosecutors bowed to party pressure to move forward, buoyed by the cover given from Jack Smith's dual-prosecutions. Even there, only one of them had a real shot, the Jan 6th case, which the Supreme Court gutted regardless. Again, Trump was flailing away to nothing when these prosecutors, plus the idiots in Colorado who tried to toss him from the ballot, only supercharged his campaign and made him a martyr.
d. Not dropping out. Joe Biden got a lot done with Democrat majorities through 2022, he should have taken the hints, and moved aside. I've said before, I'm not sure if ANY Democrat would eventually have beaten Trump with the wrong track numbers where they were. But they had a chance, and those chances faded when Biden pressed on. The result were near-constant gaffes, and the White House seemingly "hiding" the President from the public during the past two years. Say what you will about Trump's lunacy during the pandemic, but he was visible and audible throughout. To his detriment, but when voters had the choice, they decided that Trump's pandemic response, at the time one-sided towards the economy, was something they wanted more of now. Harris was a good campaigner, but she was hand-cuffed. She was given Biden's campaign team, the same team that managed to see him achieve abysmal approval ratings, and who's management came to an embarrassing conclusion with the June debate, and clearly advised her NOT to attack her boss. The result was that swing voters saw her as "more of the same," and a non-starter. A full primary process was needed, and not in August of 2024 but in 2023!!! Biden's refusal to move aside doomed his party's ticket. It made their "democracy" claim worthless, given that their candidate was nominated without a single vote.
Alright, enough shitting on Joe. Is the Democrat Party dead? LOL, of course not. Even bad parties in a 50/50 country are still going to compete, you never know what the next big over-reach of the ruling party will be. They always over-reach. For me, there are two types of voter-movement which affected Democrats this time.
2. The swing voter, he or she of low-turnout, low-information, and low-engagement politically. He or She who apparently cannot be accurately polled. What DO these indecisive people care about? Well this time around, it was the cost of living primarily. Costs which Democrats have just not done much about, at least in a meaningful way. Has anyone wondered why there is a massive, long-term move from blue states to red ones? Yeah, yeah, there's cultural reasons, but that's not the cause. The cause is money. Places like California and New York, which shed citizens at record levels, did so because they are high tax, high cost environments. They keep raising taxes and tolls, and people are not only tired of it, they cannot afford it. This has been happening even before COVID, and the exodus is a major problem. States like Texas, Florida, Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia Arizona, etc, all will gain electoral votes, and they are increasingly tough for Democrats in. There was a time when the Democrat Party was focuses on cost of living issues primarily, in additional to environment, public health, and education. Well, they continue to fail on the first one. Housing construction favors the wealthy, with lower income folks increasingly priced out and forced to move, weakening their voter base. This is a national issue.
3. The higher propensity voter shift has continued to be an issue. This began in 2016, and aside from a massive stay-at-home vote turnout from 2020, has gotten worse. These are voters who vote semi-regularly, watch the news, discuss politics, and leaned center to left for most of their lives. This voter has moved, and for this election, they flat out RAN away from the Democratic party. They are not MAGA. They are not Republican. They are 1000% ANTI-WOKE. That's right, the Democratic Party's allegiance to coastal, university wokism has ruined this party. It has promoted an agency not of equality but equity, a reverse racism which even minorities themselves have polled as being against. Terms like DEI were publicly admonished by growing legions of moderate and center-left individuals. The backlash to corporate DEI was devastating.
Then there's the criminal justice aspect, which has been been maybe the most damaging to the left. Beginning with canonizing George Floyd, Democrats in cities began to tie the hands of law enforcement. The result was widespread crime, both petty and violent. Added to the violence from some freely roaming migrants, almost all individuals having been stopped by police, only to be let back on the street due to progressive Judges. Nowhere has this been more devastating than the metropolises of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, where voters had massive pro-Trump shifts, and voted out a number of progressive mayors, district attorney's and others. The cities have been turned into cesspools. Suburban voters have been treated to non-stop coverage of the insanity for four years.
These voters and more are sick and tired with Wokism. They are fed up with statues of Jefferson or Hamilton being removed and hidden from view. They're fed up with drag queen story hour. They're fed up with PRONOUNS. They're fed up with being told what vaccines you must have, or masks you must wear. Fed up with Columbus Day being converted to Indigenous Day. Fed up with BOYS competing in GIRLS sports. Fed up when the media does things like "hide the Hunter Biden laptop story" or cancel people for questioning public health decisions made, as it turned out, without scientific backing. Most of all, they're fed up with the social media left calling them racists or transphobic or garbage, simply because the LEFT has invented new ways to Nanny-State people. I was flippant to this myself, thinking well it's just MAGA whiners or libertarian martyrs. NO, it's a significant portion of the population. It's growing, and worse of all for Democrats, it's gaining MASSIVE ground with voters 30 and under, especially men. When Joe Rogan laughs at some of the ridiculous nonsense the woke come out with, most of young America laughs WITH him. Democrats will never come back significantly unless they divorce themselves from this idiotic wokism once and for all, as the future demographics are not in their favor on this. You cannot have lousy economic conditions for young people (particularly men) AND put cultural dog collars and leashes on them. George Orwell hath spoken.
So yeah, that was a LOT to read. I expect Trump's Presidency to come up short on most of what he promised, as he's an awful manager of everything, and is surrounded by vultures. He'll tire of Elon Musk quickly. I'm most intrigued to see how long RFK Jr. lasts, as though I support a good part of his health platform, I cannot see where it goes. Case in point, on the other night's Real Time series, while the panel, including noted health expert Dr. Casey Means, applauded Bobby Jr's initiatives, Bill Maher, the skeptic laughed. When they all complained about America's ill health being driven by fast food, Bill stated the obvious, people eat McDonald's because it's "FUCKING DELICIOUS." They all were incredulous, but once again, the comedian had it right. Just like Joe Rogan or John Olliver or Dave Chappelle, always keep your ears open for the comics, because they are the first ones willing to say what the public cannot. The woke have attacked them to no end, I wonder why? They saw through the B.S.
