Here We Go Again
13 initial observations on an election that went badly
As I said in yesterday’s post, I didn’t expect this to be a close election. I expected polls would be off and the error would fall in one direction. I leaned towards those being towards Harris; but, once again, they were towards Trump. Why? Likely a problem of non-response error, and perhaps he did mobilize more young men than expected — but I’ll leave this to experts like Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, and any other Nates who know about polling, to provide the answers.
This was such a clear and decisive victory that any pet-theory as to why Harris lost isn’t going to cut it. I simply don’t believe there’s anything she could have done that would have dramatically changed this result, and I don’t blame her at all for this loss.
The person I do blame is Joe Biden. Biden never should have ran for re-election, and the Presidency he spent a lifetime aspiring towards — running three times over many decades, only finally being inaugurated in his late 70s — will be remembered primarily for the cover-up of his growing senility, and ushering in the return of Trump. If Biden had let a tough primary happen, and backed the winner of it (likely someone like Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer), then Democrats may still have lost, but it was far from guaranteed.
If a pundit tells you that Trump won because voters are racist, sexist, warped by disinformation etc. — then you should stop listening to them. These people will never be capable of understanding why normal people would vote for Trump, because doing so would require they leave their bubble — socially, geographically, and philosophically — and they are incapable of doing so. There isn’t a single county in the entire country where Harris got more votes this year than Biden did in 2020, and Trump will probably win the popular vote at the end of this (albeit, only by a few percent). That doesn’t happen because of prejudice, particularly when Trump’s re-election came in part because of a sizable increase in black and hispanic voters supporting him. Someone on MSNBC said that Americans just couldn’t stand a mixed-race couple being in power and that’s why Kamala lost; an insane thing to say on it’s face, but doubly so when the Vice President elect, J.D. Vance is married to an Indian woman, and has mixed-race children.
Some people are saying that, had Biden stayed in the race, he would have won, or at least had a better chance. Those people are fucking stupid.
Some people — namely podcasters — are saying that podcast appearances won the election for Trump. These people are also fucking stupid. Trump would have won just as solidly had he never done a single interview, and I don’t think Harris would be the first female President if only she went on more episodes of Call Her Daddy (a podcast whose immense popularity remains inexplicable to me).
This was a decisive win, but wasn’t a landslide. Obama won 365 electoral college votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012 (with 270 needed to win); Trump is only going to win around 300 this race. And if you compare that to true wipe-out elections, this was nothing. In 1972, Richard Nixon won every state but one, pulling in 520 electoral college votes to McGovern’s 17. In 1980, Reagan beat Carter with 489 electoral votes and 44 states, to Carter’s 49 votes and 6 states.
People will dramatically over-read the reasons for Trump’s win. As I said, around the world, voters have been tossing out incumbent governments, and none of those were lead by mentally-decaying 81-year-olds. Inflation is now under control but that doesn’t mean prices have went down — they’re just not going up quickly anymore — and wages haven’t caught up yet. Most voters don’t watch a lot of news, don’t like politics and don’t want to; they just care about being able to live the lives they expected, without paying heinous prices for groceries, and if a government can’t provide that, they’ll vote for the opposition. That’s been true in other Western countries, and it’s true in the States. There are three related points from this:
If COVID never happened, the economy was strong, but everything else had been the same, I very seriously doubt that Trump would have won on his platform opposing immigration, crime, and trans culture war issues. This was just about the economy.
Trump won by probably the slimmest margin that a Republican Presidential candidate could have. If Nicky Haley had been the candidate, the Republican victory would have been even more significant. This wasn’t about Trump; it was just about the economy.
Trump won’t be able to control the economy, which is expected to get worse globally over the next four years — and he’s very likely to make the situation significantly worse. As such, expect Democrats to win in 2028.
I would like the Democrats to get their heads screwed on straight, run stronger candidates, and connect more to ordinary voters, but that isn’t a necessary take away from tonight’s election. Voters like Democrats; they just didn’t want one as President. For example, Democratic senate candidates overperformed in many states that Harris lost, meaning that split-ticket voting really is back; voters were choosing Trump for President but Democrats down ticket.
The most notable, and maddening, Democratic win of the night was Fani Willis, District Attorney of Fulton County in Georgia. Willis was in charge of the easiest, strongest criminal case against Trump, and she screwed it up, trying to turn it into a grand RICO case, which takes way longer, and is way harder to charge; and, as though this wasn’t bad enough, she appointed her lover as a special prosecutor, and then lied about sleeping with him, raising various (time-consuming) procedures around conflict of interest and dishonesty. Technically that case is on-going, and Trump can’t pardon himself for a state crime, but this is done; it’s going to be dismissed and, honestly, rightfully so. Had she done this properly, Trump may well have been in state prison right now, instead of on his way to the White House.
Speaking of state prison; Trump’s sentencing for his dubious New York felonies occurs on November 26th. He could technically be jailed for this, and wouldn’t be able to pardon himself, but there’s 0% change of that happening now.
The happiest Republican victory of the night was for Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia, who won his race for Senate, meaning that he — and more importantly, his charming English bulldog, Babydog Justice — will be heading to Washington.
I’m not going to comment too much on what I expect from a second Trump administration; both because I want this to be focused more on the election than the consequences of it, and because I don’t quite know what it will look like. My worry is that Trump will try some of the insane, immoral, terrible policies he has talked about (e.g. cutting off aid and supplies to Ukraine and forcing them to surrender huge amounts of land to Russia; abandoning Taiwan if China invades; implementing economically crippling tariffs on imported goods, crashing the US and global economy; deporting millions of people; putting RFK Jr in charge of American health policy, and removing fluoride from water; legally pursuing his political enemies etc.). My hope, however, is that Trump will spend most of his Presidency in front of the TV, enjoying the fame of it, and actually doing no governing, deputising to competent bureaucrats who will temper his worst instincts. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Note: I stayed up late last night to watch the election and, given that I live in London, this meant I went to bed at 4:45am. So, excuse some errors and flops in writing style.
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