I Was Wrong About Everything!
But Maybe I'm Right About This
Ahem.
In my last post, I confidently refuted readers who called me an optimist for my assurances that Donald Trump couldn’t possibly win this election. My own sister—a trained clinical therapist—was concerned that I was “practically giddy” in this belief, and friends who called me during the last weeks of the campaign for reassurance are owed an explanation.
I’m not sure I have one. You’ve probably read some of the same analysis I have:
It was Joe Biden’s fault for not abandoning the race earlier, as Nancy Pelosi told the New York Times: “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”
It’s the economy, stupid. A survey by the Associated Press found high prices were the number one concern for about half of all Trump voters. “Voters who felt more anxious about their economic circumstances supported Trump. The sliver of voters who felt more comfortable about their circumstances largely went with Harris.”
- writes, “It proved disturbingly difficult to persuade undecided voters that Trump had been a bad president. Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency—even if they saw these things negatively—were his fault.”
“We are Witnessing a Political Realignment.”
writes, “The billionaire with a gold toilet who promises tax cuts to his billionaire donors is building a multi-racial working-class coalition. If Democrats don’t reverse these trends, it will be checkmate in presidential elections for years to come.”What happened on Tuesday is part of a worldwide wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. Financial Times columnist and chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch writes, “Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, the first time this has ever happened.”
Inflation Inflation Inflation. Washington Post columnist Heather Long writes: “Inflation is up almost 20 percent over the past four years, while wages for rank-and-file workers are up 20.5 percent. But these are averages; not everyone is coming out ahead yet. Voters remember a better scenario under Trump: 8 percent inflation in his first term and 15.4 percent average wage gains.”
Or, as newly re-elected Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the House explained, “People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.”
“The Democrats have not connected with disaffected and pissed-off voters, even though they have implemented or proposed measures that aid them,” David Corn writes in Our Land. “They certainly don’t echo and reinforce these voters’ outrage that the economy is not producing enough high-wage jobs for non-college-educated workers or their anger at elites who benefit from the status quo. Trump does, and, for them, that’s enough.”
His victory was fueled largely by the support from Latino and Hispanic voters, particularly Latino men. The Guardian reports, “There seems to be an attraction to Trump among Latinos, Latino men, that could be a kind of defensive reaction to his aggression and aggressive rhetoric,” said Guillermo Grenier, professor of sociology at Florida International University. “It could be they’re saying: ‘I’m not one of them, you know? I’m an American citizen, I’m voting for you, I’m not the rapist scum, I’m not with them. That’s the other guys, the other immigrants, not the voting immigrants.’”
Women didn’t show up for Harris. According to the BBC, “Across the country, the majority of women did cast their ballots for Harris, but not by the historic margins she needed. Instead, if early exit polls bear out, Harris’s advantage among women overall - around 10 points - actually fell four points short of Joe Biden’s in 2020. Democrats suffered a 10 point drop among Latino women, while failing to move the needle among non-college educated women at all, who again went for Trump 63-35, preliminary data suggests.
Summing up, to quote David Corn again,
Did Vice President Kamala Harris lose because the sour mood of the country could not be overcome by a candidate connected to the status quo? Was it because of her gender and complexion? Was it because the Democrats have been written off by too many white working-class voters (for cause or not)? Was it because many Latino voters were drawn to Trump’s claim he would improve the economy and were not put off by his racism and vow to implement mass deportations? (The Latino vote increased by 13 percent for the GOP ticket over 2020, ending up with only a 53–45 percent edge for Harris.) Was it because white women, despite the Republican bans on abortion, ended up siding with Trump by an eight-point margin? Was it because Harris did not draw more younger or Arab American voters because of the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza? Was it because Harris had supported gender-affirming operations for prisoners (a Trump administration policy), a position that became the target of a massive ad blitz for the Trump campaign?
Yes. Probably all of that and more.
Let me focus on the “more.”
My confidence before the election was rooted in my disbelief that Trump would succeed in winning by energizing a base of “low-propensity voters” who had never before cared about politics. I thought that Trump had maxed out on his voter base, and thought that there weren’t a lot of voters in swing states who had rejected Trump in 2020 but now thought he was just what they were looking for.
Maybe I was right about that—but I didn’t think he could make up the difference with followers of right-wing podcasts like the ones Trump apparently heard about from his son Barron. This from the Telegraph:
Barron advised that he was particularly fond of a character called Adin Ross and that his father should start there.
Ross is a provocateur who has built an enormous online following for his collaborations with celebrities and live streams of him playing video games such as the ultra-violent Grand Theft Auto.
He has been thrown off his preferred streaming platform of Twitch no fewer than eight times for various offences including allegedly allowing homophobic remarks on the site and accessing a pornography website during a stream.
But with an estimated 7.2 million followers, this has only boosted his prominence.
And this from the Guardian:
One 2021 study found that a leading predictor of support for Trump – over party affiliation, gender, race and education level – was belief in “hegemonic masculinity”, defined as believing that men should be in positions of power, be “mentally, physically, and emotionally tough”, and reject anything considered feminine or gay. Some heterodox influencers gained a following by embodying or promoting precisely this brand of masculinity, and giving their followers a script for blaming dissatisfaction on women.
I’m a consultant to the National Organization for Women, and on election night we issued this statement:
“Racism, Sexism, Misogyny and Hate Won This Election, But We Won’t Let Our Democracy Be Destroyed”
Donald Trump won by activating a base of voters who chose his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia over unity and democracy. Kamala Harris wanted to turn the page on Trump, while Trump ran on turning back the clock on equal access to rights we’ve been fighting for the last 100 years.
Kamala Harris’ campaign didn’t fail; voters failed Harris. This result was not a reflection of her ability to lead but of voters’ ability to trust women. For the second time, the most qualified and experienced candidate for President has been defeated because she is a woman. This can’t happen again.
Where do we go from here? While we might feel a mix of uncomfortable emotions and want to retreat, it’s important that we pause, think about what just happened, grieve, and then ask questions about what it will take for us to disrupt the persistence of structural inequalities so that our elections never repeat these same destructive patterns.
Elections cross lines of issues, demographics, priorities, and values. When voters simultaneously endorse abortion rights and then give their votes to Donald Trump, they fail to see how voting for oppression that affects some of us eventually reaches all of us. We can’t stay confined to silos but instead must come together in solidarity and determination to defend everyone’s freedoms and make our intersectional feminist movement stronger than ever.
For those of us who have the capacity to tear up over episodes of The West Wing, or a certain Robert Kennedy (Senior!) quote, who started volunteering for presidential campaigns in high school and believe that politics matters, it’s hard to understand how so many people could vote not to advance their most deeply held values and beliefs but to score points against liberals, hurt the most vulnerable and piss off the elites.
Of course, they don’t realize they voted for the most elite candidate to ever run for President—a billionaire whose main concern is with his billionaire friends.
From CNN: The world’s 10 richest people got a record $64 billion richer from Trump’s reelection
The biggest gainer was Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and one of Trump’s most outspoken and dedicated supporters, whose wealth jumped $26.5 billion to $290 billion Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ wealth grew $7.1 billion a week after defending his decision to withhold the Washington Post’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris. Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, another Trump supporter, saw his net worth rose $5.5 billion Wednesday.
I’m trying not to focus on all the bad things that are about to happen, and instead concentrate on what we can do next to show all the people who didn’t vote in this election why politics is something to be taken seriously, and how elections can bring about the values-driven change we all need.
As a communicator I respect, Frank O’Brien, writes,
Appeal to peoples’ personal identity as determined fighters for the values and principles they believe in. Don’t ask them what they are going to do, but who they are going to be.
That’s the best place to start as we recover from this shock, and get ready for what comes next.
