Monday, November 11th. Jon Fuhrman
About that prediction of 377 Electoral Votes for Harris – oops!!! Nowhere close. And it will be worse, with a Republican Senate and House. What happened? Where do we go from here?
What happened is still being sorted out. California still has nearly 4 million uncounted ballots. They won’t make a difference in the bottom line. But they, and the other uncounted ballots from around the country, do add to the story.
First of all, it was NOT a landslide. Yes, Trump won both the electoral vote AND the popular vote – something no Republican has done since George Bush in 2004. He even got more popular votes this year than in 2020 (initial reports didn’t account for all the mail-in ballots). But the margins were small, sometimes excruciatingly small, in most swing states – 30,000 votes in Wisconsin (out of 3.4 million), 80,000 votes in Michigan (out of 5.6 million), 145,000 votes in Pennsylvania (out of nearly 7.5 million).
Yes, we lost the Senate, because we lost 3 Toss-Up seats in tough states (Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania) that had been recognized, and targeted, since last year as Democratic vulnerabilities. We did hold our seats in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.
Finally, the GOP will retain control of the House, but their majority is likely to slip from 221 – 214 down to 220 – 215, and possibly even less. That doesn’t say landslide or mandate to me
(One interesting note – as of this afternoon, the President-elect has tapped two House members for senior posts in his Administration. This may enormously complicate Speaker Mike Johnson’s task of keeping a majority together. Vacant House seats are filled by special elections, which can easily take 3 – 5 months . Those special elections might also become referenda on the early Trump administration’s successes or failures – like losing the Ukraine or starting mass migrant detentions.)
We did, however, see, nationwide, a pretty consistent slide to the right, with both more votes for Trump and fewer votes for our side than in 2020. It was actually less pronounced in the battleground states – perhaps 1.5% compared to 2020 – but definitely more pronounced – perhaps 3% or more – in the other states.
So what lies behind our consistent and nationwide decline in top-line support? Unfortunately, in nearly every other developed democracy, we saw a similar pattern following Covid – an anti-incumbent wave that often swept the incumbents out of office. There seems to be a generalized anger at the establishment. It certainly showed up in virtually every poll in the US over the last two years; the right track-wrong track questions always showed dramatic majorities saying we were on the wrong track. Add to that the widespread sense that the economy was bad and that they, and people like them, were suffering.
Arguing that, in fact, by all the standard macro and microeconomic indicators, the economy was actually in relatively good shape (low unemployment, low inflation, soft landing, no recession, strong job growth, strong GDP growth), was simply ineffective. People felt, and knew from their own gas costs and the grocery costs and the rent costs, that they were struggling. They were angry, and they took it out on the incumbents, and that’s us.
That discontent was focused primarily on the top of the ticket. Many of our Senate and House candidates did just fine, outperforming the Vice President. Further, on most issues (particularly including reproductive rights), the voters agreed with our position, enacting new state constitutional amendments in Missouri, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and voting 57% in favor in Florida (where they needed a 60% majority to enact a constitutional amendment).
So the Democratic “brand” was not toxic. Our issues were not toxic. Our arguments may have fallen on deaf ears, but I don’t think our basic position was repudiated by voters. Ironically, it was we who actually had ideas and policies to benefit the working class, but they were just ideas and couldn’t break through the anger.
I’m not sure anything we could have done or said (including having other candidates, other VP picks, having a contested primary) would have made any difference. I think we needed to say that, in the process of saving the nation from the Covid epidemic, we did indeed dig ourselves into a hole. Prices are up. People are hurting. And the first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging: we stopped digging and got inflation under control. But we haven’t started building a ladder to get people out of the hole. The Vice President had proposals, in fact far better ones than Trump had, but in truth hadn’t begun implementing them despite being in the Administration for four years. Part of that is clearly because the GOP was unwilling even to consider any Biden proposals and was barely willing to keep the government operating, let alone tackle any serious policy proposals.
Perhaps we could have made this case more effectively, more loudly, and backed it up with a few executive actions to put some meat on the campaign bones. But even that likely would not have carried the day. The basic discontent with the nation’s course was too widespread. We should remember, however, that despite all these obstacles and headwinds and mountains to climb, Harris ran a really solid campaign that came within inches of succeeding. Not many others could have done that.
One other issue deserves some thought. It remains astonishing to many of us that, whatever the policy issues or economic suffering or cultural disagreements, so many folks could stomach voting for Donald Trump, knowing his felony convictions, his crassness, his venality, his utter ickiness. I’m thinking that we, as a nation, are suffering from outrage fatigue. He has done so much, so many terrible things, that we just write them off. Move along, nothing new to see here.
This may also be at the root of why Trump received somewhat more votes in 2024 (probably around 77 million, after all the mail-ins have been counted, versus 74 million in 2020) while Harris received significantly fewer votes than Biden did (about 74.4 million versus 81.3 million). Clearly, some Biden voters jumped ship and voted for Trump, but it seems clear that millions of Biden voters just stayed home. To be fair, 2020 had a record turnout – hugely more than in 2016. Perhaps the reason for that turnout was the anger and fear and concern that voters across the spectrum had about Trump, and that emotion was missing this year. The Jan. 6 riot is four years ago now. The threat to democracy is perhaps seen mostly as Trump’s bluster and bumbling rhetoric (assuming those low propensity voters are aware of it at all). No one really listens to him or believes what he has to say (other than the fringe MAGA zealots, who revere every spoken word).
Even though the Vice President will, in fact, get around 74 million votes, no small feat, had the other 4 million or so voters who came out for Biden/Harris in 2020 come out for her once again, she would have, at least, won the popular vote, and perhaps the Electoral College as well.
What might bring them out in future elections, and what might we do to lure back the millions of Biden/Harris voters who jumped ship this time and voted for Trump? Do we radically change our brand? Do we reimagine our voter contact schemes? Do we swing left, swing center, swing right?
Perhaps the answer is simpler – perhaps it’s just not being the incumbents. In 2020, people had had enough of Donald Trump. We didn’t really position ourselves much differently, do our voter outreach much differently (except for being constrained by Covid), construct our brand differently. People just didn’t like Trump – a lot! – so record numbers of voters turned out.
Just wait two years. Wait for Trump to impose tariffs and see inflation spike. Wait for him to start mass deportations and see families torn apart, agricultural industries hobbled, and grocery store shelves empty. Wait for him to let Putin take the Ukraine, and then Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia. Wait for him to coddle Israel and let them run amok in Gaza and the West Bank. The pendulum will turn. Yes, many people may suffer over the next two years, but it may turn the 2026 mid-term elections into a landslide, except not the sort of landslide Trump was anticipating.
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