Donald Trump hammered Kamala Harris in the presidential elections. Now the Democrats have organized a circular firing squad.
According to one theory. Joe Biden is to blame.[1] The dotard made himself very unpopular with voters because of the bad stuff—chiefly inflation and immigration–that happened during his administration. Perhaps lusting for power and office, he decided to run for re-election back in 2022. Then the June debate with Trump revealed the great and terrible Oz to the public. Still Biden clung to the nomination for another month. Had he announced that he would not seek re-election in 2022, or had he even bailed immediately after the debate, the Democrats could have had some time to find a strong candidate.
According to one theory, Kamala Harris was a “stiff,” and not in the Celine Dion “stiff person syndrome” sense of the term. She gave speeches and ticked-off sanitized talking points, while Trump was free-associating on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” An un-inspiring candidate failed to draw the votes that the dynamic and charismatic Joe Biden had excited in 2020. (Wait, what?) “Democrats sat out the election,” said one writer.[2]
According to one theory, the problem for Democrats was not with “Populism,” but with “Populists.” Democrats who won where Kamala Harris lost “ran to the left on economic issues.”[3] They attacked “corporate greed” and high prices.[4] The key here is “economic issues,” not “cultural issues” or D.I.E. initiatives. Confederate bathrooms and transgender monuments played no role in the campaigns of the Democratic victors in these cases. “Kamala’s for They/Them” jammed their own pronoun-posturing into the guts of the Democrats and twisted it. “Defund the police” came back to haunt Democrats, no matter how hard they later leaned into John Kerry-esque “I voted for it before I voted against it” dodging around. The Democrats had indulged in an orgy of “condescension and cancellation,” so it’s no wonder they lost the last shreds of their base in the “blue collar/working class/real America” vote.[5]
According to one theory, it’s the fault of the voters.[6] The people who put Trump in the White House are “the most badly informed electorate in modern American history.” About 57 percent of voters had less than a bachelor degree; while 24 percent had a bachelor degree and 19 percent had a graduate degree of some sort. Of voters with less than a bachelor degree, an average of 41 percent voted for Harris, and an average of 57 percent voted for Trump. Of these latter two groups, 53 percent of those with bachelor degrees voted for Harris and 43 percent voted for Trump; while 59 percent of those with graduate degrees voted for Harris and 38 percent voted for Trump. So, if low educational attainment correlated with Trump voters and high educational attainment, why were so many of those without bachelor degrees Harris voters and why were so many with bachelors and graduate degrees Trump voters? Apparently, educational level doesn’t have much to do with being “informed.”
What does affect being “informed”? How about lived experience? According to exit polls, 46 percent of voters said that their family’s financial situation was worse than four years before. Of these people, 81 percent voted for Trump and 17 percent for Harris. Conversely, 24 percent of voters said that their family’s financial situation was actually better than four years previously. Of these voters, 82 percent voted for Harris and 14 percent for Trump. When asked about the inflation in the past year, 75 percent replied that it had caused moderate or severe hardship. On average, 62 percent of these respondents voted for Trump. Of those who said that inflation caused no hardship, 77 percent voted for Harris.[7] Put crudely, Trump voters were inflation-victims and Harris voters were inflation-profiteers. I don’t think that’s what Franklin D. Roosevelt or Harry S. Truman had in mind for the Democratic Party.
[1] “This is all Biden’s fault”—Josh Barro in the NYT, quoted in “Election 2024: How Trump won,” The Week, 22 November 2024, p. 16.
[2] Patrick Murray, Monmouth University, quoted in “Election 2024: How Trump won,” The Week, 22 November 2024, p. 16. Actually, about 950,000 of them voted for Trump and another 72 million voted for Harris. About 8.5 million did sit out the election. Probably busy filling out the immigration papers for Canada.
[3] David Leonhardt of the NYT, quoted in “Democrats: Where does the party go from here?” The Week, 22 November 2024, p. 6.
[4] Final story is not yet written for Casey versus McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate race.
[5] Maureen Dowd of the NYT, quoted in “Democrats: Where does the party go from here?” The Week, 22 November 2024, p. 6; “Democrats: Why Harris lost so badly,” The Week, 15 November 2024, p. 6.
[6] See: Jim Bouton (and Neil Offen), I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad (1973). Good book to know if you like baseball.
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