I’ve Settled Down Long Enough to Share 2024 Election Thoughts
I am going to talk about the 2024 United States Presidential election, successfully won by Donald J. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in a fashion that isn’t as resounding as many people think (closest popular vote margin — 1.6% — since Gore v. Bush, 2000), but is absolutely decisive. There have been, charitably, a canyon full of pretty awful bits of analysis on why VP Harris lost, what the Democrats should do in the future, and the implications of understanding the power of Trump as a political figure. My goals in this piece are to breakdown the election using some of my “political science” brain, follow my therapist by channeling tons of negative energy into a productive activity, and try to raise the conversation on how we got the result and what should we learn (or not learn) going forward. I’ll try to break things down in a way that is neat with some subheadings but if you don’t read it all, no worries — you’ll be like many folks who don’t have time or energy to learn about party platforms despite the hours and millions spent on them by campaigns.
Contextualizing the Environment
Before going into blaming everyone for everything, we need to remember that this election is happening on the heels of some really important moments in time. Sure, every moment is important. But some are not as replicable as others. One of my greatest frustrations with the 2024 election is tied to one of the biggest reasons VP Harris (and President Biden before her) couldn’t gain traction. It’s a thing that is a defining moment in our collective lives, should we be lucky enough to be here, but hardly was mentioned at all. It was the event to change everything, but seemingly changed not that much.
Context #1: THERE WAS A WHOLE *BLEEPING* GLOBAL PANDEMIC!!!!
I don’t want to treat you as foolish, but you wouldn’t have any clue that a freaking global pandemic gripped the USA and world over the past four years. You remember? The thing that led to people hoarding toilet paper. The mask policies? The mask wars following the policies? The time where we had no idea if breathing next to a person would risk the lives of our family, friends, and ourselves? Yeah, that apparently was old news. It hardly was referenced at all. And that strikes me as shocking. It was treated like a miniseries from 2020–2022, but when the country was “open again”, all that came with it was left behind. This, it turns out, seems quite consequential when things like inflation gripped the electorate. Analyses of political strategy going forward should not forget the context for this moment. THE INFLATION IS SO HIGH BECAUSE THE GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN WAS UPENDED BY A GLOBAL PANDEMIC. It doesn’t help that companies have gleefully adjusted to keeping some prices higher than before but the GLOBAL PANDEMIC was felt everywhere and the price increases were felt everywhere.
Context #2: Transition President Joe Biden did a poor job of transitioning. VP HARRIS RAN A FOUR MONTH CAMPAIGN.
No part of VP Harris’ campaign for president was normal. And no part of this campaign for president was normal for Democrats. The national party spent a lot of time originally dismissing concerns about President Biden’s perceived (or real, I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter) decline until it was apparent during the first debate in 2024. This was ignoring many calls from the Left to have an open primary and let voters decide on the nominee. But it was a disaster and Biden dropped out late. VP Harris was selected and the apparatus of nominating her vs. Biden needed to come together.
It’s just to say that this isn’t how nominees are usually picked so, again, taking lessons from this process on 1) candidate selection (read: skepticism in nominating a woman or woman of color) 2) campaigning, and 3) how to appeal to voters may be tricky given it happened in an environment that is, to say the least, unusual as hell.
Okay *deep breaths* those are the things that shape all of this. We can proceed.
Why Did Donald Trump Win?
I think the answer is fairly easy: people in the US were really really pissed about the economy/inflation. Every poll (and we will discuss the terrible polling takes) said it was the number one issue. Cost of goods and inflation were the most important issue for most voters all over the nation. It’s the type of thing that is universal in its impact. And that reflects why, in large part, you saw Trump gains all over: cities, suburbs, rural areas, coasts, center of country, everywhere. It isn’t to suggest that other issues didn’t play a factor somewhere, sometime. It is to say that it was the most important factor for most people all over. Below is an image based on work by Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien on the relationship between presidential approval ratings and vote share (reproduced in a piece by John Sides and Michael Tesler over at Good Authority). It shows Biden approval rating in March 2024 and what would happen if it stayed at that level going into the summer. And it’s not good. You will know now that VP Harris won 48.3% of the popular vote.
The inflation/economy story, again an economy/inflation story in direct connection to the GLOBAL PANDEMIC, is not exceptional to the United States. Here is an oft shared picture from John Burn Murdoch of the Financial Times showing the rise and fall in vote share for incumbent parties by election. Narrowly focused on what they call “developed countries”, this is the first time every incumbent party lost vote share in a single year’s worth of elections. Ten countries this cycle including conservative parties, liberal parties, “liberal” parties, and centrist. They all lost vote share compared to the previous year.
For me, the story of the campaign sits on a very clear story that inflation/economic concerns drove voter turnout for Trump and hurt turnout for VP Harris. More than abortion, genocide, health care, transgender fearmongering, or anything else.
VP Harris: Candidate vs. Campaign
Most of the work since the election, with some exceptions, is spent poorly arguing about the failures of the campaign vs. the candidate. I’ll try to divide these out because the issues matter to some degree but there is evidence all over the board to tell lots of different stories.
The Candidate
VP Harris was a flawed candidate to lead the party on several levels, the biggest of which was having such a short amount of time to prepare to be the face of the incumbent party. Even still, she saw her popularity and approval rating rise shockingly quickly after become the presumptive nominee. From 538’s polling averages, VP Harris spent most of the four years being unpopular, as much as a net 17% unfavorable rating in late July. Then she became the nominee and became favorable. On election day, she had a net 2%-point unfavorable rating. This could be because anyone who wasn’t Biden would be viewed as favorable, a bounce of sorts. But there is no doubt that folks were feeling the Harris vibes.
What she also struggled at doing was convincing the people that 1) she was different than Joe Biden and 2) that she wasn’t a super liberal person. On the first point, there is no doubt that this was a campaigning failure. And, in large part, it made understanding her positions pretty challenging because we saw her run for President with a much more liberal agenda in 2020 (it should be noted she was in a traditional primary which tends to bring more liberal ideas before turning to the center during the general election). She ran far away from that Kamala Harris and into a more solidly CENTER-left candidate. It wasn’t enough as survey results repeated showed the public thought she was far too liberal than Trump was too conservative — a finding that regularly enraged me and irritated my Left friends. It feels like it was hard for her to distinguish herself because, well, she was the Vice President and Biden is still the President. Plus, and I know this will get some heat, the Biden White House ushered folks out of the intensity of the inflationary period faster than most other nations. She could have and should have distinguished herself further but overall, I think we got who she was and it seemed to have been a favorable person dragged down by the unpopular Biden presidency.
On the second point, Harris being too liberal, this ties into a good debate on the issues! Should she have condemned the genocide and called for a ceasefire more directly? I wish she did but I don’t think it made a big difference to most voters, particularly in swing states. It probably didn’t help turnout in safe seats. NOTE: Harris recreated the Biden coalition in many swing states but her lower overall voter turnout is due to decreases in uncompetitive districts. Trump increased his 2020 vote share by around 2.5 million votes; Dems lost around 6.8 million votes. I doubt this was because she was too liberal. I also think it’s not nearly as clear to me, sitting in this centrist country, that more liberal positions would equal an easy win. Namely, there is the fact that moving positions could jeopardize losing votes from other parts of the gigantic tent that is the Democratic party. Plus, on the issues, folks tended to like her slate of issues.
Two points on this. First, some data on what people think about the candidate policies. Below is from a YouGov survey which tested a HUGE set of policies among the people. Each dot is a policy position. Harris had a more favorable set of issues. And that favorability was true among independents and Trump supporters. Read more about the survey and findings in this Washington Post piece here. The point here is that the issues were favorable, but that is NOT how elections are won. Not all the issues are weighted equally. Democrats need to get better at messaging. President Biden was a terrible messenger for his administration. Democrats, per usual, were not good at narrative building and it cost them in an environment that was not great for them.
The other point on the issues is the other big one was immigration and the crisis at the border which, it pains me to say, is a space where the American voters want a much more aggressive response. The first three years of the Biden administration saw a comparatively liberal set of immigration policies, inspired by the desires of the voters in 2020 coming off the Trump years. But as border crossings increased, the public soured. Republican governors using migrants as political pawns, truly terrible behavior, seems to have been politically effective. Immigration was the second largest issue, meaning economy/inflation and immigration/migration dictated the top-of-mind thoughts for voters. The Biden/Harris White House did pivot to a more conservative posture on migration and asylum seeking too late and ultimately left themselves vulnerable to attacks and — again — responding to narrative. Not defining it.
And still, flaws noted, they may have run the best campaign possible. The national environment was about +6% for Republicans but in the swing states, Harris overall ran much more competitively only seeing a +3% Republican environment. It tells me that where she dedicated the most resources and campaign effort, the margins were tighter. That could be a get out the vote effectiveness or messaging, but it shouldn’t be dismissed in a complicated story on what does or doesn’t work.
Small note: You may want to read into the success of ballot measures across the nation on “Democratic” issues like minimum wage increases or abortion protections enjoying support in GOP states. You should, but you should keep in mind a strong track record of GOP voters being selective on specific issues compared to their party affiliation. The message: advocate and deliver on popular priorities (or get the barriers to action away by taking action directly to the people). Monica Potts wrote about his in 2022.
And Now, the Working Class
I wanted to spend some dedicated time here because many of the Dem strategist types that talk a bunch about what they would do if they were in charge have been making a singular case about Democrats abandoning the working class. And this comes up in the context of Democrats are focused on the wrong issues.
This is irritating.
There is a larger point that Sen. Bernie Sanders and others are making to center issues relevant to low/mid income voters. Class politics is real and the Democrats need to focus, not abandon, the working class in pursuit of some other, far-flung ideals around protecting wall street partners or, for others, transgender protections (we will return to this later). A small distinction, with a notable difference, is about the gap between advocating for policies and executing them. Biden should get credit for advocating for a fairly robust (in US terms) policy agenda that adopted several liberal ideas.
Do you remember the Build Back Better program? The $3.5 trillion package to that would extend paid family leave, expand affordable housing, broaden the Medicaid, ACA, Medicare trifecta, provide universal pre-kindergarten, and revive the child tax credit? Revive that child tax credit that led to a steep reduction of child poverty across the USA? I remember it. I remember that the white house pushed it and Democrats got behind it and the Left and mainstream supported it. And I remember Sen. Joe Manchin killed it. Then it became a $1.75 trillion bill. And it died, despite it being tied to the bipartisan infrastructure bill (a policy that was popular but no one cares about because it only matters when the projects put people to work). Between the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS act — there is a lot of solid groundwork there for the middle class. It was Sen. Sanders who said that President Biden was the most progressive President of his lifetime (which may not be saying much but it’s something that does matter).
All I’m suggesting is we have got to separate out a party that wasn’t willing to do the work of advocating for the working class from a party that did not have enough votes (in many cases two votes in Manchin and Sinema, both relieved of their duties from the Senate) to execute on those issues. I’m suggesting that a pathway forward with policies folks support and an agenda that centers on the working class needs to have effective leadership to turn into meaningful policy. Democrats, to my eye, have an execution problem that won’t get easier until they bring in senators willing to fight the fight.
Party operatives and insiders and legislators may want to spend some time figuring out how a couple legislators could upend a policy agenda that seemed to be the solution to so many of their self-proclaimed problems.
A Party Fighting “Wokeness”, Whatever That Means
I am going to do my best here and try to stay calm. And try to avoid the explicit tag for language in this post. There has been a huge bit of digital ink spilled on the idea that Democrats, and maybe the Harris campaign specifically, spent too much time on woke issues. Example? Supporting transgender people at some point in time. Seriously, where was the massive campaign expenditure and messaging apparatus by the Harris campaign to say loudly and proudly that they were making transgender rights, safety, and support a primary issue for all Americans? I missed it — in large part — because it didn’t happen. I know the Trump campaign made it a massive focus in national ad buys through October. And I know the Harris campaign didn’t counter the narrative being built effectively. But this gets to where narrative is more pervasive to lived experience.
There is a clear campaign among disingenuous cowards — commentators, “analysts”, political officials — to scapegoat the failures of the campaign to “wokeism”, a term effectively bastardized to mean any and everything. It’s the second most effective destruction of words that have meaning only behind “fake news.” It’s disgusting to watch happen all over. It’s a narrative that does not have any real standing in facts and it’s shameful because it suggests that advocating for people isn’t something that Democrats should do. That those advocating for the well-being and safety of a consistently under threat population should shut up so we can win elections. That the meager gesturing from political leaders is too loud and too much. That’s not a party strategy that is going to inspire any one; that’s a strategy that will alienate and foster distrust that the existence of a marginalized person is merely a voting transaction of convenience. Either have principles or don’t. But the speed and quickness to fault advocacy for trans athletes, students, and people is sick. It’s also cowardly because there is one space that folks don’t want to address and it’s under pinning all of this.
This is also, arguably mostly, about the reaction to the murder of George Floyd.
You remember when congressional leaders wore Kente cloth and knelt for eight minutes in response to the murder of George Floyd? And the words “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were seen as ways forward to address systemic racism? Yeah, those days are over and there has been a full retreat from all of this. I believe, at my core, that the talking points around “Dems being too woke” is about this and people don’t want to own it. It WAS a moment where leaders were boldly talking about racism and it was a moment of action. It actually had some sustained attention and support. And then backlash. And then distancing.
I suspect many people, understandably from a political lens, don’t want to draw the ire of Black backlash by attaching “too woke” with “disgusting murder on film” but the sentiment feels aligned with the data. Something to hold but all of this feels like over the top non-sense. As discussed earlier, there is conflicting data on what pathway to success is most effective. Progressive senators won and lost. Centrist senators won and lost. Ballot measures had success and failure in red and blue states. But there was no concerted effort to center the voices and experiences of the trans community in this election cycle, so to pin the blame on that group is mighty pathetic.
I want to be clear here: a party that should value working class folks, as people say, should value the range of working-class people across the country. You can advocate for policies for working class folks — there are plenty available — but that needn’t come at the expense of shelving rights for some over others. It’s not choosing who is protected and who is an inconvenient sacrifice to the political machine, churning through campaign dollars only to realize the errors of their ways are built into the hypocritical fabric that drapes a spineless set of leaders. That is a party doomed to fail every time.
Just End This Already
The overall point here is I have a lot of thoughts about what happened (or didn’t happen). I don’t think the Democrats are in some type of crisis, need to do some soul searching, that this Trump win is a “mandate”, or that the trajectory of national political positioning is damaged. This was a close election which enjoyed high turnout, record highs in many of the swing states, in decidedly distinct conditions that shouldn’t be the foundation for all grand decisions. I do think Democrats need to offer 1) clearer, direct solutions to people, 2) message better to voters what they believe and why they are good stewards of governance, and 3) should embrace a strategy that allows them to dictate messaging and not be defined by their opposition. In all, Democrats need to look around at where they are TODAY and run a campaign built for TODAY and TOMORROW, not a decade ago. The brilliant thinker and wordsmith Osita Nwanevu, a must read on everything, captured this in The Guardian:
Clearly, to many of the voters who mattered most in this election, Trump is eccentric, uncouth, but not an especially dangerous politician from a party they have long trusted more on the economy — the fully normalized standard-bearer of the only two real options Americans have when they go to the polls.
Other voters who also mattered clearly saw Trump just as Democrats do – a bomb-throwing threat to politics as usual – and decided to vote for him precisely on that basis. And it’s this constituency that Democrats, moving forward, will probably have the hardest time pulling into the fold. Decrying Trump’s threat to our norms and institutions was a message that resonated primarily with Americans who respect them in the first place – not disaffected voters convinced, justifiably, that the wealthy and well-connected really run the show in Washington or cynics who figure their politicians should at least be entertaining if they can’t actually do anything to help them…
The long Obama era is over. The familiar homilies – about how there are no red states or blue states and Americans share a set of common values and working institutions novelly and externally threatened by agents of chaos like Trump – never described political reality. They now no longer work reliably even as political messaging. The hunt should be on for alternatives.
It’s my hope that we won’t waste time hunting for alternatives using bad takes, lazy analysis, no data, and unremarkable processes to find the alternatives that could be the low hanging fruit the party routinely leaves on the tree, soon to be upended by climate disaster.
