Why I Was Wrong And Where I Was Right (Part 1)
Or, What Really Happened With 2024.
Sorry for the long vacation, everyone. Law school—combined with around-the-clock phonebanking—caught up to me. I am still playing a little catch-up on work, but I am in a much better position now, fortunately.
Trump won. Harris lost. I was wrong.
See how easy that was, Donald? Funny how all those election fraud claims you made just simply vanish when you win. Funny how all those elaborate and bizarre conspiracies involving local Pennsylvania news stations vanish too.
Which makes you wonder: if Democrats were so good at rigging elections in 2020, why wouldn’t they have done it in 2024? Especially when they had such a great opportunity to put Trump out to political pasture forever? As a 2-time loser? These are questions every Trump election denialist should ask themselves.
Still, now is the time for Democrats to be asking themselves some questions too. Mainly, what happened? And what does “the resistance” do next?
I’ll have to save that last question for another post. Or another series of posts. Or, really, another 4 years’ worth of posts. Each day will bring new challenges, and we must ensure that democracy holds. Our institutions are only as strong as the people who love and cherish them. We can either be a part of that or we can help democracy die.
President Biden said it best: “the America of your dreams is calling for you to get back up.” Let us chase after the America of our dreams once again. And as Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Yet I digress. To move forward, we must look back. Why did we lose? For that answer, I highly encourage you to read my brother Michael’s posts on the matter if you haven’t already (see here and here). I am very happy to say that his post-election autopsies have been getting rave reviews. One person called Michael’s first piece “one of the best political articles I’ve read in months” (emphasis mine). On a similar note, I highly recommend former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s insightful post-election take as well.
But now I have to face my own reckoning: why did I get my own pre-election take so wrong? And why did people like Michael Moore—who got it right in 2016 and 2020—get it so wrong too? Well, on the most basic level, we overlooked the signs of cracks in the Harris coalition. To be sure, I knew they were there, and I wrote about them as often as I could.
At the end of the day, I still believed the midterm results, the gender gap (and the assumption that we could more reliably rely on female voters leaning our way to turn out), and the slightly brightening economic picture gave Democrats the fundamental advantage.
I was definitely wrong there. However, looking back on it, it makes total sense. The midterm voting bloc represented the most consistently engaged parts of the American electorate. As 2016 and even 2020 attest to, Trump’s presence on the ballot brings out a unique set of voters. Many of these voters connect with Trump on a deeply personal level, either on cultural issues like masculinity and/or fears of being left behind by the status quo.
I discounted the strength of that personal connection, and I overestimated my familiarity with “the manosphere.” I ultimately assumed that these types of voters got merely good vibes from Trump. Likewise, I did not think these good vibes were enough to get these young men to tune into politics and to turn out for Trump in enough numbers to get him elected. To me, the manosphere seemed much more concerned with individual change (self-help, etc.), cultural issues, and cultural figures like Andrew Tate than governing.
From what I can tell, Trump was able to successfully connect the culture of the manosphere to the new Republican politics of manhood. For similar reasons, I underestimated the shift of Latinos and young male voters (18-24) towards Trump. Frankly, I should have seen the signs on just an anecdotal level. Speaking to my peers at law school. Seeing my old middle school acquaintances turned hard Republicans. The shift among my generation is real and it was hiding in plain sight.
The highly-engaged, social issues-focused, hyper-educated midterm electorate papered over all those shifts occurring underground.
(to be continued)