Why I Was Wrong and Where I Was Right (Part 2)
Or, What Really Happened With 2024
For part 1 of this series, see the link here.
Anyways, to give a quick recap, I had admitted that, well, I did not correctly predict the outcome of the 2024 election. At the most basic level, I was wrong about how much the 2022 midterms indicated a fundamental Democratic advantage against Trump and Trumpian candidates. Like I said in that post, “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 was also mistaken about how the gender gap would play out in the polling places. Namely, I assumed that “the manosphere” support for Trump was more about “good vibes” rather than an actual political movement. That obviously did not hold. Trump—with the rather significant help of experienced Republican campaign professionals like Susie Wiles—converted a cultural/individualistic movement (e.g., focusing on self-help, workout culture, pick-up artists, etc.) into a tune in & turn out funnel for Trump.
How? That is a question I will leave for another post.
Though what else could explain why Trump won and Harris lost? Ironically, among other things, I wonder whether the attempt to rebrand Kamala Harris as “brat” ultimately hurt her more than helped her.
Let me explain what I mean. First, for my non-Gen Z blog readers (or, at least, the ones not caught up on the lingo) “brat” is a word taken from the June 2024 album of singer-songwriter Charli XCX. What does it mean? Well, take this explanation from Charli herself: “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes.”
On the one hand, one might think making Kamala “brat” would make her more approachable to the younger generation. As in, she’s just like us; she says silly things, she dances around, and she has fun. That is apparently what the Kamala HQ crowd thought would successfully end the sprint to November.
Yet on the other hand, it ended up accidentally playing into the narrative that Trump and his campaign wanted to spin about the Vice-President. That is, she was a “lightweight,” seemingly unprepared to meet the moment either domestically or abroad. Obviously, that is a sentiment that only could reinforce the conscious and/or subconscious gender biases of voters.
Even taking all that into account, there was something more fundamental at work here. Many voters—particularly the working class voters who shifted from Democrats to Trump (or did not vote at all)—simply believed “the system” was not working for them. Of course, many voters have not believed in “the system” for a long time. Regardless, in the aftermath of this cycle, we have seen how this anger at “the system” has translated to “widespread and organic” rage and glee at acts like the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
For reference, a recent poll of college students has “found that half view the suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's recent killing extremely or somewhat favorably, and nearly half believe the crime was justified” (emphasis mine). That’s right. Half or nearly half of college students. Taking a look at younger voters at a whole (18-29), an Emerson College poll provides a similar portrait of younger America. In their poll, 41% of young people said that the UnitedHealthcare CEO killing was “acceptable,” compared to 40% of young people who said the opposite.
In that kind of climate, and in an election arguably decided on how the young vote swung, is it any wonder that the angrier presidential candidate won? At least looking at it in hindsight?
Yes, most voters (68%) saw the killing of Mr. Thompson as “unacceptable,” per the same Emerson College poll. At the same time, many of these voters—despite not being angry enough to approve of the killing of Brian Thompson—are angry enough to want to “stick it to the system” in other ways. That is how you get the Trump-AOC voter. That is also why former RNC chairman Reince Priebus could confidently say that “someone in the mold of Bernie Sanders could have won the many Midwestern counties alongside the Mississippi River” (Priebus said this on ABC by the way, as the votes were coming in on Election Night).
Paycheck-to-paycheck voters were in pain. Inflation both increased the economic pain and the psychological pain. Of these, the psychological pain often gets overlooked. That would be a mistake because inflation is like walking on a treadmill. Even if you are actually moving forward, you are doing so knowing that you are getting constant resistance. And that one misstep will send you tumbling back.
Inflation is exhausting and tiring and maddening to the average voter precisely for this reason. Given that, is it any wonder that the voters of the less angry “brat” candidate did not turn out in the numbers that they could have?
Which brings me to my last point. Despite all these electoral advantages, Trump did not win in a landslide. To the contrary, it was one of the smallest popular vote margins of victory since the 19th century. Even worse, he won with less than 50% of the popular vote. Still, let’s break down the “Trump 2024 landslide” a little more, shall we? In 2016, Trump got 46.4% of the popular vote, receiving about 63,000,000 votes. In 2020, Trump got 46.8% of the popular vote, receiving about 74,200,000 votes. In 2024? Trump received only 3 million more votes than he got 4 years earlier.
What’s my point? Well, that Trump gained 11 million more votes from 2016 to 2020, and still ended up with just a little over 46% of the popular vote 4 years ago. But now, in 2024, he won the election with about 49.9% of the vote by making a net gain of only 3 million. VP Harris, by contrast, lost 7 million voters compared to Biden in 2020.
What does that tell me? Either 1) the Democratic base simply could not bring itself to turn out for Harris in the numbers they normally would, for some of the reasons given above, 2) the Democratic voters who might have swung to Republicans in a normal election simply could not bring themselves to vote for a man like Donald Trump, or 3) a mix of both.
Trump—as much as we have all gotten used to his insanity and his antics—did not win because people liked him more. By most accounts, he won in spite of that. He won because people became so disillusioned with “the system” so as to give up on voting for Democrats. Even so, the 51% coalition of 2020 is not gone forever. It is there if Democrats wish to listen to their base and to their concerns (how? By listening to my brother).
That is where maybe I was right. An anti-Trump majority may very well still be for the taking. Though to bring it back into the fold—and bring it back into the fold for good—Democrats need to give their voters a reason to trust that Democrats can truly right the ship before it smashes into the iceberg.