I know we're all doing the self-criticism struggle sessions, but it just seems so damn obvious in hindsight. This election was a referendum on Joe Biden, one of the most unpopular presidents in recent history. It really was as simple as that.
If it was just inflation, why did Democrats, the party in power, outrun the top of the ticket in every single Senate race? Look at Jon Tester, who outran Harris by 13 points in Montana. Look at North Carolina, where Democrats nearly swept its statewide races. People like Democrats, and people hate Joe Biden.
The reason for the "brat summer" surge is because Harris was a fresh face and even just that switch alone signaled a change from Joe Biden in the voter's mind. The momentum, vibes, and excitement were literally ONLY because she wasn't Joe Biden.
But Harris, probably because she kept all of Biden's staffers for some unimaginable reason, decided to become Joe Biden 2.0. She should have distanced herself aggressively, but instead, she declared on national television that she would do nothing different than him.
That was the moment she lost this race. It's really not more complicated than that, I think.
Yeah you were wrong, but don't beat yourself up over this dude. You were right about Joe Biden's unpopularity and were one of the first people to call on him to drop out. In the end, the voter hated Biden more than Trump, and in their mind, Harris = Biden. Simple as.
This election echoes Humphrey's defeat in '68. VP Humphrey was never able to get off of Johnson's leash, and as a result Nixon won the White House.
I was 100% drinking the Kool Aid for Harris, thinking she represented "generic Democrat." I conveniently forgot Harris achieved her position on the merits of her ability to forget any meaningful political differences between herself and Brandon.
I want to clarify that I am not a Biden Dead Ender, nor one to shrug my head & say, “Democrats did nothing wrong, actually.” But is there a possible explanation which synthesizes the “it’s inflation, stupid” thesis with the “Biden is a uniquely bad candidate” thesis?
I don’t know how you would ever be able to prove or disprove it, but I’m imagining the argument would go something like this:
“Inflation created a uniquely bad environment for a Democratic Presidential candidate, but the hostile environment did not translate in similar ways down ballot. In other words, voters ascribed blame for inflation onto the Biden Administration, but that penalty was not replicated against other Democrats down the ballot.”
She kept Biden staffers because Biden left the race too late. It’s late July, she can’t completely rebuild a national campaign in that time. The best move she made was bringing on Plouffe, who Ettinger never once mentioned. Which I guess makes sense since Plouffe was last in national politics when Ettinger was like 13.
Yeah Kamala should have kicked the shit out of Biden on the campaign trail but that is incredibly difficult to do when she is his sitting VP. Leads to questions of “why haven’t you said anything before” and makes her look like she’s lying.
It was inflation and the economy, which people blame Biden for. Local and state politics also still matter, which is why Tester outran Biden and the NC Dems did well
I mean, isn't comparing Tester like asking how Manchin could be a Dem in the most Trump country in the nation? Some politics is local and top and bottom of the ticket aren't always in lockstep. The other part of the story is Trump transcends party,given his endorsement hasn't meant much and his wannabes are often failures.
I don't necessarily disagree, but there was a clear trend in downballot races that Democrats outperformed Harris nearly everywhere, often by a lot. Look at Ruben Gallego in Arizona, that's not Trump country but he's going to overperform Trump by 6 -- not insignificant! And he didn't run as a centrist either, he's a solidly liberal candidate.
I do agree about Trump being an exceptional force in politics, and I do think "Trumpism without Trump" is in big trouble. Whatever X factor Trump has, it's clear that his flunkies do not have it based on the downballot results and polls.
I know that the 2022 prognostication stuff was what jump-started your popularity but I follow you because I think you're a talented and insightful writer not a Nate Silver-esque prediction wizard. Looking forward to some less current event style pieces again.
I really don’t think you were that far off. You were openly critical of Harris and your criticisms were right.
As an aside, have you considered an article about the failures of transphobia this election? I first started following you cuz i really appreciate that you were willing to call that shit out
Agree. This is not going to be good, and it will definitely be much worse than Trump's first term (because there are no longer establishment con figures to hold back Trump's worst impulses, it'll just be far-right loyalists and yes-men). But it's survivable. The GOP house majority will be even smaller this time, and their incompetence and infighting will prevent Congress from getting much done.
We got lucky, and I unironically thank Nancy Pelosi for this. If Biden stayed in, his internals showed Trump winning New York, New Jersey, Illinois and 400 electoral votes. That would have meant 60+ GOP Senate seats and a House supermajority. Liberalism would have legitimately been dead in the ground for a generation or longer. The psychological damage alone of losing ultra blue states would have been enormous. We avoided the worst case scenario and we live to fight another day.
I just wanted to say that I hope you and everyone else in this community has been doing okay in spite of everything. I was fairly active in the chat but I haven't looked at it or posted in it since the night of the election. Even though you ended up being wrong---WE all ended up being wrong---I'm going to stay subscribed because I think voices like yours are important, especially in times like these, and personally I would like to see your career as a political writer grow because I think you deserve it.
Assessing the cultural zeitgeist, and letting the results sink in after the initial night of shock, I think we're in for a 21st century edition of the Bush administration. Obviously not good, but survivable. I still think Trump is too incompetent to fully implement his disastrous vision, and I think the people saying that he and his advisors have learned from the mistakes of 2016 are underestimating how genuinely dumb they are. I have a contact in Washington D.C who says that several people high up the chain of command are a lot stupider and more incompetent than people realize---I hope that's true this time around. Maybe I'm just coping.
This was a good read, and it couldn't have been easy to write. I can't imagine what the attention was like ever since you got picked up after the midterms and what that pressure means in the world of social media stardom. It either drives you into a thousand yard stare freak like Mr Beast or burns you out.
I think we (the soft left, the Chapo listeners, and Bernie Bros) did let ourselves hope for, or at least prefer, a Kamala presidency if only for a respite before what was to come afterwards, which would have in all likelihood been exactly what we're seeing now: the winners celebrating by casually threatening to rape women on twitter, the promise to keep beating on trans people, the prospect of a mass and mismanaged deportation scheme. It affects how we contextualize the data we see, even though we're instinctively not trustful of Democrats like I assume much of your audience is not. But the reckoning was coming now or in four years because there's nothing pushing back against the forces propelling the grand coalition of freaks and billionaires. Which is also the Democrats' fault. We tried to fix it twice, in 2016 and 2020. What the fuck are we supposed to do?
Not that I predicted Trump winning by any means, but I was getting the Hillary vibes in that last month when Harris was bumping her head against 50% and not getting much above it. Hitting consistent pluralities seems to indicate that Dem candidates are in big trouble in this day and age, I think.
You're a smart guy and I think your analysis is good to have out there. Importantly, you don't compromise it with all the obnoxious lib pablum getting puked up all over the place. We're in the middle of a dark and uncertain political realignment in this country and all the voices against more of the same need to be heard.
To the libs or Democrats reading this, I don't think anybody would have predicted that John McCain would have been succeeded by a Democrat. So if you believe in this political system, necessarily you should believe that you can do something with in it and there's evidence enough that you can. And I wish you luck. Democrats need to stop taking some groups for granted and deciding who they can do without. That's up to you.
From the end of your 'What to expect from a Trump second term' article about Trump's popular vote win:
"Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the economy could somehow get even worse, Biden could have some kind of massive embarrassment before election day, or Trump could wake up, suddenly understand politics, and work to moderate his positions and broaden his appeal.
Or maybe Kamala Harris could end up leading the ticket somehow and do about as badly against Trump as she’s always polled against him."
Great read, although as I mentioned in the chat, I think you should give yourself at least a little more credit for correctly assessing the reasons Kamala lost ahead of time, even if you didn't end up prioritizing them. As an aside, do you still stand by your arguments wrt the death of Trumpism-Without-Trump, or have the election results made you re-examine them?
I think that in two years you may get to enjoy watching people eat crow after you've been reminding them of this. The Chud-American Bund rally two weeks ago is the biggest sign of that.
That's about what I expected, thanks! That's a little promising as long as we can make it through these next four years, and while I readily acknowledge the threat the admin poses, I have a really hard time seeing anything completely gut free and fair elections
RE: Washington not trending as rightward as the rest of the country. As a Washingtonian who has family all over the country and has spent a lot of time in Utah, Florida, and NC for comparison, I have always felt conservatives in Washington are of a slightly different breed. Far more *actual* libertarians (many of whom get along with the strong NW anarchist community) who might vote against Trump strictly due to his authoritarian tendencies. There are also a good number of conservatives who really, really care about environmental protection in a way I've not seen elsewhere, which in my mind leaves the door open to skepticism toward someone who has made noise about killing the EPA. You mentioned it tangentially with Boeing, but unions are also extremely well respected here (see the old jokes about the Soviet of Washington). Purely anecdotal, of course, but that's my take.
Not native to WA but I've lived here for over 20 years and I fully cosign this (also anecdotally). Not that there aren't your basic conservatives here (and plenty of Trump supporters) but there's definitely a strong strain of government hating libertarians up here who understand that MAGA is not their shit
I think way too many people saw you as some kind of prophet, but forgot that you're just a dude. I'll stick with you in the long run, your perspective is very sharp. I think this election has convinced me that democracy has no future in this country, the only way to accelerate progress in our country is through A24's Civil War (2024)
Aside from the horrifying prospect of another Trump administration and what it aims to achieve, a very frustrating part of all of this is the people getting to gloat they "called it" with nothing more than "Trump's gonna win lol". The weaknesses of Harris as a candidate and those of her campaign were clear from the beginning and pretty much only got worse as time went on, which you pointed out all along the way without pulling punches. But at the same time, there was really no reason not to take signals like the Washington primary, previously reliable pollsters, the Selzer poll, etc., as anything but unambiguously positive. But here we are.
Great article. I can say you weren’t too far off; the election was always a coin toss between Trump winning every swing state and Kamala doing the same.
I know we're all doing the self-criticism struggle sessions, but it just seems so damn obvious in hindsight. This election was a referendum on Joe Biden, one of the most unpopular presidents in recent history. It really was as simple as that.
If it was just inflation, why did Democrats, the party in power, outrun the top of the ticket in every single Senate race? Look at Jon Tester, who outran Harris by 13 points in Montana. Look at North Carolina, where Democrats nearly swept its statewide races. People like Democrats, and people hate Joe Biden.
The reason for the "brat summer" surge is because Harris was a fresh face and even just that switch alone signaled a change from Joe Biden in the voter's mind. The momentum, vibes, and excitement were literally ONLY because she wasn't Joe Biden.
But Harris, probably because she kept all of Biden's staffers for some unimaginable reason, decided to become Joe Biden 2.0. She should have distanced herself aggressively, but instead, she declared on national television that she would do nothing different than him.
That was the moment she lost this race. It's really not more complicated than that, I think.
Yeah you were wrong, but don't beat yourself up over this dude. You were right about Joe Biden's unpopularity and were one of the first people to call on him to drop out. In the end, the voter hated Biden more than Trump, and in their mind, Harris = Biden. Simple as.
Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.
This election echoes Humphrey's defeat in '68. VP Humphrey was never able to get off of Johnson's leash, and as a result Nixon won the White House.
I was 100% drinking the Kool Aid for Harris, thinking she represented "generic Democrat." I conveniently forgot Harris achieved her position on the merits of her ability to forget any meaningful political differences between herself and Brandon.
I want to clarify that I am not a Biden Dead Ender, nor one to shrug my head & say, “Democrats did nothing wrong, actually.” But is there a possible explanation which synthesizes the “it’s inflation, stupid” thesis with the “Biden is a uniquely bad candidate” thesis?
I don’t know how you would ever be able to prove or disprove it, but I’m imagining the argument would go something like this:
“Inflation created a uniquely bad environment for a Democratic Presidential candidate, but the hostile environment did not translate in similar ways down ballot. In other words, voters ascribed blame for inflation onto the Biden Administration, but that penalty was not replicated against other Democrats down the ballot.”
She kept Biden staffers because Biden left the race too late. It’s late July, she can’t completely rebuild a national campaign in that time. The best move she made was bringing on Plouffe, who Ettinger never once mentioned. Which I guess makes sense since Plouffe was last in national politics when Ettinger was like 13.
Yeah Kamala should have kicked the shit out of Biden on the campaign trail but that is incredibly difficult to do when she is his sitting VP. Leads to questions of “why haven’t you said anything before” and makes her look like she’s lying.
It was inflation and the economy, which people blame Biden for. Local and state politics also still matter, which is why Tester outran Biden and the NC Dems did well
I mean, isn't comparing Tester like asking how Manchin could be a Dem in the most Trump country in the nation? Some politics is local and top and bottom of the ticket aren't always in lockstep. The other part of the story is Trump transcends party,given his endorsement hasn't meant much and his wannabes are often failures.
I don't necessarily disagree, but there was a clear trend in downballot races that Democrats outperformed Harris nearly everywhere, often by a lot. Look at Ruben Gallego in Arizona, that's not Trump country but he's going to overperform Trump by 6 -- not insignificant! And he didn't run as a centrist either, he's a solidly liberal candidate.
I do agree about Trump being an exceptional force in politics, and I do think "Trumpism without Trump" is in big trouble. Whatever X factor Trump has, it's clear that his flunkies do not have it based on the downballot results and polls.
I know that the 2022 prognostication stuff was what jump-started your popularity but I follow you because I think you're a talented and insightful writer not a Nate Silver-esque prediction wizard. Looking forward to some less current event style pieces again.
I really don’t think you were that far off. You were openly critical of Harris and your criticisms were right.
As an aside, have you considered an article about the failures of transphobia this election? I first started following you cuz i really appreciate that you were willing to call that shit out
Agree. This is not going to be good, and it will definitely be much worse than Trump's first term (because there are no longer establishment con figures to hold back Trump's worst impulses, it'll just be far-right loyalists and yes-men). But it's survivable. The GOP house majority will be even smaller this time, and their incompetence and infighting will prevent Congress from getting much done.
We got lucky, and I unironically thank Nancy Pelosi for this. If Biden stayed in, his internals showed Trump winning New York, New Jersey, Illinois and 400 electoral votes. That would have meant 60+ GOP Senate seats and a House supermajority. Liberalism would have legitimately been dead in the ground for a generation or longer. The psychological damage alone of losing ultra blue states would have been enormous. We avoided the worst case scenario and we live to fight another day.
We're all rooting for the circular firing squad. Fingers crossed Elon ODs in the Lincoln bedroom.
🤞
I just wanted to say that I hope you and everyone else in this community has been doing okay in spite of everything. I was fairly active in the chat but I haven't looked at it or posted in it since the night of the election. Even though you ended up being wrong---WE all ended up being wrong---I'm going to stay subscribed because I think voices like yours are important, especially in times like these, and personally I would like to see your career as a political writer grow because I think you deserve it.
Assessing the cultural zeitgeist, and letting the results sink in after the initial night of shock, I think we're in for a 21st century edition of the Bush administration. Obviously not good, but survivable. I still think Trump is too incompetent to fully implement his disastrous vision, and I think the people saying that he and his advisors have learned from the mistakes of 2016 are underestimating how genuinely dumb they are. I have a contact in Washington D.C who says that several people high up the chain of command are a lot stupider and more incompetent than people realize---I hope that's true this time around. Maybe I'm just coping.
This was a good read, and it couldn't have been easy to write. I can't imagine what the attention was like ever since you got picked up after the midterms and what that pressure means in the world of social media stardom. It either drives you into a thousand yard stare freak like Mr Beast or burns you out.
I think we (the soft left, the Chapo listeners, and Bernie Bros) did let ourselves hope for, or at least prefer, a Kamala presidency if only for a respite before what was to come afterwards, which would have in all likelihood been exactly what we're seeing now: the winners celebrating by casually threatening to rape women on twitter, the promise to keep beating on trans people, the prospect of a mass and mismanaged deportation scheme. It affects how we contextualize the data we see, even though we're instinctively not trustful of Democrats like I assume much of your audience is not. But the reckoning was coming now or in four years because there's nothing pushing back against the forces propelling the grand coalition of freaks and billionaires. Which is also the Democrats' fault. We tried to fix it twice, in 2016 and 2020. What the fuck are we supposed to do?
Not that I predicted Trump winning by any means, but I was getting the Hillary vibes in that last month when Harris was bumping her head against 50% and not getting much above it. Hitting consistent pluralities seems to indicate that Dem candidates are in big trouble in this day and age, I think.
You're a smart guy and I think your analysis is good to have out there. Importantly, you don't compromise it with all the obnoxious lib pablum getting puked up all over the place. We're in the middle of a dark and uncertain political realignment in this country and all the voices against more of the same need to be heard.
To the libs or Democrats reading this, I don't think anybody would have predicted that John McCain would have been succeeded by a Democrat. So if you believe in this political system, necessarily you should believe that you can do something with in it and there's evidence enough that you can. And I wish you luck. Democrats need to stop taking some groups for granted and deciding who they can do without. That's up to you.
From the end of your 'What to expect from a Trump second term' article about Trump's popular vote win:
"Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the economy could somehow get even worse, Biden could have some kind of massive embarrassment before election day, or Trump could wake up, suddenly understand politics, and work to moderate his positions and broaden his appeal.
Or maybe Kamala Harris could end up leading the ticket somehow and do about as badly against Trump as she’s always polled against him."
Great read, although as I mentioned in the chat, I think you should give yourself at least a little more credit for correctly assessing the reasons Kamala lost ahead of time, even if you didn't end up prioritizing them. As an aside, do you still stand by your arguments wrt the death of Trumpism-Without-Trump, or have the election results made you re-examine them?
The party completely relying on a lot of voters who only turn out for Trump means that Trumpism-without-Trump is deader than ever before.
I think that in two years you may get to enjoy watching people eat crow after you've been reminding them of this. The Chud-American Bund rally two weeks ago is the biggest sign of that.
That's about what I expected, thanks! That's a little promising as long as we can make it through these next four years, and while I readily acknowledge the threat the admin poses, I have a really hard time seeing anything completely gut free and fair elections
It got caught up in the weekend before ED news cycle but Politico covered it actually - https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/04/maga-trump-2024-elections-00185283
even the mea culpas are 🔥🔥
RE: Washington not trending as rightward as the rest of the country. As a Washingtonian who has family all over the country and has spent a lot of time in Utah, Florida, and NC for comparison, I have always felt conservatives in Washington are of a slightly different breed. Far more *actual* libertarians (many of whom get along with the strong NW anarchist community) who might vote against Trump strictly due to his authoritarian tendencies. There are also a good number of conservatives who really, really care about environmental protection in a way I've not seen elsewhere, which in my mind leaves the door open to skepticism toward someone who has made noise about killing the EPA. You mentioned it tangentially with Boeing, but unions are also extremely well respected here (see the old jokes about the Soviet of Washington). Purely anecdotal, of course, but that's my take.
Not native to WA but I've lived here for over 20 years and I fully cosign this (also anecdotally). Not that there aren't your basic conservatives here (and plenty of Trump supporters) but there's definitely a strong strain of government hating libertarians up here who understand that MAGA is not their shit
I think way too many people saw you as some kind of prophet, but forgot that you're just a dude. I'll stick with you in the long run, your perspective is very sharp. I think this election has convinced me that democracy has no future in this country, the only way to accelerate progress in our country is through A24's Civil War (2024)
Came for a Washington Primary funeral and got one. Great cycle. Looking forward to the midterms.
Please don’t let this Kamala campaign off the hook. We need one more piece on this election.
Aside from the horrifying prospect of another Trump administration and what it aims to achieve, a very frustrating part of all of this is the people getting to gloat they "called it" with nothing more than "Trump's gonna win lol". The weaknesses of Harris as a candidate and those of her campaign were clear from the beginning and pretty much only got worse as time went on, which you pointed out all along the way without pulling punches. But at the same time, there was really no reason not to take signals like the Washington primary, previously reliable pollsters, the Selzer poll, etc., as anything but unambiguously positive. But here we are.
It just sucks, man.
This might actually be the best article you’ve ever done and that’s a high bar
Great article. I can say you weren’t too far off; the election was always a coin toss between Trump winning every swing state and Kamala doing the same.
Don't feel bad Josh. And if you do, just take a deep breath, close your eyes, and picture Biden sitting through Trump's inauguration speech.
This is like my Cowboys fandom. I am in permanent stasis: sad when they lose; happy when Jerry Jones loses.