JVL is not necessarily wrong about Biden presiding over the victory of Trumpism. But at the same time, Trumpism is what the American people wanted. Biden's biggest failure was assuming that the American people wanted decency, competency, and seriousness in their elected leaders. Biden assumed wrong, but is that his fault or ours?
JVL is not necessarily wrong about Biden presiding over the victory of Trumpism. But at the same time, Trumpism is what the American people wanted. Biden's biggest failure was assuming that the American people wanted decency, competency, and seriousness in their elected leaders. Biden assumed wrong, but is that his fault or ours?
actually, it came down to the fact that this country is inhabited by enough people who would vote for anything but a black female...it is obvious. on issue after issue most voters agree with the positions of the D's. unfortunately, that is not sufficient. we are a troubled, shallow, and ignorant people
I read all the way to the end of the comments before replying and I agree with most of the analyses. The voters are lazy and ill-informed, the right wing media has created a closed ecosystem where Democrats are evil, and Biden did good things but couldn't prevent the return of Trump. All with a generous helping of racism and misogyny which is keeping me at a slow burn of anger at my fellow humans. Can we also add in the erosion of public schools and the rise of homeschooling? I think the Democrats were lucky in 2020 since Trump screwed up COVID so badly that everyone voted to get him out. Maybe the DOGE crew and Vought will muck things up enough that it breaks the evil spell, but I'm not hopeful. Our only chance might be that Trump alone enchants the MAGAs and this will end when he does.
1) Assuming the American people wanted infrastructure spending, green energy spending, student loan forgiveness, Ukraine spending, and domestic chip manufacturing instead of what Americans had been shouting about since 2021: that the cost of living, inflation, housing/rent costs, and the broken immigration system were the things they wanted to see addressed first.
2) Thinking he could run for a second term at 82 when he promised to be a generational bridge candidate.
3) Bringing nice guy vibes to a time of national anger and bringing defense of the status quo to an anti-establishment/populist populace.
Assuming that the American people were content with the system as it was, and willing to wait for it to give them indirect benefits, instead of at the end of their patience with government and wanting benefits directly, like the Covid stimulus.
Biden was doing what needed to be done. Trump just kept giving empty promises that he has no intention of keeping. And, yes, regardless of any of this, I blame people voting for a guy with not one shred of decency, honesty, integrity, or empathy. The "status quo" that you seemingly dislike at least doesn't spew hate toward anyone not like themselves.
Oh heтАЩs gonna do some of it. At the very least heтАЩs gonna do a whole lot of deportations. But heтАЩll also lie to them a bunch about how heтАЩs supposedly making the economy better in a way that will convince them that he is. ThatтАЩs because he knows how to sell a narrative better than dems do.
Why would we place blame on this other than squarely on the fools that enable T**** and his ilk. They'll get what they asked for, then they'll get in the rear when they bend over.
Eh, it was the Republican primary electorate that wanted Trumpism. The American people chose Trumpism over rewarding the party that presided over an economic bummer with more power. ItтАЩs not the same as wanting it. (IтАЩm still furious with them though)
Except to the extent the Democrats presided over an "economic bummer", said bummer was a function of the incompetence of Trump and one that Biden inherited, had to fix, and did so without getting any credit from the electorate. JVL's Triad from October 16th goes more into depth about this and I won't regurgitate the points he made here. But your point -- "The American people chose Trumpism over rewarding the party that presided over an economic bummer with more power. ItтАЩs not the same as wanting it" -- makes those voters look even worse that you realize. If you're correct and the only thing that matters is the voter's wallets, then it's reasonable to conclude that these voters are amoral. After everything that's happened since January 6th, the voters elected the biggest fucking moral degenerate in politics to a second term. There is really no practical difference between wanting Trumpism and accepting Trumpism so long as the price of eggs comes down, even if that means people other than them get hurt.
I was fearful of the third part when even after Covid threats faded Biden continued to retreat to Delaware nearly every weekend. Biden just never got into playing the presidential part. That was part of his inability to get his message before the voters.
H, Trump was successful at turning out low propensity voters, including a bunch of young men who think that Trump, Musk and Hulk Hogan are somehow positive examples of masculinity. I don't believe for a minute such a voter is capable of understanding the ins and outs of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the factors that went into that decision, and I don't believe such a voter understood *why* there was inflation to begin with. Point 3 is valid and something that Sarah Longwell lost her mind about repeatedly and justifiably.
But at the end of the day, Trump won because a Constitutionally sufficient percentage of voters looked at Trump's moral turpitude, risible unfitness for office, and sundowning and didn't give a shit, **or they liked it**.
Everyone is who is doing an election post mortem has been focused on what Biden, Harris, or the Democrats didn't do or didn't understand about the electorate. All of that is true to varying degrees. But ultimately, the takeaway from 2024 is the electorate is rotten. To put it another way, if we're to get better as a nation, we first have to be honest with ourselves about *what* is wrong before we can regain our health.
Dear Tim, This was complex and thoughtful response. The one thing that is true in any doing any historical post mortem is that it is never one, or two, or three, etc.,factors that have led to a particular end.
Sandy, Republican voters have agency, and when push came to shove, they voted for someone who is responsible for 1M+ deaths from COVID, a cratered economy, an attempted coup. Those voters wanted more Trump. He is more popular today with the Republican base than ever. We can quibble about lower voter turnout and Democratic messaging and all that shit, but at the end of the day, enough voters wanted an authoritarian fascist head of state because a) they like it, b) are fine with it as long as the price of eggs comes down and are thus amoral, and c) are dumber than a sack of hammers and are unable to clearly see the risk to the country.
In other words, when a significant number of voters are fine with someone who wants to bring Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal under US control by force, increasing Democratic voter turnout is not going to address the root cause of what ails us.
Dear Sandy, The results of the election were simple and verifiable. Donald Trump won, and he won by a couple of hundred thousand votes. It is why he won, the roots of why he won, that is ultimately the question that must be faced and diagnosed.
Even if Harris had won, we'd still need to face and diagnose Trump's popularity. I'm interested in why he lost in 2O2O and won in 2O24. Biden beat him by only 4OK votes in 2O2O. What was different about 2O24? Dem turnout. That's what needs to be analyzed and understood.
How do we explain the missing voters? Is it really that possible the voters for Biden (~82M vs 74M T) turned away in such numbers (77M T, 75M H) to give T the win? There's a 3M count discrepancy. You really think the turnout in 2020 was MORE and there was less enthusiasm to get rid of T this time?
People were highly motivated to vote in 2020 due to highly personal reasons: COVID was destroying their lives, and they wanted it to stop. So they turned out (some in person, some by mail). In 2024, the world was much safer, healthier, and economically secure -- unless you lived in a conservative media bubble that tells you it's the worst economy and crime rate ever.
In that reality, the people who are living in the fear-inducing bubble turn out. And the people who aren't particularly informed about the severity of Trump's malfeasance, and are reasonably safe/healthy/secure, stay home.
All of it points to one thing: Certain people only turn out when their scared about their PERSONAL security, not their COUNTRY's safety/security
I explain the missing voters as unserious people and bad citizens who didn't fucking show up, Notmy. 2020 was about COVID. If COVID hadn't happened, Trump probably would have won reelection.
Dealing with inflation is not the President's job, it's the job of the Federal Reserve. Unfairly, the sitting president gets blamed for any inflation.
I do not agree that Biden did not play the part of President well. He did everything we ask of a president. He provided leadership. He worked with Congress,and the opposition and he got meaningful legislation passed. I believe Biden was unable to communicate the scope and effectiveness of his policies. This seems to be a common problem for the Democrats: They don't communicate their successes as well as the Republicans do.
I agree with Sarah Longwell's telling of it: Being able to communicate to the American people IS the job of the Presidency. Maybe the most important job. Most everything else (outside of foreign policy) requires Congress, the States, or (as you said) the Federal Reserve.
Communication is the #1 most important job, and Biden was the worst at it.
Like it or not POTUS gets blamed for every thing. How many times did you see the effin Biden sticker at a gas pump showing him pointing and sayin "I did that!"
Got to love how those disappeared on the pumps here in GA as gas settled around $3/gal or lower the last couple years. Blamed for the high prices but also no credit for the low prices.
Sorry no. TrumpтАЩs secret meeting with the Taliban sealed the withdrawal. World wide inflation is not BidenтАЩs problem to solve. What he did is get a soft landing so this was the first that I can remember where inflation came down without massive unemployment. Biden was Biden. He did not тАЬplayтАЭ the part. Which former President is your role model?
I agree with you completely. It's time we stop blaming the Democratic Party or Biden or Harris or whomever for Trump. Trump is what a large part of the American electorate want. Let's blame the American people. Jimmy Carter did that and it was a political disaster. But maybe he was right and even more so today. Let's be honest; neo-fascism appeals to a significant portion of Americans, whether they realize it or not.
Well, the electorate wanted decency, competency and seriousness in 2O2O. That's why he beat Trump. He won the EC by about 4OK votes. What changed for those Americans?
If you read my posts, you should be able to guess that I'm locally kind but globally cynical. I enjoy interacting with people here, but I don't hold the median American voter in high regard. So when Sandy asked me "what changed for those voters", I don't think the people who didn't show up for Harris are any different than the people who didn't show up for Clinton in 2016. One of the unfortunate takeaways from 2024 is we have a problem with misogyny in the United States. We are the only industrialized country in the world that has not had a woman as head of state. There are people who voted for Obama that didn't show up for Clinton during a time of relative economic prosperity. There are people who voted for Biden that didn't show up for Harris when the S&P had returned 20%+ in back-to-back years, unemployment was low, and inflation was brought to heel after a 100 year pandemic and over 1M people died. The Democrats are not going to nominate another woman for POTUS for a very long time as a result of this act of self mutilation by the voters. In my view, COVID was an exogenous event that cost Trump a second term. With COVID memory holed and the Biden administration not getting any credit for getting us past COVID, the voters went back to being what they've always been: a bunch of unappreciative, amoral nanowits who are incapable of recognizing an existential threat if it kicked them in the balls and sang "Cat Scratch Fever" at the top of their lungs. They'd rather have a rapist with the nuclear codes than a woman. It was true in 2016, and it was true in 2024.
Or both, and a confluence of many other factors. If we manage to continue to exist, this whole cycle (1993 to today) will confound and fascinate historians for years to come.
A "sufficient number of voters" is not the American public. It is a subset that does not speak for everyone. That's all I was saying. You were making like sound like Trump has a mandate.
I would further add that several million Trump voters are going to figure out shortly they are not getting what thought they were voting for.
A sufficient number of voters decided the election. Trump will be the 47th POTUS and will represent us in our dealing with the world. People in other countries will draw no distinction between Bulwark voters and MAGA when Trump abandons Ukraine and pulls out of NATO. And while you're right that several million Trump voters are going to be betrayed, don't expect them to admit it or change course in 2028.
Some days I agree with you, and some days I think of something that got asked on a Bulwark podcast soon after the election: Would Nikki Haley have won?
The answer sure feels like a resounding "yes." And if that's the case, then the logical outgrowth is that it wasn't that people "wanted Trumpism," it was that they wanted "something else," and Trump was the only one with something. (This isn't to excuse the choice, mind--if you're making a judgement where a convicted felon as President is "better," your POV is skewed, it just is.)
That's a harder thing to wrestle with--why did the American people want "something else," and what did they think they had in the first place? It'll be a while before that gets untangled, if ever. Mulling that over makes me feel like the "they just wanted Trump" thing is a form of "Russia elected him" back in 2016: a simple out to avoid dealing with a more complex reality.
Many left-leaning political analysts say it's not so much that they wanted Trump, but rather they didn't want the Democrats. Like Dan Pfeiffer. His analysis was the Democratic brand is what enough voters voted against to give Trump his win. This accounts for the drop in turnout which was the greatest among Democrats.
This is definitely true for some of my friends in Miami. They hate the Democrats, and they hate all the woke identity politics, the gender ideology, the pronouns, the land acknowledgements, etc etc. They hated the student loan forgiveness too (so did my H and I due to the economic repercussions - those loans are 1/3 of the countryтАЩs assets). Anyway, the people I know in Miami were actually praying for Trump to die so they wouldnтАЩt have to vote for him. But they were going to vote Republican no matter what to keep the Democrats out of the WH.
I'm so sick of people who complain about "wokeness" or the BS pronouns that neither the Gov't NOR the Democrats had ANYTHING to do with! Who the fuck cares? Why can't people just mind their own damn business, as Tim Walz would say?
A lot of people care and they voted for Trump as a result. The Democrats did nothing to stop any of that ideology and the Democrats are heavily into identity politics. The Democratic Party has CRT and DEI stuck all over them like a car with a million bumper stickers all over its rear end. Most people hate that stuff, and until the Democrats put out that fire they will continue to lose major elections. The ones who win are either in safe districts, like AOC is, or theyтАЩre moderates who distance themselves from the rhetoric (and prove that distance to their voters). Tim Walz was the most ineffective VP candidate IтАЩve ever seen. His only job was to keep the far left on board and he lost 7 million of them. Fail.
Incumbents lost the world over. Democrats did remarkably well by comparison, mostly because Trump in particular was so beatable. I do agree that Dems have a huge brand problem that may have kept them from eking out a rare incumbent win.
She'd probably have gained a bunch of Bulwarkish people, but lost the Sanders/Trump voters, and yep would've been okay. Heck, looking at everything, *Desantis* might have pulled it off.
Rebecca - I want you to be right - and I fear that Tim Coffey and JVL are.
What I can piece together:
Like other elections around the world, this was an anti-incumbent election. People DID want something different.
"Low information" voters swung from Biden back to Trump because of (i) inflation (ii) immigration and (iii) anti-woke-ism - and b/c they wanted "different"
Harris as the sitting VP was given an incredibly difficult task - to differentiate herself from Biden on immigration.
Harris allowed herself to be defined by Trump's ads - and especially the ones where Harris was on video supporting federal money for transgender prisoners.
She needed to try to paint Trump as favoring the wealthy.... highlight the Biden Administration wins for poor and working class Americans, and offer something new for them.
She needed to push harder for the Lankford bill and hit Trump on killing that bill - and maybe needed to nominate a VP from a border state that had a reputation as an immigration hawk.
Even a strong attempt to differentiate may not have worked.
IF Biden had pulled out early enough to allow some kind of Democratic primary - where some Dem could put forward a third way (not Biden, not Trump) credibly - maybe that works
But... the point to me is this - that should not have been necessary. Trump was patently unfit.
And here I go back to JVL's take and to Tim Coffey's take - voters collectively knew who and what Trump was and is and will be - and still picked him. They now own it all.
I hear you on a lot of this (though there've been lots of articles on what went wrong, some saying Harris went too Left, others she went too Right...anyway) There was a great article in the Atlantic today about how the rise of misinformation has become a "justification machine." Today, if you want to think something, you can find something online to justify you. Which means that everyone who wanted to justify a vote for Trump *could*. Which made his patent unfitness moot.
I agree with you that people who made that choice own that choice. People can seek information instead of justification. But dealing with that is going to mean dealing with people genuinely not understanding what they chose.
It's the same mistake McConnell made in thinking Trump would go away without having to convict him in the Senate. Never in a million years did he think Trump could survive a scandal on the scale of January 6. And in the end, McConnell had no idea who his voters were, even as he spent his entire time in the Senate turning them into what they've become.
What we've learned, over and over, is how arrogant our pols are. (See: Biden, Joe.) The GOP keeps thinking they can control Frankenstein's monster (or ride the tiger - pick your fav metaphor).
I think Mitch figured out pretty quick who his voters were.
For someone like McConnell, the downside analysis probably looks OK. "Let's assume Trump doesn't go away. Hmm, well, the GOP gets to stay in power. And, we just have sell culture war rage, not do any actual work." What's the problem?
I was pretty depressed for two weeks after the election, Don. But once I accepted that the election showed us who and what we are as a people, I felt a lot better. I honest to God believe that collectively we simply don't appreciate what we have and cannot conceive of what happens if we lose it. Well, we're about to go through some things, and even when Trump cocks it up, I'm not sure a sufficient number of voters are going to punish him for it.
JVL is not necessarily wrong about Biden presiding over the victory of Trumpism. But at the same time, Trumpism is what the American people wanted. Biden's biggest failure was assuming that the American people wanted decency, competency, and seriousness in their elected leaders. Biden assumed wrong, but is that his fault or ours?
The fault is in our stars.
I think the тАЬfault is in ourselvesтАжтАЭ
Ever has it been so. Unfortunately.
actually, it came down to the fact that this country is inhabited by enough people who would vote for anything but a black female...it is obvious. on issue after issue most voters agree with the positions of the D's. unfortunately, that is not sufficient. we are a troubled, shallow, and ignorant people
I read all the way to the end of the comments before replying and I agree with most of the analyses. The voters are lazy and ill-informed, the right wing media has created a closed ecosystem where Democrats are evil, and Biden did good things but couldn't prevent the return of Trump. All with a generous helping of racism and misogyny which is keeping me at a slow burn of anger at my fellow humans. Can we also add in the erosion of public schools and the rise of homeschooling? I think the Democrats were lucky in 2020 since Trump screwed up COVID so badly that everyone voted to get him out. Maybe the DOGE crew and Vought will muck things up enough that it breaks the evil spell, but I'm not hopeful. Our only chance might be that Trump alone enchants the MAGAs and this will end when he does.
Couldn't agree more. Perfect analysis!
Truth
Biden's biggest failures:
1) Assuming the American people wanted infrastructure spending, green energy spending, student loan forgiveness, Ukraine spending, and domestic chip manufacturing instead of what Americans had been shouting about since 2021: that the cost of living, inflation, housing/rent costs, and the broken immigration system were the things they wanted to see addressed first.
2) Thinking he could run for a second term at 82 when he promised to be a generational bridge candidate.
3) Bringing nice guy vibes to a time of national anger and bringing defense of the status quo to an anti-establishment/populist populace.
These are all 100% his fault, not the public's.
To restate point 1:
Assuming that the American people were content with the system as it was, and willing to wait for it to give them indirect benefits, instead of at the end of their patience with government and wanting benefits directly, like the Covid stimulus.
Biden was doing what needed to be done. Trump just kept giving empty promises that he has no intention of keeping. And, yes, regardless of any of this, I blame people voting for a guy with not one shred of decency, honesty, integrity, or empathy. The "status quo" that you seemingly dislike at least doesn't spew hate toward anyone not like themselves.
Sure, Travis, but you know better than anyone here that Trump isn't going to do shit to address the issues Americans claim they care about.
Oh heтАЩs gonna do some of it. At the very least heтАЩs gonna do a whole lot of deportations. But heтАЩll also lie to them a bunch about how heтАЩs supposedly making the economy better in a way that will convince them that he is. ThatтАЩs because he knows how to sell a narrative better than dems do.
Why would we place blame on this other than squarely on the fools that enable T**** and his ilk. They'll get what they asked for, then they'll get in the rear when they bend over.
Good and hard, Notmy. And I'm here for it.
Eh, it was the Republican primary electorate that wanted Trumpism. The American people chose Trumpism over rewarding the party that presided over an economic bummer with more power. ItтАЩs not the same as wanting it. (IтАЩm still furious with them though)
Agree.
Except to the extent the Democrats presided over an "economic bummer", said bummer was a function of the incompetence of Trump and one that Biden inherited, had to fix, and did so without getting any credit from the electorate. JVL's Triad from October 16th goes more into depth about this and I won't regurgitate the points he made here. But your point -- "The American people chose Trumpism over rewarding the party that presided over an economic bummer with more power. ItтАЩs not the same as wanting it" -- makes those voters look even worse that you realize. If you're correct and the only thing that matters is the voter's wallets, then it's reasonable to conclude that these voters are amoral. After everything that's happened since January 6th, the voters elected the biggest fucking moral degenerate in politics to a second term. There is really no practical difference between wanting Trumpism and accepting Trumpism so long as the price of eggs comes down, even if that means people other than them get hurt.
And that breaks my heart on many levels...that THIS is what they seem to have wanted.
That was not Biden's biggest failure, plus that answer is semi-sarcastic.
Biden's biggest failures were:
1. Afghanistan withdrawal, and then not firing a bunch of people after it happened.
2. Not recognizing the extent of inflation and reacting to it aggressively, even if that reaction was performative.
3. Not playing the part of president well.
I was fearful of the third part when even after Covid threats faded Biden continued to retreat to Delaware nearly every weekend. Biden just never got into playing the presidential part. That was part of his inability to get his message before the voters.
Agree with all esp #1.
H, Trump was successful at turning out low propensity voters, including a bunch of young men who think that Trump, Musk and Hulk Hogan are somehow positive examples of masculinity. I don't believe for a minute such a voter is capable of understanding the ins and outs of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the factors that went into that decision, and I don't believe such a voter understood *why* there was inflation to begin with. Point 3 is valid and something that Sarah Longwell lost her mind about repeatedly and justifiably.
But at the end of the day, Trump won because a Constitutionally sufficient percentage of voters looked at Trump's moral turpitude, risible unfitness for office, and sundowning and didn't give a shit, **or they liked it**.
Everyone is who is doing an election post mortem has been focused on what Biden, Harris, or the Democrats didn't do or didn't understand about the electorate. All of that is true to varying degrees. But ultimately, the takeaway from 2024 is the electorate is rotten. To put it another way, if we're to get better as a nation, we first have to be honest with ourselves about *what* is wrong before we can regain our health.
Dear Tim, This was complex and thoughtful response. The one thing that is true in any doing any historical post mortem is that it is never one, or two, or three, etc.,factors that have led to a particular end.
I disagree. Ultimately, the results of the election are due to lower turnout, AMONG THE DEMS!
Sandy, Republican voters have agency, and when push came to shove, they voted for someone who is responsible for 1M+ deaths from COVID, a cratered economy, an attempted coup. Those voters wanted more Trump. He is more popular today with the Republican base than ever. We can quibble about lower voter turnout and Democratic messaging and all that shit, but at the end of the day, enough voters wanted an authoritarian fascist head of state because a) they like it, b) are fine with it as long as the price of eggs comes down and are thus amoral, and c) are dumber than a sack of hammers and are unable to clearly see the risk to the country.
In other words, when a significant number of voters are fine with someone who wants to bring Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal under US control by force, increasing Democratic voter turnout is not going to address the root cause of what ails us.
I thought we were talking about the results of the election, not the root cause of what ails us. Which is what, oin your view?
Dear Sandy, The results of the election were simple and verifiable. Donald Trump won, and he won by a couple of hundred thousand votes. It is why he won, the roots of why he won, that is ultimately the question that must be faced and diagnosed.
Even if Harris had won, we'd still need to face and diagnose Trump's popularity. I'm interested in why he lost in 2O2O and won in 2O24. Biden beat him by only 4OK votes in 2O2O. What was different about 2O24? Dem turnout. That's what needs to be analyzed and understood.
How do we explain the missing voters? Is it really that possible the voters for Biden (~82M vs 74M T) turned away in such numbers (77M T, 75M H) to give T the win? There's a 3M count discrepancy. You really think the turnout in 2020 was MORE and there was less enthusiasm to get rid of T this time?
No, it was a vote against Dems, even among Dems in blue cities! That is not the same thing as pro-Trump.
People were highly motivated to vote in 2020 due to highly personal reasons: COVID was destroying their lives, and they wanted it to stop. So they turned out (some in person, some by mail). In 2024, the world was much safer, healthier, and economically secure -- unless you lived in a conservative media bubble that tells you it's the worst economy and crime rate ever.
In that reality, the people who are living in the fear-inducing bubble turn out. And the people who aren't particularly informed about the severity of Trump's malfeasance, and are reasonably safe/healthy/secure, stay home.
All of it points to one thing: Certain people only turn out when their scared about their PERSONAL security, not their COUNTRY's safety/security
I explain the missing voters as unserious people and bad citizens who didn't fucking show up, Notmy. 2020 was about COVID. If COVID hadn't happened, Trump probably would have won reelection.
I think if he hadn't bungled the RESPONSE to COVID, he would have won.
Dealing with inflation is not the President's job, it's the job of the Federal Reserve. Unfairly, the sitting president gets blamed for any inflation.
I do not agree that Biden did not play the part of President well. He did everything we ask of a president. He provided leadership. He worked with Congress,and the opposition and he got meaningful legislation passed. I believe Biden was unable to communicate the scope and effectiveness of his policies. This seems to be a common problem for the Democrats: They don't communicate their successes as well as the Republicans do.
Communicating well is part of the job, and he didn't do that well unless he was scripted. He was never a good communicator as a politician.
I agree with Sarah Longwell's telling of it: Being able to communicate to the American people IS the job of the Presidency. Maybe the most important job. Most everything else (outside of foreign policy) requires Congress, the States, or (as you said) the Federal Reserve.
Communication is the #1 most important job, and Biden was the worst at it.
Agree.
Like it or not POTUS gets blamed for every thing. How many times did you see the effin Biden sticker at a gas pump showing him pointing and sayin "I did that!"
Got to love how those disappeared on the pumps here in GA as gas settled around $3/gal or lower the last couple years. Blamed for the high prices but also no credit for the low prices.
Sorry no. TrumpтАЩs secret meeting with the Taliban sealed the withdrawal. World wide inflation is not BidenтАЩs problem to solve. What he did is get a soft landing so this was the first that I can remember where inflation came down without massive unemployment. Biden was Biden. He did not тАЬplayтАЭ the part. Which former President is your role model?
Biden is not responsible for the failures in the Afghanistan withdrawl? Not according to his own Dept of State. See https://abcnews.go.com/International/reporters-notebook-afghanistan-withdrawl-State-Department-biden-trump/story?id=100553006.
Bingo.
I agree with you completely. It's time we stop blaming the Democratic Party or Biden or Harris or whomever for Trump. Trump is what a large part of the American electorate want. Let's blame the American people. Jimmy Carter did that and it was a political disaster. But maybe he was right and even more so today. Let's be honest; neo-fascism appeals to a significant portion of Americans, whether they realize it or not.
I think you can blame the Democratic Party for the decline in turnout AMONG DEMOCRATS.
Well, the electorate wanted decency, competency and seriousness in 2O2O. That's why he beat Trump. He won the EC by about 4OK votes. What changed for those Americans?
I'm not sure anything did, Sandy.
No, something did. 7 million Democrats did not vote in 2024.
Sorry, let me explain.
If you read my posts, you should be able to guess that I'm locally kind but globally cynical. I enjoy interacting with people here, but I don't hold the median American voter in high regard. So when Sandy asked me "what changed for those voters", I don't think the people who didn't show up for Harris are any different than the people who didn't show up for Clinton in 2016. One of the unfortunate takeaways from 2024 is we have a problem with misogyny in the United States. We are the only industrialized country in the world that has not had a woman as head of state. There are people who voted for Obama that didn't show up for Clinton during a time of relative economic prosperity. There are people who voted for Biden that didn't show up for Harris when the S&P had returned 20%+ in back-to-back years, unemployment was low, and inflation was brought to heel after a 100 year pandemic and over 1M people died. The Democrats are not going to nominate another woman for POTUS for a very long time as a result of this act of self mutilation by the voters. In my view, COVID was an exogenous event that cost Trump a second term. With COVID memory holed and the Biden administration not getting any credit for getting us past COVID, the voters went back to being what they've always been: a bunch of unappreciative, amoral nanowits who are incapable of recognizing an existential threat if it kicked them in the balls and sang "Cat Scratch Fever" at the top of their lungs. They'd rather have a rapist with the nuclear codes than a woman. It was true in 2016, and it was true in 2024.
Nothing's changed.
Thank you for your explanation. Either racism or misogyny or both. No one wants to name the elephant in the room.
Or both, and a confluence of many other factors. If we manage to continue to exist, this whole cycle (1993 to today) will confound and fascinate historians for years to come.
Yes! Something did. I think we are still learning about what was behind that drop in turnout.
Well said!!!
Trumpism is what *almost* half of the American voting public wanted. Trump won by a very narrow margin.
My response that I posted above: https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/american-tragedy-joe-biden-mike-pence?r=1dlvn&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=84769189
Trumpism is what a Constitutionally sufficient number of voters wanted, Bruce. Well, we're about to get it. As we should.
A "sufficient number of voters" is not the American public. It is a subset that does not speak for everyone. That's all I was saying. You were making like sound like Trump has a mandate.
I would further add that several million Trump voters are going to figure out shortly they are not getting what thought they were voting for.
A sufficient number of voters decided the election. Trump will be the 47th POTUS and will represent us in our dealing with the world. People in other countries will draw no distinction between Bulwark voters and MAGA when Trump abandons Ukraine and pulls out of NATO. And while you're right that several million Trump voters are going to be betrayed, don't expect them to admit it or change course in 2028.
Some days I agree with you, and some days I think of something that got asked on a Bulwark podcast soon after the election: Would Nikki Haley have won?
The answer sure feels like a resounding "yes." And if that's the case, then the logical outgrowth is that it wasn't that people "wanted Trumpism," it was that they wanted "something else," and Trump was the only one with something. (This isn't to excuse the choice, mind--if you're making a judgement where a convicted felon as President is "better," your POV is skewed, it just is.)
That's a harder thing to wrestle with--why did the American people want "something else," and what did they think they had in the first place? It'll be a while before that gets untangled, if ever. Mulling that over makes me feel like the "they just wanted Trump" thing is a form of "Russia elected him" back in 2016: a simple out to avoid dealing with a more complex reality.
She, nor any other woman, would have won, and will not in my lifetime.
Many left-leaning political analysts say it's not so much that they wanted Trump, but rather they didn't want the Democrats. Like Dan Pfeiffer. His analysis was the Democratic brand is what enough voters voted against to give Trump his win. This accounts for the drop in turnout which was the greatest among Democrats.
This is definitely true for some of my friends in Miami. They hate the Democrats, and they hate all the woke identity politics, the gender ideology, the pronouns, the land acknowledgements, etc etc. They hated the student loan forgiveness too (so did my H and I due to the economic repercussions - those loans are 1/3 of the countryтАЩs assets). Anyway, the people I know in Miami were actually praying for Trump to die so they wouldnтАЩt have to vote for him. But they were going to vote Republican no matter what to keep the Democrats out of the WH.
I'm so sick of people who complain about "wokeness" or the BS pronouns that neither the Gov't NOR the Democrats had ANYTHING to do with! Who the fuck cares? Why can't people just mind their own damn business, as Tim Walz would say?
A lot of people care and they voted for Trump as a result. The Democrats did nothing to stop any of that ideology and the Democrats are heavily into identity politics. The Democratic Party has CRT and DEI stuck all over them like a car with a million bumper stickers all over its rear end. Most people hate that stuff, and until the Democrats put out that fire they will continue to lose major elections. The ones who win are either in safe districts, like AOC is, or theyтАЩre moderates who distance themselves from the rhetoric (and prove that distance to their voters). Tim Walz was the most ineffective VP candidate IтАЩve ever seen. His only job was to keep the far left on board and he lost 7 million of them. Fail.
Incumbents lost the world over. Democrats did remarkably well by comparison, mostly because Trump in particular was so beatable. I do agree that Dems have a huge brand problem that may have kept them from eking out a rare incumbent win.
I believe that Nikki would have won by 3-5 points, dominating the independent vote and doing at least as well with minorities as Trump did.
She'd probably have gained a bunch of Bulwarkish people, but lost the Sanders/Trump voters, and yep would've been okay. Heck, looking at everything, *Desantis* might have pulled it off.
I would have voted for Haley in a heartbeat. I voted for her in the primary. The only reason I voted for Harris was to stop Trump.
You know things are bad when you catch yourself saying things like 'hmm, maybe DeSantis could win' or 'maybe Meatball would've been an OK president'.
Rebecca - I want you to be right - and I fear that Tim Coffey and JVL are.
What I can piece together:
Like other elections around the world, this was an anti-incumbent election. People DID want something different.
"Low information" voters swung from Biden back to Trump because of (i) inflation (ii) immigration and (iii) anti-woke-ism - and b/c they wanted "different"
Harris as the sitting VP was given an incredibly difficult task - to differentiate herself from Biden on immigration.
Harris allowed herself to be defined by Trump's ads - and especially the ones where Harris was on video supporting federal money for transgender prisoners.
She needed to try to paint Trump as favoring the wealthy.... highlight the Biden Administration wins for poor and working class Americans, and offer something new for them.
She needed to push harder for the Lankford bill and hit Trump on killing that bill - and maybe needed to nominate a VP from a border state that had a reputation as an immigration hawk.
Even a strong attempt to differentiate may not have worked.
IF Biden had pulled out early enough to allow some kind of Democratic primary - where some Dem could put forward a third way (not Biden, not Trump) credibly - maybe that works
But... the point to me is this - that should not have been necessary. Trump was patently unfit.
And here I go back to JVL's take and to Tim Coffey's take - voters collectively knew who and what Trump was and is and will be - and still picked him. They now own it all.
I hear you on a lot of this (though there've been lots of articles on what went wrong, some saying Harris went too Left, others she went too Right...anyway) There was a great article in the Atlantic today about how the rise of misinformation has become a "justification machine." Today, if you want to think something, you can find something online to justify you. Which means that everyone who wanted to justify a vote for Trump *could*. Which made his patent unfitness moot.
I agree with you that people who made that choice own that choice. People can seek information instead of justification. But dealing with that is going to mean dealing with people genuinely not understanding what they chose.
It's the same mistake McConnell made in thinking Trump would go away without having to convict him in the Senate. Never in a million years did he think Trump could survive a scandal on the scale of January 6. And in the end, McConnell had no idea who his voters were, even as he spent his entire time in the Senate turning them into what they've become.
McConnell was and is a deplorable coward. He is the absolute worst of us
Agree.
Yes and no, I think.
What we've learned, over and over, is how arrogant our pols are. (See: Biden, Joe.) The GOP keeps thinking they can control Frankenstein's monster (or ride the tiger - pick your fav metaphor).
I think Mitch figured out pretty quick who his voters were.
For someone like McConnell, the downside analysis probably looks OK. "Let's assume Trump doesn't go away. Hmm, well, the GOP gets to stay in power. And, we just have sell culture war rage, not do any actual work." What's the problem?
I was pretty depressed for two weeks after the election, Don. But once I accepted that the election showed us who and what we are as a people, I felt a lot better. I honest to God believe that collectively we simply don't appreciate what we have and cannot conceive of what happens if we lose it. Well, we're about to go through some things, and even when Trump cocks it up, I'm not sure a sufficient number of voters are going to punish him for it.
I, too, was quite depressed after the election, but have let it go. My attitude is now тАЬPass the popcorn, please.тАЬ
they'll surely find some stupid meaningless reason to blame the Dems again too...