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,"…
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 country’s assets). Anyway, the people I know in Miami were actually praying for Trump to die so they wouldn’t 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 they’re moderates who distance themselves from the rhetoric (and prove that distance to their voters). Tim Walz was the most ineffective VP candidate I’ve 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.
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 country’s assets). Anyway, the people I know in Miami were actually praying for Trump to die so they wouldn’t 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 they’re moderates who distance themselves from the rhetoric (and prove that distance to their voters). Tim Walz was the most ineffective VP candidate I’ve 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.