2024 Election Results Aren’t an Affirmation of Your Personal Politics

I. Bad, Lazy Punditry is Abound

While Trump’s win is conceptually shocking by way of him being a fascist who is unfit for office, it is not surprising when looking at the polling or political history.

Bad pundits and observers like to think of elections as idiosyncratic events isolated from all other inputs, as if an election could somehow be a pure referendum on only the merits of the candidates and their campaigns. It is inevitable to try to interpret the “cause” and “meaning” of election results. But history shows that a lot of this storytelling is usually just specious confirmation bias. The post-mortem for 2024 has been no different for bad takes, and given the stakes, perhaps worse than usual.

A. Bari Weiss is a hack

Case in point is the steaming hot take of Bari Weiss on Fox News, who I will pick on because she is exemplary of the braindead pundit thinking that infects this discourse, drunk on her own self-importance as an anti-woke crusader:

This kind of slop, delivered as tough and wise insight, is painfully common. But Weiss claims that Trump “stole” from the Democratic Party are hilariously off base. For sure, no Democrat would campaign on a strong border, except I guess for the fact that Harris campaigned on the extremely conservative Republican led immigration bill that Trump killed earlier this year. And before that, you’d have to go all the way back to Obama, who was responsible for more deportations than Trump was during his first term and pushed hard for a strong border to try and clinch immigration reform that Republicans killed. And ah yes, “the idea of tackling inflation” by railing against inflation’s existence and then campaigning on nothing but proposals that would raise it (mass deportations, tax cuts, tariffs, spending increases). What a stroke of populist genius!

And who would have thought that Bari Weiss, anti-woke drum beater, thinks that these stolen ideas from the Democratic Party were replaced by “gender fluidity and defunding the police.” A basic question for anyone peddling this bullshit is to ask: who specifically is campaigning on these issues? You can’t just find activists posting stuff on the internet and attribute it to an entire political party or a candidate.

In fact, the Harris campaign and most Democrats this cycle did not campaign on these issues in the slightest! The salience of the issue of “defunding police” took off and was most prevalent in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020. But if this was such a devastating issue for Democrats, did they lose in 2020? Oh, right, Biden and Democrats won. And since 2020, the issue of defunding police has been systematically abandoned by elected Democrats. So what non-anecdotal evidence is there that this was remotely a 2024 issue? (hint: none).

The same question goes for the Weiss’s boogeyman of “gender fluidity”. What specifically are we talking about? Who is campaigning on this topic, and what, if anything, are they proposing? Did the Harris campaign make a big pitch for injecting LGBTQ rights into the campaign? No. Also, if these issues are so critical, how did Democrats outperform Republicans in every election cycle between 2016 and 2024? Was 2024 simply the point of maximal wokeness?

Weiss’s take on Trump’s “isolationist policies” is also deeply embarrassing for anyone who was alive during his first term. He engaged in regular saber rattling with North Korea (threatening “fire and fury” and proposing to nuclear strike) and Iran. He ordered the drone strike of one of Iran’s major generals in Iraq and withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement. He dramatically escalated the use of drone warfare. He approved cruise missile strikes against Syria. He pushed for dramatic increases in military expenditures. He is so far naming Iran and China hawks to key posts in his incoming administration. All of this does not remotely equate to “isolationism” or “America First,” except maybe the way that the phrase was first used in the 1940’s.

The above examples are just those that Weiss talked about in one interview, but this type of rank speculation on any substantive issue, devoid of basic context, is everywhere! Turns out you can make lots of money by peddling this garbage on Fox News! And maybe Weiss’s retort would be that people are simply unaware or trust Trump on these topics regardless of reality, which is fine, but this puts us in a chicken/egg situation where in a world where people listen to people like Bari Weiss, how could they know such distinctions?

How might we apply this type of lazy thinking to the 2018 or 2020 elections? Did Trump losing in 2020 occur because Democrats abandoned “woke ideas”? If instead, Trump lost in 2020 because of exogenous factors like a global pandemic and flagging economy, then why wouldn’t similar factors be more relevant for examining the 2024 election? In this anti-woke obsessed universe, the chronology of the past 8 years should read: 2018 Democratic crushing victory (not too woke); 2020 Democratic victory (not too woke); 2022 midterm Democratic strong overperformance and pyrrhic GOP win (not too woke); 2024 Republican victory in which they win the popular vote by 1-1.7%, whiff on most senate pickups, and maintain a slim house majority (five alarm woke fire). It would instead be more interesting and valuable to discern political analysis based on celestial patterns.

If the average American does not have an accurate knowledge of policy, does not care, or falsely attributes a position to a candidate based on vibes, that is a categorically different issue that speaks to a poor information environment than anything Democrats can campaign on or be blamed for.

B. Bernie Sanders knows better

And even better, this type of wild nonsense crosses the ideological spectrum! Bernie Sanders released a similar chest pounding statement after the election:

To save face as a leftist and independent democratic socialist who campaigned for Harris, I get it. But these nonsensical grievances are inexcusable from a United States Senator who knows better.

The Biden administration is easily the most labor friendly administration in a generation. And Bernie knows it. This administration also put into law a suite of measures designed to cut child poverty by half, which then expired because Republicans (and Joe Manchin) would not back them. The Biden administration also orchestrated an impressive post-pandemic recovery that prioritized full employment and economic growth that performed spectacularly better than this nation’s efforts after the Great Recession. Bernie supported all of this and more. In his view though, the fault with a Harris candidacy was that she simply was not progressive enough. If she had only declared herself a comrade of the people, she would have delivered salvation.

The irony with Bernie’s chest pumping is that he performed worse this year in Vermont than Harris did. Does Bernie need to get back in touch with his roots and figure out what he can do to appeal to working class voters in his own state better?

Bernie also mentioned healthcare, but is it Democrats who are standing against more healthcare coverage? Is the implication here that the people are clamoring so hard for a single payer healthcare system that they vote for the party that wants to gut the ACA and Medicaid? Or I guess generously that Democrats failure to stand up for this proposal causes them to stay home? The data suggest otherwise. Likewise, is he also suggesting in his statement that Americans are so fed up with the situation in Gaza that they are flocking to the candidate that Israel’s Netanyahu was praying would win so he could turn Gaza into a beachside resort? These leftist theories of electoral politics are tired and unsupported. By all means, advocate for a worker’s paradise, just don’t pretend that every electoral loss by Democrats proves the world is craving it.

What Weiss and Sanders have in common from these dogmatic, bombastic takes on the election, and what most punditry consists of, is simply inserting their personal policy views as causal for the 2024 result. This is somewhat understandable as an advocating pitch for what they want to see in the world. But blithe statements of these caliber dress that advocacy up as gospel and make people dumb. Broad, world defining platitudes without even a token effort to support itself should be disregarded.

A more complete picture of the election will require more time to look at all the data and returns, but isn’t a more plausible surface level view that voters were excited about Trump’s proposals and rhetoric? Why would 2024 be a negative case in which the Democratic agenda failed to persuade rather than a positive case that the Trumpist agenda prevailed? Did Trump’s victory mean that Americans agreed that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country? They were gung ho about tariffs? Or they enthusiastically support Trump’s coup attempt and disregard for the rule of law?

Surely these things which were actual policy planks and affirmative words by Trump would have more to do with what is in the electorate’s mind than something which neither Harris nor Biden campaigned on at all in 2024? Is it reasonable to attribute everything said in leftist circles and think tanks directly to Democrats as needing full accounting for, but to not do the same with Republicans?

And more importantly, blaming Democrats for voters choosing Trump whisks away any concept of agency for those voters, as if the voting choices can only be for pure and good intentions rather than awful things front and center, and as if Trump’s win simply negates his malevolent nature. If elections are to any extent a referendum purely on the merits of candidates, then trying to justify the support for someone who attempted a coup should say more about the voters than anything about the Democratic Party’s messaging or platform.

II. A Look at History and Data

At no point during 2018, 2020, or 2022 was there this kind of agonizing demand for soul searching in the Republican Party. The Republican Party was fully captured by MAGA politics during this era and did nothing to moderate its policy positions. Instead, it doubled down.

Politics should be about fine tuning candidates, rhetoric, and policy to be maximally effective and appealing because our Rube Goldberg style political system demands it. The Democrats should recalibrate and broaden their appeal whether they win or lose any given election. But an important part of that recalibration requires grasping what actually happened and not just feeding confirmation bias and a weird urge for masochistic mea culpa. Changing the fortunes of the Democratic Party depends on seeing things clearly and not overinterpreting the results based on the whims of bad faith observers, and to recognize the uncertainty and fluctuating nature of the world two or four years from now.

It is not that policy positions and actions don’t matter to produce election results. Quite the opposite. Democrats notched absolutely historic wins in Congress in 2018, aided in part by horrendously unpopular Trumpian bills like the 2017 tax cut and an attempt to gut the ACA.

After Republicans lost the 2012 presidential election, there was an RNC autopsy report that tried to forge a new path forward for the Republican Party after their stinging loss. It famously called for a “softer tone,” improve their public perception with minorities, and better work on persuasion of the public. Of course, the next cycle saw Donald Trump disregard that consensus and stick to a hardline “Mexico is sending rapists” approach. And Latinos have been trending more rightward ever since!

After Democratic defeat in the 2004 presidential election, there was much haranguing in the press about how elitist and out of touch Democrats were because of issues like gay marriage, and predictions about how Republicans were ushering in a new era of a stable governing coalition. Then of course, the escalation of the Iraq war and the Financial Crisis of 2008 ushered in back to back historic blowouts in favor of Democrats in 2006 and 2008. The result of the Democratic Party wins in 2006, 2008, and 2012 built a broad political social base in support of gay marriage, and culminated in the Obergefell decision making it a constitutional right.

In light of this, should Democrats have been hell bent after 2004 on abandoning advocating for basic dignity and rights for gay and lesbian people to chase down some idealized version of homophobic voters, maybe setting the cause back decades? If you have principles, the answer is hell no.

It is this type of clear parallel which should guide the Democratic Party on substance and messaging. Identify what values are worth fighting for, what policies are achievable, and what the best way to persuade and uphold those are.

Take Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat who has racked repeated wins in blood red Kentucky, and who made an excellent pitch in an op-ed suggesting that LGBT rights don’t have to be thrown under a bus for Democrats to win. Republicans spent many millions on bullshit ads in 2024 fearmongering about trans people, but it is important for those scolding Democrats to be specific on what they are actually advocating for. If its to toss trans rights and dignity to the wolves, I don’t think that is a reasonable or noble idea that will do anything but immiserate an already battered minority for no reason or gain.

It is also just the fact that this age’s American elections reliably swing based on which party is in power. Think of it as a baseline propulsion that gives a natural advantage to the party out of power under the right conditions. Even great candidates can lose in bad years, and bad candidates can sail to victory. Viewing 2024 in a vacuum makes as much sense as viewing other elections that way. Democrats’ historic wave election in 2008 followed two Republican terms and a major financial crisis. Democrats got massacred in the 2010 GOP wave midterms. Democrats won reelection in 2012, only to get smacked down again in 2014 midterms. Obama’s two terms put Clinton in the position of running for a third term for the party, and she narrowly lost to Trump in 2016. Democrats had a wave election against Republicans and Trump in 2018. Trump lost in 2020 likely because of Covid and economic fallout. Biden was unpopular after a period of high inflation and asylum claims, and Harris lost on his coattails in 2024.

Economic conditions, broad trends, and polarization tell a more coherent story than any cheap assortment of gimmicky subjective takes or one-size fits all explanation based on internet buzz. Economic effects are tangibly felt by everyone and voters are sensitive to it. It is also much easier to measure economic effects than it is to point to subjective perceptions in polls or interviews. Voters simply have a tendency to punish incumbent parties for doing any dramatic policy changes in US politics for the past several decades with few exceptions.

If the next two years are as turbulent as they appear likely to be and don’t bring the country to ruin, Democrats will probably have excellent runs in 2026 and possibly 2028. Would it make sense for Democrats to win and then media personalities demand that Republicans and their voters address how racist and out of touch they are? Maybe! But I’m skeptical that those currently scolding Democrats for similarly nonsensical platitudes would agree with that prognosis.

Trump is poised to win the popular vote by 1-1.7%, and with less than 50% of total votes cast, making it one of the weakest victories in history. Out of approximately 153 million votes, only something like 237,000 votes switched the other way across three states would have given Harris a win, which is 0.15% of all votes cast.

The moral of all this should encourage more uncertainty about a singular or absolute theory of the 2024 election rather than giving in to the temptation to succumb to the lazy arguments because they are personally self-satisfying. Is it ever appropriate to develop grandiose theories and demand prescriptions for Democrats based on such slim margins that could have easily gone the other way?

For instance, did Harris really run a poor campaign? Where she put her time and resources, she performed significantly better than across the nation in an unfavorable national environment for her:

2024 is also nothing remotely like a landslide election like those in 2008, 2010, or 2018. Republicans this year had a wide open field of vulnerable Democratic senators to pick off in battleground states that Trump won, but only won a single one. If Democrats’ brand was so unbelievably toxic, how did that happen?:

Republicans are also going to have a very slim majority in the House of Representatives. Given the national environment being favorable for Republicans, Biden’s unpopularity, and the clear discontent of the electorate, there is a strong case that Trump and Republicans underperformed relative to the fundamentals. If campaigning, rhetoric, and substance matter at all, and if the Republican base truly isn’t just a bunch of susceptible racists and fascist sympathizers, can you imagine what a non-insane Republican might have done in an environment where the average state shifted 6.7 points to the right? If Trump underperformed, is that really a catastrophe for Democrats and desperate call for reform? What happens when the pendulum hugely shifts after two years of Trump 2.0?

The world also ran a fun experiment when it had a pandemic in 2020, with all of its fallout, followed by inflation. For the first time in a hundred years, every developed country that had an election this year had its incumbent party get beat, often quite badly:

What makes the United States so special that it would escape this trend of backlash and anger? Is this really just a massive coincidence? The pandemic fallout hit all developed nations in rapid succession and spared no one. Everyone knows and feels prices regardless of their consumption of news or their interest in politics.

Trump is a real trailblazer in showing us that electoral loss should ever be treated too seriously. Biden won the 2020 election by a 4.45% margin in the popular vote. Trump responded to his loss in 2020 by attempting a coup and doubling down on MAGA. As a result, Trump and the Republican Party did zero soul-searching and hand wringing about how they had lost touch with America. And they won in 2024! If Trump had won in 2020 and the economy suffered the inflation that all nations suffered, and Harris/Walz ran on their exact same platform making the exact same decisions, does anyone really think that that Republicans would have won in 2024, or that the dialogue right now would be how Democrats were too woke and lost their way with the working class?