I Guess We're Going Back.
Time for the predictions of shame.
Well, the good news is that one of my pundit prayers was answered: the election was decided much earlier than it was in 2020, and everyone acknowledged the results as legitimate.
The bad news is that Trump and the Republicans won handily, rebuking all of my other prayers.
So what does that mean?
[You don’t have to do this.—ed. Yeah, I kinda have to. Are you sure?—ed. I am very sure. Okay, it’s your pundit funeral!—ed.]
Well, it means that some of my newsletters in recent years turned out to be horribly, horribly wrong. And it seems worthwhile as an exercise to look back at this newsletter and see where I got my political analysis of Trump, Biden, and Harris wrong. This is not going to be a deep dive, just links to those posts and some quick observations about how poorly they have aged.
In chronological order:1
Oof. This one hurts. I was just flat-out wrong. No excuses.
Based on the immediate market reaction to his victory, it turns out the answer to this was “hell, yeah!” It’s a little more complicated than that, of course, and more about this in the future. For now, though, capital still does swipe right.
Turns out the answer was “no.” Democrats are not allowed to shit the bed during presidential debates — but Trump has done it in all but one of his general election debates and it turns out not to matter! Trump’s cognitive failings turned out to be a non-issue in the election outcome.
Turns out that key Trump supporters will now admit gleefully announce that Project 2025 was their plan all along!
Turns out the answer was “no.”
So, I got a lot of stuff wrong, and Americans proved eager and willing to elect — check that, re-elect — an immature leader. No one can say that Americans did this with their eyes closed. Claims that Americans were simply misinformed are not gonna fly this time round. This was a choice.
Furthermore, the thing about Donald Trump is that he is both a sore loser and a sore winner, so the political and policy repercussions of the 2024 outcome will be long-lasting. That is what Drezner’s World will be focusing on for the next — checks calendar — four-to-forever years.
If you, dear readers, will be interested in that analysis, then I thank you. But as the above links should point out, I get a lot of stuff wrong. One of my few comparative advantages in pundity, however, is that I will readily acknowledge when I am wrong. That’s my brand! “Read Drezner’s World: He Might Well Be Wrong!”
Let the comments to this post also be a suggestion box for what specifically you would like me to focus on in the future. Seems to me like there’s gonna be a lot of possible topics, so any areas of focus by the patrons will be taken into account (which is why they are the only ones allowed to comment).
I do like that many of these posts are titled with questions, which at least acknowledged the possibility in real time that I might be wrong.
Everyone got it wrong. Everyone overlooked the pews and focused on the shitty ground game the GOP had in the field. But every Sunday, evangelicals were being told from the pulpit that Donald was their guy and he’d make sure all their wildest theocratic fantasies would come true. Maybe something on this? Religiosity is going to become huge in the coming years and we non-Christian, non-Catholic people need to learn how to make inroads with people who have been told explicitly that *the other* is evil and will destroy your entire way of life. How the fuck do we fight against that? I guess that since all their stock has been put into one guy, Donald, as their new savior and when he finally leaves this mortal coil, his movement will go with him. Or they’ll become a death cult. And then shit will get REALLY weird.
Good morning Daniel. I just started following you after joining Substack when Harris became the nominee. I’m very grateful for your posts. We all got it wrong. We thought we were a country based on moral principles.
What can we do to prevent our voices from being silenced? I just dumped X after the election. Am on bluesky now. Hoping to find more resisters.