Thanks for this overview. I think people may be misunderstanding the third reason you point out - that she ran too much on cultural issues. This is not about how she ran her campaign, this is about how people "perceived" she ran her campaign. In all of the congressional and presidential campaign ads against the Democrats that I witnessed (and that was mostly in traditional media, but social media must have been worse), cultural issues - trans rights, etc - were dominant. I don't want to downplay the likelihood that her being a woman of color could also have been a factor, but I think you may be underplaying the above.
I think we're downplaying the role of bigotry. But every time we face this issue, Democrats convince themselves the problem couldn't have been racism and sexism. We need to listen what Black women are saying even though we won't like the answer. And as for racism among ethnic groups, it has a very long and ugly history in this country. The only factor? No, but a real factor.
I've yet to meet a Democrat that has convinced themselves that the problem couldn't have been racism or sexism. I think most everyone thinks these played some role. But it's not wise and not accurate to say that these are the only issues.
I'm certainly not making that argument (that the problem is not racism and sexism). My specific point is to understand what those polled meant. It is useful to see the full text (in the link in the story) of that issue: "Kamala Harris is more focused on cultural issues like transgender issues than on helping the middle class." 15% of all Black voters agreed with this, and 9% of Latino voters. I don't think that is objectively the case in terms of her campaign, but it is -- according to his poll - objectively the case in terms of voters' "perceptions", which is clearly a sign that the GOP's media campaign worked. I don't think you can extrapolate from that question that what they are really saying is that they don't think a woman of color should be president. I'm not sure how you actually poll that, but clearly it is a factor.
The poll answer should be taken as an indictment of democrats generally rather than the Harris campaign specifically. In that light, I think it makes a lot more sense.
Joe Biden's unpopularity - justified or otherwise - could not be significantly effaced by the Harris campaign, as much of it stuck with key voter demographics. Quite honestly, Biden's approvals tanked right after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, kept declining, and right after the 2022 mid-terms, Biden should have announced in no ambiguous terms that he will honor his pledge to be a one-term "transitional" candidate, and invite an open primary. Sure, with or without a formal endorsement of his VP, Biden may have caused some short-term ruction, but enough qualified Dems not associated with the administration were ready to move, and let the best person win.
But, he didn't, Harris was tarred with Biden's disapprovals, and the rapist/convicted felon is b-a-a-a-a-a-ck!
We don't have a ton of data because Presidential approval is mostly a mid-late 20th century metric but no Presidential incumbent has been reelected with an approval rating below 48 has ever been reelected. I just don't think changing the party's candidate would have made a difference. Now, our data set of 1 tells us it does not. Depending on Trump's approval ratings we may have another case in 2028.
Except that T had one admin under his belt too and was one of the worst pres we’ve ever had . So not like they were running with someone who was a star.
Oh but I don't want to come across as though I didn't try and deny everything I learned in my American Politics 101 class to hope that all these "differences " would make her win. So I am with you 100% except that's just not what happened. People voted with (at least what they thought were ) their pocketbooks and an unfavorable party lost.
No. I know. It feels like it should be different. But that's not what the data has told us in the past and is not what our one 'simolar but different" case tells us now If Trump's numbers are below 48 this term, then we will get another similar case, ( with Vance??). But that case too wiill not be identical because there should be a full primary and general campaign.
Of course there were many other factors at play. Can we say that Carter and Ford and Bush the 1st were identical cases? Likely not. But what I can say is that 2024 was another case that did not disprove the wisdom that unfavorable incumbents do not get reelected.
I think the cultural issues are pretty clearly gender identity/trans rights. The three things that Trump pushed were 1) inflation 2) immigration and 3) gender issues. It sounds like all three were compelling to the voters.
All of the “fundamentals” election models have a variable representing “time for a change” that kicks in after eight years. A party that has held the White House for two consecutive terms is at a serious disadvantage trying to keep it for a third term. A party has held the White House for three consecutive terms only once since 1950.
The mechanism for this would seem to be something like this. Over time, things happen that the party in power gets blamed for, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. Some of the party’s former supporters either switch sides, or decide not to vote. For some psychological reason the “blame” side of the equation outweighs the “credit” side of the equation, and over eight years a party will accumulate enough “blame” points that it will almost inevitably lose.
I hypothesize that the nature of modern media, starting in the early 2010s, has changed things so that the speed of the blame accumulation is happening faster. Small negative stories that formerly would never made it out of the local papers now are elevated to national controversies, and the party in power takes the blame.
Eight years used to be “time for a change”. Maybe now it’s four years.
If inflation, the border and Democrats being too woke were critical factors, then the party would have been crushed in the 2022 midterms when all these issues were far more salient. Instead, the Democrats solidly beat the historical trends.
So what was different in 2024, with inflation beaten (and wages solidly exceeding inflation), migrant counts way down, and Harris basically running as Mitt Romney? Here's the difference: Trump was on the ballot, lots of (ahem) "low information" voters were activated, and there was a woman (of color) on the ticket.
Oh, and it was still a close race with Trump winning a narrow popular vote victory (when all the votes are counted) and having all the swing states narrowly break for him.
End of the day, this wasn't an issues race, and it wasn't one about the people suffering materially. This was a "vibes" election pure and simple. People feel grumpy and dyspeptic and decided to act on their accumulated bile.
This doesn't mean Democrats are sure to rebound (though I bet 2026 will be a great Democratic year) or that there's nothing for Democrats to do (their ivory tower brand is simply too toxic). But it does mean that there will be a thermostatic reversion, especially if the Republicans govern as badly as I expect them to, and in a couple years Democrats will look a helluva lot better than they do now. But they still need to make major changes if they ever hope to win an election 55-45 instead of 50.5-49.5.
Ya know...this was the first time I had heard that last bit. A party should not be organizing to get "just enough" but should want to be able to win outright. I wonder if that could even exist in the US currently. (I also doubt whether the Dems have enough internal cohesion to even think about accomplishing this.).
But what it really makes me ask myself is: Would I recognize that party?
His margin is within the % of people who vote randomly (this something that is well known to political scientists who specialize in political behavior). From a substantive, policy perspective, it could have gone either way.
If we zoom out, incumbents are being voted out throughout Western world, mostly due to inflation; but voters in America went for the guy who wants tariffs so clearly they don't understand what they were voting for.
Meanwhile, after having denied any link to Project 2025, MAGA says they can now admit it was Project 2025 all along. So they lied to get elected, their real platform was not popular. They can't claim to have a mandate to do something they hid from voters. In fact, in surveys people prefer Democratic positions over Republican ones.
"MAGA says they can now admit it was Project 2025 all along." Nope. This is the opinion of a couple podcast hosts, amplified across left wing outlets. Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025, then or now.
Exactly. If democrats want republicans to answer for project 2025, they should also be prepared to answer for the crazy views of all their aligned groups.
The point is if they implement Project 2025 after having denied any link to it, it will be delegitimizing. Given the tight links, we can assume it's a real wish list for MAGA. We'll see what happens.
I just don’t buy that trump voters were all that interested in the economy or immigration. Some are just now starting to figure out what tariffs mean, but it’s too late now. I think we have a broad swath of society in the US that is racist and misogynistic. That’s not Harris’s fault. I thought she ran a great campaign.
Thanks for not blaming the results of this suspect election on Dems “ignoring middle class voters” or Harris “should’ve gone on Joe Rogan.” No! All of Harris’s economic plans were lower and middle class driven. Turning Dems into Republicans who don’t care about reproductive rights isn’t the answer either. That kind of commentary makes me want to scream!
The macro international political economy has been horrible for incumbents, and the Democrats were not exempt. I published a piece on Wednesday discussing this, while summarizing some of the global elections that have taken place.
Across every continent, every political persuasion, the story has been similar (each country with its own unique nuances) - the incumbent has taken the blame for the post-pandemic malaise felt by the electorate.
This really shouldn't have been news to the Democrats either; the electorate hates inflation and Americans had been telling pollsters for a while that they did were not doing great.
The unfortunate thing is, laying the result at the feet of this global phenomenon inherently takes away agency and assumes Harris functionally had no shot.
Had Biden dropped out earlier (say, November 2022 post-midterms) and the Dems conducted an actual primary that really allowed the candidates to differentiate themselves (e.g., the Dem governors like Whitmer and Shapiro), perhaps one of them could have positioned themselves as a change candidate.
But the nominee being so linked to the incumbent was never going to work, regardless of the opponent.
My heterodox view is that Biden dropping out early and there being a normal open primary would most likely have been very bad for the Democrats, and skipping the primary and anointing Harris at the last minute was the best outcome, though it fell short of victory.
What's the evidence that an open primary would have led to nominating a moderate Middle West governor who could change the toxic image of the Democrats? In the 2016 primary, Bernie Sanders almost took over the party with a hard left message and really pushed Clinton into taking on a more woke position. In the 2020, campaign, he did the same thing, and all the candidates (like Harris!) were running to the (woke) left as fast as they could. It took a deus ex machina action (via Jim Clyburn, South Caroline Black voters, and the timely intervention of some party leaders) to cut Bernie off at the pass. And even with that, Biden felt forced to make lots of concessions to the progressive elements of the party in the campaign and afterwards.
What makes us think an open 2024 primary would have been different? Progressive groups were feeling their oats (look at the BBB legislation effort and the results of the 2022 midterms). Why would they have gracefully made way for a Gretchen Whitmer? It would have been a knockdown drag out fight with the center of the party still being on the left. I'm glad we avoided that battle.
When Bernie goes away or gets stifled, we can do primaries again. I think the run to the left in 2020 was supremely not helpful to anyone who was on that stage. Only Biden resisted, and he became the President.
I am shaken by Umar Lee's take that Democrats need to part ways with the cultural left which he would have believed no matter who had won. (Then he wanted to charge me $8 a month to argue with him which I would not pay under any circumstances. This is too bad because I started an interesting book called "Finding Similar Paths" by Samuel Heilman and Mucahit Bilici that I wanted to tell him about.)
I think Harris had policies that would have concretely helped people but you cannot fight people blaming the president for inflation or putting inflation which presumably comes and goes over broader values like democracy/institutionalism. I also think Harris did not have an overarching metaphor to wrap the policies in so that people would have a good answer for why they were voting specifically for her. Because I did not consume any of Harris's media appearances since the convention I cannot drill down any more than that.
Deeper issue: TFG should never have been on the ballot, with multiple Constitutionally disqualifying attributes, but the Senate failed twice to convict him and the AG failed to prosecute him immediately for J6. And behind those failures stand, in part, the forces of white supremacist oligarchy. But the powerful agents in the Senate and the AG office also bear moral responsibility for their choices. They of all people could have pushed back against the malevolent forces. They chose not to.
The limited counter is Casey’s seat and the House are likely to be lost be very very small margins. Those are places different decisions could have yielded different results.
Sides summed up the case in an email to “Good Authority” subscribers. Taking the liberty of extensively quoting.
John Sides
Good Authority
November 8, 2024
Because Donald Trump gained vote share in many kinds of places and with many kinds of groups, the simplest explanation is a national one: An unpopular incumbent party lost reelection.
It’s sort of a boring story, really. It’s the story of 2020 too. It’s the story in lots of developed democracies since 2022. The spike in inflation in 2021-22 appeared to do real damage.
But it’s hard to let that just be the story. Commentators and analysts want there to be more! However, if the 2024 election hinged on the long shadow of inflation and Biden’s unpopularity, you should discount stories specific to particular places and groups. You should also discount stories specific to the candidates or campaign tactics. For example:
“Trump did better even in big cities! This is an indictment of liberal governance in those cities.” Except that Trump did better everywhere, so why do we need a separate explanation for cities? Or any other place.
“Kamala Harris was a bad candidate” or “Kamala Harris ran a bad campaign.” Trump’s gains were smallest in the battleground states, where Harris was campaigning.
“Donald Trump ran a genius campaign.” People are susceptible to circular reasoning: Anything the winner did must have worked because they’re the winner.
Of course, Trump’s gains were not entirely evenly distributed across groups or places. He appeared to do particularly well in places with larger shares of Latinos. I did an interview with political scientist Yamil Velez to unpack this. Still, Latinos were hardly the whole story.
To be clear, in using the subject line “what didn’t matter,” I’m overstating things. I’m just trying to center post-election analysis on the bigger factors rather than the less important ones.
Here is one last incorrect explanation that you’ll see in post-election analysis: Trump won because voters wanted Trump’s policies. This is the “electoral mandate” interpretation, and it comes out after every election. I did a tweetstorm about it this week.
The problems with the electoral mandate interpretation are many. Lots of voters don’t necessarily know about the candidate’s policies. Or they choose a candidate for other reasons. Indeed, sometimes they choose a candidate for other reasons and then change their policy views to match the candidate’s.
And the ultimate irony is this: When the winning candidates pursue the policies they promise, voters often shift in the opposite direction. So even though you’ll see people claiming that Trump’s victory means we’re a “center-right nation,” it’s likely voters will soon be moving left.
"The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties" Really? More "hostile" than after the crash of 1929? 18% inflation in the mid-'70's? I can think of dozens more that dwarf the "hostile environment" of today. What's this guy talking about?
I get it that incumbent parties haven't done too well. But I look at Great Britain where the Tories took a shellacking in terms of seats but the winning Labour party only got 34% of the vote. And that's when a non-controversial leader like Starmer at the helm. Had they had a crazy Trump-like person (Jeremy *cough* Corbin) leading them, does Labour get even 34% of the vote? The LePen-led National Rally in France improved, but only got 32% of the vote and 125 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. A nice improvement, like I said, but the large majority of the voters rejected them.
It's only in the US where the out-party (led by an aged crazy man!) won a lot of votes.
I think the article goes way too far in excusing Harris’ flaws as a candidate. She lacked the ability to think “on her feet.” I don’t have a staff of researchers, but I recall two key moments in the campaign where she was asked what would be her first action on Day 1 of her Presidency. I believe this “softball,” no-brainer of a question was asked in Dana Bash’s CNN interview and in the debate with now President-elect Trump. In both cases, Harris gave a rambling response that failed to identify her first action. Her inability to be decisive was laid bare for the large number of viewers to see. Trump had his own flaws as a candidate, but I think more voters saw him as a better “decider” than Harris. Then there was her tone deaf response to the question posed on “The View” about giving an example of something she might have done differently than Biden. She said nothing came to mind. Nothing — seriously? She said that in front of the largest audience “The View” had drawn in the last three years. How could she give that vapid response and still portray her as the agent of change in the election? Finally, anyone who watched her poor interview with Oprah Winfrey saw a halting performance in which Winfrey had to help out Harris with many answers. Not a good look. A lot of way you say about why Harris lost is correct, but your strained effort to exculpate her personally for her own defeat ignores evidence to the contrary.
As opposed to thinking on her feet quite effectively during the debate? Which had much higher ratings than all three of the things you mention? I think you grievously overestimate how much voters were paying attention to the things you mentioned.
Overall, the debate didn’t help Harris that much. After a short boost for her in the polls, the race reverted to a neck-and-neck race. Given the outcome of the election, however, it’s questionable whether polling was ever an accurate bellwether of the contest.
Both thoughts can be true at the same time. I think her failure to adequately answer the Day 1 question on several occasions hurt her a lot. I believe she also flubbed it in her CNN Townhall with Anderson Cooper.
My original main point was that Harris was a deeply flawed candidate who frequently lacked the ability to think on her feet in big unscripted settings. I’ve provided solid evidence citing several specific examples of this that I and other observers think hurt Harris. Read Fareed Zakaria’s election post mortem. Clearly, her staff worried about her frequent inability to answer questions in candid venues. Emails from 2023 released under a Washington Post-filed FOIA showed that her staff tried to arrange for Harris to answer pre-selected questions on a college speaking tour. At least one African-American radio show host in Philadelphia admitted during the campaign that she chose her questions for Harris from a list provided by the Harris campaign. Finally, late in the campaign townhall-host Maia Shriver told the audience that there would be no random questions from the audience, but that Harris would respond to pre-selected questions. You will never convince me that her Presidential debate performance is sufficient to best the evidence I have compiled for my case against Harris as a candidate who could think on her feet, say like J.D. Vance.
"What will you do on your first day?" is the dumbest question in politics. "I plan on enjoying the parade, finding out where the outlets are in the Oval Office, going to some great parties that evening, and then collapsing in bed. Dana, the *real* question is 'what will I be doing on Day 11 and Day 111 and Day 511? I'll be working my tail off for the American people, that's what I'll be doing."
But the evidence suggests this view is wrong. I might have thought that way if I hadn’t read John Sides - see my other post. It’s hard to accept that candidates/campaigns have only a marginal impact on the result. But the evidence is pretty strong here that inflation created strong headwinds that were hard to overcome.
Dan, thanks for this well argued and supported analysis. Is it your view that the wrong track numbers are principally driven by the inflation spurt? Is there a way to honestly argue to oneself that a sizable number of Trump voters were not embracing his charming self or mass deportations or 20% tariffs but are just ignorant of them or just so mad they don't care and convince themselves they won't happen?
Thanks for this overview. I think people may be misunderstanding the third reason you point out - that she ran too much on cultural issues. This is not about how she ran her campaign, this is about how people "perceived" she ran her campaign. In all of the congressional and presidential campaign ads against the Democrats that I witnessed (and that was mostly in traditional media, but social media must have been worse), cultural issues - trans rights, etc - were dominant. I don't want to downplay the likelihood that her being a woman of color could also have been a factor, but I think you may be underplaying the above.
I think we're downplaying the role of bigotry. But every time we face this issue, Democrats convince themselves the problem couldn't have been racism and sexism. We need to listen what Black women are saying even though we won't like the answer. And as for racism among ethnic groups, it has a very long and ugly history in this country. The only factor? No, but a real factor.
I've yet to meet a Democrat that has convinced themselves that the problem couldn't have been racism or sexism. I think most everyone thinks these played some role. But it's not wise and not accurate to say that these are the only issues.
I think a white woman would have lost too
I'm certainly not making that argument (that the problem is not racism and sexism). My specific point is to understand what those polled meant. It is useful to see the full text (in the link in the story) of that issue: "Kamala Harris is more focused on cultural issues like transgender issues than on helping the middle class." 15% of all Black voters agreed with this, and 9% of Latino voters. I don't think that is objectively the case in terms of her campaign, but it is -- according to his poll - objectively the case in terms of voters' "perceptions", which is clearly a sign that the GOP's media campaign worked. I don't think you can extrapolate from that question that what they are really saying is that they don't think a woman of color should be president. I'm not sure how you actually poll that, but clearly it is a factor.
The poll answer should be taken as an indictment of democrats generally rather than the Harris campaign specifically. In that light, I think it makes a lot more sense.
Joe Biden's unpopularity - justified or otherwise - could not be significantly effaced by the Harris campaign, as much of it stuck with key voter demographics. Quite honestly, Biden's approvals tanked right after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, kept declining, and right after the 2022 mid-terms, Biden should have announced in no ambiguous terms that he will honor his pledge to be a one-term "transitional" candidate, and invite an open primary. Sure, with or without a formal endorsement of his VP, Biden may have caused some short-term ruction, but enough qualified Dems not associated with the administration were ready to move, and let the best person win.
But, he didn't, Harris was tarred with Biden's disapprovals, and the rapist/convicted felon is b-a-a-a-a-a-ck!
We don't have a ton of data because Presidential approval is mostly a mid-late 20th century metric but no Presidential incumbent has been reelected with an approval rating below 48 has ever been reelected. I just don't think changing the party's candidate would have made a difference. Now, our data set of 1 tells us it does not. Depending on Trump's approval ratings we may have another case in 2028.
Except that T had one admin under his belt too and was one of the worst pres we’ve ever had . So not like they were running with someone who was a star.
Oh but I don't want to come across as though I didn't try and deny everything I learned in my American Politics 101 class to hope that all these "differences " would make her win. So I am with you 100% except that's just not what happened. People voted with (at least what they thought were ) their pocketbooks and an unfavorable party lost.
No. I know. It feels like it should be different. But that's not what the data has told us in the past and is not what our one 'simolar but different" case tells us now If Trump's numbers are below 48 this term, then we will get another similar case, ( with Vance??). But that case too wiill not be identical because there should be a full primary and general campaign.
Of course there were many other factors at play. Can we say that Carter and Ford and Bush the 1st were identical cases? Likely not. But what I can say is that 2024 was another case that did not disprove the wisdom that unfavorable incumbents do not get reelected.
I think the cultural issues are pretty clearly gender identity/trans rights. The three things that Trump pushed were 1) inflation 2) immigration and 3) gender issues. It sounds like all three were compelling to the voters.
My hot take, which is honestly just speculative:
All of the “fundamentals” election models have a variable representing “time for a change” that kicks in after eight years. A party that has held the White House for two consecutive terms is at a serious disadvantage trying to keep it for a third term. A party has held the White House for three consecutive terms only once since 1950.
The mechanism for this would seem to be something like this. Over time, things happen that the party in power gets blamed for, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. Some of the party’s former supporters either switch sides, or decide not to vote. For some psychological reason the “blame” side of the equation outweighs the “credit” side of the equation, and over eight years a party will accumulate enough “blame” points that it will almost inevitably lose.
I hypothesize that the nature of modern media, starting in the early 2010s, has changed things so that the speed of the blame accumulation is happening faster. Small negative stories that formerly would never made it out of the local papers now are elevated to national controversies, and the party in power takes the blame.
Eight years used to be “time for a change”. Maybe now it’s four years.
If inflation, the border and Democrats being too woke were critical factors, then the party would have been crushed in the 2022 midterms when all these issues were far more salient. Instead, the Democrats solidly beat the historical trends.
So what was different in 2024, with inflation beaten (and wages solidly exceeding inflation), migrant counts way down, and Harris basically running as Mitt Romney? Here's the difference: Trump was on the ballot, lots of (ahem) "low information" voters were activated, and there was a woman (of color) on the ticket.
Oh, and it was still a close race with Trump winning a narrow popular vote victory (when all the votes are counted) and having all the swing states narrowly break for him.
End of the day, this wasn't an issues race, and it wasn't one about the people suffering materially. This was a "vibes" election pure and simple. People feel grumpy and dyspeptic and decided to act on their accumulated bile.
This doesn't mean Democrats are sure to rebound (though I bet 2026 will be a great Democratic year) or that there's nothing for Democrats to do (their ivory tower brand is simply too toxic). But it does mean that there will be a thermostatic reversion, especially if the Republicans govern as badly as I expect them to, and in a couple years Democrats will look a helluva lot better than they do now. But they still need to make major changes if they ever hope to win an election 55-45 instead of 50.5-49.5.
Ya know...this was the first time I had heard that last bit. A party should not be organizing to get "just enough" but should want to be able to win outright. I wonder if that could even exist in the US currently. (I also doubt whether the Dems have enough internal cohesion to even think about accomplishing this.).
But what it really makes me ask myself is: Would I recognize that party?
Same could be said of GOP , bc this campaign was a stinker
Does Trump have a mandate?
His margin is within the % of people who vote randomly (this something that is well known to political scientists who specialize in political behavior). From a substantive, policy perspective, it could have gone either way.
If we zoom out, incumbents are being voted out throughout Western world, mostly due to inflation; but voters in America went for the guy who wants tariffs so clearly they don't understand what they were voting for.
Meanwhile, after having denied any link to Project 2025, MAGA says they can now admit it was Project 2025 all along. So they lied to get elected, their real platform was not popular. They can't claim to have a mandate to do something they hid from voters. In fact, in surveys people prefer Democratic positions over Republican ones.
"MAGA says they can now admit it was Project 2025 all along." Nope. This is the opinion of a couple podcast hosts, amplified across left wing outlets. Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025, then or now.
Podcast hosts like Steve Bannon 😬
We'll see soon enough how many of the Project 2025 policies they will try to enact. I hope you're right and they didn't lie so massively.
Exactly. If democrats want republicans to answer for project 2025, they should also be prepared to answer for the crazy views of all their aligned groups.
The point is if they implement Project 2025 after having denied any link to it, it will be delegitimizing. Given the tight links, we can assume it's a real wish list for MAGA. We'll see what happens.
Thanks. I was talking about Bannon too, who these days is just another nitwit podcaster.
It will be rolled out - there’s a reason they distanced themselves. Do you find this crazy? It’s the heritage foundation - Scotus, etc etc
LOL. This is what they want everyone to believe.
I just don’t buy that trump voters were all that interested in the economy or immigration. Some are just now starting to figure out what tariffs mean, but it’s too late now. I think we have a broad swath of society in the US that is racist and misogynistic. That’s not Harris’s fault. I thought she ran a great campaign.
Thanks for not blaming the results of this suspect election on Dems “ignoring middle class voters” or Harris “should’ve gone on Joe Rogan.” No! All of Harris’s economic plans were lower and middle class driven. Turning Dems into Republicans who don’t care about reproductive rights isn’t the answer either. That kind of commentary makes me want to scream!
Totally agree - they’re just parroting that bc that’s all they heard from the T campaign .
The macro international political economy has been horrible for incumbents, and the Democrats were not exempt. I published a piece on Wednesday discussing this, while summarizing some of the global elections that have taken place.
https://nuancematters.substack.com/p/the-post-pandemic-fall-of-incumbents?r=1cwd5h
Across every continent, every political persuasion, the story has been similar (each country with its own unique nuances) - the incumbent has taken the blame for the post-pandemic malaise felt by the electorate.
This really shouldn't have been news to the Democrats either; the electorate hates inflation and Americans had been telling pollsters for a while that they did were not doing great.
https://nuancematters.substack.com/p/bad-news-for-the-biden-camp
The unfortunate thing is, laying the result at the feet of this global phenomenon inherently takes away agency and assumes Harris functionally had no shot.
Had Biden dropped out earlier (say, November 2022 post-midterms) and the Dems conducted an actual primary that really allowed the candidates to differentiate themselves (e.g., the Dem governors like Whitmer and Shapiro), perhaps one of them could have positioned themselves as a change candidate.
But the nominee being so linked to the incumbent was never going to work, regardless of the opponent.
My heterodox view is that Biden dropping out early and there being a normal open primary would most likely have been very bad for the Democrats, and skipping the primary and anointing Harris at the last minute was the best outcome, though it fell short of victory.
What's the evidence that an open primary would have led to nominating a moderate Middle West governor who could change the toxic image of the Democrats? In the 2016 primary, Bernie Sanders almost took over the party with a hard left message and really pushed Clinton into taking on a more woke position. In the 2020, campaign, he did the same thing, and all the candidates (like Harris!) were running to the (woke) left as fast as they could. It took a deus ex machina action (via Jim Clyburn, South Caroline Black voters, and the timely intervention of some party leaders) to cut Bernie off at the pass. And even with that, Biden felt forced to make lots of concessions to the progressive elements of the party in the campaign and afterwards.
What makes us think an open 2024 primary would have been different? Progressive groups were feeling their oats (look at the BBB legislation effort and the results of the 2022 midterms). Why would they have gracefully made way for a Gretchen Whitmer? It would have been a knockdown drag out fight with the center of the party still being on the left. I'm glad we avoided that battle.
When Bernie goes away or gets stifled, we can do primaries again. I think the run to the left in 2020 was supremely not helpful to anyone who was on that stage. Only Biden resisted, and he became the President.
For the record: fn2, linking to TPM, points to an article not by Josh Marshall but by Kate Riga.
Minor thing, but I always like to highlight the lesser-known. Among, you know, the hard-working staffs.
;)
I am shaken by Umar Lee's take that Democrats need to part ways with the cultural left which he would have believed no matter who had won. (Then he wanted to charge me $8 a month to argue with him which I would not pay under any circumstances. This is too bad because I started an interesting book called "Finding Similar Paths" by Samuel Heilman and Mucahit Bilici that I wanted to tell him about.)
I think Harris had policies that would have concretely helped people but you cannot fight people blaming the president for inflation or putting inflation which presumably comes and goes over broader values like democracy/institutionalism. I also think Harris did not have an overarching metaphor to wrap the policies in so that people would have a good answer for why they were voting specifically for her. Because I did not consume any of Harris's media appearances since the convention I cannot drill down any more than that.
Deeper issue: TFG should never have been on the ballot, with multiple Constitutionally disqualifying attributes, but the Senate failed twice to convict him and the AG failed to prosecute him immediately for J6. And behind those failures stand, in part, the forces of white supremacist oligarchy. But the powerful agents in the Senate and the AG office also bear moral responsibility for their choices. They of all people could have pushed back against the malevolent forces. They chose not to.
The limited counter is Casey’s seat and the House are likely to be lost be very very small margins. Those are places different decisions could have yielded different results.
Yes! Yes!
Prominent political scientist John Sides has written very cogently on the “fundamentals” explanation.
Simple model explains the result.
“In 2020, an unpopular incumbent lost reelection.
“In 2024, an unpopular incumbent’s party lost reelection.”
https://goodauthority.org/news/where-to-start-to-explain-trumps-win/
Condensed to one tweet/graph
https://x.com/johnmsides/status/1854194922246844652?s=46
Sides summed up the case in an email to “Good Authority” subscribers. Taking the liberty of extensively quoting.
John Sides
Good Authority
November 8, 2024
Because Donald Trump gained vote share in many kinds of places and with many kinds of groups, the simplest explanation is a national one: An unpopular incumbent party lost reelection.
It’s sort of a boring story, really. It’s the story of 2020 too. It’s the story in lots of developed democracies since 2022. The spike in inflation in 2021-22 appeared to do real damage.
But it’s hard to let that just be the story. Commentators and analysts want there to be more! However, if the 2024 election hinged on the long shadow of inflation and Biden’s unpopularity, you should discount stories specific to particular places and groups. You should also discount stories specific to the candidates or campaign tactics. For example:
“Trump did better even in big cities! This is an indictment of liberal governance in those cities.” Except that Trump did better everywhere, so why do we need a separate explanation for cities? Or any other place.
“Kamala Harris was a bad candidate” or “Kamala Harris ran a bad campaign.” Trump’s gains were smallest in the battleground states, where Harris was campaigning.
“Donald Trump ran a genius campaign.” People are susceptible to circular reasoning: Anything the winner did must have worked because they’re the winner.
Of course, Trump’s gains were not entirely evenly distributed across groups or places. He appeared to do particularly well in places with larger shares of Latinos. I did an interview with political scientist Yamil Velez to unpack this. Still, Latinos were hardly the whole story.
To be clear, in using the subject line “what didn’t matter,” I’m overstating things. I’m just trying to center post-election analysis on the bigger factors rather than the less important ones.
Here is one last incorrect explanation that you’ll see in post-election analysis: Trump won because voters wanted Trump’s policies. This is the “electoral mandate” interpretation, and it comes out after every election. I did a tweetstorm about it this week.
The problems with the electoral mandate interpretation are many. Lots of voters don’t necessarily know about the candidate’s policies. Or they choose a candidate for other reasons. Indeed, sometimes they choose a candidate for other reasons and then change their policy views to match the candidate’s.
And the ultimate irony is this: When the winning candidates pursue the policies they promise, voters often shift in the opposite direction. So even though you’ll see people claiming that Trump’s victory means we’re a “center-right nation,” it’s likely voters will soon be moving left.
https://goodauthority.org/
So unpopular candidates tend to lose elections?
Good to know.
"The economic and geopolitical conditions of the past year or two have created arguably the most hostile environment in history for incumbent parties" Really? More "hostile" than after the crash of 1929? 18% inflation in the mid-'70's? I can think of dozens more that dwarf the "hostile environment" of today. What's this guy talking about?
I get it that incumbent parties haven't done too well. But I look at Great Britain where the Tories took a shellacking in terms of seats but the winning Labour party only got 34% of the vote. And that's when a non-controversial leader like Starmer at the helm. Had they had a crazy Trump-like person (Jeremy *cough* Corbin) leading them, does Labour get even 34% of the vote? The LePen-led National Rally in France improved, but only got 32% of the vote and 125 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. A nice improvement, like I said, but the large majority of the voters rejected them.
It's only in the US where the out-party (led by an aged crazy man!) won a lot of votes.
I think the article goes way too far in excusing Harris’ flaws as a candidate. She lacked the ability to think “on her feet.” I don’t have a staff of researchers, but I recall two key moments in the campaign where she was asked what would be her first action on Day 1 of her Presidency. I believe this “softball,” no-brainer of a question was asked in Dana Bash’s CNN interview and in the debate with now President-elect Trump. In both cases, Harris gave a rambling response that failed to identify her first action. Her inability to be decisive was laid bare for the large number of viewers to see. Trump had his own flaws as a candidate, but I think more voters saw him as a better “decider” than Harris. Then there was her tone deaf response to the question posed on “The View” about giving an example of something she might have done differently than Biden. She said nothing came to mind. Nothing — seriously? She said that in front of the largest audience “The View” had drawn in the last three years. How could she give that vapid response and still portray her as the agent of change in the election? Finally, anyone who watched her poor interview with Oprah Winfrey saw a halting performance in which Winfrey had to help out Harris with many answers. Not a good look. A lot of way you say about why Harris lost is correct, but your strained effort to exculpate her personally for her own defeat ignores evidence to the contrary.
As opposed to thinking on her feet quite effectively during the debate? Which had much higher ratings than all three of the things you mention? I think you grievously overestimate how much voters were paying attention to the things you mentioned.
Harris smashed the debate but it was pretty obviously down to superior preparation and not her ability to think on her feet.
Oh piffle.
Overall, the debate didn’t help Harris that much. After a short boost for her in the polls, the race reverted to a neck-and-neck race. Given the outcome of the election, however, it’s questionable whether polling was ever an accurate bellwether of the contest.
"the debate didn’t help Harris that much"
You're now arguing against yourself. If the debate didn't have much effect, why do you think the (much lesser) things you mentioned did?
Both thoughts can be true at the same time. I think her failure to adequately answer the Day 1 question on several occasions hurt her a lot. I believe she also flubbed it in her CNN Townhall with Anderson Cooper.
No, they really can't.
My original main point was that Harris was a deeply flawed candidate who frequently lacked the ability to think on her feet in big unscripted settings. I’ve provided solid evidence citing several specific examples of this that I and other observers think hurt Harris. Read Fareed Zakaria’s election post mortem. Clearly, her staff worried about her frequent inability to answer questions in candid venues. Emails from 2023 released under a Washington Post-filed FOIA showed that her staff tried to arrange for Harris to answer pre-selected questions on a college speaking tour. At least one African-American radio show host in Philadelphia admitted during the campaign that she chose her questions for Harris from a list provided by the Harris campaign. Finally, late in the campaign townhall-host Maia Shriver told the audience that there would be no random questions from the audience, but that Harris would respond to pre-selected questions. You will never convince me that her Presidential debate performance is sufficient to best the evidence I have compiled for my case against Harris as a candidate who could think on her feet, say like J.D. Vance.
Trump was a horrible candidate and his campaign was run a hot mess yet he squeaked out a win 🤔
"What will you do on your first day?" is the dumbest question in politics. "I plan on enjoying the parade, finding out where the outlets are in the Oval Office, going to some great parties that evening, and then collapsing in bed. Dana, the *real* question is 'what will I be doing on Day 11 and Day 111 and Day 511? I'll be working my tail off for the American people, that's what I'll be doing."
And that's basically the answer she gave.
And dictator on day 1 is better , to an American audience ?
You make perfect sense!
But the evidence suggests this view is wrong. I might have thought that way if I hadn’t read John Sides - see my other post. It’s hard to accept that candidates/campaigns have only a marginal impact on the result. But the evidence is pretty strong here that inflation created strong headwinds that were hard to overcome.
Dan, thanks for this well argued and supported analysis. Is it your view that the wrong track numbers are principally driven by the inflation spurt? Is there a way to honestly argue to oneself that a sizable number of Trump voters were not embracing his charming self or mass deportations or 20% tariffs but are just ignorant of them or just so mad they don't care and convince themselves they won't happen?