Election post-mortem

Not what I wanted, but not catastrophic. Don't despair

That certainly wasn’t the outcome I was hoping for. Just as I suspected, my gut instinct proved to be useless in guessing what would happen. Although it wasn’t what I wanted to happen, it’s not surprising either. Based on the polls, what happened was a distinct possibility. Unlike the last two presidential elections, this time the polls did a good job. Trump’s share of the vote was underestimated, but only by 1-3 points, which is fine. Hats off to pollsters for a job well done and I’m glad polling is still reliable.

Had the race gone the other way it wouldn’t have been a surprise either. Had one candidate won some of the swing states and lost others, it wouldn’t have been a surprise. Knowing all those scenarios were possible is one reason why, despite my dislike of the outcome, I don’t feel like I did in 2016. The idea that Trump could win was outlandish then, but is now something everyone expects could happen.

In my adult life (I just turned 38), I have seen Democrats lose three presidential elections. The first was in 2004. I remember how awful I felt the next day. It was hard to finish breakfast that morning and keep a poker face at school. Back then, Democrats were on a losing skid and Bush had been reelected winning the popular vote. Like Trump, he made inroads with groups thought to be solidly Democratic. There was talk of a permanent Republican majority and Democrats becoming irrelevant.

2016 didn’t feel nearly as bad. I was surprised by the outcome, but in a sense I was kind of relieved. I wanted Clinton to win, but I dreaded the prospect of her presidency. That’s not because I thought she would be incompetent or a lousy leader. It was because she was wedded to her self-destructive ways. Had she won it would have been completely by default and she would have convinced herself that her dig-in, hide, deny and evade style was the way to go. Democrats were going to get wiped out again in 2018 and odds are she was going to be a one term president and very unpopular the whole time.

This time around, I’m not all that upset. I’m irritated and somewhat angry. I’m worried about what will happen here and especially abroad. The American led international order we’ve had since 1945 looks to be over. Putin and Xi are very happy right now as they should be. If Trump screws Ukraine like he says he will, our allies in Europe won’t trust us again. The same goes for our allies in Asia. Europe and Asia are on their own now. It’s heartbreaking to say, but we can’t be counted on to help out anymore. Even if we get a much better leader in four years, the damage and lack of trust will probably be too great to undo for a long time. On the domestic front, we’re going to find out how much of Project 2025 becomes a reality.

That said, I’m somewhat glad about how Trump won. I say that because he will win the popular vote this time when all is said and done by around two points. If he’s going to win, I would rather it be that way than by taking advantage of the electoral college again. That’s not much consolation, but it’s better than him losing the popular vote by millions and still winning. It also denies Democrats and the left an excuse for losing. I don’t like the electoral college, but it’s not going away and I don’t have any desire to listen to people griping about it again.

Part of why I’m not so upset this time around is we made our choice with our eyes wide open. Trump is who he is and nobody is being deceived. Sometimes a majority of people just make bad decisions and that’s life. The consequences will probably be serious, but you get what you vote for. There are no excuses this time around.

As I mentioned in my piece last week, if Harris loses it will be heavily because of inflation. Incumbent parties around the world have been crushed by voters mad about inflation and Democrats are the latest one to get hit. This year, every election held in developed countries has seen incumbent parties lose. Democrats defied gravity in the midterms, but it caught up to them this year.

The swing towards Trump compared to 2020 was almost uniform. Virtually every state voted more Republican than it did in 2020. Blue states like New York, New Jersey and Illinois swung hard towards Trump while most urban metros swung hard towards him, too. Funny enough, the states that swung the least towards Trump were the seven swing states.

Harris’ loss had little to do with her. That she held up the best in swing states is a testament to the good campaign she ran. Her biggest problem was one she couldn’t fix. Biden, like almost all incumbents around the world, is very unpopular and she was tied to him. Breaking away from him was basically impossible to do. She would’ve had to say the last four years were a big blunder, which would have raised a lot more questions than it answered. She was in a bad situation she couldn’t escape from.

Her campaign raised a ton of money and she smartly moved towards the center. It just wasn’t enough to overcome the headwinds she was facing. Sometimes shit just happens. You can do things right and run a good campaign, but it isn’t enough. That’s very unsatisfactory, but it’s the truth.

Am I saying she was screwed from the beginning and was going to lose no matter what? I wouldn’t go that far. Pennsylvania and Georgia were decided by two points, Michigan by one, Wisconsin by less than one and North Carolina by three. Those are hardly blowout wins, but, in retrospect, she was a big underdog.

Voters were mad about inflation and that wasn’t something messaging can fix. Inflation has come down substantially from its peak, but there is still lingering anger over it. Trump had the benefit of being in office when the economy was good and many voters just assume he’ll do it again. That’s completely false, but voters aren’t economists and nobody should expect them to be.

Bad takes

Let’s get the easiest things out of the way. Harris didn’t lose because of your pet issue, unless your pet issue is inflation or immigration. She didn’t lose because of Gaza, student debt, DEI workshops, some random idiot online or on TV saying something stupid or because she wasn’t left-wing enough. She didn’t lose because of Tim Walz, no running mate was going to save her.

There have already been countless pieces written on how various groups voted based on exit polls. I should have mentioned this in my last piece, but whatever you do don’t pay attention to exit polls! They’re notoriously unreliable and have a terrible track record.

If you hear or read anyone citing an exit poll to make any kind of point, stop listening to or reading them. They’re telling you they don’t know what they’re talking about. Groups like Catalist and the Pew Research Center produce comprehensive data after each election detailing what happened, but it takes months for that to get done. We’ll get a good idea of how groups voted then, but it won’t be until next year.

Of course, there are plenty of hot takes about what Democrats should do going forward. Almost all start off from two false premises. The first is that Democrats should do everything the person giving the take wants them to do anyway. The second is that Tuesday was a disaster for Democrats. The first false premise is something I write about a lot, but the second is probably my coldest take yet. I will get to it in a bit, but of all the worries I have, the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party aren’t one of them.

To be sure, I have plenty of ideas for what I think Democratic elected officials, candidates and other party-aligned actors should do, but they’re things I think they should do regardless of the outcome. For example, I have written before about the split in the party between what I call the abundance wing and the leftist wing. I’m firmly part of the former group and believe the leftist wing of the party is a force for bad and needs to be smacked down hard. For years, Democratic Party elites have prioritized party unity above all else and have tried to avoid coalition infighting. That’s a good goal, but, like all goals, it has costs, namely the party’s left-wing hasn’t been pushed back on enough. That matters more now than not upsetting any coalition members. Had Harris won and Democrats crushed it everywhere on Tuesday, I would still believe that.

Another thing I have written about before is the atrocious governance in many blue states and cities, especially when it comes to housing policy. That’s not why Trump won, but it’s a major problem and it would still be one had he lost. I would highly recommend this piece here by a writer I follow who lives in New York City and discusses how horribly governed it is. It’s disgraceful that such a great city is run by shitty people who don’t care and it has to stop regardless of who is president.

It’s imperative that states like California, Maryland, Massachusetts and New York get their shit together and crush the NIMBYs. Those are places people want to live, but they can’t because housing is unaffordable because red tape makes it impossible to build much of anything. That’s unacceptable and makes a mockery of every claim from blue staters that they’re tolerant and inclusive. Had Harris won that would all still be true.

It’s time for Democrats in blue states to bring down the hammer on NIMBYs and prove that they can govern effectively and that they actually believe in what they claim to. The left doesn’t get that. That crowd thinks regulation can never be bad, every problem on earth is caused by corporations and billionaires and is culturally insane. The left needs to be pushed back on no matter which party occupies the White House.

With respect to abortion, the hot take from commentators, reporters and pundits almost everywhere is that it didn’t matter. I don’t agree with that at all. It didn’t help Democrats keep the White House or the Senate and it didn’t win them red states. I wrote last week that with so many low propensity voters potentially showing up in a presidential election, it could be less salient of an issue compared to the midterms. That’s looks to have been the case, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t make any difference.

Abortion remains a great issue for Democrats. Despite facing major headwinds, Democrats largely held their own downballot. It looks like they will lose four seats in the Senate, but three of them were always going to be hard to keep anyway. Nevada and Arizona both overwhelmingly approved pro-choice ballot initiatives and the Democrats won the Senate races there by a small margin. Without abortion as a big issue, those races could have gone the other way.

In Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump won, but Democrats won both Senate races. In the House, Republicans will likely keep their majority but it will be as small as their current one or maybe even a tad slimmer. Without abortion as a liability, they may have won a much bigger majority.

Unsurprisingly, there have been plenty of hot takes about how Harris lost because of wokeness. That’s ridiculous, but I’m okay with it. If Democrats believe that and use it to kill wokeness once and for all, I’m all for it.

I think wokeness is on its way out anyway and is way overstated in its importance, but it’s still terrible. To the extent it has had any effect on Democrats’ electoral prospects, it has been uniformly negative. Electoral considerations aside, on the merits the ideas promoted by that crowd are horrid. Watering down education standards, not enforcing laws and giving out aid based on race are all terrible ideas and should be defeated.

There is often talk about Democrats needing a Sister Souljah moment. Usually, it involves railing against wokeness. I do think a Sister Souljah moment would be good, but not on that. It would be good to call out environmental groups for promoting terrible ideas and opposing anything that would actually help with climate change. It would also be good to expose them, and the entire left-wing advocacy world for that matter, as the paper tigers and astroturf groups that they are.

Democrats almost everywhere have made pivots to the center. Biden and Harris both pivoted on immigration. Harris did some pushback on environmental groups when she talked about the increased oil and gas production that’s happened since 2021. She also eschewed any talk about identity. Those were all good moves, but she only had three months to work with and it just wasn’t enough time. Other Democrats need to pick up where she left off.

The pivots towards the center by Harris and the anger I’ve seen at the left since Tuesday are part of why I’m much more hopeful now than I was after 2004 and 2016. Unlike 2016, the response to Trump’s win from Democrats is going to be much more intelligent and productive. The left-wing advocacy world surged in influence during his first term, but their entire theory of the case for how to win has been completely debunked and everyone can see it. Going forward, very few people are going to believe any claims from advocacy groups that they speak for those they say they do.

Unlike during Trump’s first term, I doubt there will be a #Resistance this time. There will be opposition to Trump, as there should be, but it’s less likely to become a lifestyle brand. Unlike the 2020 primary, I’m not worried about Democrats racing into left-field come 2028. Nobody with presidential ambitions is going to believe that the key to success is to call themselves a socialist and state their pronouns.

Why I’m optimistic

I’m not delusional, things are going to be bleak in many ways soon. Still, there is one thing I’m very confident of and that is the Democratic Party’s bright electoral prospects. Unlike some who write about politics, I remember history. As terrible as things looked after the 2004 election, Bush quickly became very unpopular and Democrats killed it in 2006. Two years later, a certain senator from Illinois who nobody had heard of a short while before got elected president.

In 2016, the Democratic Party was truly in shambles. Trump had won and Republicans had Congress and a huge majority of governorships and state legislatures, but Democrats’ fortunes quickly surged. Trump was instantly very unpopular and Democrats had a banner year in 2018. 2020 was close, but Democrats did well enough to win back the Senate. 2022 was, by party in the White House standards, an amazing year for Democrats. The Democratic Party now is in way better shape than it was after 2004 and 2016.

Trump won the White House again and did better in the electoral college and popular vote than in 2016 and 2020. Just looking at those results, things look grim, but that wasn’t the only thing going on. Downballot, things were much better.

In the Senate, Republicans will likely gain four seats for 53 seats total. In the House, they will likely keep control, but just barely and may even lose a seat or two. The latter is a recipe for more dysfunction on their end and having to rely on Democrats to pass things.

On the state level, very little changed. No governorships changed hands and the total number of state legislative seats probably didn’t shift much. Surprisingly, Democrats managed to somehow keep the state house in Pennsylvania despite struggling there statewide and in House races. In Wisconsin, they made gains in both houses and are well-positioned for a trifecta in 2026. You can call what happened on Tuesday many things, but a red wave is not one of them.

What’s head spinning is how quickly the parties have changed in terms of whose voters are efficiently distributed when it comes to winning House seats. Democrats used to have many of their voters concentrated in a few places, which put them at a disadvantage. Now, it’s Republicans whose voters are poorly distributed. As things stand now, Republicans are on track to win the House popular vote by three points, but to break even or lose a seat(s) and could, though it’s unlikely, lose the House.

The key to Trump’s win is, again, almost certainly low propensity voters putting him over the top. He made big gains with Hispanics and possibly younger voters, especially men. The problem for Republicans is those voters don’t show up in midterms. To the extent they vote at all, it’s only in presidential elections and for candidates they’re infatuated with. In sharp contrast from a short while ago, it’s now Democrats whose voters always show up. Democrats are now the party of educated, white collar suburbanites. God bless the bourgeoisie.

As soon as Trump is in office again, he’s likely to do things that will make him very unpopular. He’s never been a popular figure and won’t have a Democratic opponent to rail against. If he imposes tariffs and tries to go through with mass deportations that will raise prices and will be very unpopular. The same is true if he tries to cut taxes without offsetting it (inflation, higher interest rates) or if he tries to offset it with massive spending cuts (toxic). If he tries to make any moves against abortion, as some of those angling to work for him want to do, that will make him radioactive.

When you combine (a) the party out of the White House having a built-in advantage in midterms, (b) Trump being unpopular, (c) Republicans being the party of low propensity voters and (d) Democrats being geographically well distributed, you get a massive blue wave. I wrote about that scenario not too long ago. Come 2026, I expect Democrats to wipe the floor with Republicans. That’s to say nothing of what will happen in off-year and special elections.

Sure, nothing is determined and that could wind up being wrong, but I doubt it. 2026 will only go wrong for Democrats if they do what Republicans did in 2022 and nominate a bunch of lunatics. Call me highly skeptical that will happen. Democrats have been laser focused on winning elections since 2016 and that focus will only intensify after Tuesday. The Democratic Party is nothing like the Republican Party. There is a reason why it’s almost always Republicans and not Democrats who nominate terrible candidates.

As for 2028, that’s an eternity away and we have no idea what will be going on then. What we do know is the Democratic bench is very deep. There are many governors and senators who could be strong contenders. We don’t know who will run and which of those who run will be strong candidates, but we do know there are many possibilities.