Election post-mortem, part two
Peak hot take season
It’s been over a week since the election and we now have a clear picture of what the next Congress will look like. Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the Senate. In the House, their majority will be 220-221 seats to 214-215 for Democrats. God bless those folks in California for taking their merry old time to count their ballots.
While Republicans will have a trifecta on paper, in practice it may not really exist. They will either have the same narrow majority they have now or will wind up losing one seat. In the current Congress, Republicans have been unable to do much of anything without Democrats bailing them out and extracting concessions in return. In the next Congress, if they try to pass anything on a party-line vote, they can only afford to lose 2-3 votes. That’s going to be very tough to manage when well north of 2-3 of their members will want to vote no. Good luck figuring out who gets to vote no and who has to walk the plank.
Trump’s second term won’t begin until January 20, but we’re already getting a good feel for how it will go. Most everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he nominated Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State. All things considered, I think he’s a good choice. I don’t care about Elise Stefanik at the UN and I find his choice for national security adviser to be amusing given how many alleged peaceniks supported him.
After a day of things seeming to be normal, the real picture started to take shape. Relief quickly gave way to panic. In a span of two days, Trump nominated a Fox talking head to run the Pentagon, a Russian dupe (or worse) to oversee our intelligence agencies, Bozo the Clown to be attorney general and measles to run Health and Human Services. Are you not entertained?
To all of Trump’s more sophisticated supporters who insisted he wouldn’t do that, please report for detention. He is who is he is and that was very clear. I’m not going to lie, as bad as those nominees are, watching Senate Republicans get tortured almost makes it worthwhile. Give it a little more time and they’re all going to change their names to Reek.
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a long four years. Don’t tune out, continue to stay informed and vote when it’s election time. Definitely continue to read this blog and please recommend it to others. I’m sure anyone reading this knows plenty of people out there who could use a dose of freezing cold takes.
At the same time, relax and enjoy your life, we’re all going to be fine. Don’t obsess over every last thing. There will be plenty of things to be unhappy over, but be selective about it. Conserve your outrage and don’t lose your mind. That’s a mistake many people made the first time around. By all means oppose Trump, but don’t make it a way of life and don’t fall into the trap of thinking anything he’s for is automatically bad and vice-versa. All that is going to be critical over the next four years to ensuring that those of us opposed to Trump don’t wind up making him look reasonable by comparison.
As I mentioned in my last piece, I think the response to Trump winning this time will be much better than it was after 2016. There are already signs of that from elected officials and party strategists, consultants, columnists and others. Unlike last time, there is no illusion that running way out into left-field is the answer. Almost everyone seems to recognize that appealing to groups based on identity doesn’t work and needs to be abandoned. There is also a lot of anger at the left-wing advocacy world for having elevated unpopular issues and damaged Democrats’ electoral prospects over the years.
While I think the left-wing advocacy world’s culpability in Democrats’ electoral woes is overstated, I’m glad to see them getting blamed for what happened. It’s long overdue that they get pushed back on hard. It’s not just on cultural issues where they have gone off the rails, but on economic issues, too. Just about everything those groups have done since 2016 has been designed to shrink the Democratic Party’s tent and it’s good to see people recognize that and fight back.
In fighting against those groups, it will become apparent very fast that they can protest, tweet and yell and that’s it. Those groups are perceived as strong, but the reality is their power is an illusion. They have no ability to beat incumbents in primaries nor do they represent large numbers of voters who could sit out in a general election. Once everyone realizes that, their influence will quickly evaporate.
All that notwithstanding, for Democrats to do well in 2026, they don’t really have to do anything. There are some writers out there who recognize that, but it’s not likely to be something you’ll hear a lot of on TV or social media. It’s inconvenient for self-serving narratives and it’s boring. Democrats don’t need to satisfy anyone’s pet issue to thrive in two years. All they have to do is wait for Trump to implode and become unpopular. Come 2026, if Trump is unpopular, as he is highly likely to be, Democrats will do well just because they aren’t Republicans. That’s usually how midterms work (see 1994, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018).
Trump is likely to be unpopular just for being a repulsive jackass. Combine that with Republicans pushing for massive tax cuts that will either push up inflation and/or interest rates and he’s going to be even more unpopular. Add on his being chaotic and wreaking havoc throughout the federal government, Republicans being the party of low propensity voters and Democrats being much more motivated to vote and you can easily see where things are headed. That’s before we even get to abortion. Looking out at the ocean, I can already see a giant blue wave forming.
Just to warn everyone in advance, as we get closer to the midterms, there will be a particular hot take you will start to hear. It will come from writers, pundits, talking heads and columnists of all stripes. What they will tell you is that, for Democrats to win, it’s not enough to just not be Trump. They have to have a message and a substantive agenda.
I heard and read that take many times in 2018. Spoiler alert, it’s 100% wrong. In 2018, Democrats gained the most House seats in any cycle since 1974. Was it because they had a compelling message that everyone loved? No! It was because Trump was unpopular and they weren’t him.
Presidential elections are completely different from midterms. There, a message is needed along with some sort of vision. Midterms aren’t like that at all. The message from Democrats in 2026 will be the same as it was in 2018, which is, “Trump sucks and we’re not him.”
To be sure, there are plenty of things I think Democratic candidates, elected officials and other party-aligned actors should do at all levels of government. I mentioned that in my last piece and may write a whole piece on it soon. I want the Democratic Party to succeed and to reach out to as many voters as possible. There are some things I think should be done that I believe would help with that, but I’m not going to oversell it. Nothing is ever guaranteed to work and when you’re not the party in the White House you can kill it in midterms by default.
The worst take givers
Political writers and commentators of all stripes are often the most guilty of giving bad takes. After election season, however, they aren’t the biggest offenders. The group of people who are the worst at giving post-election takes are elected and other party officials. There is no group of people worse at diagnosing their party’s problems and predicting the future than their highest-ranking elites.
During this time in 2004, there was a consensus among Democratic elites that they needed to appeal more to religious conservatives. Gay marriage in particular was seen as electoral poison. Democrats needed to nominate someone like Mark Warner, who was the governor of Virginia at the time, and would basically be Bill Clinton 2.0. I can count on no hands the number of people who accurately predicted that Democrats would nominate a newly elected, barely known senator who was black and whose middle name was Hussein and he would win in a rout.
After Mitt Romney lost in 2012, the consensus among Republican elected officials and other elites was that they needed to support comprehensive immigration reform to win Hispanic voters. All other positions such as tax cuts for those at the top and shredding the safety could stay the same. Rhetorically, they needed to be more polite and stop insulting people. That was the entire basis for Jeb Bush’s candidacy. Like with Democrats after 2004, literally nobody in Republican Party circles thought the answer to winning again would be the rout they took in 2016.
After Trump won, a whole lot of Democratic Party elites got carried away. His victory signaled an end to the era of free trade and a market-oriented economy. People wanted a revolution and to burn it all down. All kinds of left-wing advocacy groups raised a boatload of money and gained a platform they didn’t have before. Professional activists were seen by many Democratic Party elites, including presidential candidates, as speaking for everyone in their group.
When the 2020 primary began, all the energy was seemingly on the left. Democratic voters wanted identity politics and socialism. Bernie Sanders was the one to beat and only by going to his left could someone become the frontrunner. As it turns out, Democratic voters just wanted normalcy and to win. The candidate who fit that the most was Biden, who had approximately zero support on social media and no fanatical following.
After Harris’ loss, Democratic Party officials are doing their thing. There are calls for Democrats to change their ways in a whole host of areas ranging from voter outreach to policy to rhetoric. I agree with plenty of what has been said and written. This op-ed in The New York Times sums up my thinking very well.
I think it’s fine for party officials to do some introspection. Even if many of the ideas put forth are just fighting the last battle, it’s good for everyone to have humility and check to see if what they’re doing is working. I think that’s something that should be done all the time. Even in the best of times, there will always be room for improvement.
That said, there’s a good chance some of the things that are big issues now won’t be big issues in 2026 and beyond. It’s highly likely that something that’s not currently being talked about will happen between now and 2026 and will become a big issue. For example, Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and it became a big issue in the 2006 elections.
As far as 2026 goes, there is very little that’s within Democrats’ control. The only significant thing they can do that they do control is candidate recruiting. It will be important to run candidates who are good fits for their states/districts. What constitutes a good fit will vary widely, but it will likely involve having a biography that chimes well with where they’re running and deviating from what is seen as the national party’s position on some issues.
Everything else is out of their hands. The good news is the problems that plagued Democrats the most (inflation and immigration) are no longer theirs. If those are still issues in 2026, especially inflation, it will be Republicans who get smacked. When you’re the party in the White House, voters take their anger out on you whether it’s your fault or not. If anything goes wrong that makes people unhappy during the next four years, Republicans will be the ones to pay the price.
Two particular takes that irked me
Here, I’m going to address takes from two people I like. Both of them are very good at what they do and I tend to agree with them a huge majority of the time. That’s why I’m responding to what they wrote. I don’t care about what some hack writes, but I do care about what people I think well of write. Neither of the takes I’m critiquing have been commonly made, but I strongly disagree with them.
The first take is from Ezra Klein. I think very well of him. He’s one of the best thinkers on the center-left today. He has written many times about the need for Democrats to support building things and the barriers to it within their own coalition. He has co-written a book scheduled to come out early next year, which I look forward to reading.
His take that I think is wrong can be found here. He argues that Democrats would have been better off had the 2022 midterms been a red wave. His reasoning is that because Democrats did so much better than expected, the pressure on Biden to not run again went away and he didn’t make a pivot towards the center. As is always the case with counterfactuals, we can never know for sure what would have happened, but I’m very glad there was no red wave.
Let’s remember who Republicans nominated that year. A red wave would have meant Kari Lake got elected governor and Herschel Walker got elected senator. It would have meant Republican wins in places like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Had a red wave happened, abortion would likely be banned in many more states. Had the 2023 elections gone to Republicans, abortion could be banned in Virginia, too. That’s a world I’m very glad doesn’t exist and if it meant Democrats got a little complacent about 2024, so be it.
Even if there had been a red wave, Biden could still have run again. He may have gotten a primary challenger(s), but he may still have prevailed and been badly weakened in the general election. Had he lost the primary, whoever beat him would be dealing with huge party divisions and would be facing the same unfavorable macroeconomic environment in 2024. Maybe it would have worked out, but maybe not. We could be living in world where Republicans have 60 senators and a huge House majority along with the White House.
As for Biden not pivoting towards the center, I wish he had in some ways. It would have been better had he done everything in his power to lower prices even if it wasn’t much. It would have been better to not waste time trying to placate the left with things like student debt. Maybe if there was a red wave he would have pivoted much sooner than he did on immigration. Or maybe he wouldn’t have done anything differently.
Even if Biden did make a clear pivot towards the center, it wouldn’t have changed the biggest barrier to his getting reelected. Inflation was going to be a big problem for him no matter what. He could have done everything perfectly and it would still have been a drag on him or any Democrat.
Let’s say Klein’s ideal scenario came to pass. The midterms were a red wave and Biden announced he wouldn’t run again. There would have been a primary, but Harris probably would have had the edge. In that world, Gretchen Whitmer lost reelection and is gone, Josh Shapiro lost his race and a whole bunch of Democratic senators are looking for new jobs so the field is fairly small. Her biggest competition could very well have been from the left, especially Gavin Newsom. My worst nightmares aren’t that scary.
A world where Harris has to compete with attention whores like Newsom and is pressured to go out into left-field is worse than hell. I can easily see Trump winning a bigger margin in the popular vote and electoral college than he just did. Harris did the best she could with the cards she was dealt and it could have been so much worse. Klein’s preferred scenario could very well have produced that outcome.
The second take I’m critiquing here is from Fareed Zakaria. I like him and recommend reading his recent book Age of Revolutions. Alternatively, if you prefer the CliffsNotes version, you can read my review of it here. In the piece I linked to, he gave three reasons in addition to inflation for Harris losing. Those reasons are immigration, Trump being indicted and wokeness. I don’t take issue with immigration and have written plenty about wokeness. It’s with his second explanation that I really take exception to.
Zakaria argues that indicting Trump was counterproductive even though some of it was legitimate. He cites the New York case as being egregious. In his view, despite the legitimacy of some of the indictments, the rapid succession of their announcements made Trump a martyr to his base. It confirmed their belief that the deep state was out to get him and drove them further into his corner.
I have a profound disagreement with that analysis. The upshot of what he’s arguing is Trump should never have been indicted on anything. Essentially, Trump can never be held accountable because his base will only love him more. If you think about that for just a second, the door it opens is very bad. In the future, any candidate with a fanatical following could become above the law because holding them accountable would just inflame their base. Kiss the rule of law goodbye.
An issue I have had with those making Zakaria’s argument is the flipside of it. The implication is that if Trump wasn’t indicted it would somehow have made his base like him less. Can someone please explain to me how that makes any sense? Am I supposed to believe his fanatical followers would have said, “Trump’s been totally exonerated. Now, I’m going to vote for someone else”?
The failure here is not the justice system’s, it’s ours. Any other candidate being indicted would sink their prospects, but Trump gets away with it because people let him. That’s a failure on the part of Republican primary voters for sticking with him and a failure of the general election voters in swing states who pulled the lever for him. Our justice system was never going to save us from Trump.
Arguing over why Trump won and how we got him in the first place will probably never end. What I can say is there are groups who are the most responsible for it and they aren’t Democrats, the left or the justice system. They are the Senate Republicans who refused to remove him from office and prohibit him from running again, the Republican primary voters who nominated him and the general election voters in the swing states who voted for him.