2016, 2020, 2024 : Oh, My!

I was going to do a postmortem of the 2024 election, when I thought better of it. There are a few results that jump out, but what’s really important is clearer when the last three elections are looked at as a trilogy.

Join me in the Wayback machine to April, 2011. President Obama is finishing off a first term and at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. As the event requires, he takes jabs at himself, the media, his political opponents, and also at one unusual target: a rich New York land developer and reality TV star named Donald J. Trump. Seems Trump had been the most vocal spokesman for “birtherism,” claiming Obama wasn’t born in the United States. The President, indignant at the charge, refused to respond to it until it grew into an issue, at which point he released his birth certificate to end the charade. And so he took some swipes at “the Donald.”

Some progressives believe this was the genesis of the Trump candidacy: revenge for a public insult. However, people close to Trump, including those who sat at his table that night, say he took Obama’s ribbing well (he was less happy with Seth Myers’ jokes, probably because he saw the comedian as a nobody who had no right to make jokes about Trump). Trump and his closest advisors all say he felt he could do a better job than any politician as President, and he was only looking for the right opportunity.

It came in 2016, when the GOP nomination was up for grabs, and the leading candidate was Jeb Bush (who seemed more obliged than enthusiastic) with a host of newcomers. Trump’s brash style separated him from the pack, and he proceeded to win pluralities of primary votes without ever getting a majority, knocking off the other contenders one at a time, until only Marco Rubio was left standing. Rubio tried to adopt Trump’s personae (remember the whole story about “small hands”?) but it didn’t work, and the GOP resigned itself to going down in glorious defeat.

Then the Democratic Party leadership said, “hold my beer.” When Obama pushed aside Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the nomination, she agreed to be his Secretary of State. Her plan was simple: get a Cabinet position and some foreign policy bona fides, spend all your time outside of DC, and wait for the opportunity to run again. She planned to become “the most traveled” Secretary of State in US history (this she accomplished), which ironically led to her need to have classified information sent to her through her personal e-mail account, and thus the whole Comey investigation. But the implicit party deal was: behave as a loyal party member, and when the time comes, Obama will endorse you and the party will clear your path. Forgotten in all this was that her first campaign had been a disaster: it’s why a one-term Senator from Illinois with a funny name and no federal experience quickly eclipsed her. That and, as Obama said in a debate to Hillary, “you’re likable enough” (addressing the simple fact that everyone who met her found her at best irritating).

True to his word, Obama told his Vice President, Joe Biden, to stand down in his desire to be Obama’s successor. Which was a relief to most Democrats, as no one (except Dr. Jill Biden) had ever woken up in the morning and said, “what we need is a Biden presidency.” His past efforts had always ended in failure without receiving a single percent of any votes. When the Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders ignited hope with his candidacy, the Democratic party (note, these are the ones for democracy and free-n-fair elections) put their collective thumbs on the scale to prohibit any outcome but Hillary Clinton as the nominee.

All of which set up the hubristic 2016 campaign between Clinton and Trump. Democrats were certain there was no way their seasoned, veteran leader could lose to this guy. A common commentary among talking heads was “how would this even be close?” (foreshadowing here) They actually debated using the campaign slogan, “it’s her turn” as if the outcome was fore-ordained. Trump for his part lurched from calling all Mexican immigrants “rapists and criminals” to admitting he could “grab women by the p***y” on a tape released the week before the election. Clinton suffered through the sturm und drang of James Comey’s “her investigation is on/off/on.”

Trump won by 80,000 votes in three states. Nobody saw the outcome coming, least of all Trump, who hadn’t seriously planned a transition effort. What the Democrats missed was (1) the country was sick and tired of the ancien regime, which included all Clintons and Bushes, who had been monopolizing the political arena for twenty-plus years, and (2) just how unlikable Hillary Clinton was. Even a grasping, greedy reality TV star seemed a more approachable choice. Hillary completed the story by becoming a bitter political crone blaming everyone but herself from the confines of her home in the Westchester, New York, woods.

Years of Donald Trump’s tweets, threats (real or imagined), and bluster left the entire country exhausted precisely when a once-in-a-lifetime (we hope) pandemic hit. The Democrats, desperate to limit Trump to one term, held an open primary for the 2020 election, resulting in twenty-nine major candidates. This quickly whittled down to eighteen. After the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg were the leaders. Sensing they had candidates who might not be ready to confront President Trump, party leaders pinned their hopes on the South Carolina primary, which Joe Biden won going away. His moderate opponents were convinced to withdraw (remember, this is the party for choice!), consolidating enough support for the chosen leader, Biden, to hold off the non-party member Bernie Sanders.

During the early debates, Senator Kamala Harris ran an uber-progressive campaign and lit into Joe Biden, suggesting he was responsible for the oppressive bussing she experienced growing up in Oakland. This was odd in that Biden had a strong record and ties to african-american voters in the party. She quickly flamed out after the debates, and would have been forgotten, but Biden made the rash pledge to put a woman on the ticket if he were selected as the nominee. When he won, the likely ticket-mates were few and far between, and he ended up with Kamala.

Biden ran a low-key campaign, mostly from his home in Delaware, ostensibly due to the ongoing pandemic. It also conveniently limited his opportunity for gaffes, something he admitted he was prone to. He promised a moderate presidency emphasizing stability and decency, to “unify the country.” President Trump refused to stop tweeting nonsense and vitriol, right through the post-election Capitol riot on January 6th. Biden had the victory in hand when the voters realized he didn’t even know how to tweet. While receiving the most votes for President by any candidate in history, he ended up winning (the electoral vote, the only one that matters) by only 43,000 votes in three states!

Sadly for the Biden-Harris administration, they were no more effective against the COVID virus than the Trump administration had been. Biden had won both Houses of Congress, and sometime after the election he decided this was a mandate for a progressive rework of the federal government. Out went the emphasis on compromise and in came a series of big, then bigger, finally biggest government programs. Progressives sensed an opportunity unlike anything since FDR. Some of this was in response to the Democrats’ belief that Obama had been too hesitant to respond to crises in his two terms, and now was the time for greater action. Some of it was a completely justified stimulus for an ailing economy, to avoid a depression. Most of it was progressivism run amok.

Biden’s extravagant domestic spending fueled inflation, while his extraordinary caution led foreign leaders to see opportunities to strike. Biden spent much time decrying Trump, who seethed on the sidelines claiming the election was stolen (it wasn’t). Biden’s position as morally above the tawdry self-dealing of the Trump family was belied by his family’s business dealings with wealthy and duplicitous Chinese and Romanian businessmen. Biden made a great show of rescinding hundreds of Trump policies, especially about the border, but was then unwilling to address the massive influx it created. The inevitable end was foreshadowed very early, when he didn’t rescind Trump’s mistaken commitment to withdraw from Afghanistan, and instead meddled in the planning, resulting in the most horrifying foreign policy photo op since Saigon, 1973.

Biden’s approval rating never recovered. Meanwhile, Trump consolidated control of the Republican party, forcing out anyone who wasn’t willing to concede to his contention the 2020 result was stolen. While a whopping eighty percent of the voters wanted anybody but Biden and Trump as the 2024 candidates, the two leaders remained locked in a manichean struggle (who was good and who was evil was in the eye of each party).

Trump continued his raging and sometimes incoherent attacks, while evidence mounted that Biden was working only a few hours a day, and mostly for canned photo-ops. He showed up for some big-ticket events, like the State of the Union speech, and gave an impressive performance. But as the campaign began in earnest, his more frequent public appearances became grist for the idea he wasn’t up for a real campaign (remember his basement campaign in 2020) let alone another four years of the presidency. The White House and the Democrats erected an elaborate house-of-cards defense of Biden, calling him ‘vigorous’ and saying he ‘ran circles around the staff.’ All of which came crashing down when the Biden who appeared opposite Trump for a debate was a pitiable, befuddled old guy.

While Biden simply insisted he “had a bad night,” Democrats panicked. He continued to avoid public events or pressers, but when asked, insisted he was still the nominee and in it to win it. Each time Joe said the matter was closed, Nancy Pelosi said “we’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” No wait, she said “when the President makes up his mind, we will support him.” Same difference. The party of democracy told its sitting President, the guy who won all the primaries and had all the delegates, to shuffle off the ticket not because he wasn’t up to the job, or the campaign, but because he as going to lose.

Faced with legal issues over campaign financing, loyal black Democratic voters who wanted to see the Vice President elevated, and facing the specter of an open convention in Chicago (how did that work out the last time?), the party leaders quickly coalesced around Kamala Harris. Immediately forgotten were the three bad years of Vice Presidential publicity, her failed 2020 campaign, or the rumblings the month before that Biden couldn’t leave the ticket to Kamala because she wasn’t up to the challenge.

Having snatched potential victory from the jaws of defeat, the Harris campaign took stock of its situation. She needed money, and proceeded to accumulate more than a billion dollars in weeks, a record which will probably not be broken for a long time. She settled upon a positive campaign featuring “joy” as an antidote to the ever-darker musing at Trump’s rallies. She selected as Vice President Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz, who had impeccable progressive credentials, but was also the liberal caricature of a common Midwesterner. The media went into overdrive, ignoring the lack of access and acting as amplifiers for the party. I watched ABC World News Tonight with David Muir almost every night, and the first fifteen minutes were positive clips from Harris events or spokespersons interspersed which whatever outrage Trump said that day. The polls were already turning around, as voters remembered they wanted “anybody but Biden and Trump.”

A funny thing happened on the way to the coronation. Harris could only avoid interviews for so long, and when she started doing them, it became apparent to everyone not in the Democratic Party leadership that she couldn’t answer basic questions, or when she tried, made it worse. She served up heaping helpings of word salad or acted irritably, a trait evident way back when Lester Holt asked her about visiting the border. Meanwhile her running mate went from charming local guy to weird uncle in record time. Whether it was his lying about a DUI, leaving his unit on the verge of deployment, or mis-stating a combat record, his folksiness degraded into his self-description as “a knucklehead.” And his prancing around on stage didn’t help. And while it was a sideshow, the media’s attempt to paint a philanderer who slapped his girlfriend silly in public as the new face of positive masculinity was an affront to both common sense and decency.

Harris was focused enough to destroy Trump in a debate, after which the GOP decided to let Harris do to herself what Trump could not. Trump’s Vice President pick, Senator JD Vance, had been written off by the media (who once adored him) as some kind of character from the Handmaid’s Tale. When Tim met JD for a debate, the result was lopsided. The Democrats and media started to waterboard everything Trump said into actionable threats, while the problems of new and untested-on-the-national-stage candidates hampered any positive vibes.

While pollsters tried to squeeze something definitive out of their data, everything kept coming up a near tie. Which is how we went into election night. Trump won again, although when all the votes are cast it will probably be by a few votes in a couple of states.

Why did I relive all this trauma? Because the story is consistent, and can only be understood as a tale in three parts.

Part one is the Democrats. Remember the Wayback machine? We started with the Wayback machine. If we went back to that night, and we sat down with Democratic party leaders and described Trump in all his glory over the next three elections (the vulgarity, the name-calling, January 6th, Roe v. Wade, and on and on), then we told them democracy itself was at stake, and they would violate every norm of it to get the right candidates, would they have said the following: OK, we lead with Hillary Clinton, then Joe Biden, then this Kamala lady from California (she was then its Attorney General)?

Of course not. They told us Trump was an unqualified misogynist, then he was dangerous and unstable, and finally he was a greedy fascist. And then they ran, first, the most hated woman in America, second, a non-entity who had never won anything at the national level, and finally a little-known progressive politician with no seasoning or national campaign experience. That is either world-class political malpractice, elitism (“we know better”) beyond belief, or they didn’t really mean what they said about him. Or all three. This was so bad, we must embrace the power of “AND.”

I lean towards elitism as the main culprit. It showed up with the frequent refrain about”how can we lose to this guy?”, the willingness to engage in ever-more-shrill exaggerations (a Liz Cheney firing squad? Really?), the disdain for the common man’s pain (“you don’t understand how well the economy is doing”), and the epithets (deplorables, racists, fascists, garbage, etc.).

The second part was the Republican, no, wait, the MAGA party. Maybe there are still some classic Republicans out there in hiding. Some went completely into Trump Derangement Syndrome (e.g., the Cheneys) and endorsed Harris. How anyone who had conventional Republican credentials could do this is beyond me. Others went into defiance and just got “primaried” out of office. The rest became compliant. Those powerful enough (McConnell, DeSantis) laid low and avoided eye-contact with the MAGA king. Lesser types were forced to genuflect at the MAGA altar of election denial. The old GOP had neo-conservatives, culture warriors, free-marketeers, and some libertarians. Now it has MAGA hats. Perhaps it will continue to evolve PT (post-Trump); that remains to be seen. Clearly Trump has decided enough is enough, and specifically picked JD Vance as heir apparent.

The voters were the third part for the story. You will find some pretty sophisticated analyses out there showing how much of what I described is explained by a general, worldwide discontent with the governing authorities and systems. This explains Trump’s first win and second loss (he was the establishment at the time), Macron’s emasculation in France, the routing of Merkel’s side in Germany, the rise of right-wing parties in Europe, Milei in Argentina, Meloni in Italy, and so forth. Doesn’t matter if they’re right or left or wrong, out they go.

But this analysis has its own bias: it comes from elites, and it lets them conveniently avoid the deeper question. See, the voters are being emotional, not rational, it’s not our (the elite’s) fault. But why are voters rejecting leaders across the political spectrum? Because voters will only tolerate being ignored, being lectured, being condescended to for so long. For example, in most advanced western nations, neoliberalism (the free movement of capital, people, and trade) was supported by both sides. It worked well for the world as a whole, not so well for individuals in certain countries. And those individuals vote. It started small, built over time, and eventually overthrew leadership. In Mexico, it drove a left-wing populist (AMLO) into power, and his chosen successor, too.

You can see this outcome in many forms over the last twenty years: Brexit was one, as was the MAGA movement. Neoliberlism posited that borders were a thing of the past, as was national identity, a crude hangover from the twentieth century. Funny thing is, elites who love neoliberalism generally aren’t futbol fans; if they were, they would have known that nationalism didn’t die, it simply changed into something less warlike (soccer). People want to belong to something, not be an atomized consumer recipient of big government largesse. Europeans loved travelling across the Schengen area without ever showing a passport, right up to when millions of illegal immigrants started doing the same.

In America, the voters revolted over very being told they shouldn’t mind losing jobs to China, shouldn’t mind introducing large numbers of foreign immigrants to small local communities, shouldn’t mind the disorder which accompanies lax policing and drug decriminalization, shouldn’t mind having odd or novel social theories taught to their children. When they objected, they were denounced. Sometimes they stopped arguing publicly (this is why the polls are so often off), but never changed their minds, they just changed their votes.

If the trends persist as the final votes are counted, Trump-the-misogynist won married women. Trump-the-bigot won Hispanic men. Trump-the-billionaire won the paycheck-to-paycheck vote. And of course he won men, white men, and increasing shares of blacks, Asians, and Jews. He won heavily Puerto Rican districts despite his comedian’s attempt to label the island “garbage,” and nearly swept the totally Hispanic, formerly Democratic Texas border communities, who know something about immigration (legal and illegal).

One question before election night was “will this be a re-form or realignment election?” The former would be Harris rallying the Obama coalition to victory; the latter Trump taking the working class (all races) away from the Democrats. It’s clear now it was the latter. Whether that is temporary or not is still in question. If Trump can’t make life better for the voters as he promised, they’ll look elsewhere in 2028. That is mostly JD Vance’s challenge, as Trump will be an eminence grise in the next presidential election.

The winner was simply Trump. Who were the losers? Not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. While he deserves blame for a lack of humility in running again, and she proved ineffective in a national campaign, Biden’s pride and Harris’ competence were well-understood long ago. The Democratic party worked long and hard to get the results it received on November 4th, and they are the biggest losers. The soul-searching has begun, and maybe they’ll recover. Here are some thoughts :

• trading non-college educated working class voters for college-educated women is a losing proposition.
• thinking women have only one view about abortion is a mistake.
• defending every progressive cultural movement dissipates your energies.
• telling voters how they should feel is disastrous.
• calling voters names feels good until you lose.

The other great losers are the legacy media. I know the history of media in America: I don’t expect unbiased coverage. Major newspapers began as political party sheets, publishing whatever their preferred party wanted. Even the concept of “professional journalism” was mostly a patina of non-partisanship, as the professional journalists were almost uniformly liberal/progressive types. But in the Trump era the media went all in.

Smaller, more partisan types (New Republic, Daily Beast, MSNBC) were rabid in their coverage, and the larger media (ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times and the Washington Post) felt they had to compete. Things got so out of hand that journalists regularly “rioted” over anything that wasn’t critical of Trump, and the Post lost two-hundred thousand subscribers for not endorsing Harris/Walz (While the decision was handled terribly, Post readers/writers should remember that but for Jeff Bezos’ millions, the Post would be have been a $1 sale item on eBay). Fox News was about as bad, and there are even more right-wing crazy small web pubs than left-wing ones, but all of these are nakedly partisan, not pretending to be the neutral arbiters that the networks and newspapers claim.

Don’t believe me, believe the voters. With all these media types relentlessly covering Trump’s every off-color comment, highlighting Democratic talking points about fascism and misogyny, critiquing every Trump comment as a lie (Glenn Kessler, Post fact-checker, characterized Trump’s pre-election comment that “we’re leading in the polls” as his 20, 218 lie. That’s real quality work, there), it had little to no effect on voters, other than to drive regard for the media into the toilet.

What should we take from all this? The economy, immigration, and abortion were the top three issues.

The country must address the economic needs of the working class, pronto. That may mean higher prices as we protect (or recreate) domestic industry. That may mean loosening restrictions on housing starts to create greater supply where it’s wanted, in the cities. That may mean shifting the tax burden to higher income types while exempting tips and social security. That will mean reducing regulation, which was probably the most successful part of Trump’s first term.

Immigration must be normalized, legalized, and controlled, which will be painful and ugly at first. We can’t just build a wall, we have to change people’s minds about why they try to come. That means deporting those who have gone through the whole immigration process, been denied, but stayed. That will make for tragic stories, and that’s the cost of decades of neglect. Of course we’ll need legislative reform to create a system that encourages the immigrants we want, and discourages those we don’t. And foreign relations which force countries to assist us in this endeavor, or face serious political and economic consequences if they don’t.

We’ll need a truce in the federal abortion wars. The voters clearly want one. They are willing to decide the issue at the state level, and Trump apparently is too. Pro-lifers must switch from legislating a ban to changing the culture back to where it was for millennia: abortion is something heinous that must be avoided but will never go completely away. Pro-choicers must accept that abortion wasn’t even the most important issue for all women, and will never again be a “fundamental” national right.

Many other serious issues face America. Trump is now the greatest second act in American history, easily eclipsing Richard Nixon (oldies will remember his “you won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more!” speech). Whether you wear a red hat or not, we’re all living in the Trump era, as history will now note. There will be no brown shirts goose-stepping past the White House at the Inaugural parade. Trump will be Trump on X and in the news: astonishing some, appalling others, but unchanged.

As Trump gets his second chance, so do those who so opposed him. As I wrote on social media recently (and I’ll write again in a future blog post), Trump is ultimately about Trump and making deals. If his political opponents stop and think, they can cut deals with him that would have been impossible with the former Republican party. Or they can march in pink hats and scream and cry.