The Grand Illusion
The real question facing Democrats is whether they want to be a successful political party or whether they want to emphasize an ideology that most Americans believe is excessively liberal.
From what polls show and from what I’ve observed, most Democrats don’t fall into far left/woke mindset, but the far left tends to be far more active politically and socially than the more “mainstream” Democrats, and thus tends to have influence out of proportion to its actual numbers.
Recent poll analysis by The New York Times suggests that one of the reasons Kamala Harris lost was that something like seven million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. That alone wouldn’t account for her loss, but that combined with more liberal voters who oppose what they see as excessive support of trans/LBTG+ initiatives very well might. Nor did ads suggesting that wives hide their votes from their husbands help, since any woman so inclined didn’t need the ads, and any woman thinking about it would likely be worried that the ad would prompt inquiries by husbands and boyfriends.
Like it or not, a majority of Americans, for whatever reason, are leery of women running for the presidency, and the combination of a woman who was perceived as liberal was also a strong factor in the campaign.
The fact that the Democrats actually made a very slight gain in their numbers in the House of Representatives (if only by one member) at a time when they lost the presidency and the Senate suggests that Democrats who addressed the issues in their districts could be very successful, but that the national ticket had too many negatives.
Not that anyone is going to change their mind based on my observations.
“Not that anyone is going to change their mind based on my observations.”
Ain’t that the truth. Too many people only care about reinforcing what they already believe, not the truth.
Another good post. Thank you, LEM. And even if it doesn’t move any minds, the value is in the effort.
Although I promised myself I wouldn’t, I’ve consumed quite a bit of the post-mortem stuff. The data is not all in and so you’d be well- advised to continue to take everything, like me here, with a grain of salt.
One thing consistently emerging though, is that the fault of trans rights and pronouns in emails stuff are a convenient hot take that is not being borne out. Remember that the Republicans ran heavy on trans panic in the 2022 midterms and it didn’t help.
Also keep in perspective that Trump won the popular vote by far less than Biden did, possibly only 1.5%, that the presidential election was once again decided by less than 200,000 voters in three swing states and that if 1,500 people across three house districts changed their mind, the Democrats would control the house.
Rather, it does look like voters fired Biden for the same reason that they fired Trump four years ago: they just didn’t think the economy was doing that well for them. That’s why people were happy to vote for Democrats that were not Harris, as LEM pointed out.
Biden never should’ve been allowed to run for reelection and we should’ve had time for a primary to challenge Harris against the rest of the party. Because not enough believed that she was anything except an extension of their perception of Joe Biden‘s failures.
The final tallies are still being counted and at this time there are roughly an equal number of votes cast in 2024 as in 2020 – 155 million. So, the voters who swung to Trump definitely decided on another course. This is not the end of the Democratic Party just as it wasn’t the end of the Republican Party when Romnet lost and the party was supposed to do a post mortem lest they never win another election (hint; they didn’t change a thing. They doubled down on moving to the right and effectively changed the electorate rather than themselves).
Like Grey said, this is not a mandate for Trumpism. We’ll see if Trump is any more successful this time around (as determined by objective measures and not what his administration will claim).
Dan Rather said it much better than I can: https://steady.substack.com/p/a-big-win-for-propaganda
Actually the Dems gained 2 seats, CA13 just went for Adam Gray. It’s now 215/220. 3 GOP members won’t be available next year due to Gaetz quitting, & 2 others claimed by Trump. It would be great to pick up another seat, but highly unlikely. I think Johnson will have his hands full – that is if he can keep his job. (P.s., I just found the Ghosts trilogy, 1st one is pretty good so far.)