What just happened and why?
And what do we do next?
What just happened and why?
Our first response to this loss must be humility. We fought, we lost, that is on us regardless of any explanatory framework that might eventually emerge.
Our other first response to this loss must be skepticism wrapped in patience. Nothing in politics is simple. Occam's razor is a pernicious fallacy and a very poor guide to thinking about complex things. When your favorite football team loses a 34-33 game because the kicker missed the final field goal, that was not a problem with the kicker (exclusively). Single cause and simplistic explanations we hear people tout are more likely to be part of, rather than an explanation for, the problem. Did you know that there is a thing called “the voter files” assembled over weeks following an election and subsequently analyzed by groups like Pew Research? This is the corpus of data from which all experts draw verifiable conclusions about what actually happened during an election. This is a better resource than gut feeling or anecdotal data, and will produce a better analysis than that produced by the usual immediate lamentation and rending of cloth. Have patience.
Having said that, here are some preliminary thoughts on some of the things.
On the ground game: there is no evidence that the Harris campaign or the Democratic party failed in the ground game. A good ground game does not guarantee a win if the voters are against you. A good ground game produces better than otherwise expected results. We know in which states the Harris campaign focused their ground game. The relative effect on vote counts in those states was about double or triple that in states where there was no focus. There was a pretty darn good ground game. Also note that the favorability ratings favored Harris over Trump fairly dramatically. The voters liked Harris more than Trump. Many Trump voters were not voting FOR Trump, they were voting against something, probably the status quo, probably their perception of the economy, maybe some other issue.
Did misogyny play a role? Of course it did, when does it ever not? Maybe Harris did a better job of pushing past the usual misogyny than most women candidates manage. Harris was supposed to be the woman that campaigned past the problem and broke the glass ceiling. Maybe next time?
Note that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ran a 100 day long campaign to continue a presidency, currently represented by an incumbent with an historically low popularity rating, against a candidate who has been running for office for almost 10 years, and was on his third campaign. That alone is worth at least one good field goal kick.
Trump inherited a good economy when he first became president, but it was a good economy he did not create, and he managed to break it. This is a common problem. It takes a while to make a good economy, and it takes a while to ruin it. You are already familiar with this since you’ve seen it several times in a row. Democrats inherit a recession, struggle to fix it, and hand the fixed economy off to a Republican who then pillages and plunders for his rich friends and hands the next president a bad economy. This is one of the main drivers of the back-and-forth between parties. The Democrats were due to get booted out. You, dear reader, are special in that you are well informed, so this craziness seems unthinkable to you, but most people are not well informed, and this must be among the factors that mattered.
We know the Biden administration did not cause the global inflation that was caused by a pandemic that became full blown under, and was mishandled by, Trump. One could argue that our messaging about cause and effect was poor. One could also argue that our messaging was better than average but was working against the powerful vacuum of the memory hole. Regardless of the quality of the argument that our current (and decreasing) inflation was caused by a prior president's mishandling of a global pandemic, the electorate comprises a population that can’t remember or get straight who prior presidents were or exactly when prior pandemics happened. Again, you are special. You know these things. Most people don’t have this straight.
Don’t assume that every single Trump voter is a deplorable MAGA that likes Trump because of his MAGAness. A good number of those folks mistakenly think that since their personal economy was better under a previous administration that returning Trump, while risky in some ways (that they may not be personally concerned about), is worth it. Again, this is not a single-cause explanation, just something to keep in mind while we go through the process of analysis and reaction. It isn’t necessarily true that the case we made against Trump was poorly done, or that it was ignored; it simply wasn’t on the top of everyone's list.
Note that exit polls are fun but not good data on their own. Please try to ignore them for now. The exit polls results will become more useful over time, as the more stable and useful framework of the vote file analysis becomes available. For now they don’t help much.
Having said that, they do indicate, along with lots of other data, the following: Ethically based transactional politics are outmoded. The usual associations of issue with origin, dialect, and skin color are old hat and no longer matter much. Racial issues are felt important by a broad swath of people. The economy affects all groups more uniformly than ever before, and is felt and incorporated in political thinking across the board regardless of race or ethnicity. And so on. The Democratic Party needs to remain a coalition of people of all backgrounds and walks of life, but can no longer be a field of silos full of different kinds of folks with different stereotypical values and needs. This applies as well to gender and age.
So what do we do now? Here is a vague suggested provisional thumb-suck framework, a mere concept of an idea, to get us started.
1) Don’t blame allies or eat our own young. We’ll figure out the past as we move into the future. Stick together.
2) Don’t assume that just because Trump wants to be a dictator that the United States becomes a dictatorship on day one. We are not going to carry his water for him.
3) Consider the political time table. We have work to do. Maybe groups that have up to now focused on local issues can shift at least some effort to work elsewhere now and then, in order to focus power where it can be effective. Start paying more attention to the Indivisible national calls to action. We are not looking at four years of pure Trump. We are looking at a complex political calendar where we can have real wins. For example:
Wisconsin judicial elections are in a few months.
There are meaningful odd year state elections in Virginia and New Jersey next year.
There will then be federal midterm elections in which we have a very good shot at the US Senate and US House.
In Minnesota, we also have Constitutional offices and State Senate races in two years, and in certain districts we may be able to turn red to blue. The races for elections that start in two years start now.
4) Trump will be a lame duck president. In four years he’ll be roast duck ex president. And defendant in a number of trials.
OK let’s get to work.