2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Sheilbh]

As things stand the Republicans have no hope in winning in 1968.  The Republican have become of the educated elite- and only part of that group.  And the Democrats have become the voice of the wage labourer.

As things stand the Democrats have no hope in winning in 1976.  The Democrats have become of the educated elite- and only part of that group.  And the Republicans have become the voice of the wage labourer.

I could go on and on. Things never stand.  Life happens, events occur, perceptions change. Americans are fickle and have the attention span of a 2 year old.

The Republicans under Trump are not the voice of the wage laborer, they have temporarily succeeded in attracting that vote in 2024 as they did to some extent in 2016 and failed to do in 2020.  The people funding and backing Trump and the GOP consist of a foreign born media mogul who is the richest man in the world, a series of multi-billionaire private equity fund titans, big oil and gas company executives, the owners of the NYSE, fellow real estate moguls, etc. The policy agenda is to gut worker regulation, gut worker bargaining power, gut antitrust enforcement.  It's the most aggressive antiworker agenda we've seen in decades.

So I totally agree with the first part.

With the second part I think the caveat is there's been for at least the 10-15 years an intellectual effort on part of the right around "post-liberalism". That's argued for an agenda for the GOP to become a multi-racial party of working people from at the softer end people like Reihan Salam or Sohrab Ahmari to the more wild like Patrick Deneen. They've argued that is the route to political success but also that the social and cultural liberalism they oppose is also a product of liberal, globalised capitalism. In a way it's the old line that the left romanticise the economic order of early post-war America, the right the social order - and their argument is, in part, that that was a package and the disintegration of both has the same cause.

I've always kind of dismissed them for the same reason you give and how dismissive they are of unions (though I'd note Ahmari has been petty pro-union lately), which to me seem like the only way of exercising worker power against capital. But there's a project there, and Trump has, I believe, just won voters earning under $100,000 a year and increased his vote share everywhere - but particularly Latinos and African-American men. I also saw JD Vance of all people say the problem with "corporate America" is that corporations socialise costs and privatise gains in a way that most mainstream Democrats (or Labour MPs here) would shy away from.

So I think everything you say is true. But I'm not sure it's all the story (and I think that's basically the difference between Mitt Romney and Donald Trump's position as candidates).

But I totally agree that nothing is inevitable and it's for the Democrats to work out what next for them. But I wouldn't bet on that GOP pitch for working votes just evaporating or automatically falling back.

[Tamas]

Here is a good summary of the why, I think: https://youtu.be/WAyIAJCWVxA?si=M8w_suk7itLnN3DJ

[The Minsky Moment]

But I totally agree that nothing is inevitable and it's for the Democrats to work out what next for them. But I wouldn't bet on that GOP pitch for working votes just evaporating or automatically falling back.

The people bankrolling Trump and the party will never permit the kind the rhetoric that Vance is throwing about to ever become policy.  If you look at the concrete policy direction, it goes the other way.

Vance may talk a good game, but there is a man who despite his youth has already built a formidable track record of talking out of the both sides of his mouth.  He may play the man of the people and tell cute little stories about his meemaw, but he is former private equity exec angling for a role to eviscerate business regulation.

FWIW I looked at the breakdown of the Bergen County vote - that's a well-to-do NJ commuter county just over the GW Bridge where I live now. I was interested because although the county went Harris, the vote margin was way down. Looking at the votes, the lunchbox towns like Hackensack and Englewood stayed solid Dem.  Alpine - possibly the richest town in the state and home to various celebrities  - flipped.  Englewood Cliffs - home to many corporate HQs and well-manicured estates - also flipped.  Other flips include upscale commuter towns like Ridgewood and Mahwah.

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

[viper37]

But I totally agree that nothing is inevitable and it's for the Democrats to work out what next for them. But I wouldn't bet on that GOP pitch for working votes just evaporating or automatically falling back.

You're assuming a lot.  You're assuming there could be free and fair elections in 4 years at the Presidential level.

I think it's even a stretch to imagine fair election at the Senate level in 2 years.  The Dems are gone for a long while now and nothing short of a collapse of the GOP or a revolution can bring them back.

Trump might be forced up to leave the space for someone else more malleable, but the GOP is there to stay.  Musk and the others did not invest so much for a one term stint.

[viper37]

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

I see voter turnout down.  So it seems that, again, many Democrats stayed home.

[Barrister]

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

I see voter turnout down.  So it seems that, again, many Democrats stayed home.

I've seen a reasonable amount of Democratic conspiracy mongering on Twitter - that the Democratic vote is down millions from 2020.

I think it mostly comes down to California (and lesser extent Oregon and Washington) which still have huge piles of votes to count, and will be majority democratic.  It won't make any difference to the electoral college, but it will to vote totals.

[Sheilbh]

The people bankrolling Trump and the party will never permit the kind the rhetoric that Vance is throwing about to ever become policy.  If you look at the concrete policy direction, it goes the other way.

Vance may talk a good game, but there is a man who despite his youth has already built a formidable track record of talking out of the both sides of his mouth.  He may play the man of the people and tell cute little stories about his meemaw, but he is former private equity exec angling for a role to eviscerate business regulation.

I don't disagree - but I think politics is upstream of policy. If the route for Republican victories becomes as those "post-liberal" guys argue a populist multi-racial coalition of working people, then I think that will shape what the Republican party becomes. And likewise if the Democrats can't break out of college educated and people earning $100k+ then that is what they will become and that'll shape the polices both of them offer.

And in part it depends on what narratives form about this election and what lessons both parties take from the first Republican popular vote victory since 2004.

And of course another bit of the story which could be the dominant narrative (though I think it'd be high risk) is simply that it's a shit time to be an incumbent. As pointed out in the FT so far this year for the first time in the post-war era every election in a developed country has seen the governing party lose vote share (and the Democrats have done better than most).

FWIW I looked at the breakdown of the Bergen County vote - that's a well-to-do NJ commuter county just over the GW Bridge where I live now. I was interested because although the county went Harris, the vote margin was way down. Looking at the votes, the lunchbox towns like Hackensack and Englewood stayed solid Dem.  Alpine - possibly the richest town in the state and home to various celebrities  - flipped.  Englewood Cliffs - home to many corporate HQs and well-manicured estates - also flipped.  Other flips include upscale commuter towns like Ridgewood and Mahwah.

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

Yeah the thing I'd read was basically that in 2020 Trump beat Biden among people earning over $100k but Biden won people earning less than that - and this election it flipped.

But obviously the wider context of that is that Trump did pretty well across the board:

[viper37]

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

I see voter turnout down.  So it seems that, again, many Democrats stayed home.

I've seen a reasonable amount of Democratic conspiracy mongering on Twitter - that the Democratic vote is down millions from 2020.

I think it mostly comes down to California (and lesser extent Oregon and Washington) which still have huge piles of votes to count, and will be majority democratic.  It won't make any difference to the electoral college, but it will to vote totals.

We'll when the final vote count is out.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

FWIW I looked at the breakdown of the Bergen County vote - that's a well-to-do NJ commuter county just over the GW Bridge where I live now. I was interested because although the county went Harris, the vote margin was way down. Looking at the votes, the lunchbox towns like Hackensack and Englewood stayed solid Dem.  Alpine - possibly the richest town in the state and home to various celebrities  - flipped.  Englewood Cliffs - home to many corporate HQs and well-manicured estates - also flipped.  Other flips include upscale commuter towns like Ridgewood and Mahwah.

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

Was this the breakdown?  That map doesn't surprise me much, based on the overall election results.  The biggest is that I thought Nutley was going to be much more in favor of Trump.   Apparently they're a flip this election!  BTW, did you mean Ridgefield rather than Ridgewood (which is showing as solidly blue)?

What's really interesting are the tables below the map.  There were 180,000 fewer votes cast across the five counties this year versus 2020.  Basically all those missing votes look to have come out of Harris's total (vice Biden).  Trump was basically flat (he got 2% more votes this time, but there were 3% more registered voters).  The numbers make it seem like Democratic apathy swung this, rather than any Trump appeal.

[Savonarola]

From Al-Jazeera:

'We warned you,' Arab Americans in Michigan tell Kamala Harris

A shift away from pro-Israel Democrats in communities like Dearborn underscores anger over war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Dearborn, Michigan – When Fox News called Pennsylvania for Donald Trump in the early hours of Wednesday, all but confirming that he would be the next president of the United States, there were a handful of Arab activists left at a watch party in Dearborn, Michigan.

"Genocide is bad politics," said one attendee at the event, which had Palestinian and Lebanese flags hanging outside its doors.

As the reality of another Trump presidency set off anger and sorrow from many Democratic commentators, at the Dearborn gathering organised by American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), there was a sense of indifference – if not vindication.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris had ignored the community's calls for reconsidering the unconditional US support for Israel. The vice president also continued to assert what she calls "Israel's right to defend itself" despite the brutal atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.

Activist Adam Abusalah said part of the reason why Harris lost was her decision to side with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the expense of alienating the Democratic base – Arab and Muslim Americans as well as young people and progressives.

"We've been warning the Democrats for over a year now, and the Democrats continue to downplay what's going on."

He added that Harris's main message to the Arab community was to warn of the dangers of a Trump presidency. This tactic failed to work as voters in the area were laser-focused on the continuing war in the Middle East that affected many of them personally.

Dearborn shift
In the Arab-majority suburb of Dearborn, anger over Israel's US-backed assault on Gaza and Lebanon was tangible at the ballot box.

Harris lost the city to Trump by more than 2,600 votes. President Joe Biden beat Trump by more than 17,400 votes – a more than 20,000-vote swing that helped the Republican former president reclaim Michigan.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who centred opposition to the war in her platform, also performed relatively well in the city, growing her party's support from 207 votes in 2020 to more than 7,600 this year.

Hussein Dabajeh, a Lebanese American political consultant in the Detroit area, noted that Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat, significantly outperformed Harris in Dearborn, receiving more than 9,600 votes than the vice president.

"The Arab community said we're anti-genocide. We supported the candidates that supported the community, and we stood against the candidates that stood against the community," Dabajeh told Al Jazeera.

It is unclear what a Trump presidency will mean for Arab and Muslim Americans and the country at large.

"I hope it's something good. I hope the country comes together. I hope the Democrats are brought to their senses," Dabajeh said.

While the former president has a long history of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant statements and policies, he has promised to bring "peace" to the region.

Trump also softened his antagonistic tone towards Arabs and Muslims as he courted their communities in Michigan.

He brought Arab and Muslim officials and imams to the stage during his rallies and called them "great people".

Trump also visited Dearborn and listened first-hand to demands to end the war, which Harris failed to do.

'It doesn't stop here'
Ali Alfarjalla, a 32-year-old Iraqi American real estate agent in Dearborn, said that for all his flaws, Trump represents a change from the Biden-Harris administration that has been unflinchingly supporting the Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon.

He stressed that the election is not the end of political engagement, saying that the community will press Trump to deliver on his promise of bringing peace to the region.

"It doesn't stop here," Alfarjalla told Al Jazeera.

"We have to work more to make sure our issues are heard – to stop the genocide in Gaza, stop the invasion of south Lebanon, and let Palestine have its own state. We're hopeful about that. That's our number one priority for this community."

He also said that Harris supporters' "lesser of two evils" pitch to the community backfired because many voters could not see a worse evil than the administration providing the bombs that were killing their families and destroying their hometowns.

While both major candidates back Israel, the Harris campaign committed a series of unforced errors that further alienated the community in Michigan and beyond, Arab American advocates told Al Jazeera.

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, the Harris campaign rejected demands to allow a speech by a Palestinian speaker.

The Democratic candidate also turned down a request for a meeting by the Uncommitted Movement, which was founded during the Democratic Primary process to pressure Biden over his unconditional support for Israel.

Unlike Trump, Harris did not visit Dearborn, the de-facto seat of Arab American political and financial power, during her campaign.

Instead, Harris met with handpicked Arab and Muslim "leaders" in Flint, about an hour north of Detroit, last month.

Moreover, Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney in Michigan and welcomed the endorsement of her father, former President Dick Cheney – an architect of the so-called "War on Terror" that devastated the Middle East.

Numerous Arab American activists invoked Harris's embrace of the Cheneys when underscoring her apparent disregard for their communities.

"We had Harris endorsed by neoconservatives like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, and she's openly campaigning with them and talking about how great they are," Dearborn councilman Mustapha Hammoud told Al Jazeera on Tuesday night as the results trickled in.

"You know what? I don't think people are willing to vote for George W Bush, so you weren't going to see people vote for Harris, either."

'I smile and laugh at it'

Speaking under a Harris campaign sign last week, former President Bill Clinton claimed that Hamas "forces" Israel to kill Palestinian civilians and suggested that Zionism pre-dates Islam.

The campaign's behaviour led some advocates to question whether the Democratic candidate has given up on the Arab community.

"Vice President Harris has shown over and over again that she actually doesn't want our vote," Uncommitted Movement leader Layla Elabed told Al Jazeera last week.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud also noted that the Harris campaign was hesitant to engage Arab Americans directly.

"They don't want the heckling to occur. They don't want to knock on the doors where they think the conversations are going to drag, and the votes might not be there," the mayor told Al Jazeera before the elections.

On the policy front, Harris did not make any concrete promises to the community – even within the acceptable realm of mainstream politics – like reopening the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, DC, or resuming funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

In contrast, Biden released platforms for Arab and Muslim Americans in 2020, promising domestic and foreign policy moves sought by the community – many of which went unfulfilled.

Bottom line, many Arab Americans say they already survived four years of Trump while many of their relatives in Palestine and Lebanon did not survive the Biden-Harris presidency.

They say they will continue to push for change, no matter who is in power.

Asked about some liberal social media users attacking Arab Americans and blaming them for Harris's defeat, Alfarjalla said many people in the community have survived war and adversity, so they are not concerned about what others say.

"I smile and laugh at it," he said.

Harris was faced with an dilemma of either alienating Jewish voters or alienating Muslim/activist voters.  She might have done a better job with Arab-American outreach, as the article says, but it really is hard to see how they're better off with Trump.

[Barrister]

And it's not as if the Arab-American vote would have made up the difference either.

[garbon]

And it's not as if the Arab-American vote would have made up the difference either.

Still what dumbfucks. Their "protest" is going to gain them anything.

Edit: forgot the word not

[Admiral Yi]

They have four years to explore the depths of their stupidity.

[Savonarola]

And it's not as if the Arab-American vote would have made up the difference either.

She might have been able to take Michigan with a more solid Arab-American turnout.  It's difficult to tell from the article since it focuses exclusively on Dearborn, which is where the Muslims live.  There's a large Christian Arab-American community in Metro Detroit as well, but their communities (and how the war impacted their vote) are ignored in the article.  Of course it wouldn't have made a difference in the general election.

[DGuller]

FWIW I looked at the breakdown of the Bergen County vote - that's a well-to-do NJ commuter county just over the GW Bridge where I live now. I was interested because although the county went Harris, the vote margin was way down. Looking at the votes, the lunchbox towns like Hackensack and Englewood stayed solid Dem.  Alpine - possibly the richest town in the state and home to various celebrities  - flipped.  Englewood Cliffs - home to many corporate HQs and well-manicured estates - also flipped.  Other flips include upscale commuter towns like Ridgewood and Mahwah.

I get that the story may be different elsewhere.  But at least swiveling my head where I live, I don't see a clear play out of the supposed Trumpian workers revolting against their elites.  I see a lot of well-educated affluent folk voting their tax bracket.

I looked at Jersey City results, for each Ward/District combination.  I was relieved to find that Ward E, where most of the well-off yuppies like me live, usually in highrises, the Harris share is almost the highest.  Only the low-income Ward A is higher.  The ones that that are Trumpiest?  The Heights and Journal Square, which are middle income.  The Heights in particular has a high proportion of Hispanic population.

I've only looked at it quickly, and not in a very organized way.  I also wish I could compare against 2020, but such detail is not available for that one, and probably redistricting would make such comparisons impossible anyway.