2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[garbon]

Pre-election I was listening to a podcast that had James Carville on it.  He is always an entertaining listen, and he can have some good insights.  He's the one who came up with "it's the economy, stupid" during Clinton's 1992 campaign.

He was saying (and I'm paraphrasing here) that one of the things voters care most about is order.  So it's not quite so much that "wokeness" hurts democrats, but disorder.  So the massive 2020 protests, the campus anti-Israel protests, very visible homelessness and lawlessness (Canada, but I visibly saw people shoplifting twice in the last week who were called out by clerks, but otherwise made no attempt to stop them).

I forgot to say this feels like spin the wheel and pick a rationale. If order is a key drive, you would presumably pick the former prosecutor not the felon.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, Trump is definitely not the candidate of order. 

It is a bit odd to try to fit him into a status quo conservative mold.  His brand is chaos and disruption.

[viper37]

It'll take a while to process this all, but my initial thoughts are:

1. The entire DNC leadership should resign.  They have completely lost touch with the American people.

OR

2. America just hates it leadership so much that the 'incumbent' will always be blamed for its problems, no matter what.

I hope 2 is true, and if so I predict the Democrats and likely Tim Walz will win the 2028 election.

You'll be lucky if you get a fair election in 2028.  I don't think Democrats stand a fair chance of regaining the Presidency any time soon.

[crazy canuck]

As things stand the Dems have no hope of winning in 28.  The Dems have become the party of the educated elite- and only part of that group.  And the Republicans have become the voice of the wage labourer.

The Dems cannot win if they don't change that.

[Tamas]

Pre-election I was listening to a podcast that had James Carville on it.  He is always an entertaining listen, and he can have some good insights.  He's the one who came up with "it's the economy, stupid" during Clinton's 1992 campaign.

He was saying (and I'm paraphrasing here) that one of the things voters care most about is order.  So it's not quite so much that "wokeness" hurts democrats, but disorder.  So the massive 2020 protests, the campus anti-Israel protests, very visible homelessness and lawlessness (Canada, but I visibly saw people shoplifting twice in the last week who were called out by clerks, but otherwise made no attempt to stop them).

I forgot to say this feels like spin the wheel and pick a rationale. If order is a key drive, you would presumably pick the former prosecutor not the felon.

Unless the voter's definition of order is kicking and stomping the undesirables.

[DGuller]

I think that regardless of issues, the one constant is that the voter logic works this way:  "I'm unhappy with this issue, so I'll vote for the other party."  The way the voter logic does NOT work is this way:  "I'm unhappy with this issue, but the other party is just going to be so much worse at this."

We need to understand how this works.  We don't have to respect it, because for fucks sake this is idiotic, but it's how it works.  In our timeline, Jews would vote for Hitler because they were unhappy with anti-Semitism under Weimer Republic.

[The Minsky Moment]

As things stand the Dems have no hope of winning in 28.  The Dems have become the party of the educated elite- and only part of that group.  And the Republicans have become the voice of the wage labourer.

The Dems cannot win if they don't change that.

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.

[crazy canuck]

As things stand the Dems have no hope of winning in 28.  The Dems have become the party of the educated elite- and only part of that group.  And the Republicans have become the voice of the wage labourer.

The Dems cannot win if they don't change that.

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.

You can keep telling yourself that but the election results. Tell a very different story.  If working-class Americans didn't vote for Trump, he would not have won this election.

If you and other Democrats keep telling yourself that the voters just got it wrong and you don't need to change you're going to keep losing elections.

[garbon]

As things stand the Dems have no hope of winning in 28.  The Dems have become the party of the educated elite- and only part of that group.  And the Republicans have become the voice of the wage labourer.

The Dems cannot win if they don't change that.

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.

You can keep telling yourself that but the election results. Tell a very different story.  If working-class Americans didn't vote for Trump, he would not have won this election.

If you and other Democrats keep telling yourself that the voters just got it wrong and you don't need to change you're going to keep losing elections.

I don't think he said voters are wrong but fickle. So this doesn't represent some massive realignment but more in this cycle the Republican messaging appealed to them.

[frunk]

It also doesn't help that although there was some demographic shifts Trump got pretty much the same number of votes in 2020 and 2024.  It was the Democrats that lost votes by the buckets after the historically highest number of votes for a presidential candidate in 2020.  It's not that Trump was appealing in his message, it's that Democrats failed to engage enough despite a much more vigorous campaign that was almost entirely about the economy and significant numbers of volunteers reaching out to people to GOTV.

You can criticize the campaign for not succeeding, but not on the basis of ivory tower eggheadedness or not focusing on working class people.

[Barrister]

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.

This talk about the people funding Trump brought me back to another interesting point I heard yesterday.

As you know this election was fought almost entirely in 7-8 battleground swing states. WI, MI, PA, NC, GA, NV - maybe one or two more.  Those states saw huge floods of advertising.

But in all the remaining states they were uncontested by both sides.

But when you look at the results in uncontested states - either bright blue Illinois or New York, or bright red Iowa or Kentucky - Trump did significantly better than his last two times.

So there does seem to be something "in the air" that was attracting people to Trump.

[Tamas]

I think that regardless of issues, the one constant is that the voter logic works this way:  "I'm unhappy with this issue, so I'll vote for the other party."  The way the voter logic does NOT work is this way:  "I'm unhappy with this issue, but the other party is just going to be so much worse at this."

We need to understand how this works.  We don't have to respect it, because for fucks sake this is idiotic, but it's how it works.  In our timeline, Jews would vote for Hitler because they were unhappy with anti-Semitism under Weimer Republic.

Yeah

[The Minsky Moment]

It also doesn't help that although there was some demographic shifts Trump got pretty much the same number of votes in 2020 and 2024.  It was the Democrats that lost votes by the buckets after the historically highest number of votes for a presidential candidate in 2020.  It's not that Trump was appealing in his message, it's that Democrats failed to engage enough despite a much more vigorous campaign that was almost entirely about the economy and significant numbers of volunteers reaching out to people to GOTV.

You can criticize the campaign for not succeeding, but not on the basis of ivory tower eggheadedness or not focusing on working class people.

Focusing on the working class has been pretty much the Democratic strategy since Hillary Clinton fell.  It's what they ran on in 2020, it's how they governed (or at least attempted to) and it was Harris strategy as well. It was why she picked Walz, and eschewed appeals based on identity, to the point that the key area of emphasis in her otherwise interesting biography was a summer job at McDonalds.

The first Presidential campaign where I had some sense what the hell was going on was 1984.  The election featured a reace between a hardscrabble midwesterner who grew up poor in Depression and spent a lifetime championing working people.  He faced a former Hollywood actor who more than any other single human being had undermined the power and status of American labor, a man whose Presidency marks the origin point of a long-term trend of real wage stagnation.

Working Americans voted in droves for the actor.  Why?  They remembered that when the midwesterner was VP, there was inflation and unemployment, and by 1984, they were both down. 

[Caliga]

Also, the other guy he was too youthful and inexperienced.

[Caliga]

If working-class Americans didn't vote for Trump, he would not have won this election.

If you and other Democrats keep telling yourself that the voters just got it wrong and you don't need to change you're going to keep losing elections.

cc is right.

Let me tell you guys an ancedote.  A few weeks back I had an appointment with my hair stylist.  She's a single young female, very working class, with tattoos, piercings, etc.  In other words, I think most people around here would look at her and thing 'Oh, Democrat'.

She asked me about the election and what I was thinking, and I told her I was a near-lifelong Democrat (been a registered Democrat my entire life) who hadn't voted Republican since 2000.  I explained why I liked Harris and Walz, what I didn't like about Trump, etc.  She listened thoughtfully and then replied, "Well, all's I know is prices just keep going up and if that doesn't stop I don't know how I can keep paying for this lease."  With that, I knew she'd be voting for Trump even though she didn't say so, and I suspect millions of Americans had a similar internal dialogue and made the same decision, too.

The Democrats do not know how to appeal to working-class America anymore.  They keep trying (the Walz pick was an obvious attempt to do that), but they're not connecting like they need to.