Some Preliminary Thoughts on Trump’s Win
Here we go again.
Donald Trump’s re-election was not how I would have bet or what I predicted yesterday morning, but I’m surprised only by the magnitude of the win. He’s almost certain to sweep the swing states and may well win the popular vote as well.
I’ll post more on the likely policy implications of the outcome in the coming days but here are some thoughts about how we got here.
We have a binary system and Trump, as the nominee of the out party, represented change from the status quo. I know it’s hard for political junkies like ourselves to grasp but Americans overwhelmingly don’t pay that much attention to politics. And, as fundamentally awful as Trump is as a human being, it was either him or another four years of what we have now. When the public thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, the other guy usually wins.
I’ve voted for the Democratic nominee in three straight cycles. That doesn’t mean that I supported all of their policies; it just means that I preferred them over the alternative. The same is true for Trump voters. Are many of them racists and misogynists? Sure. But that doesn’t explain the huge number of women who voted for him. Or the fact that he’s drawing more Black and Hispanic voters than past Republican candidates.
Campaigns just don’t matter. This has been a truism of the political science literature for a very long time but we—including we political scientists—routinely ignore this in real time. Trump ran an unhinged, hateful, undisciplined campaign. Harris ran as nearly flawless as a campaign as I can remember. Yes, it was very short, giving her less time to stumble. But the flip side is that hit the ground running with essentially no notice and killed it on the stump, killed it in the debate, and staged a phenomenally one-message convention. It. Just. Didn’t. Matter.
Blame Biden. I voted for Biden last go-round and genuinely like the guy. But he hung around far too long out of selfishness and foolish pride. Had he stepped down a year ago rather than after embarrassing himself in the first general election debate and being forced out, the Democratic Party could have held a primary campaign and crafted a new message. Instead, they were stuck with defending an unpopular status quo and running on Trump’s awfulness.
While I have a lot of sympathy for my colleague Steven Taylor’s view that having party elites pick candidates is preferable to the primary system, the way this was done made it impossible for Harris to be her own woman. She may well have emerged victorious in a legitimate contest for the nomination whether to the nominating electorate or the party elites. She’s a much stronger candidate than I’d given her credit for. But because she was anointed in the wake of Biden’s endorsement, she was unable to differentiate herself from her boss.
Trump is Sui Generis. Ronald Reagan was viewed as “the Teflon President” and Bill Clinton survived a sex scandal that would have ended any other presidency. But I’ve never seen anything like Trump. He has spent nine years saying and doing bizarre, outrageous things that would have killed any other candidate in the primaries. Instead, he’s not only won the nomination three times and the Presidency twice but increased his popularity levels considerably. We’ve never seen anything like it and hopefully won’t again.
I would note that “Binary System” + “Campaign Don’t Matter” does not sum to “Blame Biden.”
It seems pretty clear that the binary nature of the system plus dissatisfaction with the direction of the country resulted in the candidates not mattering all that much at all.
I am not sure how we look at this and say that a Dem primary would have lead to a different outcome. Trump appears poised to win all three “Blue Wall” states.
What candidate would have fixed that?
[CTR TRIGGER WARNING!!!] The voters of America have chosen a geriatric white male bigot over…
Meh… What would be the point?
Your lies to your readers didn’t work for the country
@Jake: Jake,
What lies?
I’ve been a reader of this blog for almost 20 years. I respect James and his viewpoints even if we disagree.
He misjudged the polls. That isn’t lying.
@Jake:
You make me miss the downvote option.
On this day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States.
Boy, have we gone down hill.
It’s fun to see that the “facts don’t care about your feelings” crowd is now 100% vibes.
Jake’s got nothing because his one point is the emotional claim that everyone else [but definitely not him] is all about feelings.
It’s also interesting to watch the 40-year growth of fascism [as initiated by Reagan] create a legitimacy crisis in American law and politics. It’s almost like only one of two parties is entirely dedicated to oligarchy and doesn’t give a hoot about this “rule of people” thingy!
Also, American people not paying attention to the specifics of proposed policy doesn’t help. People voted for Trump because.. prices are too high? OK, and the solution from your candidate is… Trump’s tariffs, which will double those prices. Great work!
@Gavin: Seems rather more fun to construct enormous straw men to knock down and burn as ritualistic favours to affirm pre-existing positions.
If only. I think a repeat of Trump’s awful first term is a best-case scenario, and hopelessly optimistic.
I read that an I think, “what the hell?”. I can’t even see how you could think Harris ran a flawless campaign. I’ll give it some thought, maybe I’m the one who is confused, but I don’t think so.
Harris was word salad in the easiest interviews. Trump did long form podcasts that allowed viewers to see him off stage, so to speak. No one believe Kamala Harris could do 3 hours of random conversation on camera without gaff or coming off as empty. To be fair, she didn’t do press conferences so wasn’t trained up by experience.
I watched the Triggernometry podcast with guest Tyler Fischer a few days ago. The hosts had just done Rogan post Trump and Fischer had done Rogan as well. They all reported being wiped out after 3 hours with Rogan. Just wanting a pee, some food and sleep to recover. Trump on the other hand few straight to do a 2 hour rally in Michigan.
And why were the long form podcast important? Because they allowed the suburban, mostly white, men to get over the MSM-highlighted Trump “incivility”.
@Gavin:
Winning a majority of the popular vote (or even EV) is the rule of the people. I got plenty of issues with oligarchs, but this one doesn’t hit very effectively right now.
Trump ran an unhinged, hateful, undisciplined campaign. Harris ran as nearly flawless as a campaign as I can remember.
This statement could be used as evidence of clinical psychosis. The McDonald’s and garbage truck stunts were, inarguably, two of the best political photo ops in history. Trump doing all those podcasts, where he often got to interact with fairly non-political or at least non-partisan hosts, was sheer genius. Trump hitting Harris on Gaza was one of the best jobs of throwing a monkey wrench into the other campaign I’ve ever seen.
Harris, meanwhile, hit her campaign highpoint with a decent debate performance where she got a boost from both moderators. She spent a huge chunk of the campaign virtually hiding from the media and refusing to make any substantive case for her candidacy. She NEVER came up with even a bad answer to the questions “When did you notice Biden was slipping” and “Why haven’t you done all these good policy ideas already? You’ve been Vice President for 3 1/2 years.” And she closed out her campaign tying herself to Liz and Dick Cheney. That’s “nearly flawless?”
There has only been one question to ask about the political career of Donald Trump. “How badly have we fucked up that basically half the country would rather vote for him than us?” The stubborn refusal of people like James Joyner to even possibly consider maybe thinking about asking that question is why Donald Trump is going to be in the history books for as along as anyone teaches history.
@DrDaveT: Precisely what I came here to say.
People who think they are getting another round of the sh!t stew Trump dished out during his first administration are in for a rude awakening. As we’ve witnessed during this campaign, every one of the even marginally competent people from his first administration have run for the hills and are now on the enemies list.
Buckle up folks.
@TheRyGuy:
No, they were not. They were essentially inside jokes, and the garbage truck came very close to looking as foolish as Dukakis in a tank.
And yes, Harris’s campaign was near flawless in its execution. She filled stadiums, he had empty seats and people heading for the exits early. She stayed on message while he simulated performing fellatio on a microphone. She raised a billion dollars in one quarter. Etc. By any logical, objective measure, it was a good campaign.
None of it mattered, because people were annoyed about paying more for eggs, and apparently neither understand nor care that the US had both the lowest pandemic-induced inflation, and returned the quickest to normal inflation levels.
@Steven L. Taylor:
That was my question during the replace Biden kerfuffle.
However, given an open primary, it’s possible one or more candidates might have brought up the matter of inflation, if nothing else in order to attack Harris (whom I’m sure would have run).
I confess not having paid much attention to political speeches, but I think Harris spoke little about the current economy and did not address inflation in any meaningful way. Bill Clinton’s 90s era “I feel your pain” shtick might have helped, along with an explanation of how prices won’t come down absent some form of government price regulation, and repeatedly calling out el fuhrer for claiming he can do, or even wants to do, otherwise.
@DrDaveT: I really, reeeaaally hope you’re wrong on that best-case scenario thing.
@Steven L. Taylor: I think candidates matter to some degree even if campaigns don’t. Even a Kamala Harris would have been able to run as a change candidate were she running in her own right rather than as Biden’s replacement. Certainly, a Democratic governor would have been able to do so.
@JKB: Mostly, she ran essentially a mistake-free campaign. There were no gaffes that needed to be walked back. Her optimism resulted in an immediate, if short-lived, surge in the polls. It just didn’t matter in the end.
@Jen:
There’s a difference between tactics and strategy. The Harris campaign may have been great at the tactics of campaigning, but the strategy – the theory of victory – was, at best, flawed. See also the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I have been a casual reader of OTB for… Jesus, fifteen?… or so years. I first added the blog to my Google Reader feed in high school, where it fulfilled a role as a (sane) politically right-leaning blog to balance out politically left-leaning, left-wing and right-wing blogs.
How things have declined since 2015.
To say I am ecstatic and jocuse is a massive understatement… It’s been an absolute joy to witness the neoconservative-globalism empire painstakingly built and carefully manicured by selfish Boomers and early Gen Xers – both Democrat and Republican – crumble, starting first with the gutting of the Old GOP over the last four years and now today with utter rejection of cultural imperialism and eventual fileting of the New Democrats (who welcomed you failed “national security advisor” rejects with open arms.) The dread and anxiety the writers and readers of this blog are currently feeling makes me overwhelmed with positivity!
In the end, you regime-changing Boomers borrowed away the futures of my generation and those after around the globe to fuel you all’s gluttonous, overconsumptive lifestyles, but now your influence is finished. You all should find solace in the fact Trump is not an actual fascist, otherwise you really would be getting what you deserve.
@Andy: As a former campaign worker, I agree with that assessment.
But, also–given Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail over the past three or so weeks–if people were willing to vote FOR him after witnessing THAT behavior, there’s not only nothing Harris could have done, I don’t think there’s anyone the Democrats could have offered up who would have been successful.
Something is rotten in the State of Denmark, etc.
@Jen:
Yeah, we’re just going to get sycophants this time. Party over country idiots in a workforce that values country over party and serves all duly elected administrations.
These idiots think they can bully long serving civil service pros into subservience.
Malicious compliance is the new brat summer.
@de stijl:
I think it’s TRUMP over party and over country.
@Jen:
My heart breaks for the people of Ukraine who will now almost certainly have to cede some or all of their country to Putin. My heart breaks for the Palestinians in Gaza who will bear the brunt when Trump and the Republicans remove what little constraints there are on Netanyahu. I’m worried about my children, nieces and nephews trying to start their families in a new Republic of Gilead. I’m worried about the all immigrants, both legal & illegal, that will be forced into camps to await deportation to countries where they might face personal or economic peril. Concern over the price of eggs and gas seems so puerile.
This quote from H. L. Mencken seems apt today, particularly for deplorables like JKB, Jake, I Am and TheRyGuy who came here this morning to demonstrate their cluelessness in victory:
I’m struggling to understand the use of “word salad” to describe Harris’ statements. I think the meaning has been shifted to mean “unrelatable college talk” from what it first meant, which was “free associative stream of consciousness”. Which Trump engages in all the time.
But he uses a language that non-college educated people also use, especially after they’ve had a beer or something. Hyperbole everywhere, no attention to details. To some, attention to detail sounds like hedging which is a signal of dishonesty. This is completely wrong, of course.
Meanwhile, I did not have any trouble understanding anything I’ve seen/heard Harris say.
Of course, this makes me wonder about Obama’s success. He was a bigger brainiac than Harris is, but he made it work. Somehow…
@I Am: “In the end, you regime-changing Boomers borrowed away the futures of my generation and those after around the globe to fuel you all’s gluttonous, overconsumptive lifestyles, but now your influence is finished. You all should find solace in the fact Trump is not an actual fascist, otherwise you really would be getting what you deserve.”
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
What the actual….?
Google searches for ‘did Joe Biden drop out’ spiked as voters headed to the polls Tuesday
Ed Burmila on Bluesky, by way of Cheryl Rofer on LGM:
@Scott: No one ever believes me when I tell them that a massive chunk of voters don’t pay attention until the last possible minute. I used to say if I ever wrote a novel about a political campaign, I’d likely title it “Two Weeks Out,” because that’s when what you are doing on a campaign starts to resonate with a large portion of voters–it’s when the highly visible stuff counts.
This doesn’t surprise me at all.
Perhaps Harris had a gaffe free campaign, but apparently it wasn’t as effective as Biden’s ‘from the basement’ 2020 campaign
@Jay L Gischer:
I saw someone last night remark on how Harris used consultant-speak. And that like most of what comes out of academia doesn’t stand up to being parsed by the factors of studying, i.e., with regulated emotions, –“when he has determined the relative importance of different parts and given them a corresponding organization; when he has passed judgement on their soundness and general worth”. If you break down what is said, in this manner then you find there is no there there.
Trump speaks in a complex pattern which he has termed “weave” but his digressions do stitch together in the long run. Though, as we’ve seen, leaves a lot of room for “journalists” to misrepresent what he says by cropping and dropping.
It is best for both is you read the transcript, assuming you can ascertain if is a accurate or edited.
@I Am: So presumably you can point to something positive that you think Trump will do to address these? I’m still waiting for this from any of his voters.
(Also noting the comedy of suggesting an octogenarian con man who recently wasted 4 years debasing his country and lining his pockets is the savior who’s gonna clean up this town.)
@I Am:
I think you’re misunderstanding what you’re looking at, but, as is usual for me these days, I’d be happy to be wrong.
Best of luck in the brave new world.
@Barry:
Exactly! That’s what I’m afraid of for I Am and the gang.
But it’s their time to be “hopey changey” I guess. Maybe it’ll work for them, too.
@James Joyner: Leaving aside the Trumpian dezinformatsia commentariat, who will speak in Pravda-esque twists – it seems to me that Ms Harris was quite generally competent and effective overall – the things the Intello bourgeousie didn’t like as not giving substantive interviews I rather doubt had any effect at all.
Her competence in campaigning and even ease I would put in stark contrast with Ms Clinton – I rather came to like her (from having a position prior to Biden dropping out of “oh dear she was a bumbler before”). She could merit a 2nd chance really, I do not think the loss can be ascribed to her making significant errors overall – except maybe the last stage theory of victory
@Andy: has perhaps the properly useful directoin – the theory of victory – although it seemed to change in the last weeks to my observation from over the Atlantic, from the more earthy Wallzian “weird” to reversion to what the Bourgeousie Intello base of the Democrats like to go on about, Fascism, Threat to Democracy, etc. – the points that were not going to convert any non-pre-sold and returned to the excessively egg-headed academe infected discourse of the Democrats
And too little of some economic Populist pandering (not that I am personally in favour of any such populist pandering policies in the world economic but pandering was needed and what a person like myself wants to hear or likes is quite besides the point to win).
However would even this have changed much? mmm maybe but it is a tenous hypothesis – although I was baffled to see that Musk and other Trumpians made statements economic (pain, hurt blah blah) in the last weeks that the Democrats seem to leave essentially untouched in favour of the reversion of the Bidenesque fascism arguments again (this being an impression perhaps misplaced and not offered in a strong fashion but certainly it seemed more visible the Fascism – Threat to Democracy rhetoric returned to a front and center in emphasis).
Whereas it seemed already clear that there was a working class backlash against inflation and immigration (and generally against Democrats wokey Uni-grad dorm loungue discourse and public presentation of agenda).
@Jen: I believe the Democrats might have done better had they more fully grasped the alienation of their mode and presentation from the working class – although by the time Ms Harris became candidates it was perhaps too late for her to unwind that.
@I Am:
I really like how you ended that off with with the thought that non-Trump voters might get shot by a firing squad if you don’t behave.
That was classy!
@JKB: I appreciate your good faith response to my question.
And yet, I don’t understand what “most of what comes out of academia doesn’t stand up to being parsed by the factors of studying, i.e., with regulated emotions”
I spent years as an academic. You don’t have any trouble understanding me. Calling this academic really doesn’t work for me. Yes, I have read some stuff coming from academics that definitely make me raise my eyebrows.
The “regulated emotions” seems to be a response to the crowd that says, “there is no truth only power”. That’s kind of hard to take from an academic like me, who was deep into math and science, where figuring out what the most factual way to describe existence is our aim.
But the thing to remember is that that saying applies to itself as much as to anything else. I also think it’s a terrible way to communicate for a politician. And as far as I know, Harris did nothing like that. Nothing.
And again, everything I’ve listened to her say had a point. Sometimes she ducks questions, and sometimes Trump did that too. All politicians “pivot” on a question they don’t want to answer.
“sounds like consultant speak” is something I can understand, though. I thought she was doing a lot better than she did in 2020, but maybe it still wasn’t good enough. Frankly, what she sounds like is a lawyer, because she’s spent most of her life around lawyers.
@Jay L Gischer: And because she is a lawyer.
@Lounsbury:
I just don’t think it would have mattered. The “alienation of their mode and presentation” boils down to “understanding wtf they are talking about,” and once that is considered suspect, anyone with a cogent policy prescription is suspect.
Again, given Trump’s behavior over the last few weeks–let alone his prior [insert whatever you wish here, mocking a disabled reporter, the Access Hollywood tapes, stealing and storing classified documents, etc., etc., etc.] behavior–that should have repelled people. That they witnessed him calling for guns trained on Liz Cheney, simulating fellatio on a microphone, stumbling into a garbage truck, and more and still said “yep, that’s who I want on the world stage” is an indicator that he is the emperor of failing up and Christ himself would likely have lost.
@CSK:
Conceded.
What are they going to do when Trump dies or becomes mentally unable to speak?
What does post Trump Republican party look like? What are their policy positions beyond trans folk are shit and should be beat?
I really want to be post-Trump but the follow-on could be worse.
@Jen:
Yes, the problem isn’t just Harris, it’s a whole host of things that have built up over time. For instance, there are reasons the Biden administration is historically unpopular – some of those, like with any President, are beyond his control, others are. It’s hard to win as a Democrat when a decisive majority of the country thinks things are on the wrong track under Democratic leadership. Harris specifically and Democrats generally didn’t really have a good answer for that beyond trying to tell the public that they were wrong. And she tried to play it safe by simultaneously trying to take credit for all the Biden admin successes while suggesting she would do things differently without explaining how. Combined with the inability to explain her flip-flops from 2019, I’m guessing a lot of people did not believe her and concluded she’d just be a second Biden term.
I think the most decisive mistake was immigration. Biden campaigned on a friendlier immigration stance, and he got that, but the public really didn’t like the result. Democrats did basically nothing for three years in the face of incontrovertible evidence that a majority of Americans did not want chaos on the border or the mass gaming of the asylum system. Senate Democrats only agreed to the deal Trump eventually killed in order to secure Ukraine funding. By and large, the Democratic response to the public’s concerns about immigration were – to put it charitably – not effective in terms of policy or messaging. The result is that border counties that haven’t voted Republican in over a century voted for Trump.
I also think Matt Yglesias is correct on some of the deeper issues and the collective action problem among Democratic factions that prevented them and continue to prevent them from adjusting to political realities.
@JKB: “I saw someone last night remark on how Harris used consultant-speak”
Wait — you saw some anonymous person on TV making a claim that’s impossible to prove, and for which you give no evidence? I’m convinced!
Whelp called it….
We are as a country not ready to elect a woman let alone a black one.. Obama squeaked past because he sounded like a white dude.
We also learned that the people want someone who promises everything in the vaguest way possible. Also eat the rich..
The only hope we have is for the GOP’s hateful incompetence to keep them from doing too much to fck the country.
One thought:
This is just a guess, which will need to wait on details of turn-outs, and post-facto polling and focus group analysis.
But I have a suspicion it may be that experienced inflation was a key element.
If so that may prompt politicians in future to incline to more caution over possible inflation.
And prefer the concentrated pain of higher unemployment to the generalised annoyance of higher inflation.
Secondary to that:
If that is the case, and it’s seen to be general, that does NOT bode well for the Trump economic policy projects (such as they are).
Tax cuts, tariffs, tighter immigration limits, preference for low interest rates, no obvious major spending cuts, possible weaker dollar in longer term (?): all these are inflationary.
Combined, extremely so.
Cue both economic and political problems down the road.
@Andy: I agree, Biden not doing something way more conspicuous about the border until the last year of his term was a gigantic mistake.
@Andy:
So, his meddling and killing the compromise legislation that would have put a win in Biden’s column is now going to become normal campaign behavior. That’s not a good thing.
@JohnSF:
I’m just old enough to remember 1974 Whip Inflation Now aka WIN. There were buttons. Not really sure how 10 year old kids can whip inflation now with a button, but we got ’em at school.
There’s not a lot a President can really do about inflation. A lil bit. Nixon and Ford played with a bit with price and wage controls. Didn’t work. Backfired both politically and financially.
Incidently, at that time or shortly thereafter us US kids were being taught the metric system. We were slated to convert to the metric system in 1980 Iirc.
It was day to day lesson stuff. I still remember most of the salient, useful fractions and conversions. 1 kg is 2.2 pound. 1 inch in 2.54 centimeters. 1 kilometer is .66 of a mile. One meter is a wee bit short of a yard. A liter is roughly the size of a quart.
Ronald Reagan put the kibosh on formally converting to metric because patriotism or something. I spent probably a tenth of my schooling on the metric system and a new President comes in and says nah. Not gonna do it. That’s commie shit.
The one thing that is very difficult is Fahrenheit to Celsius. I know -40 aligns. I know 21C is roughly room temp close to 72F. I know 0C is 32F. 100C, 212F is water boiling point. In between I was always kinda lost. Still am. Always have to look it up. There is no easy math for C to F or vice versa. (Sorry, maths.)
@de stijl:
I think they’d be happy with Vance succeeding Trump.
@JohnSF:
It remains to be seen how much of his fantasy agenda he can and will implement, and how, and in what time frame. It depends on whom he names for the relevant departments, too.
The biggest variable is how much pushback will he face from his own officials, and how much will he tolerate. I’ve no trouble seeing der fuhrer firing anyone who points out his master plan has a tiny flaw.
I’ve mentioned my own employment is rather safe. We sell essentials (food) to the government, and governments always have money, even if devalued. The Great Recession didn’t hit me hard at all. On the contrary, I found great deals on hotels in Vegas at the time.
So if der fuhrer wrecks the world’s economy, which hasn’t yet recovered from inflation and supply chain disruptions and is facing imminent recession at all times, I’ll very likely be ok. Inflation would hit me, but not that hard (survivor of 150% rates in the mid 80s and all).
If it weren’t for the massive suffering that will inevitably come along in too much of the world, I’d like to see him try his Dumpster Fire Economics just to see how those who voted for him like it then.
@Jen:
That’s not a new tactic, although the usual method is the poison pill.
Also, that legislation wasn’t something promoted by Biden or Democrats in the first place. Senate Democrats (and Democrats generally) wanted funding for Ukraine, and the price Republican Senators gave was immigration reform bill. It was only after Trump selfishly nuked it that it became a Democratic talking point, and one that was not nearly powerful enough to overcome the Biden admin’s established record on the border and immigration.