“One Weird Trick” Election Takes
Plus some discussion of identity politics.
In reading through the Open Forum a phrase in a comment from DK leaped out at me as it pertains to why Harris lost, specifically the emphasized portion: “The reasons why are multifaceted and complicated, and not even necessarily within party control.”
This well articulates what it is that keeps bugging me about so many of the hot takes, and it fits in with long-standing frustration with “messaging” arguments that I have expressed before. It is the idea that when a party or candidate loses that loss could have been reversed if they had just said or done X, Y, and/or Z. Usually the argument is based on “if they had just talked more (or less) about this thing that concerns me, a Very Smart Pundit, then things would have gone differently.”
The key is control. I just don’t buy the notion that some tweak of the message is the issue. I don’t think campaigns are video games wherein, if you play them the right way, you win. They aren’t puzzle boxes that have a correct solution.
I think the two biggest variables were inflation and Harris’ race/gender.
No one who reads my scribblings will be shocked that I take great stake in the argument that the results were part of global anti-incumbency wave largely in response to the post-Covid political environment.
I will share this graph again:
This is a truly stunning pattern that is, in my view, impossible to dismiss. It is worth reminding everyone that incumbent parties lost votes regardless of their ideological orientation. Both the left and the right suffered the same fate.
And we know that the economy has consistently been the top issue for the electorate. So, we have at least two sets of empirical measures. One is a clear global pattern and the other is a set of public opinion polling that confirms the local manifestation of that which appears to be driving the global pattern.
Indeed, as I noted in my post, Should He Stay or Should He Go?
Too many people blame Joe Biden for the price of gas, groceries, and rent. Full stop. But I expect that people who have such an understanding of the economy would also blame Harris. Indeed, if there is evidence that a Harris ticket could change the dynamic over the economy, I would be all ears.
Clearly, this was a major contributor to the outcome, as we all knew would be the case.
In terms of Harris as a biracial female, in that same post, I noted the following.
It is a commentary on America to have to note that I think that Doddering Old White Man probably has a better chance at winning than Angry Black Lady. (Note that I am not saying this is a fair representation of either of them, but I do think that that is how they are perceived by a lot of the country). Along these lines, I think that the perception that Harris has been a less than stellar VP is part and parcel of what I am describing because objectively I think she has been a pretty standard issue veep.
I will note that she did a good job of not allowing them to cast her as angry. Instead, Trump went with the racist approach of casting her as dumb. It is also worth noting that Harris did not run on identity politics–neither in terms of race nor gender. Clinton ran far more, for example, on the gender issue than Harris did. Note that the argument is not that it was never mentioned, but that she clearly did not want to make race/gender central to her pitch.
Now, we can argue that a different nomination process could have produced a white male, although I am not sure who that would have been. We have to get deep into counterfactuals to produce that result. But I will concede that some control over the nomination could have been asserted if Biden had stepped aside earlier. I am unconvinced that would have resulted in a different electoral outcome, ultimately, but I concede that my speculation on that matter is still just that.
As such, I just don’t buy simplistic takes on Joe Rogan non-appearances, trans rights, and a panoply of other stuff. Even the whole “she didn’t appeal enough to the working class” stuff falls flat to me. To wit: the Biden administration has an awfully good record of being pro-labor. Indeed, the best in a very long time. It didn’t matter. Meanwhile, Trump praised Musk for firing workers for wanting to strike. It didn’t matter. Further, legislation, such as the CHIPS Act helps bring jobs to the US. It didn’t matter.
Keep in mind, too, Trump was willing to lie about his ability to bring prices down.
On the issue of identity politics spefically, I highly recommend this piece by Don Moynihan: Who is allowed to practice identity politics? He correctly argues that the Trump campaign was far more based on identity politics than Harris’. He also provides some examples of the kinds of hot takes that inspired my post in the first place.
The entire piece is worth a read, but I will share the following:
At this point, the term “identity politics” like the term “elites” does more to obfuscate to enlighten. I don’t know if Trump won *because* he engaged in identity politics, but it seems a far more plausible claim than the idea that Harris lost because she had done so. But we can’t have that discussion because the pundit class does not allow that Trump practiced identity politics.
To be sure, there are differences in types of identity politics.
Identity politics is sometimes about establishing empathy and respect for less powerful groups, people who are different from you. This is the kind of identity politics that Harris was accused of engaging in.
Identity politics is also about increasing the salience of shared group markers in order to celebrate that identity while also excluding and dehumanizing outgroups. This is the populist model of identity politics, which requires some outgroups to demonize, and which Trump engaged in repeatedly throughout his political career. He came to power surfing the tea-party claim that Obama was not one of us, not born in the United States. And he spent the last campaign complaining about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” His efforts at expanding his appeal beyond white identity politics still evoked identity: he argued that immigrants were stealing “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” or that teachers would turn your kids trans.
This all strikes me as quite clearly identity politics, and of the worst kind.
Identity politics did not work for Harris, who did not use them. But perhaps being a woman and the bi-racial child of immigrants is enough to assume that she did so. But some of those demographic differences that Smith points out might reflect that identity politics worked very well for Trump. But it’s hard to reach this conclusion if you cannot admit he engaged in identity politics in the first place. In America, identity politics can only be identity politics if it comes from the left, and if it centers on historically marginalized groups. Right wing politics that emphasize male, Christian and white identity is not defined as identity politics. As the perceived natural order of things, it is seen simply as politics.
Exactly.
By the way, as of midday, November 11, 2024, the popular vote gap between Trump and Harris is 2.4% and closing. I will have something to say about that in more detail once we have a final number. But the notion that a national gap of 2.4% (or less) given prevailing national and global circumstances is indicative of some long, dark twilight of the Democratic Party just strikes me as incorrect. That it proves any particular pundit’s pet theory correct is absurd.
May I note that Trump lost in 2020 by 4.5% and yet, somehow managed to win four years later with the same basic approach to campaigning?
It’s as if losing an election doesn’t necessarily mean what the pundits say that it means.
Having watched the last month of Trump’s declining dumpster fire of a campaign along with the growing chorus of his former allies decrying his fitness for office, I am convinced that there was no message that could have beaten him. People want what they want and believe what they believe. The idea that better nuanced messaging will change the outcome flies in the face of experience.
On the surface, it makes sense why Democrats would try to explain their defeat by reference to mistakes (real or imagined) by the Harris campaign. The idea that the outcome might have been out of their control is deeply demoralizing. What’s striking that these criticisms aren’t being delivered in a constructive manner, they are at bottom different interest groups trying to assert control over the narrative. That’s how we end up with mutually contradictory explanations, like saying she went too far to the left or too far to the right, depending on whom you ask.
There’s an old adage that “history is written by the winners.” This isn’t strictly true (look at the Civil War, for instance–the losing side had quite a bit of control over the narrative for some time), it’s more accurate to say that history is written by those with the institutional power to write those histories–which may sound vague and a bit circular, but it happens to be correct. The business of political operatives–who often are the ones most sought after in the media as oracles of how successful campaigns operate– creates strong incentives to view election outcomes strictly through the lens of effectiveness at running campaigns. This view filters into the history books, which themselves have incentives to emphasize drama, and as a result we end up with a lot of common beliefs that people take for empirical fact about why past elections happened the way they did, when really they’re nothing more than stories certain people laid down because they thought it sounded good to them.
This is an issue, right? Many Americans seem to think that white people cannot practice identity politics. But that very thought reflects the belief that whiteness is the American default.*
Whiteness=norm forms the foundation of the concept of systemic racism. As applied to law, it is foundational to CRT as well. The refusal of many to see Trump’s speeches as identity politics indicates that no conversation on the topic is possible. And his rants are explicit about it.
It should surprise no one. Yes, we see racists use n__ more because of the internet, but it will never be as ubiquitous as it was in the early 20th century. Rather, most communicated racism these days is via euphemism.
I raise the issue of euphemism, because the border plays such a central role in our political environment. For far too many people couch it in terms of security. Well, that provides a refuge for those who are concerned about the “country’s blood”.
The idea that he a singular American identity exists and must be protected, yet that it also lacks a racial component seems to be what far too many people think. Again, we see this idea of euphemism as a way to avoid an explicit appeal to race while maintaining structures rooted in racial identity.
How else could a semi-regular commenter here maintain a straight face while accusing @DK of “hating whitey”?
*There is a word for it wrt to sexual orientation–heteronormativity.
I agree with all of this and, yet, it’s likely true in any very close election that One Thing might have made a difference. Pretty much all of the 2016 explanations, for example (the Comey letter, Clinton’s failure to campaign enough in the Rust Belt, etc.) may well have made a difference since her margin was so small. (But, of course, they could have cost an equal number of votes somewhere else.)
@Kurtz: Vanilla isn’t a flavor.
@James Joyner: I mean, kinda?
I am open to the notion that in a close election any number of things could have mattered. I just still think it is things, plural. I have seen nothing that gives me a reason to believe any specific variables, save the two I identified above. And I will admit I have not seen anything empirical to back the race/gender of Harris variable.
100% to all of this. Once more data is in, I plan a post around the theme: “Is there such a thing as an unwinnable election?”
As far as the hot takes, Patterico @Patterico (an anti-Trump former Red State writer) recently posted the following “hot take” template to Twitter. I think he’s totally right:
As someone with a background in socio-cultural linguistics, I love it when something is so predictable that you can point it out this way.
Seems like a corollary of Murc’s Law.
@Matt Bernius:
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear,
And disregards the rest…
As I said on the other thread, the answer is usually, e) All of the above.
I would add a third: Donald Trump.
Harris did least worst in that global trend against incumbents you are so fond of, and I think that as important as asking why she lost is, asking why she did so well is more important.
It was a change election, but the change on offer was not that good. Almost bad enough to break that global trend.
@James Joyner: @Steven L. Taylor:
I suspect a lot of people do not have the most accurate idea about why they vote the way they do. At least at root.
If that is the case, the answer is likely unknowable.
“I’m disappointed because I always wonder what else could I have done. Who else could I have reached? How many more doors could I have knocked on,” he said,..
Incumbent Jackson County (IL) States Attorney Joe Cervantez commenting on his reelection bid ending in a dead heat tie of 10,805 votes each for him and his Democratic challenger Marsha Cascio-Hale with 100% of precincts reporting on election day.
See my post on this matter at 13:47 in today’s Slow Vote Counting is a Problem thread.
I can’t think of any particular event or phenomenon where one thing made “the difference.”
There seems to be a pattern in the recent decades of the candidate that most embodies “change” winning. Trump’s “The nation is messed up”, spoken in the tones of rage, seems to have beaten Harris’s “More of the same” spoken calmly. Might have done better as an angry black lady, but she would have to have been been angry at the right things.
It is sometimes necessary to get in front of a stampede to lead it. Trump reflected rage, and perhaps that’s what tipped the balance. Messaging? I think it qualifies, but at an emotional level.
@Kurtz:
It irks me that the “norm” is taken not only as the standard, but often as the only valid standard.
How many times have I said no one questions when a cisgender boy claims to be cisgender?
It’s the same thing when one brings up diversity and inclusion. No one, or no one in the mainstream, claims there’s no value in, say, the works of long dead white writers like Shakespeare or Cervantes. The claim is that there is work just as valuable by writers with different skin colors. And that recognizing this does not invalidate or deprecate the works of other artists.
It’s the economy, stupid. And the public’s utter inability to understand how little positive control the President has over it (it’s all too easy to make things worse economically, as we will see once again with tariffs in the near future, but much harder for the President to make things better).
To update Blazing Saddles, “These are people of America. The common clay of the republic. You know—morons.”
Biden was unpopular and was replaced by the person exactly 2nd in line to be just as unpopular. That is not going to change approval ratings. It’s the same thing just younger. Trump 2024 is not that many votes more than 2020. It’s those with no preference who were not happy and just stayed home. Evidenced by the graph in the post. Whole world was not happy with status quo. Why would U.S. be any different? Especially if the opponent is someone who has already been in charge. I would bet if the GOP nominee was anyone other than Trump, their pop vote total would top Trumps by millions and same result.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
Ironically, the man who coined that phrase wrote a piece for NYT before the election titled “Three Reasons I’m Certain Kamala Harris Will Win,” in which he never mentions the economy or inflation at all.
When he used the phrase in 1992, he wasn’t expressing a sense of electoral determinism based on the economy, he was advising the Clinton campaign to focus on the economy in its messaging.
Like I said, campaign operatives want to believe that the outcome of an election is always going to be in the hands of the candidate. “It’s the economy, stupid” was created as a messaging strategy, not a prediction, in one particular election.