The 2024 Election —What did we learn?

Guy Chamberlin said:
Meanwhile, the Democrats began competing for the voters Trump had attracted, and, after this helped lead to a victory in 2020, they enacted an ambitious program aimed at the economic lives of working- and middle-class Americans. And still, outside a limited cadre of activists and policymakers, none of this is the dominant narrative of American politics.
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Trump was well on his way to a large EC win in 2020 until Covid hit.  Democrats didn’t win because they “woo’d voters” over with some magical policy.   With no Covid, Biden would have been trounced and the Senate would have been Republican.  
 

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
 



After the ceremony, Su and I found a room where we could talk for a few minutes. She is a lawyer who started her career in civil-rights organizations and then worked in state labor agencies in California. (Her liberal past has made it difficult for her to be confirmed by the Senate, and that is why she is the “acting” Secretary.) She told me about the amount of effort that had gone into making the Fort Valley announcement possible. Phil Horlock, Blue Bird’s C.E.O., had been brought to the White House for a meeting with Biden. Then, this spring, Su had come to Fort Valley to urge Horlock to speed up his slow-moving negotiations with the United Steelworkers. Was the conclusion of the negotiations connected to the eighty-million-dollar grant to build the electric-bus factory? “I’m going to answer this way,” Su said. “The way you asked me implies conditions. Whether workers want to join a union depends on them. Politicians should not interfere. It is not a condition. What I said to Phil was ‘There’s no reason not to have a contract after a year of negotiations.’ They got that done. The company took it seriously. Phil said, ‘We heard the Julie Su challenge, and we accept.’ ”
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“Telling” a company to unionize or you ain’t getting the money is a bulls#!t way to govern.  

 
Dr. Strangelove said:
Both can be true at the same time, no?

It's obvious that Democrats had no chance of winning. This is evidenced by every Democracy in the world seeing incumbent governments lose their elections. Voters across the world were angry at inflation and that was reflected in the voting booth.

I do think you're right in that Democrats do need to do soul searching, which I thought I implied in my post. States like New Jersey, cities like New York, or other places don't swing MASSIVELY to the right without something deeper going on beyond inflation. This did not effect the outcome of the election, but I do think that you are correct: democrats and their supporters need to reflect on the policies that led to the hemorrhage of votes across all demographics.

I think @Archy1221 is correct by saying some of this unpopularity has to do with national unpopular policies like Student Loan Forgiveness, but I think it's probably more localized. San Francisco swung massively to the right because the Progressive DA did not prosecute crime effectively, causing her to lose the election there. New York City swung massively to the right in part because jumping turnstiles into the subway and not paying a fare led to massive funding shortfalls in the mass transit department. There are probably dozens of localized, unpopular left-wing policies that caused cities across the country to swing to the right. Democrats need to rapidly figure what they are and pivot.
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Nothing will stop the second guessing and hindsight, and although it was definitely a spanking by the GOP it's still the story of 2% swings in key states that had different 2% swings four years ago. This is the same country where the same populists were attracted to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump at the same time in 2016, and although it was projected that a third term Barack Obama would have beaten Trump in a landslide, that election was interpreted as a dramatic shift to the right.  In 2020, Trump was punished for the fallout from the pandemic. In 2024, Biden/Harris was punished for the fallout from the pandemic. Neither deserved the full credit or blame. 

My money was still on Trump, but of course the Dems had a chance of winning. The GOP just does a better job of messaging. Voters across the world may have been angry at inflation, but only in the U.S. was the existence of transgender Americans treated as the bigger wedge issue. Kamala Harris most definitely pivoted away from unpopular policies, but it didn't matter in the end. Could a Newsom, Whitmer, or Shapiro have fared just a couple points better than Kamala? It's not that hard to imagine. 

The bigger takeaway is still Donald Trump. You could have been angry at inflation and woke-ism and picked any number of Republican candidates to lead the charge against liberalism and away from the baggage, risk, and advancing age of Donald Trump. But it has clearly morphed into a cult of personality and a movement that defies the issues. I 100% guarantee that Trump will do the opposite of things he promised and still control the narrative, taking credit for things he didn't do, blaming his enemies for everything that goes wrong, and generally avoiding the details that policy demands. I could pretend to understand why this works and where it will lead, but then I'd join everyone else who has had everything wrong for the last 8 years. 

 
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So in the end, I guess I was correct and shouldn’t have given the article the time of day.   It doesn’t lay out why America will be so great in decades to come because of Joe.  It lays out how the author views Democrats trying to to be more competitive in elections.   It lays out how Government should not give grants unless unions get the grab bag.   It lays out how government should subsidize Democrat pet projects and then just proclaiming that those projects will save America for decades to come.   It lays out how Govennent should be the arbiter of spending spending spending and  deciding who will win and who will lose vs a more market based approach.   It tries to lay out an idea of saying don’t redistribute, instead make sure the top doesn’t even get the money to redistribute and instead have government have the money in the first place to decide who gets what and how much.   

good thing I didn’t pay for that one.   Whew

 
I mean, in the end @Dr. Strangelove was totally right.  The D's did not just lose they got beat down in a totally humiliating way.  It is not like it was close at all in the end.  

Looking back on it, any D would have beat Trump in 2020, had the D's ran anyone but JB they would have still won and had a chance to win in 24 but they got caught with their "He is as sharp as ever" bit...then they had to come out and be like "Yeah, he is losing his mind, but it just happend, 15 minutes before the start of the debate, honest"

 
Archy1221 said:
2) How is Trump saying he won’t cut Medicare, having lower taxes on other pieces mentioned as unimaginable to other Republicans?   Lower taxes is literally one of the hallmarks of the Republican Party and politicians of both sides claim to not want to cut Medicare benefits.   Trump previously put in tariffs and now it’s unimaginable he would want to do it again?!?!
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I mean, it's kinda funny this is the paragraph you cite, seeing as it more accurately and even sympathetically portrays Donald Trump rather than using the demonizing slash and burn accusations used by libs. You have literally written similar defenses of Trump. 

Same paragraph mentions eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay -- a demographic campaign ploy -- and not the larger Republican standby of lowering taxes in general. Same article not only mentions Trumps malleable history with tariffs, it exposed Joe Biden doing the same thing. This is the way accuracy works. 

 
Archy1221 said:
So in the end, I guess I was correct and shouldn’t have given the article the time of day.   It doesn’t lay out why America will be so great in decades to come because of Joe.  It lays out how the author views Democrats trying to to be more competitive in elections.   It lays out how Government should not give grants unless unions get the grab bag.   It lays out how government should subsidize Democrat pet projects and then just proclaiming that those projects will save America for decades to come.   It lays out how Govennent should be the arbiter of spending spending spending and  deciding who will win and who will lose vs a more market based approach.   It tries to lay out an idea of saying don’t redistribute, instead make sure the top doesn’t even get the money to redistribute and instead have government have the money in the first place to decide who gets what and how much.   

good thing I didn’t pay for that one.   Whew
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It lays out several things a lot of people may not have known unless they read the article. However you interpret it, you are wiser for having read it. 

 
teachercd said:
I mean, in the end @Dr. Strangelove was totally right.  The D's did not just lose they got beat down in a totally humiliating way.  It is not like it was close at all in the end.  
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Speaking strictly for myself, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by a near identical electoral college margin and twice the popular vote as Donald Trump just won, I didn't considered it a beatdown or even a comeuppance. I was still struck by how close the election was, the handful of counties that decided it, and the clear divide that didn't warrant a mandate. 

 
Archy1221 said:
Trump was well on his way to a large EC win in 2020 until Covid hit.  Democrats didn’t win because they “woo’d voters” over with some magical policy.   With no Covid, Biden would have been trounced and the Senate would have been Republican.  
 
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I love your sassy retorts to points the writer didn't make. 

 
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