It wasn’t close. Really it wasn’t.
Donald Trump served notice this week that America’s still exactly who he suspected America was in 2015 when, after decades teasing an entry into politics, he mounted a blindingly tacky, proudly profane and ultimately successful dark horse run for the White House.
Kamala Harris wasn’t competitive on Election Day. I’m sure some readers will quibble with that assessment, but watching the results roll in it felt like Trump was in command from start to finish. He flipped Wisconsin early Wednesday. That was the coup de grâce for Harris, but it was over long before then. Trump will almost surely win the popular vote too, a first for a Republican since W. in 2004.
For “good” measure, the GOP flipped the Senate and had a decent shot at keeping the House. Suffice to say it was a very, very good night for Republicans, and, if we’re honest, a wholly devastating election for Democrats. I suppose we can all apologize to Polymarket now: Betting markets had it right.
I spelled out the main election takeaway in “We’re Going Back!“: The idea that Trumpism “isn’t who we are” as a nation, and that by and large, Americans are a good-natured, agreeable, forward-looking, progressive bunch is manifestly false. A bunch of “malarkey,” to employ the favorite word of a man who might’ve fared better this week. The whole “shining city on a hill” thing? Meh, not so much. I don’t know what the confusion was. It’s right there on the statue. Just read the inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, your beautiful Scandinavian women yearning to be wives.”
It strikes me that all the fanfare — the celebrity endorsements, the SNL cameo, the Trump derision from military men and the support of a banished Republican old guard, exemplified by the Cheneys — worked against Harris. But let’s face it: The biggest impediment to her would-be presidency was her gender and skin color. Maybe Michelle Obama could’ve] triumphed over the potent combo drug of misogyny and racism, but we now know Harris wasn’t nearly as close to breaking through those two barriers as a lot of folks were inclined to believe.
In an odd way, the results might actually strengthen the country’s collective faith in democracy: The notion that the “deep state” wouldn’t “allow” Trump to return to power irrespective of voters’ will can be put away now. Republicans will surely say that if you exclude the immigrants George Soros paid to vote blue, Trump actually won every state and that if the “real” results were made public, everyone would see that in fact, Trump received 137,599,998 votes to Harris’s two (it’s 137,599,999 to one if you exclude the second ballot Harris cast for herself illegally).
Setting aside what are sure to be allegations of voter fraud from the Trump camp (and no, they won’t spare the nation those allegations just because Trump won), it should be clear to Trump’s supporters now that there’s no conspiracy. And there never was. If Trump would’ve won in 2020, that’s the way the vote would’ve been called. Occam’s razor everybody: If they won’t let you into Area 51, it’s probably because there’s military equipment there, and if your guy isn’t declared the winner of an election in a country with two centuries of fairly stable democracy under its belt, it’s probably because he didn’t get enough votes. No aliens necessary on either account.
Just as a Trump loss would’ve forced an existential rethink for a Republican party now made almost entirely in his image, Democrats now need to grapple with the reality of an American electorate with which they’ve plainly lost touch. Harris’s loss wasn’t all about racism and misogyny, although we shouldn’t delude ourselves: That was a big part of it.
On the eve of the Trump era, Lindsey Graham famously said, of Republicans’ allegedly grim demographic prospects, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long-term.” Graham’s lament came at time when the GOP was busy recasting itself in a panicked attempt to stay relevant. The 2012 election hadn’t gone well, and the Republican National Committee commissioned a 100-page “autopsy” to figure out why.
The report’s authors, a group that included Reince Priebus, described a party that “needs to stop talking to itself.” “We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue,” it assessed, noting that “young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what [Republicans] represent, and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.”
Those interested in a comprehensive account of what happened next are encouraged to read “Charon’s Obol,” but suffice to say the reformist agenda was sidelined in favor of a broad-based push to restrict voter rights and otherwise engage in what I’ve variously described as institutionalized election fraud, all in a bid to overcome a demographic reality that, as Priebus put it in 2013, would soon make it “difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.”
The GOP voter suppression effort was highly successful, but it wasn’t a long-term strategy. Eventually, demographics would’ve caught up to Republicans. But Trump proved that in fact, there were more than “enough angry white guys” out there for the GOP to put a candidate back in the White House — that anger just needed to be harvested and harnessed, and it took a demagogue to do it. Trump succeeded wildly where Pat Buchanan failed miserably.
Harris was set on Wednesday to address a country which just roundly rejected her. I don’t know what she’s supposed to say: “As many of you might’ve heard, I lost. As it turns out, I’m a black woman. Who knew?”
So, what should Democrats do now? They can’t very well turn back the clock and remind Graham’s “angry white guys” that historically speaking, the white racist vote belongs to Democrats. My suggestion — and on this point, I’d strongly encourage readers peruse “The Divide” — is that the party dial back the social crusading on issues that aren’t mission critical and refocus on the working class.
You can’t effectuate change if you can’t win elections. Harris and Biden would say they’ve done more for the American middle class than any modern administration. I don’t disagree. But voters apparently do.
Befriend the working class –> lose the social crusaders. In too deep with the latter who are themselves in quest of totality.
My thoughts on Trump, while he was running the first time, were that he is a smart and terrible person. My views have not changed as I don’t think he has changed. If Democrats do not now acknowledge that democracy is alive and well in our country, then they are just as terrible (and possibly less smart).
What really makes me feel sick to my stomach is thinking about Ukraine. JD Vance lead the anti-Ukraine aid coalition from the Senate, and Trump has a personal chip on his shoulder regarding Zelenskyy’s (wholly innocent) roll in Trump’s first impeachment. That combined with Trump’s fondness for Papa Putin means Ukraine can no longer count on any help coming from the world’s most powerful military.
I was at a Ukrainian wedding (in Pennsylvania) on February 25, 2022, just 3 days after the invasion. It was a happy, yet somber affair. I’ll never forget the moment when the priest, having finished the religious part of the ceremony, lead the congregation in a singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. Jesus fucking wept but Ukraine has been dealt a bad hand.
Slava Ukraini!
Unrelated, exit polls suggest Harris under-performed Biden among female voters by 3%.
Yeah, Ukraine’s obviously in a very bad spot now. And yeah, I mean this really was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats. I obviously think Harris would’ve made a great president, but the cold, hard reality this week is that she didn’t perform well at all on any vector and Trump outperformed expectations. He ran her over. Plain and simple.
Seems very likely Ukraine will lose the Eastern provinces and Crimea, permanently.
I have not liked, nor do I like, either candidate. So today is going pretty much as I expected with regard to the election- which is that I don’t have a high degree of confidence that the person who got elected will be able to execute in such a way that our country will be better off, on every measure, in four years time.
Hopefully, we have two “outstanding” candidates to choose from in 2028 because I still can’t believe our choice in this election was Trump or Kamala.
FYI- I still believe in Jared Pollis. 🙂
What does that say about the value of debates?
So, the Thousand Day Reich begins.
Market implications per this morning’s reaction and retreading the pre-election scenario guessing:
Longer yields up, bear steepening.
General expectation of corporate tax cuts and/or extension of TCJA and de-regulation.
Industrials up. Transports are looking for a big rush of imports ahead of trade wars. Defense reflexively up but shouldn’t be.
Energy mostly up. Fossil up, renewable down. Producers’ spending/production discipline may crumble with new exploration opened up, lower regulatory constraints, less de-carbonization effort. Higher production is bad for oil producers longer-term but good for services, refiners, pipelines. Wonder if oil/LNG exports will be throttled for domestic reasons?
Financials up. Trump pushes ST rates down (Red Wave -> change to Federal Reserve?), inflation pushes LT rates up, wider spreads, general de-regulation, no more CFPB or DOJ antitrust enforcement, more M&A, wider deficit = fiscal stimulus. Banks the obvious beneficiaries.
Real estate down. LT rates up, immediate pressure on REITs/builders, but higher inflation
and higher project financing costs should ultimately benefit REITs on the supply-side.
Materials mixed. Agriculture down (tariff war), construction up (CHIPs and infrastructure probably not on the chopping block), building materials down (with builders), interestingly mining/gold down.
Discretionary mixed. EV incentives pared back if not axed should be good for ICE cars, preferably with US production.
Staples mostly down, except retail. I think this is mostly a LT rates effect, to be followed by inflation effect.
Technology up. Not sure why this is good for semicap, but those names are up. Clipping DOJ antitrust and FTC should be good for hyperscalers. FERC won’t fuss about nuclear safety. DOT won’t fuss about FSD safety.
Communications mixed. Hyperscalers live here too.
Healthcare mixed. Cutting ACA subsidies, Medicaid expansion, Medicare spending will hurt providers and devices/supplies, populist bashing of drug costs a risk to large biopharma. More liquidity generally good short term for small biopharma. Cut to NIH funding, an RFK Jr-run HHS or FDA should be bad for the drug industry longer term. Vaccine programs just got less valuable.
This is a “cut and paste” of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s post on X this morning:
FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.
If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2.
Pack your bags.
Ha wow, that’s a lot of crazy to unpack. Wonder what the Christian Nationalists will think about the stem cells? With this administration, we’ll basically get all of the bad and none of the good from that list.
Dollar is up too. Is that a result of long term yields being up or just animal spirits?
“My suggestion — and on this point, I’d strongly encourage readers peruse “The Divide” — is that the party dial back the social crusading on issues that aren’t mission critical and refocus on the working class.” Yep. The democrats did not seem to notice that the old playbook was a losing one. Giving so much attention to and focus on blacks who constitute 12.5% of the population while pretty much ignoring or taking for granted working whites, Hispanics and Asians. (Remember how Reagan first taped into the resulting resentment?)
Building on that bone-headed priority back in 2016 to allow trans people to us the bathroom of their choice which was hardly a burning issue for people just barely getting by. (That 45% who could not raise $500 in a week to cover an emergency.)
Do you want to be morally upright or win??
It wouldn’t matter. Republicans and right-wing media will always find some grievance to rile people up. All the transgender stuff came about because gay marriage was no longer a motivating factor once people realized it didn’t impact them one bit. Transgender athletes have been allowed in the Olympics since 2004 and in college sports since 2010 and then suddenly this year it’s all over the airwaves and right-wing mediasphere even though Trump never brought it up while he was president. The grievance politics will be a never-ending game of whack-a-mole for democrats because even if the party doesn’t take a position on an issue, the right-wing mediasphere will find some twitter influencer who advocates extreme positions and use them as an example or Russian trolls will play the part so Elon can point to that and say “see how crazy they are!” Never mind the literal right wing nazis out there.
Are there times when democrats need to walk back policies because they went overboard? Yeah, but they actually take the time to reflect and back off policies when they go too far in one direction. However, that’s seen as a negative when the other party just goes all-in on shallow and disingenuous populism. It’s much harder to be the adult in the room and we continue to go through cycles of Republicans running things into the ground and Democrats having to clean up the mess but getting blamed for it.
If it were truly about the working class, the Democrats’ policies would win in a landslide. Republicans have just figured out how to play the grievance game, throw in some token tax cuts for the poors, and constantly put the democrats on their heels because they no longer care about basic norms. Democrats have accepted that we need at least one serious party or we would’ve already gone completely off the rails, but at this point, I’m more inclined to agree with H that humanity is hopelessly unable to cope with modernity. Democrats only win when Republicans finally wreck things or they find a highly charismatic leader.
“If it were truly about the working class, the Democrats’ policies would win in a landslide.”
Which is why the mainstream GOP so arfully plays the race card. This time crime and immigration.
As LBJ was quoted as saying: ” “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
My thought is that Dems need to find a way to win with the electorate that exists, not the electorate that they wish existed, particularly swing voters in the swing states. If they are motivated by resentment and fear, then message resentment and fear: of AI taking your job, big corporations ripping you off, billionaires stealing your tax money, China, big landlords, terrorists, etc. If they are low-information and/or get their information from X and Fox, then reach them where they are: spend the next four years running campaigns and ads on X and Fox. Save the love and hope message for the audience that buys it: don’t push love/hope on people in the grips of anger/fear. In the next four years, we will probably have higher inflation, higher long rates, slowing growth, rising UE, increasing disruption, an aging Trump: Dems should have a better chance in 2028 than they had in 2024 and even in 2020.
It’s a bittersweet outcome. Bitter because for those of us who have to worry about Russia for reasons of geography it might actually mean the difference between life and death whether NATO exists or not. Sweet because the extra money from investments might make relocating easier if it comes to it.
As a non-American I’d like to understand to what extent this reflects entrenched racism and misogyny and to what extent bad messaging (focusing on culture issues irrelevant to working class voters). I don’t know that racism is equally entrenched in our society here in my part of Europe, but the center-left still seems to be losing the working class. Of course, our left is different; seen from here America only has an extreme-right vs. right-wing party. However, somehow even our traditionally socialist (ex actually literally Soviet socialist) left focus on culture issues (pro immigration, trans rights etc.) messaging instead of advancing the interests of the undereducated working poor, collective action, wealth redistribution. Either that or the discussion is successfully pivoted to culture issues regardless of the economic positions in the media.