We Have No Idea
As with any election defeat, there is a certain amount of navel gazing and finger-pointing about the factors in the loss. At this point, most of these analyses are based on hopelessly incomplete information and/or the implicit biases of the critic. After all, the standard explanation for the 2016 election was “economic anxiety” for months, even years, but was eventually shown to be anxiety that was far less economic and far more racial and cultural.
Per usual, the Democratic circular firing squad has begun. There are the usual suspects who this time want to throw trans people and/or immigrants under the bus. There are the usual complaints that Harris was too far left – too “woke” (whatever that means today) – or that Democrats have ignored the working class and don’t acknowledge their pain. There are the language police who claim that “defund the police”, “LatinX”, and pronouns drove voters away. There are the single-issue critics – the Gaza genocide, fracking, covid lockdowns, expiration of pandemic aid, etc. – take your pick. There are the ones who blame Harris for relying on identity politics and some who blame Biden for not dropping out earlier so there could be an open primary. Others who point to inflation and the data that indicates voters felt the economy was terrible. Still others rely on the usual (and often correct) suspects of racism and misogyny. But perhaps most annoying of all are the pundits who claim Democrats are just too elitist, condescending, and need to reach out and understand Trump voters.
In an election where about 150,000 votes in the three “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania determined the election for the third time in a row, you can make the argument that any and all of these criticisms could have been critical to Harris’ losing. On the other hand, when the data gurus have finally finished crunching the final election numbers, we may find out that the driving force behind Trump’s win was something else entirely, just as happened in 2016.
But many of these explanations appear to be divorced from the reality of the campaign or are incomplete analyses. Harris barely spoke about trans issues while Republicans were the ones who were driving the trans story, focusing on trans athletes in sports. Considering that it is estimated that 0.5% of high school athletes are trans, a number that is less than 50 total athletes, it’s hard to see how that became a national issue. Similarly, literally no Democratic candidate uttered the words “defund the police” and barely any ever used the word “LatinX”.
Since I have no idea what “woke” actually means anymore, I would only say that the idea that Harris ran some far-left campaign is simply farcical. In the same way, the idea that Democrats abandoned the working class after the most successful worker-oriented four years since LBJ or even FDR doesn’t pass the smell test. Likewise, the fact that lower wage workers saw the greatest increase in inflation-adjusted income in decades which erased one-third of their wage inequality that had built up since Reagan, as well as an economy that by every objective measure is in near goldilocks territory and the envy of the world, puts lie to the ignored working class and a terrible economy. In fact, a vast majority of poll respondents who thought the national economy was bad also reported that their local economy and their personal finances were good.
There is at least some credence to the immigration fears but the fact is that the American economy relies on immigrants and immigration actually increases job opportunities for all Americans. At the same time, border crossings are now lower than the last month of Trump’s term and Democrats made a deal to pass the most draconian changes to immigration law in generations, which Republicans blocked at Trump’s behest to keep it as a campaign issue. Finally, it was the Republican candidate who mocked disabled people, called military veterans “suckers” and “losers”, attacked trans people and immigrants, talked about “his beautiful white skin”, and called other voters “scum” and “garbage”. So who is really playing identity politics, treating voters with condescension, and acting elitist with their Penn and Yale educations?
But the argument that annoys me the most is the one telling Democrats to work harder at understanding Trump voters. Even if you ignore his horrible policies, his cruelty, the impossibility of his promises, the fact remains those voters supported a convicted rapist, a traitor who stole state secrets and tried to hide them when caught, and who says he wants to be a dictator. What level of understanding could I possibly get that would overcome those essential moral failings and why would I want them to be “on my side”. It is like telling me to understand Manson or Dahmer – it cannot mitigate what they have done. And the disgust I have for the evangelicals who lecture us about morals when they overwhelmingly vote for allowing young women with dead babies inside them to die of sepsis and elect as president a philandering convicted rapist who offers no apology for his crime, a convicted felon, a serial fraudster, the leader of an insurrection, traitor, who advocates violence and simulates fellatio on his microphone, knows no bounds.
I can at least give credence to the idea that people focused on inflation and price levels, or the high cost of housing, or the expiration of pandemic support made it seem like their income dropped. And there is no denying that racism and especially misogyny played a part, as well as immigration fears mentioned earlier. But even some of those explanations, while certainly valid, seem incomplete simply because the underlying reality does not match those beliefs.
To truly reckon with these results, I think you have to answer why, when presented a blind test of the policies the candidates were offering, the Harris’ agenda was more popular, yet she lost the election. You have to explain why Missouri, one of the reddest of red states, passed ballot initiatives for abortion access, raising the minimum wage, and earned sick leave. All of these are clearly Democratic position opposed by the Senator they voted for, Josh Hawley, and the president they voted for. You have to answer why deep red Kentucky voted against public funds for private school in another rejection of stated GOP policy. You have to account for voters in Arizona and Montana also enshrining abortion access even as they too voted for Trump. You have to answer why a young woman in Arizona, when asked why she voted for abortion access and Trump, answered that she didn’t think Trump would take away abortion rights, even though he has bragged about appointing the Justices that made the Arizona vote necessary and discussed the use of the Comstock Act which would supersede her Arizona abortion rights. You have to account for why an immigrant whose cousin is illegal voted for Trump while thinking his cousin won’t get deported because he works hard, not like those other criminals. You have to answer why most Democratic Senators outperformed Harris. You have to explain why evangelicals literally think Democrats are devils and Satanists. And finally, why, by any historical standard, they voted for a person who would have been politically dead for his abuses if he was any other politician and who is clearly not fit for the job of president, even more so than even 2016 and 2020.
When presented this way, the rather obvious explanation is the information environment that people live in. Democrats get higher levels of support from voters who actually get their news from newspapers and the national network news. Those outlets certainly did insane amounts of sane-washing and both-sidesing but at least a discerning consumer could get a realistic sense of both campaigns. Trump gets higher levels of support among those who rely on social media for their news or simply don’t follow politics at all. Younger voters and Hispanics have increasingly relied on social media for their news. The top social media sites for news – Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X – all try to increase engagement through conflict and extremism where facts are irrelevant and all use algorithms to drive such content to their users. At least a portion of that content is created by bots controlled by foreign sources, and we know at least some of the most prominent influencers were being paid by Russia. Similarly, the list of top podcasters is dominated by right-wing personalities.
Those social media sources are filling the gaps left behind by the destruction of local news and the vast news deserts around the country that collapse created. That gap is also filled by Fox News, essentially a propaganda outlet for the Republican party, which regularly captures 50% or more of the daytime and prime time cable news audiences. In many of those news deserts Fox is almost omnipresent, in bars, in waiting rooms, even on military installations.
The average voter in this country has a reading comprehension at about a 6th grade level. Increasingly their news comes in visual and audible forms as opposed to written. Those spaces are now dominated by right-wing voices and provide the social fabric for their consumers, much the way the sitcom dominated the water-cooler conversation in the 1970s and 1980s. For now, much of the focus of these right-wing spaces is on national politics and local issues largely fade into the background especially in those news deserts. That lack of local focus may prove to be important in explaining why Harris underperformed many of her Democratic Senate counterparts. In Nevada, for instance, it appears Jackie Rosen will get tens of thousands fewer votes than Trump but still manage to win election. That speaks to Trump’s enormous power to bring out citizens who typically do not vote and only have interest and knowledge about the top of the ticket, again largely gleaned from the right-wing spaces they inhabit. On the flip side, Harris actually matched the performance of Democratic Senators in swing states where she was able to flood the zone with her policies and message such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
When people like Chris Murphy say “Democrats clearly aren’t listening to the people we say we fight for”, they have it 180 degrees backward. The people who we say we fight for never even hear what we are saying. Similarly, as Eall notes, “The logic people seem to be employing is, ‘The fact that Harris lost proves the economy was bad’ rather than, ‘The fact that Harris lost suggests that people’s negative economic sentiment was salient in their voting decisions.’ It’s obtuse to an amazing degree”. It would seem far more important to focus on why that sentiment exists in the midst of one of the best economic periods by any objective measure in decades – especially since people simultaneously thought their local economy and personal finances were good but the national economy was bad and since that sentiment is already beginning to change simply because Trump won the election – rather than focusing on one or two single indicators as the answer that then can be theoretically solved by changing policy.
Democrats will continue struggle in elections until they find a way to break through in these alternative media spaces and actually get their message to the people who currently never hear it. As we have seen, Democratic policies are popular. It is the Democratic brand name that has become toxic in large swaths of the country. Changing that will now be extraordinarily difficult as these information platforms are controlled by oligarchs who are only interested in protecting and expanding their own power. Murdoch at Fox, Musk at X, Zuckerberg at Facebook and Instagram, China/Xi at TikTok, Bezos at WaPo, Sulzberger at NYT, and the corporate behemoths at CNN and NBC – these are the billionaires that control the information spaces that most of us live in. They have created what Jill Lepore describes as an “artificial state” where “political strategists and private corporations to organize political and automate political discourse”, adding that, “Within the artificial state, nearly every element of American democratic life – civil society, representative government, a free press, free expression, and faith in elections – is vulnerable to subversion”. The artificial state is how the Republicans are able to create a national panic about some non-issue virtually at will – Ebola! Benghazi! Emails! Caravans! Voter Fraud! Antifa! Critical Race Theory!, etc., etc. The power of this information environment is best illustrated by that Idaho town that armed itself to the teeth and set up defensive positions in anticipation of a fictional Antifa invasion in 2020. When is the last time, if ever, Democrats were able to produce anything like that kind of response to an issue that is essentially irrelevant or even nonexistent for the vast majority of voters, despite Republicans providing an endless amount of fodder for just such tactics.
When Ezra Klein and others write “Democrats don’t need to build a new informational ecosystem. Dems need to show up in the informational ecosystems that already exist”, they are frankly delusional. We’ve already seen that Musk and Zuckerberg throttle Democratic messages on their platforms. Bezos’ similar intervention cost the Post 10% of its subscriptions in less than two weeks and Sulzberger clearly has some agenda that is not favorable or even fair to Democrats. NBC and CNN have both slanted their coverage in anticipation of a Trump win improving their economic position. The head of CBS previously joked about how good Trump was for business. And Fox is and always has been simply a GOP propaganda machine. Rather Klein et al should grapple with why the billionaires who know control this artificial state would not always intervene against a party that wants to restrict its wealth and power, both economic and political.
I don’t have an answer as to how Democrats restore their brand name, break the grip of the artificial state, and get their popular policies in front of the people who never hear them. Relying on some deep-pocketed philanthropist to build a platform seems problematic based on what’s happened to those controlled by other billionaires. Activists alone won’t succeed. Perhaps the satirical approach that began with the Daily Show and has been inherited by the Onion and its new purchase of Infowars is a way forward. In the end, however, it really has to start and end with the Democratic elected officials. That means being omnipresent, on message, and throwing as much of the proverbial crap against the GOP to see what sticks. it requires always being seen in fight mode, working to make things better. It requires ceasing once and for all to openly wishcast for a responsible Republican party as a “partner” in government and it definitely does not include accurately describing your opponent as an autocrat and a fascist and then playing kumbaya when the election is over as Biden just did with Trump. Finally, it requires abandoning the strategy of constantly shading your policies and beliefs to try and become Republican lite in order to win votes.
It would be helpful to have some kind of independent Democratic party apparatus that is not beholden solely to the Democratic leaders in Washington but supports the party everywhere. That is the function the DNC is supposed to fill but rarely does since it is used instead as a pawn in the party’s internal factionalism. As Ryan Cooper suggests, it probably requires a return to the traditional party structure, writing, “Communication, journalism, and propaganda are just some of the institutions that used to make up the core of political parties. Time was, there were party clubs, bars, gyms, and so on”. Perhaps a requirement that any Democratic press release or statement go through a party media platform first before being released more generally some time later would be helpful. That would certainly be a way to capture journalists’ attention.
If the Democratic party were a corporation, a PR crisis management firm would probably recommend to rebrand by changing its name to something unintelligible, putting new faces in leadership, and moving on. Renaming is probably not an option, but new leadership is. But as long as Democrats can not find a way to modify the current information environment or create a new one where they can shape public opinion the way Republicans do now, and continue to rely on the utterly failed strategy of reliance on polls that merely reflect the opinions shaped by the GOP, they will continue to struggle to win elections.