That went poorly
A first review of a bad election night
Last night, Brian Beutler and I recorded an hour’s worth of fast reactions to what was clearly become a Donald Trump election victory even though it hadn’t been called yet.
I meant to send the recording of that live video out as Slow Boring content this morning but because I am a little new to the feature I accidentally only sent it out to a minority of the list. So for the rest of you here it is.
There will obviously be a lot more to say in the days to come.
But I think my pre-criminations post “Why Biden Lost” from the spring holds up pretty well as do all 27 of the “27 Takes on the 2024 Election” that I published last week.
My tentative take on this disaster is that it's the revenge of fundamentals. There's going to be lots of angst-ridden discussion of what Democrats should have done differently—and what mistakes Kamala Harris made. Indeed this has already begun in earnest. But what if the reality is: the Democrats didn't have a candidate or a strategy that was going to make up the millions of votes by which Donald Trump has apparently won? No, not Michelle Obama, not Gretchen Whitmer, not Andy Beshear, not a Biden step-down in 2023 followed by a spirited primary—maybe none of it would have been enough to save the bacon of an incumbency party that presided over a hideously unwelcome burst of inflation on its watch.
I suspect my take isn't a popular one. We humans like to think we're in charge, which means if we don't get what we want we should've done something different. But maybe, just maybe, enough voters wanted 2019's price level badly enough that they demanded the return of 2019's president.
POSTSCRIPT: None of this means Democrats shouldn't analyze this loss to see what can be improved upon. There's a midterm to fight in two years, and a presidential election in 2028—a Trump free one at that! And a sounder and better executed political strategy would surely have helped in terms of downticket races, and margin of loss. But yes, my own deep hunch is that we've been barreling toward a Trump restoration for a long time: an irresistible tsunami of anti-incumbent sentiment like that witnessed in countless other democracies.
This election feels very different from 2016 to me in most ways save one: I feel genuinely bad for Kamala Harris. She's been a dedicated public servant for a long time, and she gave this campaign her all. She would have made a great president, and I was excited by the possibilities of a Harris administration. She deserved better from the electorate. I'll miss her, but I personally hope she remains in politics or at some point returns to public life.