I’ve been texting friends on the left and the right as we all have.
My right wingers are asking how the Dems had 81 million votes for Biden in 2020, but only 65 million (so far) in 2024. I don’t believe for one second that there was voter fraud in 2020. But a 20% drop in an election for one party seems to be significant. Especially this year. And a couple of these guys have pointed to this a proof that there was voter fraud in 2020.
I’d like to slam the door on this assertion, but I don’t have a great reason for it. Any ideas? It does seem odd.
Also, people are likely tired. You can only hear alarms and panicked texts for so long before you become dulled to it. And if Trump hadn’t run such a clownshow the first time, maybe some would take it more seriously now.
People who voted in 2020 did not vote this time. Perhaps it was a protest where they would have voted for Biden and would never vote for Trump, but chose not to vote at all as a protest against Biden because of any excuse. The real excuse I’m looking at is a protest against Biden for the genocide in Gaza. The sad irony is Trump supports what Netanyahu is doing.
Clearly correct. Total in 2020 was 155 million, only 136 million thus far in 2024. Seems like an odd drop off, especially when many predicted record number of voters.
BANG! Out of all the presidents we’ve elected, we’ve had one Black male and ZERO women of any color. Kamala Harris was a double minority candidate, and this effing racist/sexist society just couldn’t handle the idea.
The Trump camp did a great job instilling fear in the electorate. If you are that frightened of the opposition you will come out and vote in droves. The fear machine was too great. In hindsight, the Dems never had a chance regardless of who they ran.
As far as we can tell while they’re finishing the count, harris lost a normal amount in the swing states and lost votes in the democratic (and possibly republican?) strongholds at a rate almost no one foresaw.
I’m sure we’ll get tons of analysis on this but maybe it all hinges on people not being excited to vote for Harris - in the swing states most of the biden coalition still showed up for her because they were motivated to vote against Trump but in the states where it didn’t matter people just didn’t bother.
It also makes the voter fraud theory even dumber - why do this massive conspiracy to run up the score in an irrelevant state?
It looks like Trump lost about 3MM of his 2020 totals, while Harris lost about 13MM of Biden’s 2020 totals.
I chalk it up to:
The men of this country simply aren’t inclined to turn out for a woman candidate.
White people are likewise disinclined to turn out for a Black candidate.
The supposedly trustworthy “legacy media” have been fully captured by oligarch interests, and they were in the tank for Trump, specifically twisting the knife in the inflation-and-taxes story. To which the incumbent party is deeply vulnerable.
Cognitively I believe these 3 factors are equally weighted. Intuitively I cannot help notice a pattern that Dems have now twice assumed that a woman candidate would energize turnout, and twice been deeply wrong about this (myself included).
It seems that even though many support a woman candidate, it seems impossible to build a winning political coalition without conceding that this country simply doesn’t like women very much. At least not as leaders.
Yes it’s women’s turn. Yes, it’s a Black woman’s turn. No, that isn’t going to win elections. Like, ever.
The Trump campaign did a good job of reminding people of what they didn’t like about the last four years.
The Harris campaign didn’t do a good job explaining why the last four years were good.
Emphasizing abortion was a mistake. It was only the important to those who already firmly in your camp.
A large number of people don’t follow politics like the people here. They vote or don’t vote with how their bank account is doing. People were not happy with how the economy did during the Biden administration, rightly or wrongly. Harris inherited everything from the administration, rightly or wrongly. I try to observe things from the perspective of someone not involved in politics and what they are exposed to. The Harris message on the economy was weak unless you dug deep into her proposed policies. That’s a recipe for disaster.
But as somebody who understood that massive spending was probably the only way to avoid economic collapse because of COVID – particularly since it was handled sub optimally from the beginning – I was willing to give Trump somewhat of a pass for the inflationary effects of that spending – coupled with massive supply chain disruptions – on the risibly quixotic assumption that Conservatives would understand that those factors would continue to have profound effects that carried over into the next administration.
I kept my end of the bargain. Biden/Harris kept theirs. The conservatives bought what Trump and the right-wingers sold them – pretty much unmitigated bullshit.
And Americans – as expected – couldn’t be bothered with about thirty minutes of basic homework.
I don’t think this is all of it, but I do think this is most of it.
I’ve been open for weeks about my expectation for a Trump victory. My wife had a different view, and told me to stop saying anything about it because I was harshing her glow of anticipation. She’s now shellshocked. About half an hour ago, she came out of it enough to ask me why I was so sure this would happen. I said, an election shows you the character of a country, and I see America clearly for what it is: racist, certainly, but even more deeply sexist. Ergo, Trump had the edge.
Uninformed opinion: I think people are exhausted. I think people feel like regardless of their vote that things in general are shitty and will remain so. I think plenty of dems (along with republicans) don’t believe that the worst case stories of a Trump/GOP ascendancy are real or possible, and constantly hearing about it causes a “this is all just people over reacting… I’ve never trusted politicians and I’m just tired of hearing my neighbor’s wailing and gnashing of teeth at every tiny thing. This whole situation is ridiculous and I just don’t give a fuck anymore” response.