Our Loss

My attempt to understand and explain

Credit: Getty Images

The mood around many households I know has been bleak since early Wednesday morning. Most pros in the news business don’t shock easily. But they would just as likely see a rhinoceros run through their living room as believe Donald Trump would return to the White House.  

As things turned out, Trump not only won, but won big. Some of Trump’s own people even say they were surprised by the size of his victory.  

I am gratified by one thing that has happened since election night: many new people have joined us here on Steady. Thank you, and welcome. I’m guessing most of you are some version of fed up, had it, done with politics. I don’t blame you. But you also love this country and want to know just what the hell happened. Three days on I have a few theories, but just as many questions. Much of my time has been spent trying to distill my thoughts into something I could share with you.  

So, how did a race that everyone said was essentially tied end with such a lopsided result? Read on, friends. There were a lot of factors at play. The metaphor “a perfect storm” may be a bit overused but does an excellent job of describing this situation.

To stick with a weather analogy, many described Kamala Harris’s challenging run for the presidency as “facing headwinds.” Turns out it was more like a hurricane. She had just 107 days to run for the most important job in the world. Trump announced his candidacy in November 2022 but had essentially been running since he left office two years earlier.

President Biden has been good for this country. But his bad debate performance and late withdrawal did his party and the country no favors. Harris leaped into the race quickly and sealed the nomination as the party fell into line. No one else was given a chance. In July that seemed like a fine idea — and the only real option — but it hurt Harris. Many voters said they were unhappy with the lack of nominating process. Some said they never really got to know what she was about. That sounds like a tired excuse, but OK. The other side of that argument is many Americans might have voted for a fence post before a convicted felon.

Harris felt forced to distance herself from an unpopular president, who also happened to be her boss, while not appearing disloyal. Good luck with that. On “The View,” when asked what she would have done differently from Biden, she said, “Nothing comes to mind.” Republicans pounced on this, and those four words became the centerpiece of Trump campaign ads. 

No matter how well she walked or didn’t walk that tightrope, she was considered the incumbent. Biden’s personal unpopularity — his approval rating never topped 45% — plus disdain for his policies, especially on the economy and the border, were a toxic combination Harris could not overcome. Republicans did a masterful job of exploiting this dynamic, while the White House did a lousy job of championing the policies that were actually bettering people’s lives. 

The economy is, was, and always will be the most important issue for American voters. We live in a hyper-capitalist society, and everyone wants to get ahead. Standing still is considered losing. So when a University of Chicago poll shows 9 out of 10 people are worried about the price of groceries, the incumbent should be very concerned. It is almost impossible to get 9 out of 10 people to agree on anything. People will always vote with their pocketbooks, not with their hearts. Harris needed hearts. 

The 2022 midterm election, which did not see the predicted red wave, was characterized as a vote of confidence for Biden. It wasn’t. Remember, it was the first post-Dobbs election. January 6 was still top of mind, and Donald Trump wasn’t running, so his handpicked, conspiracy-minded House and Senate candidates didn't fare well without their leader. 

Many of us thought Harris’s campaign was working. She quickly rallied the party around her. The initial enthusiasm for her and running mate Tim Walz was rock-star level. She was able to raise unprecedented amounts of money. The Democratic National Convention was practically hitchless. She enjoyed huge crowds at her rallies, at some of which she was accompanied by global celebrities. It seemed a masterful 100-day run. But then voting began …

Now let’s look at what that vote tells us.

After all that enthusiasm, turnout was surprisingly down — for everyone, but much more so for Harris. As of this writing (not all votes have been tallied yet) Harris received 12 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. Apparently, the vaunted Harris ground game didn’t deliver. Trump is about 700,000 votes shy of his 2020 number. Harris underperformed in many key demographics compared to Biden: with Black people (-2), Latino people (-13), young people (-6) and women (-3).

That fact that she, a younger Black woman, did less well among Black people, women and young voters than a white septuagenarian man is baffling. But those are the numbers.

For Democrats and those opposed to Trump, the old poker expression “read ‘em and weep” applies.

Trump made his biggest gains among Latino voters, earning 47% of their support. All the while promising to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, a majority of whom are Latino. “It's simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,” Samuel Negron, a Puerto Rican Pennsylvania state official, told the BBC.

Poll is a four-letter word. And once again, they were wrong. The polls said the candidates were essentially tied going into Election Day. But Trump won handily. This may have been what in pollster parlance is known as the Bradley Effect. When Tom Bradley, who was Black, ran for California governor, he was leading going into Election Day and then lost. It is clear that some voters lied to pollsters because they didn’t want to appear racist. That is likely why most polls underestimated Trump’s margins.

This time, it wasn’t just concealed racism, but sexism hiding within pre-election polls. Harris’s losses among Black and Latino voters were mostly among men, not women.

In an interview with Newsweek, Danielle Vinson, a political science professor at Furman University, said, “There is a small but significant portion of our country who cannot quite wrap their minds around the idea of a woman being president. They are fine with women senators or governors, but they pause at thinking a woman can handle national security and foreign affairs. Trump played that up in his comments frequently.” This idea gains support from the fact that in several states, female Senate candidates outperformed Harris.

Another minority group, albeit a much smaller one, that Harris lost was Arab Americans. In Dearborn, Michigan, the biggest majority Arab city in the country, Harris got only 36% of the vote as compared to Biden’s 74%. The war in Gaza is the reason. In another head-scratcher, either Democrat should have been preferable to Trump, whose contempt for Palestinians is no secret. The fate of Gaza, which was already precarious, is now very much in question.

So, the Democrats are wringing their hands and gazing at navels, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. And they should. But there is reason for patience too. All is not lost forever. Much of what Trump and his closest advisers say they are going to do will hurt, not help, the middle class, people of color, young people, and women. Mass deportations, tax cuts for the rich, and tariffs will hurt our economy. For people who voted with their wallets in 2024, things could be significantly worse by the 2026 midterm elections. Oh, and don’t hold your breath for the price of groceries to fall anytime soon.

It’s also worth remembering that Ideological swings are the norm in American politics.  Though things seem bleak right now, keep in mind that there are always declarations of demise after big wins and big losses. The Republican Party was declared dead after Obama won in 2008 and again after Trump was elected in 2016. After that election, it was the Democratic Party that was on life support. Then in 2020 it was the Republican Party once again.  

Over the next four years, democratic institutions will be tested, and Americans will have to fight to safeguard them at every level. Arash Azizi, an Iranian Canadian columnist for The Atlantic, wrote something that should give us hope.

“The essence of America has always been the battle over its essence. No one election has ever determined its complete or permanent nature, and that is as true now as it was in 1860 and 1876. If today’s America is the America of Donald Trump, it is also the America of those who would stand up to him.” 

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Stay Steady,

Dan