Why He Won
Historians will be scratching their heads over the 2024 presidential election for decades to come. How a clownish buffoon who uses too much bronzer and too few brains could have won any election at all with 34 felony convictions goes beyond the pale.
I have my own idea why this happened, but first I did “my own research” as independent voters are wont to proclaim. What do “the experts” say?
Former Obama advisor David Axelrod lays the blame at the feet of priggish over-educated Democrats: “[Democrats have] become a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party. You can’t approach working people like missionaries and say, ‘We’re here to help you become more like us.’ There’s a kind of unspoken disdain, unintended disdain in that.”
NY Times journalist Frank Bruni says people weren’t really paying attention to Bronzer Boy’s “florid ugliness,” especially toward the end. We who paid attention were outraged, “but we’re arrogant: We assume our experience is everyone’s and our knowledge ambient.”
I was guilty of this more often than not. As a matter of fact, I was known to say anyone could beat Trump. My refrigerator could beat Trump.
The New York Times (which replaced WaPo on my digital subscription list) lists the thoughts of several pundits, two of which struck me as being non-repetitive.
Politico’s Ankush Khardori says “a critical mass of voters were willing to set aside their concerns about Trump’s alleged misconduct because of their dissatisfaction with the Biden-Harris administration. Fair or not, this was absolutely their right as voters.”
Maybe.
John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times thinks that it’s the economy, stupid: “Ultimately voters don’t distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world. Voters don’t like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit.”
And at the Brookings Institute, we have William Galston, who put it all on getting out the vote: “Convinced that Trump’s intense personal bond with his supporters would do most of the mobilizing work, the campaign decided not to invest heavily in traditional get-out-the-vote organizing and instead outsourced it to supporting organizations. Although the Harris campaign touted its advantage in the “ground game,” there is little evidence that it made much of a difference.”
But it’s like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Each used their sense of touch to discover what an elephant looked like and came away with conclusions based on their own narrow experiences.
I prefer to believe that the reason he won goes much deeper. I recall a consideration early on that Joe Biden was going to bridge to the new generation of 60 year-olds and serve but one term. It was not my imagination. I thought it was a good plan. He is, after all, no spring chicken. But they flipped that script, didn’t they? And when they saw their mistake – too late – the hair-pulling began. America, too used to 2-year presidential campaigns, had to adjust to a new paradigm of what became our version of a “snap election.”
Don’t get me wrong, it was a great campaign – all 107 days of it – and I enjoyed watching. It just wasn’t long enough to let the less engaged voters catch up. Had Biden committed to a 1-term administration, Harris would have been a huge consideration to succeed him along with others. But by waiting until very late before stepping aside, only Harris could have accessed the campaign war chest that Biden’s people had already amassed.
It was Harris or bust.
If you’re paying attention, like Salon customers are, it would have only been a slight change in plans. But with so many voters not tuned in – people were Googling the terms “did Biden drop out” on Election Day – the outcome seems inevitable in retrospect.
Gimme a clue! Cannot understand how any American is “not tuned in” at any time. Thats about equal to having a leg or an arm going gangrene and not noticing it!
1You dropped WaPo for the NYT? Out of the frying pan, into the fire, man.
Looking at The Guardian myself. And Wonkette, of course.
2The election was rigged. Voters were suppressed by threats from drumpf’s Russian buds and there was massive voter fraud on a scale no one’s ever seen before. Plus, I have proof. (not really, but it worked for magats)
3RE:1 Never underestimate how untuned in many (most?) Americans are. The day AFTER election day the Jimmy Kimmel show went on the Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk and asked people “Did you vote today?” That is, they asked that on the day after the election. People said “yes” etc. Some had no idea who was running for President.
A couple minute video of that Kimmel video is here:
https://www.threads.net/@jimmykimmellive/post/DCDusfXxmOj
As for clued in vs clueless, take a look at the NBC exit polls for some real head-scratchers. For example, 7% of the voters who answered “Yes” to the question “On most political matters, do you consider yourself Liberal” voted for *rump.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
4I am inclined to think that it was inflation. As several thumbsuckers have noted, incumbents around the world have been mostly repudiated.
If so, it begs the question: Was Churchill wrong when e said that democracy was the worst form of government except all the other kinds?
However, Harris had other obstacles.
1. 6 in 10 Americans belong to churches that preach that women cannot lead (evangelical Protestant and Catholic). Many, if not most of these religionists might not take that preachment seriously, but if even 10% did, that could account for the outcome.
2. Color. Not an insuperable obstacle, as Obama shows, but note that so far all non-white candidates for president have post-slavery African antecedents. I predict that it will be a loooong time before American whites will vote for a descendant of slaves.
Then there were the things Democrats did that were unbelievably tone-deaf, primarily pushing the trans agenda (which is separate from but confused in the minds of voters with drag queen story hour for toddlers).
They should have kept that in pectore, as the Catholics say, because every drag queen story hour at the local library cost them 10,000 votes.
5Why??? For 50 years they’ve been systematically working for this. They control the Courts to keep tRump from justice and control the Message to brainwash and fool the many.
“Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?
It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.
The answer is the RIGHT-WING MEDIA. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.
https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox
“Where did Trump voters get their news?
6Yes, there’s social and partisan sites, but there is another influential strategy that isn’t getting enough attention: Manipulated, pay-to-play and all out fake news sites
I’ve been covering a mix of those for years. Here’s a primer …Let’s start: What did residents in key counties in Arizona, North Dakota and Nevada all have in common on Oct 15? They received a print paper with the same front page and headline” … see more at link!
https://x.com/mirandacgreen/status/1854967274202935803
The main stream media did a grave disservice to this country. Although they seemed to have unlimited resources to go after the Hillary emails in 2016, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and feeble, aging Joe Biden, they basically sane-washed the absurdities uttered by the other side. And I’m not just talking Fox; it includes the networks and the major newspapers, including the Washington Post and New York Times. What percentage of the electorate has even heard of Project 2025 and its implications? And now we are at a point where the judiciary will become even more larded with Scalia clones who will rubber stamp anything to keep Republicans in power. These dark times will become darker.
I don’t understand the Democratic Party at all. Since WW2, the economy has vastly outperformed during their tenure vs. when Republicans are in charge. There have been 11 recessions since 1950, with 10 of 11 occurring on the Republican’s watch. Why do the Dems cede the talking points that the Republicans are better for the economy when statistical data can easily refute this?
My grandfather was a proud dairy farmer in Wisconsin who remembered the Democratic Party as the one that pulled the country out of the depths of the Great Depression. I live in a very agricultural area of Michigan where the only signs you see in rural areas are for Trump. Why did the Democrats give up on these people and the working poor? Bill Clinton decided it was best to endear the party to the corporate class and it’s a road that has led us to our present state. The party figured the farmers would vote for Democrats until they didn’t and the same goes for the working poor and they are now losing ground with Hispanics and Blacks.
We will have elections in the future, but whether they will be “free and fair” will be very much up in the air. Do a little study of Victor Orban and get a glimpse of what happens when someone gains all the levers of power including the media. It’s truly frightening.
7You’d have to be living in a cave to not know the Trumpf’s personality and bad character. But to 74.3 million voters, that didn’t matter. That was only about 100k more votes than 2020. Only reason it was over 50% of the popular vote was Harris had 11 million less than Biden’s count in 2020. Lots of people didn’t vote including Democrats. Thus you have an authoritarian ready to take over.
8I don’t pretend to have the reasons why so many didn’t vote but the above opinions probably covered most. Those 74 million don’t care how bad TFFG was and is so you can’t persuade them. One of my neighbors (a Democrat) told me that another neighbor told him trumpf is god’s gift to humanity before the election. Says something about their religion and moral compass. I passed them on my dog walk this morning and had to hold my tongue.
And we’re about to find out what zoro balance of power will look like.
9Who seriously cares or believes what evangelicals think.. Are they not supposed to worship a false dog? Religion is the number 1 cause of world problems throughout history. The world
10would be safer without it.
Both Jay Kuo’s and Jeff Tiedrich’s weekend roundups are excellent. I like the one about a joke from Germany. What borders on Stupidity? Answer: Canada and Mexico.
11The New York Times Tech Guild is on strike, and has requested that people not cross the digital picket line.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-tech-employees-remain-strike-guild-targets-high-paid-ceo-meredith-kopit.amp
12As most know Trump has shown that over 50% of the voters in ‘merica are stoopid and arrogantly full of themselves.
13Trump himself told us: the election was rigged. He told us over and over, and he was being truthful, just as when he promised to round up and deport (more likely place in work camps) “illegals” aka: Latinx and Haitians.
I was so surprised at the SCOTUS “Dobb’s” decision in 2022. I thought it was sure to cost republicans any chance at re-election. When so many red states followed up with absolutely insanely cruel laws and actual deadly consequences, I thought “that’s it”.
But SCOTUS in 2022 knew the 2024 election was rigged, probably purchased by various tech bro and corporate billionaires.
I suspect Musk’s absurd giveaway of $1 million dollars per per “chosen” person in swing states was a mocking tip-off to us Democrats that he’d helped buy the election long ago. He has a strong cruel streak, and he was showing it, no doubt laughing.
his ass off. How easy to bribe the vote counters for someone these men. How easy to scare away the honest election workers.
All this hand wringing and blaming everyone except the evil men responsible –the .01% oligarchs and their Putin overlord– must also make them laugh their asses off.
I know I’ll probably be deleted for hysterical conspiracy theories, but I bet you a thousand dollars that (probably after Jan 20) these people will admit, in fact, BOAST, of what they did. And laugh in our faces.
14The Democratic Party needs to have a better campaign theme than “Not as bad as the other guy.”
15It’s cost them more than one election in the last 20 years.
There is no antidote for willful ignorance. No amount of time or strategy can overcome closed minds. Millions of Americans wanted a Fuhrer and, God help them, that’s what they got.
16Dictator Trump DOES “promise” ………. (Dictatorship AFTER he is Sworn In) .
17I’ve been writing here less and less. However, I’ve been writing a ton. I’ve come to a decision that the direction of my writing doesn’t fit here as much for a variety of reasons. We have taken great pains to shroud our identities but I’m taking the risk. If you want to see more of it, you can find me on Substack under “Thoughts of a Native Texan”. Yes, that means I’m unmasking myself in a dangerous time. However, when you see the writing you’ll understand why.
I invite you to come check it out if you like what you’ve read here. If not, I completely understand. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Finally, this is not goodbye. It is merely a shift. I’ll still be lingering in the background and commenting occasionally.
18I’m adding the link below. One answer to this question in today’s post
https://scottbarzilla.substack.com/
19Thank you for your thoughtful posts, Nick. And for keeping on writing on Substack. I clicked the link, and will check in on you.
20Thank you Nick for all your great posts! I’ve enjoyed reading them, didn’t always agree, but they always got me a thinkin!
21Thanks, Nick.
22Subscribed.
Shall visit frequently.
Signed up and read your post for today. Thanks. Very good.
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