I figured this was as good a time as any to come clean about reasons Democrats are fretting the 2024 election results despite some quite positive signs for Kamala Harris, so I wrote them up at New York:
One of the most enduring of recent political trends is a sharp partisan divergence in confidence about each party’s electoral future. Democrats are forever “fretting” or even “bed-wetting;” they are in “disarray” and pointing fingers at each other over disasters yet to come. Republicans, reflecting the incessant bravado of their three-time presidential nominee, tend to project total, overwhelming victory in every election, future and sometimes even past. When you say, as Donald Trump often does, that “the only way we lose is if they cheat,” you are expressing the belief that you never ever actually lose.
The contrast between the fretting donkey and the trumpeting elephant is sometimes interpreted as a matter of character. Dating back to the early days of the progressive blogosphere, many activists have claimed that Democrats (particularly centrists) simply lack “spine,” or the remorseless willingness put aside doubts or any other compunctions in order to fight for victory in contests large and small. In this Nietzschean view of politics, as determined by sheer will-to-power (rather than the quality of ideas or the impact of real-world conditions), Democrats are forever bringing a knife to a gun fight or a gun to a nuclear war.
Those of us who are offended by this anti-intellectual view of political competition, much less its implicit suggestion that Democrats become as vicious and demagogic as the opposition often is, have an obligation to offer an alternative explanation for this asymmetric warfare of partisan self-confidence. I won’t offer a general theory dating back to past elections, but in 2024, the most important reasons for inordinate Democratic fear are past painful experience and a disproportionate understanding of the stakes of this election.
It’s very safe to say very few Democrats expected Hillary Clinton to lose to Donald Trump in 2016, or that Joe Biden would come so close to losing to Donald Trump in 2020. No lead in the polls looks safe because in previous elections involving Trump, they weren’t.
To be clear, the national polls weren’t far off in 2016; the problem was that sparse public polling of key states didn’t alert Democrats to the possibility Trump might pull an Electoral College inside straight by winning three states that hadn’t gone Republican in many years (since 1984 in Wisconsin, and since 1988 in Michigan and Pennsylvania). 2020 was just a bad year for pollsters. In both cases, it was Trump who benefitted from polling errors. So of course Democrats don’t view any polling lead as safe. Yes, the pollsters claim they’ve compensated for the problems that affect their accuracy in 2016 and 2020, and it’s even possible they over-compensated, meaning that Harris could do better than expected. But the painful memories remain fresh.
If you believe the maximum Trump ‘24 message about Kamala Harris’s intentions as president, it’s a scary prospect: she’s a Marxist (or Communist) who wants to replace white American citizens with the scum of the earth, which her administration is eagerly inviting across open borders with government benefits to illegally vote Democratic. It’s true that polls show a hard kernel — perhaps close to half — of self-identified Republicans believe some version of the Great Replacement Theory that has migrated from the right-wing fringes to the heart of the Trump campaign’s messaging, and that’s terrifying since there’s no evidence whatsoever for it. But best we can tell, the Trump voting base is a more-or-less equally divided coalition of people who actually believe some if not all of what their candidate says about the consequences of defeat, and people who just think Trump offers better economic and tougher immigration policies. While the election may be an existential crisis for Trump himself, since his own personal liberty could depend on the outcome, there’s not much evidence that all-or-nothing attitude is shared beyond the MAGA core of his coalition.
By contrast, Democrats don’t have to exercise a lurid sense of imagination to feel fear about Trump 2.0. They have Trump 1.0 as a precedent, with the added consideration that the disorganization and poor planning that curbed many of the 45th president’s authoritarian tendencies will almost certainly be reduced in 2025. Then there’s the escalation in his extremist rhetoric. In 2016 he promised a Muslim travel ban and a southern border wall. Now he’s talking about mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants and overt ideological vetting of legal immigrants. In 2016 he inveighed against the “deep state” and accused Democrats of actively working against the interests of the country. Now he’s pledging to carry out a virtual suspension of civil service protections and promising to unleash the machinery of law enforcement on his political enemies, including the press. As the furor over Project 2025 suggests, there’s a general sense that the scarier elements in Trump’s circle of advisors are planning to hit the ground running with radical changes in policies and personnel that can’t be reversed.
An important psychological factor feeding Democratic fears of a close election is the unavoidable fact that Trump has virtually promised to repeat or even surpass his 2020 effort to overturn the results if he loses. So anything other than a landslide victory for Harris will be fragile and potentially reversible. This is a deeply demoralizing prospect. It’s one thing to keep people focused on maximum engagement with politics through November 5. It’s another thing altogether to plan for a long frantic slog that won’t be completed until January 20.
Trump has been working hard to perfect the flaws in his 2020 post-election campaign that led to the failed January 6 insurrection, devoting a lot of resources to pre-election litigation and the compilation of post-election fraud allegations.
Though if you look hard you can find scattered examples of Democrats talking about denying a victorious Trump re-inauguration on January 20, none of that chatter is coming from the Democratic Party, the Harris-Walz campaign, or a critical mass of the many, many players who would be necessary to challenge an election defeat. Election denial in 2024 is strictly a Republican show.
As my colleague Jonathan Chait recently explained, the odds of Republicans winning control of the Senate in November are extremely high. That means that barring a political miracle, a President Harris would be constrained both legislatively and administratively, in terms of the vast number of executive-branch and judicial appointments the Senate has the power to confirm, reject, or simply ignore.
If Trump wins, however, he will have a better-than-even chance at a governing trifecta. This would not only open up the floodgates for extremist appointments aimed at remaking the federal government and adding to the Trumpification of the judiciary, but would unlock the budget reconciliation process whereby the trifecta party can make massive policy changes on up-or-down party-line votes without having to worry about a Senate filibuster.
Overall, Democrats have more reason to fear this election, and putting on some fake bravado and braying like MAGA folk won’t change the underlying reasons for that fear. The only thing that can is a second Trump defeat which sticks.
The comments by Sagacious make more sense to me than do Cynthia Tucker’s arguments. If Democrats take comfort from the polls that show them preferred over Republicans, then they should heed the warnings from the same polls that show an overwhelming majority of all Americans, Democrats included, object to unchecked illegal immigration and the continued bestowing of benefits on non-citizens, such as a New York driver’s license. Tucker ruins much of her argument by bringing up the straw man issue of forced expulsion of the 12 to 20 million illegals said to already be in the U.S. No rational opponent of the so called comprehensive solution to illegal immigration suggests rounding up illegals and sending them back en mass. The problem is that no national Democrat has even come up with a plan that really stops future illegal immigration. Where are the proposed new laws that put employers who hire illegals in prison? Where are the proposals to reimburse states and cities for what they are having to spend to control illegal immigration because the federal government has abdicated its responsibilities. Democrats may think they can prevail on this issue by taking the so called “high road”, but for citizens who think this is an important issue, they only drive them back into the arms of the Republicans or force them to sit on their hands.
One thing that Turner misses in this essay is that the sixties were a time of financial prosperity for Americans. Jobs were plentiful and people beleived they could succeed with hard work.
The new millenial does not at all have economic prosperity for vast numbers of working Americans, consequently they are unwilling to share the meager resources available to eek out a living for themselves. Many have lost their jobs and homes.
We may be a nation of immigrants but America is in a self-preservation mode, families are unable to feed themselves, they do not have health insurance and education is deplorable in terms of inadequate funding for children of American citizens.
For this reason the noble reasons for immigration will fall on deaf ears. Too many Americans have seen their jobs outsourced or unions busted with ‘immigrant labor’ destroying the unions as a new labor pool willing to accept menial wages that do not provide an American standard of living wage. Too many Americans have seen the influx of immigrant children into the education system crowding out needed programs for their children to meet the language and learning needs of immigrants. Too many Americans can’t pay for their own children to go to college and are outrage to have to consider making immigrant children who graduate from the public school system eligible for federal loans. The healthcare system is overwhelmed with immigrant patients without insurance and that deprives Americans who are waiting behind them in the ER for their own healthcare. Americans are angry and destitute with the harshness of the economics which will not allow a single wage earner to support a family. Individuals have to work 2 jobs just to survive and that leaves no time for a ‘life’ to enjoy family and their kids.
At this time in our history Americans are only willing to choose hope over fear, tolerance over division and the beloved community over bigotry for their OWN needs. To suggest they give the food off their plates to immigrants will create a huge backlash.
Immigration is a losing issue for Democrats and they should NOT attempt to stand up on this issue, as it is the WRONG time to do so.
The principles are right but the timing is completely wrong. Americans will give when they have enough for themselves to SHARE right now is NOT that time. Americans are not willing to share or offer helping hands because they are struggling to keep for themselves afloat.
The best idea to offer illegal immigrants is to go into the military and use that as a route to earn citizenship. At least then they will only be competing with families who also volunteer to give the ultimate sacrifice to this country.
Great idea Tucker…wrong time.
there’s another as yet unspoken argument that ought to be made by those proposing a progressive immigration policies and it begins with the question of “why would people risk their lives and be separated from their homes and families to come to the US to work at backbreaking jobs for menial wages?” the answer is simple: they do not see a future for themselves in their native homelands. a progressive immigration policy goes hand in hand with a progressive trade policy that lifts up the living standards of our trading partners and encourages their entrepreneurial and risk taking people (what else can the journey to the US be called beside a highly risky entrepreneurial venture built on optimism) to stay home and build up their own economies and societies. but that would of course necessitate shaking off the moneyed wing of the party and its unclear that the dems in leadership positions have the “brass balls” to do that (yes, that is an implicit reference to rahm emmanuel).