Consider “Latino Men Were the Big Defectors—but They Weren’t the Only Story: Here’s how Harris failed to replicate Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump” by TNR editor Michael Tomasky, cross-posted here from The New Republic:
How in God’s name did the Democrats lose yet another election to Donald Trump, after defeating him somewhat comfortably four years ago?
If you go carefully through the exit polls and compare them to 2020, you actually see a fair amount of stability. Even a little modest improvement in some places. In 2020, Trump won the white vote 58–41 percent. On Tuesday, he won it by less, 55–43. Among white women, Kamala Harris did a bit better than Joe Biden: Trump won white women 55–44 over Biden and 52–47 over Harris. The result among white men wasn’t statistically different: Trump won them 61–38 over Biden and 59–39 over Harris. For all the talk of defections among Black men, the exit polls say otherwise. Biden won them 79–19, and Harris carried them 78–20. She also won among independents, although by a few points less than Biden did.
Only one group of voters really stands out. Biden had won Latinos 65–32. Harris won them by only 53–45. And the biggest change of all is among Latino men: Biden won them 59–36, and this time, Trump beat Harris outright, 54–44.
At the same time, the breadth of the Trump—and Republican—win doesn’t seem like it can be pinned solely on that. He won the popular voteby five million. He won every swing state that’s been called so far—not by huge margins, but also not by the razor-thin margins that characterized 2016 and 2020. He came closer in blue states—New Jersey, Illinois—than anyone in many years, going back probably to the previous century. And so far, all those MAGA senators have swept their Democratic opponents.
This is probably explained by the fact that the Trump vote, again, was underestimated by the polls—by around 3 percent, John Heilemann said Wednesday on Morning Joe. This was a huge debate during this campaign. I was among those who thought the pollsters, who had made that mistake in 2016 and 2020, were overcompensating this time around and undercounting Harris voters. I thought Harris would narrowly win white women, and win women overall by more than 15 points. I was wrong. (Her margin among women was just 10 points.)
So it wasn’t all Latino men, by any means, but in the exit polls, their vote is the only eye-popping shift. The “floating island of garbage” didn’t matter. May have helped, who knows. There’s no breakdown yet that I’ve seen of different Latino groups, but Trump’s Puerto Rican support apparently did not crater. He outright won heavily Latino counties in New Jersey, for example, that Democrats usually win on autopilot.
So the question is why. Cataclysmic as this result is, and what it’s going to lead to in this country over the next four years, I think people may have a tendency to get too hysterical in answering this question.
For example, Harris didn’t suck as a candidate. In fact, she ran a good campaign overall. I thought “We’re not going back” was powerful, and her optimistic tone made a good contrast to Trump’s darkness. She was overly cautious on some things. Israel apparently hurt her in Dearborn, but there was no widespread left-wing revolt against her. Jill Stein got a paltry 611,760 votes, versus 1,449,370 in 2016. Cornel West didn’t even register in the Associated Press tally I checked Wednesday morning. Likewise, few centrists ran away from her. Except for Latino men, and to a lesser extent Latina women, she held the Democratic Party together. Polls kept telling us that Democratic enthusiasm was through the roof.
I think she made two specific late mistakes—one was something she did, and the other was something she didn’t do.
The mistake she made was saying on The View on October 8 that she couldn’t think of anything she’d have done differently than Biden. Various exit poll results tell us that in a sense, she was seen as the incumbent, and she paid an obviously steep price for Biden’s 40 percent approval rating. That became a Trump commercial.
And maybe this was all that simple. As numerous people have now pointed out, every incumbent party in a developed country that had to deal with Covid and inflation, whether a party of the left or the right, has now been voted out.
But it also isn’t that simple. The thing Harris didn’t do: I kept wishing that I would see an ad by one of the prominent Black or Latino men who endorsed her that didn’t focus on praising Harris or even denouncing Trump in the normal, he’s-a-threat-to-democracy way. I wanted to see, say, LeBron James talking directly to young men of color about why Trump was not a tough guy at all; why he was a weakling and a bully, and explaining that a real man doesn’t lie or make excuses or disrespect women. Who knows, that kind of thing could have made a difference.
But millions of men bought Trump’s idea of masculinity. How much outright sexism and racism drove the vote? We’ll never know. But enough. This is another mistake I and probably a lot of people on the broad left made. Sexism and racism (the former undoubtedly more of a factor here than the latter) will never disappear, but there seemed reason to think that by 2024, they’d be minor factors. They may well have barred the door.
I might add a third mistake: not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Another exit poll result that surprised me was that late deciders were evenly split—completely not what preelection polls were suggesting. I wonder if the pro-Trump late deciders were influenced by Rogan’s endorsement of him.
And nothing Trump did mattered. None of the lies, the hate, the microphone oral sex, the musing about Liz Cheney facing bullets. Nothing. As Alex Shephard argued here, Democrats have spent nearly a decade trying to convince swing voters that Trump was a unique threat to the republic, and they’ve failed.
Now, we will live with that failure, and with a fully unleashed Trump, and his idea of masculinity, for the next four years. I fear for the people he’s going to round up (and we should definitely take him at his word on that); for transgender people; for Palestinians, for whom it can get worse; for Ukrainians, for whom it can get far worse; for a lot of people who’ll be on the receiving end of his brutish policies. And we’ll see, in a year or two, how different a country the United States is going to be.
The debate over the future of Democrats is almost settled with neoliberal elites actually prevaling even more than they did in 2016.
The argument is mainly this: Biden caused inflation by pursuing the expansion of the welfare state and this loss is therefore self-inflicted and caused by progressive ideas.
The neoliberals overemphasize government spending and wage increases as causes for inflation, while they minimize supply chain issues, agricultural prices, corporate profits and the cascading effects of increases in federal interest rates on things like mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.
Who is right? More than half of inflation had nothing to do with government spending or wages. The Federal Reserve has said so many times.
The argument is wrong not only regarding the causes of inflation, but also regarding the supposed expansion of the welfare state.
Trump expanded the welfare state (due to Congressional Democrats) and was rewarded for it:
1. Created Pandemic Business Assistance (that won’t be repayed);
2. For the first time actual small businesses were eligible for government help;
3. For the time time self-employed persons were eligible for either business assistance or unemployment insurance;
4. Expanded Unemployment insurance, for the first time created standard national/federal benefits;
5. Expanded Medicaid eligibility;
6. Gave out free vaccines and tests;
7. Expanded Obamacare eligibility and subsidies;
8. Expanded SNAP (food stamps) eligibility;
9. Improved SNAP (food stamps) benefits;
10. Sent out several Univeral Basic Income checks, first time that more than one check is issued (and they were issued directly to people instead of reducing taxes like Obama);
11. Established national Eviction Moratorium;
12. Expanded federal housing spending;
13. Expanded federal spending on childcare;
14. Expanded the Child Tax Credit;
15. Subsidized state and local budgets.
Under Biden basically all of this was rolled back.
What Biden did was fund Industrial Policy.
He allowed 2 years to be wasted with idiotic negotiations with Sinema and Manchin. Both him and progressives are responsible for not wrapping up those negotiations as soon as it was clear that the “moderates” were negotiating in bad faith.
Yes there were substantive mistakes on some add on policies, like the ill designed electric vehicle incentive that can basically only be used by the upper middle class.
But Biden didn’t achieve his proposed expansion of the welfare state. Not a single new benefit for ordinary people was created under Biden.
Trump and Republicans were incredibly smart in learning from the mistakes of Obama and the Great Recession.
It was Trump who spent and spent and Biden who cut and cut.
Republicans and Trump also made sure that as soon as Biden came into office all the benefits would start to expire.
What neoliberals are trying to do is rewrite history (again).
Neoliberal elites have almost no experience of the actual real economy, much less any lived experience of the welfare state as it actually works.
They cherry pick macroeconomic data like unemployment, GDP and the stock market, while downplaying consumer debt, auto loan purchases and defaults and the effects of interest rate rises on housing affordability and construction.
This is not done merely because of ignorance. They defend their class interests and the interests of economic actors they identify with and are funded by.
We now have a large coterie of mainly white male writers gaslighting Democrats about the state of the economy and misleading about economic and policy history while still claiming to be economic progressives.
The idiot Democratic governors of California and New York are already pushing to further define the party as the instrument of opposition to Trump.
The out of touch open borders crowd wants to make sanctuary policies and opposition to deportation the centerpiece of that opposition.
Instead the Democrats need to enable Trump so as to hold him accountable.
If Trump can point to Democratic Governors and Mayors as obstructing his policies on immigration the issue will not die down, ultimately favoring Republicans.
Democrats should defend some procedural protections in deportation proceedings, but that is completely different from the whole scaremongering and obstructionism that has come to dominate elite discourse on immigration.
Same with tariffs, Ukraine, Israel and some tax cuts.
Hold Trump accountable.
The President already has significant tariff authority. Goad him to act quickly. Use Congress the way Democrats have failed to use Congress for messaging purposes.
Yes, push to protect our key allies (mainly EU/NATO, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and a few other partners).
But otherwise Democrats have no business advocating for China and countries that choose to align with China or remain “neutral”. Bush was right: you are either with us or against us.
On Ukraine, hold Trump accountable for his promise to immediately end the war.
Yes, oppose any push for total Ukrainian capitulation.
But Democrats have obstructed Ukraine from attacking Russia, so the party doesn’t really have the moral high ground.
Democrats have no Ukraine strategy and it is time to negotiate and see what Putin is willing to settle for.
On Israel, stop pushing for ceasefires.
The hipocrisy and arrogance of (too many) Americans wanting to dictate the response of Israel to a 9-11 like event is stunning.
The alignment of the far left with the political interests and values of Islamist extremists is disgusting. Once again the far left cloaks its role as 5th column behind fake pacificism.
The far left only cares about humanitarianism and imperialism when it can make the US/West look bad. Liberals need to stop coddling the far left. On foreign policy the far left is just as bad, if not worse, than the far right.
The US will have more sway with Israel on humanitarian issues if it stops the Biden/Kamala push for ceasefires based on US domestic political reasons. Michigan was also lost, so time to move on.
The fact is that Israel is doing the US/West’s dirty work of confronting Iran and its proxies. Trump was right about Iran all along. One has to understand that the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel was meant to disrupt Israeli-Arab peace negotiations.
As long as Palestinians are used as paws in Middle East geopolitics instead of having a democratically elected leadership that negotiates for an actually viable state there will be no peace, Iran will use the issues to distract from its domestic problems and Israel’s sole alternative is defensive war with offensive strategies.
The far left cares about international humanitarian law violations (“war crimes”) and imperialism by Israel but not by Russia or China.
We need to uphold the global right to self-determination. That is the United States at its best (Wilsonian 14 Points).
On tax cuts, hold Trump accountable on Trump promises.
Introduce bills and show just how incoherent his plans are. Start with Tips and Social Security benefits and go along.
Also deal with SALT in a way that brings to light the Trump contradictions and that proves that Democrats are the party of the working class and not the upper middle class.
$400,000 is not middle class and certainly not working class.
Focus on tax evasion/avoidance. Develop a discourse around taxation based on values instead of technocratic solutions.
Focus on the stupid spending habits of rich Americans. Talk about luxury taxes and conspicuous consumption.
Our culture has become crass and self-obsessed. Inequality is not a technical problem, but a moral, sociological and political one.
Learn how to deal with the role of Musk and other plutocrats in American politics. Dare to call it what it is: Oligarchy.
Anti-trust and free competition is also not about technocracy.
Musk is using Trump to protect Tesla from Chinese electric vehicles because Tesla’s model is not working.
Republicans love to talk about crony capitalism. Take them up on the debate.
The problem with tariffs is not that they are an indirect tax on consumption.
Americans spend too much on throw away goods.
Taxation should in fact move from labor taxes (income and payroll) towards consumption (including environmental) taxes.
Take up Republican ideas like flat taxes with fewer exceptions. Make tax simplication one of Democrats’ main goals.
Take tax negotiations out of dark rooms.
After inflation, the most important political development of the past 4 years was the busing of immigrants to northern Democratic cities by southern Republican Governors.
The sense of chaos was finally understood by the sanctuary states.
But because immigrant groups are so well organized in sanctuary states, the change in culture that the Democratic party needed didn’t materialize.
We have a huge problem with congressional districts whose population includes a large proportion of non-citizens being represented by politicians elected in primaries with the support of open borders activist organizations.
In these very low turnout primaries in districts that are poorer on average, it is very difficult to mobilize voters and canvassers and there is very little civic infrastructure.
The above describes most strongly New York and California.
Regretably, New York and California also have a total strangehold on the Democratic party.
E.g. Kamala as presidential candidate and Schumer and Jeffries in the Senate and House.
Nothing in Kamala’s political history pointed to a principled opposition to open borders (unlike Bernie Sanders and others who had always pointed out that open borders is a right wing libertarian agenda).
Schumer and Jeffries are the wholesale embodiment of fecklessness as the defining Democratic trait.
New York politics is completely broken. One need only look at our Mayor and Governor.
Now with NYC Mayoral primaries on the way, the doubling down on sanctuary city discourse is rapidly consolidating.
Schumer and Jeffries failed to hold the congressional votes necessary to hold Republican proposals accountable or to showcase Kamala’s ideas and Biden’s accomplishments.
Silence is the preffered communication message from both.
They have a complete conflict of interest between their local political careers and their role as national party leaders. They always choose local politics because they are mediocre politicians.
Democrats are now completely leaderless and the task falls by default on these two “go along with it” paper pushers.
This is like the 100th racist take on the political behaviour of Hispanics that I have read in the last few days.
This author in particular needs to do a little bit of more research on actual turnout patterns.
The whole talk of toxic masculinity is insulting and demeaning.
I write this as a gay Hispanic Puerto Rican.