The World Keeps Spinning

I live in the Republic of Catatonia. There is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. My neighbors are walking around muttering, shaking their heads and raising their fists against the great darkness that has descended upon our land. Little children cry themselves to sleep and beg their parents for answers to the unanswerable question, "Why?!"

Not very many miles to the east, there is much rejoicing in the Empire of Euphoria. There, children spin and frolic gleefully among the arid hills as their parents gloat and tweet "I told you so," giddy with anticipation of cheaper groceries, trans-free girls' volleyball teams and a landscape rid of those pesky brown people who are taking "their" jobs.

It may come to pass that Catatonia's shock and horror are well-founded, and the Euphoric celebration deserved. But this feels a lot like 1980, after the seismic jolt of Ronald Reagan's ascension and the rise of the New Right, or 1994, with the triumph of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, or 2000, with W's bizarre, butterfly ballot-fueled, SCOTUS-assisted "win" over Al Gore, or even 2016, just eight short (But God, do they feel long) years ago, when the unthinkable happened and an unqualified TV huckster was elected president.

It's always darkest before the dawn, or so they say, incorrectly. Actually, it's not. Just before dawn, there's a lovely lightening of the sky. It's really darkest a few hours earlier. So the brightening of Catatonia is not just around the corner. It may take a year, or two, or even four, for the Catatonics to be bathed in sunlight once again. But the light will come, because that's the way of the world, which keeps turning, no matter what darkness befalls it. We can sit in blindness and curse the darkness, or we can light a candle and hold someone's hand to help them make it through the night. Bring whatever light you can, until the universe catches up and casts away the shadow.

I've seen many answers to the questions "Why did Donald Trump win? How could most of our country vote for this guy??"—from racism to sexism to economic ignorance to Joe Rogan to "it's the media's fault." I think people are asking the wrong questions though. Donald Trump did not win this presidential election. Kamala Harris, and the Democrats, lost it. 

In 2020, a record 158 million Americans went to the polls. Right now, with a few million ballots left to count, mostly from California, the turnout is 148 million. Donald Trump has 50.5% of that vote, to Kamala Harris' 48%. He has 74.8 million votes and she has 71.2 million. Trump's share of the vote went up in all 50 states—yes, every single one—suggesting a rightward shift in the electorate. But was there one, really?

In 2020, Donald Trump received 74.2 million votes. He will probably end up with 76 to 77 million this year. But there are almost 20 million more registered voters now than there were four years ago. Due to population growth and aggressive voter registration efforts, the electorate has grown from 168 million Americans in 2020 to 187 million now. There are still far more registered Democrats than Republicans in this country, about ten million more. The Democrats have lost some defectors over the last four years, mostly because people have quit the party to become independent voters. And the Democratic lean among independents has faded, to the point where they're now split between the Dems and the GOP. In 2008, at the peak of Obamamania, 55% of the country self-identified as Democrats (regardless of how they were actually registered) and 42% as Republican. Now that's fallen to 49-48, in the Democrats' favor (and those numbers are a few months out of date, so the GOP might actually have an edge after Trump's victory). But there hasn't been much change in how people describe their ideology: according to Pew Research, 33% identify as conservative, only 23% as liberal, and 39% as moderate (the remaining 5% decline to say), and that has held steady since before the pandemic.

So it's not that many more voters have moved to the right and become Trump supporters—it's that registered Democrats, and Democratic-leaning independents, did not turn out to vote. Only 31% of last week's voters were Democrats, and for the first time ever, independents and third party voters outnumbered them, with 34%. Republicans were 35% of the electorate. In 2020, Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans, 37 to 36%, and independent/others were a distant third, with 26%.

While Trump's percentage of the vote went up across the board, his raw vote total increased less than it should have, given the expanded electorate. Take his home state of New York, for example. In 2016, Trump won only 2.8 million votes there, which was 37% of the vote. He got crushed by Hillary Clinton, who received four and a half million votes. In 2020, Trump did about the same, winning 38% in New York, which, given the record turnout, took 3.2 million votes. Joe Biden won the vote of 5.2 million New Yorkers. But this time around, Trump won 44% in New York, suggesting a surge in support. In reality, though, he only got 3.4 million votes, not many more than he received four years ago. But Kamala Harris only got 4.3 million, almost a million fewer than Biden, because 700,000 fewer New Yorkers bothered to go to the polls. 

The numbers are similar from coast to coast. In California, ten counties flipped from blue to red—not because more voters became Republicans (the GOP is a minority party in the Golden State, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1), but because even in Harris' home state, turnout, primarily among Democrats, fell. Donald Trump got six million votes in California in 2020. When we're done counting out here, he should have about 6.5 million. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris—the first California Democrat ever nominated for president, who has been elected statewide three different times—is going to fall perhaps as many as two million votes short of the 11 million votes that Joe Biden won here in 2020. That is stark evidence of Kamala Harris failing to inspire and motivate her constituency, even in her own backyard.

The collective shrug so many Democrats gave their presidential ticket also cost them the Senate, and probably the House. There were enough close losses that had Democrats simply turned out in proportion to their registration advantage, they would have swept the presidency and both houses of Congress.

So why didn't they? It is not because half the country are Nazis. It's not because half the country is stupid. It's not because half the country is racist. Certainly a significant number are racist, but I think sexism and misogyny played a bigger role. This country has elected a Black man president before, but it rejected a white woman, and now a Black/South Asian one. I can't even tell you how many voters (both men and women) told me they just couldn't vote for a woman president, or even visualize one. They did elect a record number of female governors, 13, and that number has risen steadily over the last two decades. But 18 states, including four of the swing states and a few awfully blue ones (hello, California? Illinois? Colorado?) have never been governed by a woman. Perhaps as more are, the resistance to electing a female Commander in Chief will erode and, in 2036 or '40, a woman will be elected president.

Kamala Harris ran a fairly solid campaign, given the challenges posed by a 107-day sprint against one of the best-known men in the world. She had money to burn and an army of motivated volunteers. She had the superior Get Out The Vote operation (or so we thought). She had Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and pissed-off Puerto Ricans in her corner. She had all of Trump's baggage to publicize, aided by constant stumbles and unforced errors by Trump himself. She ran hard in all the battlegrounds, took nothing for granted and left it all on the field.

But it is extremely difficult for sitting vice presidents to win, challenged by the need to both run on their boss' successes and distance themselves from his failures. Al Gore couldn't do it in 2000. Hubert Humphrey couldn't in 1968. Richard Nixon couldn't in 1960. And so on. The only sitting vice president to pull it off since 1836 was George Bush in 1988. And in this case, Kamala Harris was handicapped by her gender, race and the extraordinary unpopularity of her aging president. 

She and her campaign staff did make some significant tactical errors. At the Democratic National Convention, the pro-Palestinian Uncommitted contingent begged for a five-minute speaking slot, even allowing Harris' team to vet their speech ahead of time. They were denied. Israel's war in Gaza put Biden and Harris in the difficult position of trying to thread the needle between staunch support for an ally backed by more Americans than not (and the majority of American Jews, a not insignificant voting bloc), and pressuring Israel to negotiate a peace with Hamas and end the war, a position supported by a growing number of Americans, especially progressives, younger voters and Arab Americans. In her closing campaign speech in Washington DC, Harris promised to always listen to those who disagree with her, to always give them a seat at the table—a pledge that rang hollow among those in Michigan still stinging from that DNC rebuke. Many, many progressives and younger voters, in many states, refused to vote for Harris because of Gaza—one told me "I'm sorry, but I can't vote for genocide"—either staying home, voting for third party candidates or even, believe it if you can, voting for Trump. In Dearborn, Michigan, the epicenter of the Arab American opposition to Harris, Trump won, with 42% to Harris' 36%. Meanwhile, the Green Party's Jill Stein, who took just one percent of Dearborn's vote in 2020, won 18% this time. In 2020, Biden crushed Trump in Dearborn, 69 to 30%. This is a constituency that just gave 62% of its vote to Representative Rashida Tlaib, one of the most left-wing members of Congress—but a third of Tlaib's voters refused to back Harris.

So the progressive and anti-Israel opposition to Harris cost her dearly, no matter how much the Democrats argued that withholding those votes would help Trump win, which promises even stronger U.S. support for Israel and a much bleaker future for the Palestinians. Voters who said "It's like choosing between Hitler and Stalin—I can't vote for either one" and stayed home just didn't recognize that not choosing between the lesser of two evils can leave the country with the worse evil (they might want to review the history of World War Two when the country did, in fact, have to choose between Hitler and Stalin and at last check, made the right choice). "Harris: Lesser Of Two Evils" does not look so great on a yard sign, though, but neither does "A New Way Forward" when you represent the incumbent party that's controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years.

Harris was never able to articulate how she'd be different from Joe Biden, to the extent that when asked, she could not come up with a single thing she'd have done differently during the last four years. She spent the closing weeks of the campaign parading through swing states with Liz Cheney and other anti-Trump Republicans, giving Republicans "permission" to vote for her instead of Trump. But it didn't work. Only five percent of the GOP voted for Harris—fewer than the six percent who voted for Biden in 2020. Meanwhile, Harris only won among independents by three points, while Biden carried them by 13. I get that Harris believed converting wavering Republicans and independents could win her the race, but instead she further alienated younger and progressive voters. She thought running to the right of center would bring back disaffected white voters, but instead it pushed left of center Democrats onto their couches, much the way Hillary Clinton's DNC war with Bernie Sanders in 2016 prompted so many Berniecrats to stay home that it cost Clinton the presidency. 

It was clear for months that abortion was not the motivating issue it was in 2022, falling far down the list of voters' most important considerations. But even so, we thought (I thought) that women were so motivated by Harris' historic and invigorating candidacy, and so repulsed by Trump, that they would turn out en masse and carry her to the White House. I warned that it was dangerous to read too much into the string of abortion rights victories since the fall of Roe v. Wade, even in very red states, because a majority of all voters, not just Democrats, favor legal abortion. Just because 65% of a state votes to protect reproductive rights does not mean they will all vote for Kamala Harris. Just look at Arizona and Nevada, where 61% and 64%, respectively, voted for constitutional abortion protections—yet Donald Trump won both states. That means a lot of Republicans—especially Republican women—voted for both choice and Trump. Some of them justified that with the belief that protecting abortion rights at the state level inoculates them against any national ban or other restrictions that Trump may attempt, making a vote for him for president less risky. But I still thought pro-Harris women were underestimated in the polling data, and they would make the difference in this election.

They didn't. In fact, while Trump won 55% of men's votes, Harris only won 53% of women. His gender gap beat hers, neutralizing the larger number of women who vote. And Trump actually won among white women, 53-45%, and also won among women ages 45-64, and he won overwhelmingly among white women without college degrees, by a staggering 63-35%.

We live in a country that is split right down the middle between two competing realities. A steadily growing number distrust our institutions (which includes the mainstream media, and yes, that's me) and as unlikely and imperfect a billionaire who lives atop a gilded tower may be as the standard-bearer for that anti-establishment fervor, those voters see Trump as a disruptor. The Democrats could shout themselves hoarse pointing out how much the voters hated Trump by the end of his first term, or reminding voters how much stronger the economy is now than it was then, or how Biden pulled the nation out of a pandemic and a recession (although frankly, Harris did not emphasize any of those things nearly enough, deciding instead to focus on Trump The Fascist and the support of Bush-wing Republicans), and it was never going to matter to people who blame Joe Biden for the price of eggs. Kamala Harris was not a credible enough messenger for an electorate with a short memory and an even shorter fuse. She couldn't unshackle herself from Biden's shortcomings, and there were just too many Americans who wouldn't buy what she was selling.

The silver lining for those rending their garments over Tuesday's loss is that the global anti-incumbent energy is not going to dissipate. It will only intensify. And when Donald Trump does not magically lower the cost of bread and bacon and milk, or cut taxes for the middle class, or wave a wand and end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza (he's already broken his first campaign promise, having pledged to end the war between Russia and Ukraine "within 24 hours of getting elected," although perhaps he meant inaugurated), the same voters who turned him out four years ago will turn on him again. Don't be surprised if the Democrats reclaim the House in the 2026 midterms (the Senate will be a much tougher proposition) and whether JD Vance or someone else is the Republican nominee in 2028, they will have to run on Trump's record and the Democrats will be the ones running on change.

What goes around, comes around. Including the light of the sun. To paraphrase the unknown Jewish poet who scrawled those immortal words on the wall of a concentration camp in Cologne (Köln), you just have to keep believing it's there, even when it isn't shining.