Sorting through the noise to try and understand what just happened

After sitting in my discomfort for a few days, I'm ready to try to understand WTH happened in this election. There are an awful lot of bad takes out there attempting to find fault with VP Harris, President Biden, or Democrats in general. But they're all impossible to square with the fact that, no matter their shortcomings, a little more than half of voters supported a delusional, narcissistic bully who has been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault, and tried to overturn an election.

So here's the take that makes the most sense to me: 

About a month ago I wrote that, when it came to the presidential election, it was all about the lies and the way Trump/Vance used them to create an alternative reality. As it turns out, the lies worked. One of the best ways to document that came from a Reuters/Ipsos poll that was conducted just prior to the election.

What we see is that the more voters believed Trump's lies about crime, the economy, and immigration, the more likely they were to vote for him. Those who believed the truth swung heavily in Harris's direction. 

We're also getting a lot of bad takes on who those lies appealed to. Philip Bump did a good job of debunking all of that nonsense. The first thing to note is that Trump received about the same number of votes that he did in 2020 (it's just that Harris got fewer than Biden). So if we look at the demographics of Trump voters, "his voting base [in 2024] was older, wealthier and about equally White to what it was in 2020."

For example, we're hearing a lot of talk about how Trump won over Hispanics and African Americans in 2024. But here's what that actually looked like:

To all of those who are suggesting that this election was all about populism and support from working class folks, the truth is that Trump's big gains were actually among the wealthy.

What this kind of information tells us is that we not only need to combat the lies from right wing media, we're also being fed a lot of junk information from mainstream media and pundits. So chose your sources wisely.

Over the last few days I've been noting who I will pay attention to and who I'm going to ignore. On the former category, I've been significantly impressed with Rebecca Solnit. Here are a few gems from her latest column at The Guardian. 

I’m wary about anger – as George Orwell once observed, it’s easily redirected, like the flame of a blowlamp, and it has been in this election as people whose own lives were thwarted economically and otherwise got on board with the scapegoating of immigrants. So it’s something to be careful with. Even so, “rage is a form of prayer too,” as Reverend Dr. Renita J. Weems declared after this terrible US election.

I suspect she means that behind that rage is care, and this is something I have found secular activists often forget – you are angry the children are being bombed or the forest is being cleared because you care about them, so it’s not the feelings about the forces of destruction that is primary. It’s the love, and not losing sight of that is crucial...

Not being them and not being like them is the first job, not just as negatives but as an embrace of the ideals of love, kindness, open-mindedness, the ability to engage with uncertainty and ambiguity, inclusiveness...

There are other kinds of resistance that mean making your own life and your own mind an independent republic in which the pursuit of truth, human rights, kindness and empathy, the preservation of history and memory...This does not overthrow the regime, but it does mean being someone who has not been conquered by it, and it invites others who have not been or who can throw off the shackles to join you...

We do not know what will happen. But we can know who we can commit to be in the face of what happens. That is a strong beginning. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving. Let Julian Aguon have the last word: “No offering is too small. No stone unneeded … All of us, without exception, are qualified to participate in the rescue of the world.”

Solnit's words remind me of a song Garth Brooks wrote after the Oklahoma bombing titled "The Change." It's going to be my anthem for a while.

I've also been extremely impressed with the analysis provided by historian Heather Cox Richardson. She was interviewed by Jon Stewart a couple of days ago on his podcast. It is a little over an hour long and I know most people won't take the time to listen to the whole thing. But she's absolutely brilliant (Stewart...not so much). So I definitely recommend paying attention to her - no one does a better job of describing what just happened. 

Doug Muder has always demonstrated a deep understanding of this political era and recently wrote a post titled, "My Way-Too-Soon Election Response" over at his blog The Weekly Sift.

Going forward, I'll be paying a lot of attention to Timothy Snyder, who literally wrote the book on fascism. His most recent column at the New Yorker is titled, "What Does it Mean that Donald Trump Is a Fascist."

To maintain my sanity in the midst of the chaos that is about to come, those are just a few of the people I'll be listening to. 

On a final (somewhat related) note, I'd just like to share this little nugget to help explain why Christian nationalists are so amenable to the alternate reality created by Trump's lies. 

The discomfort I'm sitting in today

I'm still reeling emotionally and doubt that it's a good time to write any analysis about what happened on Tuesday. There are an awful lot of bad takes pointing fingers - which is understandable, but ultimately not productive. Here's a twitter thread from Brad Bauman that I found helpful:

A lot of times we confuse fast with smart. Quick and simple answers at a moment when everyone is trying to make meaning of what’s happening and looking for something to do. We end up doing things that aren’t productive or counter productive when we move that quick.

Sometimes, the right answer is to sit in our pain; sit in our discomfort and feel it, rather than rush to answers or movement.

There will be a resistance, and all of us will be a part of it, individually and collectively.

Let’s take a moment and allow ourselves to process, to feel, to think about what truths arise and then let’s act.

As I "sit in my discomfort and feel it," Rebecca Solnit captured my reaction perfectly.

Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do. Our mistake was to see the joy, the extraordinary balance between idealism and pragmatism, the energy, the generosity, the coalition-building of the Kamala Harris campaign and think that it must triumph over the politics of lies and resentment. Our mistake was to think that racism and misogyny were not as bad as they are, whether it applied to who was willing to vote for a supremely qualified Black woman or who was willing to vote for an adjudicated rapist and convicted criminal who admires Hitler. 

I literally cried as I read that. Here's how John Harwood put it:

If you’re accustomed, as I am, to believing that a critical mass of Americans embraces the values of freedom, pluralism, and common sense, the choice voters made defies comprehension. The arc of history in 2024 bent not toward justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. liked to say, but away from it.

Regular readers will know that I've always maintained that President Obama's speech at the 50th anniversary of the Selma march was the most important he's ever given. In it, he defined his view of America and the ideals we've embraced/fought for. VP Harris echoed that vision during her speech in Washington D.C. last week.

I’ve seen [the promise of America] in Americans, different in many respects, but united in our pursuit of freedom, our belief in fairness and decency and our faith in a better future...

Nearly 250 years ago, America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure. And those who came before us, the Patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall, on farmlands, and factory floors, they did not struggle, sacrifice and lay down their lives only to see us seed our fundamental freedoms.

They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.

These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised, a nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us, and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.

So America, let us reach for that future. Let us fight for this beautiful country we love.

And in 7 days, we have the power, each of you has the power to turn the page and start writing the next chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.

What's been shattered is my belief in that America. More than anything else, I'm grieving that loss today.

Why I'm getting optimistic about this election

It's hard to over-state how much the Des Moines Register's Selzer poll shook things up by showing Harris/Walz leading in Iowa. None of us know if their numbers are on point. But here's what we DO know:

That's one of the ways to look at the Selzer poll. In early Sept, they had Trump up +4. By the end of Oct, they have Harris up +3. Since their methods didn't change, they captured something important. (2/2)

— Nancy LeTourneau 🇺🇦 (@Smartypants60) November 3, 2024

Whether or not Harris wins Iowa isn't as important as the fact that the same pollster found a 7 point swing in her favor in state that has been deeply red. WOW!

But let's forget about the polls for a minute. While Selzer gave us all a moment of hope, a consensus has been building over the last week or so that pollsters and aggregators really don't have a clue about what's going on. Here are the data points that make me optimistic.

Enthusiasm

According to Gallup, Democrats are seeing a surge in enthusiasm.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely driving the surge in enthusiasm nationally. In March, 55% of Democrats and Democratic leaners said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting; now, 78% are. Republicans and Republican leaners, who held a slight edge in enthusiasm in March, now trail Democrats by a significant margin, with their current 64% enthusiasm score up slightly from 59% in the spring.

That difference is palpable when you compare what is happening at Harris/Walz rallies to Trump's. 

Meanwhile here was Kamala’s rally, held at the exact coliseum. Both levels plus the floor full of eager supporters! https://t.co/ZJmaeIaIvg pic.twitter.com/w55RKfka1A

— V 🤎 (@veexoh_) November 3, 2024

Fundraising 

It's true that Trump has a lock on money from the oligarchs. The problem is that they only get one vote - like the rest of us. When it comes to small donors, they've abandoned his ship.

Donald Trump’s contributions from small-dollar donors have plummeted since his last bid for the White House...Fewer than a third of the Republican’s campaign contributions have come from donors who gave less than $200 — down from nearly half of all donations in his 2020 race...The total collected from small donors has also declined, according to the analysis. Trump raised $98 million from such contributors through June, a 40% drop compared to the $165 million they contributed during a corresponding period in his previous presidential race.

Here's how that compares to Harris/Walz:

Ground game

When it comes to GOTV, Trumpers are nowhere to be found.

Some battleground state Republicans say they’re worried they see little evidence of Donald Trump’s ground game — and fear it could cost him the election in an exceedingly close race.

In interviews, more than a dozen Republican strategists and operatives in presidential battlegrounds voiced serious concerns about what they described as a paltry get-out-the-vote effort by the Trump campaign, an untested strategy of leaning on outside groups to help do field work and a top-of-the-ticket strategy that’s disjointed from the one Republicans down the ballot are running.

In comparison, here's at taste of what the Democratic ground game looks like:

The Harris ground game strategy is at once obvious and sophisticated. Harris has more than 2,500 staff and 358 field offices across the battleground states, including more than 475 paid staffers in Pennsylvania. Since July, more than 110,000 people have volunteered with the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania, and those volunteers have knocked on nearly 2 million doors in October alone. One third of the Pennsylvania field offices are in rural counties that Trump carried by double digits in 2020, and where Harris’ goal is to hold down Trump’s margins. At the same time, the campaign is attempting to lock down the base in urban areas through long-term relational organizing targeted to hard-to-reach voters. The campaign realizes that Democrats have long taken Black and Latino votes for granted. Now, the campaign is treating them as persuasion targets as much as mobilization targets. And it believes the path to victory goes through the suburbs, where they hope college-educated voters and women could propel the VP to victory.

Harris/Walz voters are "fired up and ready to go!" Their enthusiasm is demonstrated by their willingness to donate both money and time to the campaign. So while I'm certainly not ready to celebrate yet, I'm at least starting to unclench my fists and breath a bit.