Hello at 6am my time here in The Netherlands. As I’m writing this, we’re probably a few hours away from the networks making the final calls, but I don’t see any pathway for Kamala Harris to come back and win this. As I understand I’m to be shortly quoted as saying in part of the Dutch media, Harris needs banana republic style margins in some of the remaining urban counties to pull this out of the bag now. And dear reader, I regret to tell you, she’s not going to get them.
I’m devastated. But I’ll probably write about that in future posts. For now, here is what you come here for - some explaining of America:
The story of the night is that Harris lost a little bit everywhere. Trump ran up his margins in rural areas while Democratic growth in urban cores and suburbs slowed or slightly reversed. The Harris play for female voters motivated by abortion and for white moderates either stalled out or was overwhelmed by Trump’s gains somewhere else.
Some people will argue that this means Harris had the wrong strategy, but I don’t agree. She correctly identified her major weakness - being viewed as too liberal - and moved to counter it. The question is, then, given that she had this weakness, should she have been the candidate. That will be litigated endlessly in the coming years.
Everyone got really excited early on yesterday about high turnout, and I got scolded on Twitter for pointing out that this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The problem is that the party’s coalitions have shifted from the days when lesser-educated voters, who are less likely to vote, overwhelmingly backed the Democrats. Back then, it was true that it was good if Democrats could increase turnout and get these people to the polls. Nowadays, they often vote Republican instead. That means that higher turnout no longer necessarily benefits the Democrats the way it used to, as we saw last night.
But then, I’d be careful about reading any major long-term trends into what happened last night. This election was a pretty broad rejection of the Democratic Party in a lot of different places, including safely Democratic states, indicating national malaise. The electorate was in the mood for change, a trend entirely consistent with what we’ve seen happen to pretty much every post-pandemic government which presided over high inflation and then face an election. Americans really, really did not like the economic situation over the last four years. In fact, they now remember Trump’s first term more favorably than they do Biden’s, largely for that reason.
In the face of this, I’m not sure any coalition juggling or different approach to messaging would have made a difference, although you can bet that Democrats will still be arguing about it in 2124. I still think it would have been best if Biden had resigned the presidency earlier this year, handed the reins to Harris, and given her the chance to chart a completely new course. That might have been the dramatic break with the past that was needed. But it was considered a fanciful suggestion earlier this year, and never got serious consideration.
Abortion certainly wasn’t the winning message for Democrats that many thought it would be. It may be that in states where abortion rights are currently protected, the issue feels less urgent. This was a lesson that Democrats took away from the midterms in 2022, when they lost ground in New York, but that few people wanted to discuss this time around.
But enough about the Democrats. Let’s talk about something else: how on earth people could vote for Trump. Wanting to kick the current government out because of high inflation is one thing, but voters who have opted for Trump have at the very least indicated that even if they are not active enthusiasts of overt racism and dictatorial tendencies, they at least don’t see them as disqualifying. We need to stare in the face the fact that Trump and Trumpism have just been ratified as an acceptable part of the American political spectrum - even after the insurrection, Madison Square Garden, and everything else.
If you’re familiar with the broad sweep of American history, that’s not surprising. But it’s depressing to see that at this point in that history, the forces of darkness are so much stronger than the forces of light. America cannot survive if it is constantly one bout of inflation away from incipient dictatorship. It might not even survive the next four years in a form that we recognize.
There’s plenty of work to be done to understand the consequences of last night not just for the United States, but also for the world. That’s what this newsletter is for, and I’ll keep writing it. But I’ll be a lot sadder - and a lot more scared - as I do it.
Thanks for your fantastic analysis throughout the election period - looking forward to reading what you have to say going forward. And as another Californian once said: Keep ya head up!
Thank you Dr. Gawthorpe for this piece and your posts during this election cycle. This outcome is beyond my comprehension, but it convinces me that the democratic experiment in America will probably not survive.
It still hurts to see a country that I love so much be lost, just like my family’s home country that is now a dictatorship. I don’t know how NATO and the world survives this either.