There was a sweep of swing states.
The GOP swept Congress, but this is not what CNN calls a “Big Tent” Republican Party
Kamala Harris got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Why was turnout 10 million votes lower
There were no third-party effects
Raising a billion+ dollars made no difference
107 days seems now to have been in the opinion of David Plouffe too deep a hole to have dug out of.
Gender and Race were determinative. A Woman of Color was a hill too far.
It was not inflation. The economy despite the polling claims is better than at any point during the Trump administration.
What kinds of people defected from voting, considering the irony of tariff policy increasing prices. Are these voters who stayed home, a combination of ‘uncommitted’ supporters of Gaza, anti-miscegenationists, antisemites, racists, misogynists, casual 2020 voters who were even more unhappy with the 2024 choices, or future fascists too lazy to vote.
As of 2023, there are 21 countries that require their citizens to vote, with varying levels of enforcement. Some of these countries include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, and Brazil.
Donald Trump’s existential threat to US and global democracy raises the question of what the Democratic party was prepared to invest to avoid such an outcome. Judging by Kamala Harris’s campaign, the answer, it seems, was not very much. No Medicare for All, no green new deal, no mass provision of social housing (or just advocating rent caps). Not much, then, to win over the crucial segment of low-wage America that supports Trump.
Since Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, progressive voices have warned that to beat Trump next time, the Democratic party needed to drain the swamp of poverty and inequality that amplifies Trump’s faux populism. Instead, they repeatedly placed their hopes in legalist measures to put him out of the race, thereby “proving” to Trump’s base that they had more in common with elites than with the masses. The Democratic party has squandered this opportunity, and the poor and downtrodden will pay the price.
Prof Benjamin Selwyn
www.theguardian.com/...
