In the weeks ahead, we will hear all about why Trump lost.
In hindsight, it will be obvious.
Yesterday I described how pundits would explain a Kamala Harris loss. Today is Trump's turn.
Trump lost because:
1. He was doomed from the start. Trump's schtick and special mix of right wing populism have never had majority approval. He had support from a dedicated minority, which was enough to take over the GOP but not enough to win a nationwide majority.
2. Trump never expanded his base -- because he couldn't. Trump's core constituency demanded Rambo Trump. A move to a "kinder and gentler" style would be off-brand and unacceptable. Besides, Trump didn't want to change.
3. Trump had to stick to the Big Lie story of having won the 2020 election. He was trapped by having successfully sold it to his MAGA base. The story is a turnoff to a majority of voters.
4. His end-of-campaign messaging got sloppy. Americans are all too willing to hear racist and misogynist dog whistles, but Trump's campaign went a step too far with Haitian cat eaters, Latin American murderers, Puerto Rican garbage, and Harris as "low-IQ" and "mentally retarded."
5. The abortion issue. Trump's judges unleashed a monster. Red-state anti-abortion absolutists voted into law locally-popular measures that essentially banned abortion. An idea emerged: If Republicans have power they will go crazy on abortion. They are doing it already. This hurt Trump with female voters.
6. Economic events confounded the Trump message. Inflation kept dropping. Gasoline prices had fallen. Unemployment was low again. The Fed lowered interest rates. The U.S. economy was the strongest in the world. Trump is selling a message of economic disaster. His base believes it, but Trump did not get the clear confirmation from the real world to make this stick with marginal voters. There are "help wanted" signs everywhere. The stock market is up, home prices are up, and store shelves are full.
7. The Trump schtick has gotten old. Americans tend to give each party about eight years, then tire of them and let the other team have a chance. Trump had been out of office, but he had not left the scene. Indeed, he has remained the prime mover in American politics for nine years. Electing Trump means more-of-the-same, in the form of high-drama disruptive behavior. Trump is exhausting.
8. Trump looks old and sounds weird and wacky. Looked at with the eyes of voters under 30 or 35, Trump was a cranky old man stuck in the past.
9. Trump could not stay on message. Trump's criminality, sex crimes, and legal problems did not hurt him. He is understood by a majority of Americans to be a strong leader, not a good man. He said with confidence that he could bring a stronger economy, tariffs instead of taxes, lower inflation, and jobs returning to America. Trump can sell illusions. Trump kept muddling that message with the Big Lie and personal grievances.
10. The Supreme Court. Trump's great victory in packing the Supreme Court became a political negative. Trump judges come across as political and extreme. What next, if Trump gets four more years? Will they enforce the Comstock Act, criminalize homosexuality, reinstate school prayer, criminalize pornography, and remove citizenship from tens of millions of people born in the U.S. to parents here illegally?
11. Elon Musk. Musk is a hero to many. He gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump as money and as in-kind contributions via the Twitter/X feed. It was was a strategic error for Trump to let Musk be so prominent. Musk showed voters that Trump is conspicuously connected to the interests of billionaires. It muddled Trump's brand as a swamp drainer who fights for the little guy. Voters on the margin barely know of Peter Thiel and other billionaire Trump supporters, but they know Musk.
12. Character matters, at least a little. Trump represents swashbuckling independence, strength, and willingness to break through barriers to make change. Many Americans like that. But there is no denying that Trump flouts every virtue people would want in a spouse, an employee, or a leader. No search committee would hire a person with Trump's record of financial crimes, personal grift, sexual behavior, flagrant dishonesty, and public boorishness.
Trump presents like an inspirational national leader -- a Napoleon. Democracies find them exciting and tempting. Talented as Trump is in some matters, and popular as he is with a near-majority of Americans, he has profound character flaws, documented and attested to by his former closest associates. We have seen them. Trump cannot hide them. Kamala Harris is too new in the public eye for us to be certain that she is a trustworthy leader. But voters know Trump is not.
10 comments:
“Trump represents swashbuckling independence, strength, and willingness to break through barriers to make change.”
It’s sad but true that some people think Trump’s bullying projects “strength.” I think President Obama said it best:
“Trump’s fake macho thing is not what real strength is. Real strength is about working hard, taking responsibility, and telling the truth. It’s about being confident enough to treat everybody with dignity and respect. That is what we should want in our daughters and our sons, and that is what I want to see in the next President.”
There are a couple other ways Republicans think Trump could lose. 1) They’re convinced that Democrats have allowed migrants to enter the country so they can vote in the 2024 election. As Trump said during the debate: "They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that's why they're allowing them into our country." 2) Then there's dirtiest Democratic trick of all: The administration is using weather-control technology to create hurricanes and direct them at red states.
All good Republicans know the only way a disgusting crook like Trump could lose is if the election is rigged. When he does lose, it will be interesting to see what they do about it.
The election may not be completely over next Tuesday. After the results are in, there will be lawsuits galore. On and on it will go. Like a never-ending nightmare.
When you're President of the United States, you represent ALL THE PEOPLE, not just the ones you like. Trump fails to realize that and doesn't care. He's a crazy MF and, hopefully, next week we'll get rid of him for good.
It will probably wind up before the Supreme Court, which just allowed Virginia to purge its voter rolls even though it’s against federal law to do it this close to the election. Gee, I wonder who they’ll pick to be our next president.
Guantanamo or SuperMax with the other terrorists.
Given republicans denial of their January 6 riot and Joe Biden's 2020 victory,
I'm sure they'll ask Trump who?
Mike:
"Of the roughly 1,600 people removed from Virginia's voter rolls since Aug. 7, about 600 had indicated to the DMV that they were not U.S. citizens, according to Virginia's filing to the Supreme Court. The other 1,000 had presented documents to the DMV showing they were noncitizen residents, and were later identified as noncitizens through a federal database, the state's filing said."
From:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-revives-virginias-voter-roll-purge-1600-purported-noncitizens-2024-10-30/
So why didn't the DMV do its job with "motor voter" registrations? Probably other states with clerical errors, too.
Like Oregon, perhaps.
M2:
The voter purge has also erroneously ensnared U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/29/nx-s1-5169204/virginia-noncitizen-voter-purge
Mike:
A good point, but...it was the voter who also caused the problem for failing to change her address.
Yes, errors occur. Sometimes with the elections office, sometimes with the DMV, and sometimes with the voter.
Yes, it's a crime to vote if one is not a citizen, and yes a voter should not vote more than once.
A lot of this could be cleared up if voters were required to update or confirm their registration well before the elections.
Here in Florida, I always get an absentee ballot, as does my wife. Each January, we are required to revalidate our registration. We can do that online or at the Bureau of Elections office. We received ballots several weeks before the primary and the election. Those ballots are also marked "Do Not Forward". We can mailing our ballots, or drop off at a ballot drop box. I did the same when I lived in Oregon, long before vote-by-mail became the norm.
We dropped off our ballot the other day at a polling location. It was manned by election workers who checked the outside of our security envelope to make sure it was signed and dated. We also included our email address and cell phone number as we opt in to track our ballots online to make sure they were received on time and counted.
There now are other challenges to the voting process in many states. For example, the preference is that the elections office received ballots by close of business on election day. Some states accept ballots after election day IF ballot is mailed and postmarked no later than election day.
Several years ago, Oregon started providing franked envelopes to return ballots by mail. Unfortunately, there is a flaw with that method as franked mail is not postmarked with a date. I knew this, so I asked the Secretary of State for examples of postmarked ballots delivered via the USPS. I have written correspondence from the Oregon SoS office that they were unable to provide a picture of a postmarked ballots.
Other than their word, there was no way to prove a ballot that was counted, was actually received and postmarked.
Back in the day when voters had to provide their own stamp if they wished to return their ballot by USPS, a postmarked envelope was easy to see.
Ballot boxes are provided here in Florida, but they are required to be secure and manned to prevent damage to ballots by troublemakers. Seems Washington and Oregon have learned recently that dropboxes are susceptible to troublemakers.
Bottom line: regardless of your political affiliation, there are still some slight problems with making voting easy, safe, and secure.
There need to be policies and procedures to make sure voting is safe, secure, and valid.
The point is that purging the polls is against federal law this close to the election, but of course, if Republicans and their partisan judges cared about the law, Trump would have been tried long ago.
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