The People Shifted to Trump

There are an endless number of election post-mortems today, focusing on how Trump overcame his 'baggage' (mostly people didn't believe the media's tales about him) and why he won. I'm going to talk briefly about why Democrats lost. 

The clear evidence of the vote was that the people shifted towards Trump almost across the board. College-educated? Up four points. Over 25% black? Up four points. Over 25% Latino? Nine points. Large population over 65? 4.9 points. Large population 18-35? 5.6 points. Literally not one county in America voted for the Democratic candidate at higher rates than in 2020.

Why did this happen? Because the Democrats refused to trust democracy. They had the chance to admit that the public had serous doubts about the age and mental stability of their candidate, Joe Biden. They could have held a primary to consult the people about who they should run instead. Had they done so, that primary would have produced a candidate with broad popular support among Democrats, who could contest the general electorate for its approval. 

Instead, they did everything they could to avoid democracy. The elites decided that no primary was to be held, and they did everything they could to prevent one. This included extensive lawsuits to keep opponents off the ballot, including the scion of the Kennedy family, RFK Jr. If they had let him compete against Biden and lose, he would have endorsed them after it was clear he had been fairly beaten in an election. Because they did it with trickery, lawfare, and even the infiltration of his campaign, he went over to Trump and threw his support there instead. 

Then, when it became crystal clear that Biden wasn't up to another term, the party once again refused to solicit popular opinion or input, and forced a replacement without debate or any sort of election. She lost because she never had any public support to begin with, because she never won a single election -- not a primary, not a single delegate to be a Democratic Presidential candidate, not this year and not ever. None of the process of building public support, working out what the people want and need from their candidate, none of that ever happened. They just tried to ram it through without consultation. 

Having done that, of course, she didn't really campaign. She hid from the press and from the people, took scripted questions that were designed to protect her from scrutiny, and didn't do the work of getting out there and getting to know the ordinary people, finding out what they need, winning their support. 

Meanwhile, that's all Trump did. He did democracy better than them. Much better, because he was the only one who even tried it. 

UPDATE: Or possibly there's a simpler explanation: ~15MM votes just evaporated from 2020, compared to other recent elections. 

6 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

The graph from zero hedge is incomplete, representing the count at the time, with many votes still uncounted. The full total should show something similar, but not as dramatically.

Christopher B said...

Poking around I ran across mention that California still has about 8 million ballots to count so that's a good chunk of the difference right there. Harris is currently closing in on 69M votes and Trump has almost matched his 74M from 2020 so the difference is declining.

Grim said...

It'll be interesting to see if the final difference turns out to be a plausible number, or statistical evidence of manipulation. After all, statistical evidence is all the evidence you normally get in these cases; we never had a forensic audit of Saddam's elections to prove he didn't get 95% of the vote, or Putin's either.

Anonymous said...

Truth.

Susan wiles does not call our Govt a "Democracy" she calls it a "Republic"

“I said, ‘I don’t want this to continue.’ I think it seriously will damage our republic and who among that group can really have the fortitude to shift what I’ve seen happening over all these years?” Susan Wiles said.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/07/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-susie-wiles-00188391

Dad29 said...

Literally not one county in America voted for the Democratic candidate at higher rates than in 2020

Since the '20 had abnormally high "turnout," (really--fraud), it is impossible for Harris to overperform Biden. 81 million votes, and all that.........

Grim said...

Susan wiles does not call our Govt a "Democracy" she calls it a "Republic"

That's not what is under discussion here. The government is a republic; the work of going to the people, asking for their votes, understanding their problems, building a base of support that trusts you, that's the work of democracy. That's what Trump did that Harris never even tried to do.

That isn't actually part of the government -- Trump isn't in the government, and wasn't while he was doing all this voter-persuasion and base-building. Democracy is how you get elected to serve as an officer in the republic.