COUNTERPOINT: Election Analysis
/By Anonymous
November 13, 2024
Earlier this week I posted an after-election analysis called “Can Democrats Accept the Truth?”
It drew quite a bit of reaction; it was prescriptive in nature, while a lot of people were still in the middle of raw reaction. One of them was a friend who years ago moved from his big city to a smaller town in the Midwest; coastal liberals might consider this “living behind enemy lines.”
Below is his take on the election…
I write from a bright red county in a battleground state that Trump won in 2016 and again last week. The election was a surprise to the ME that lived through the short-lived Harris era, but it was no surprise to the ME who lived through most of this year.
A Trump victory was obvious to plenty of observers here starting back in the winter. It grew steadily more dire for a long time, only to be interrupted with an illusion of hope for a few months before the gut punch Tuesday night.
As for why Kamala Harris lost ... count the ways. If a profoundly overqualified white woman couldn't beat him 8 years ago, why did anyone think an overqualified Black and Asian woman would win this year?
So, don’t let anyone tell you sexism and racism wasn’t part of the winning equation for Der orangefarbene Anführer.
But it was more than that, of course. Perhaps the biggest influence was the right-wing media sphere, which is much stronger than I ever appreciated. There are people here in Red County, USA, educated people, mind you, who only consume FOX and The Epoch Times and listen to Joe Rogan or whatever their nondenominational evangelical pastor says.
And don’t forget Facebook. You and your kids probably don’t use it anymore, but it’s the best, free tool for organizing people. The Facebook of 2024 is an archipelago of private and public groups and pages designed to appeal to anyone's biases, but mostly biases on the right. If you’re blessedly ignorant of those spaces, good for you.
I thought back in 2020 that Biden might just be our Alexander Kerensky, the democratic centrist who ran Russia for a short period in 1917 before the Bolsheviks swept him away. Biden, indeed, was our four-year dose of sanity, destined to deposed by the revolutionary masses.
Maybe 2022 favored Democrats simply because Trump wasn't on the ballot, and a bit because Dobbs was so recent then.
What I objected to in your most recent analysis was any notion that the young men of this country need to be mollified or coddled or catered to. Speaking generally, the 20s and 30s men in this country have been nothing but coddled, allowed to remain children, playing video games and blasting the libs on Twitter, while women take care of them and orient their lives to serve the man/boy in the house. I see it here, where the ultra MAGA moms always seem to have an ambitionless male child who can't figure out how to navigate daily life.
I know your argument was more complex than that. But I just don't care about the young men. They came out for Trump because there's nothing an immature man loves more than a bully. When Trump is gone, they'll go back to their virtual porn and protein shakes ... until the next Trump comes along (mark my words ... Barron Trump in '48 or '52...)
So, Harris lost and it was Trump. Trump has been in our lives since I was a teen way back in the 1980s. He's a celebrity. And there's nothing Americans like more than a celebrity (Reagan, Schwarzenegger, that jerk from Minnesota, Jesse Ventura).
And Trump was clear on what he stood for -- mass deportations, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, and punishing his enemies.
Harris was for ... sanity and protecting the vulnerable. She had detailed policy proposals for elder care and so much more. But in the age of mass right wing media and an electorate numbed by outrage TV and manosphere podcasters, none of that amounts to a platform that voters will actually hear.
And since few voters live in a world where they were exposed to all the good the Biden administration has done in the past 4 years, they didn't have any reason to reward him by electing his VP.
We are in a post-literate world where the worst people's voices are amplified and anyone who says "ouch" is called a woke libtard. And that's thanks to Zuckerberg and Bezos and Murdoch and the Kochs and ... so many more.
The Democratic Party is broken ... for now. Yes, the working class (which is more than truck drivers in MAGA hats) needs to be won back over. My only worry is that no matter who or how the Dems come back, the media ecosystem won't allow their message to get out.
And that means we are left with a series of 2008s and 2020s, where economic crises and pandemics made worse by GOP mismanagement allow Dems to win just long enough to clean up the mess...before being tossed out by angry voters upset over not being allowed to insult gays or tell sexist jokes.
Sorry for the rant. The rational side of me just can't believe the American people did this. Even I had more faith in them, and I'm cynical through and through
But really, it’s no surprise. The failure to hold Trump accountable in 2021 put us on a trajectory to his return to power. Lots of blame to be shared for that.
If there is another presidential election in 2028, Trump will be the GOP nominee again, unless the well-done steak and vanilla ice cream diet he lives on results in the inevitable coronary. Don’t bother with quoting me the 22nd Amendment. With a cavalier rulebreaker the de facto king of America, the rules no longer apply …
Good luck, folks. We were warned, and the schadenfreude won’t be as much fun when all the victims of MAGA impunity are starving in the same camps.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
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