First and foremost, it was about the economy and immigration, pure and simple. Perhaps that was obvious to some people, but while it wasn't lost on me as I knew that as many as a two thirds of the polled voters listed either the economy or immigration as their number one issue, I truly thought that since inflation was back to pre-pandemic numbers, the labor market was strong, consumer spending continued at a robust pace, and the the stock markets had broken their all time highs dozens of times this year, while encounters at the border had dropped to a similar number as before the pandemic, voters would also consider how we view Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the January 6th attack on our Capitol and subsequent vow to pardon some of those attackers, the bromance of Trump with the authoritarians of the world, and his personal criminal convictions.
Clearly, a majority of voters did not share my perspective that those issues were important.
In fact, one could even say that many voters thought that Trump's associations with strong leaders, his defense of the patriots who were fighting for their country in protest of a stolen election, and his total denial of guilt and commitment to fight all indictments, cemented their attraction to them.
I spent some time before starting this post to look at some of the numbers from the election. Here are a few specifics.
In 2020, Biden received a little over 81 million votes, Trump a little over 74 million, and Biden won the electoral college 306 to 232.
While not a complete flip, and with still at least 6 million votes to count in California, Washington and Oregon, states which Harris won, I expect that when all votes are counted, Trump will have earned over 76 million votes (plus 2 million or so from 2020) while Harris will have accumulated in the 74 million range, minus 7 million as compared to Biden in 2020.
So, besides indicating that more people voted for Trump than in 2020, literally millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home, in addition to those who switched their vote. The fact that it looks like less people will have voted in this election than 2020, is rather depressing.
A really striking analysis as to how poorly Harris did becomes clearer when looking at the Senate races.
There were four Senate races that resulted in a gain for the GOP, West Virginia, Montana, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Because the West Virginia seat was a lock for the Republican candidate, let's look at the other three.
In Montana, Trump won the state by 118K votes, while the incumbent senator, John Tester, lost by only 45K votes. In other words, a net 73K voters split their ticket, voting Democratic for Senator, Republican for President.
This pattern is the same for Ohio where the incumbent senator, Sherrod Brown lost by 210K votes while Harris lost by 640K votes (net difference of 430K), and in Pennsylvania, where the incumbent senator, Bob Casey lost by 40K votes while Harris lost by 145K votes (net difference of 105K).
Quick math tells us that Harris under performed in those three states by a combined total of 73K + 430K + 105K which equals 608,000 votes.
As for the senate seats where the Democratic candidate won (or will most likely win if Arizona's numbers hold) but Harris lost, the totals are also prominent.
Nevada, Harris lost by 45K, Rosen won by 20K, net 65K
Wisconsin, Harris lost by 30K, Baldwin won by 30K, net 60K
Michigan, Harris lost by 80K, Slotkin won by 20K, net 100K
Arizona, Harris is losing by 182K, Gallego leads by 35K, net 147K
So that is 372,000 votes the Democratic Senate candidates received above Harris, plus the 608,000 she under performed in those Senate races that flipped, and we are just shy of one million votes (980K).
Remember, forgetting the Senate losses, if Harris gets the same amount of votes as the Democratic senatorial candidates in Michigan and Wisconsin, she gains 35 electoral votes, and if she gets the same as the Pa senate candidate plus another 30K, her electoral total goes from 226 to 270, which means victory, regardless of whether Trump wins Arizona which would give him 268.
Now, please don't misunderstand me, as you may be thinking that I am about to blame the loss on the candidate, Kamala Harris.
Which I don't.
In fact, in some ways, these numbers are a credit to the almost one million voters who decided to split their vote, who put country over party loyalty, even if their decision does not reflect my perspective.
We will never know if Biden would have received a number of votes closer to what he got in 2020, should he have stayed in the race. We do know that for two of the demographics which helped Trump, Hispanic men and young white men, many seemed to make their decision based on the simple fact that Harris was a woman. Would they have stayed with Biden? Assuming my first assumption, that the economy and immigration were the big drivers, then no, as Harris was not able to extricate herself from the belief that the Biden Administration was at fault for inflation and the record illegal immigrant surge.
Could a different (male) Democratic candidate have retained some of those votes by being less associated with Biden? Perhaps, but that imaginary candidate would still have had Democratic roots, and still been portrayed as a part of the problem, just as all the ads against Harris merely replaced Biden's name with hers, so it would have been with any other candidate.
In retrospect then, it seems to me that the Democratic presidential candidate was fated to lose this election due to inflation and immigration.
Before continuing, I must note here that Harris has conceded, and that Biden has told the country that he will work to ensure a peaceful and productive transition, two things that Trump never did. The good news then is that we will be spared two months of election lies, ridiculous lawsuits, and uncertainty as to whether Trump's win will be certified on January.
And not only will the majority of Democrats (and I say that knowing that there will be some who will copy the undemocratic posturing and rhetoric displayed by the GOP four years ago), honor the election results despite their disappointment, the losing candidate, Kamala Harris will preside over the certification of Trump, in direct contradiction of how that process was marred by members of the Republican party who denied Biden's win, and the lies of mass fraud which led to the horrific attack on our nation's Capitol.
As a loyal Democrat, I applaud these actions which have cemented my view that despite occasional differences in national Democratic policies, I will always remain a Democrat, will never be able to vote for a party which supported a candidate who spat on our Constitution because he wasn't man enough to admit he lost. Talk about a lack of strength!
Ok, so where does the Democratic party go from here?
First, let's remember that the last GOP candidate who won both the electoral college and popular vote was George Bush 2, and that the following election, only four years later in 2008, featured an overwhelming victory by Barrack Obama who won the electoral college 365 to 173 and the popular vote by 9.5 million votes, a much bigger mandate than Trump has been claiming this past week.
Now, of course, part of that big turnaround was due to the 2008 economic meltdown (yes, back to the economy again), and we certainly don't hope something similar happens again.
But, assuming Trump doesn't do something unheard of (when did he ever do that, right?), then we should be starting from scratch in terms of leadership and message. Hopefully my party will have an open primary, and will not assume the country is ready for a woman president. While I believe that both Clinton and Harris were far better choices than Trump, it seems awfully clear that the American electorate is still unwilling to hand over the White House to a woman, which means my dream of having a black, lesbian, atheist, woman president will not occur in my lifetime.
And so if it must be a man, hopefully one who is less than 50 years old, and can articulate the party's platform, policy objectives, and provide cogent reasons why electing a Democratic president is best for America.
Which brings us to message.
While I thought it ludicrous to claim that Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets, the message that illegal immigration had been out of control is what the voter heard. And they were right. In an effort to be more humane than Trump, Biden lost sight of the fact that we didn't have the infrastructure to assimilate two to three million immigrants, legal or otherwise, per year. Not enough judges to process asylum claims, not enough beds to house those waiting for a decision, not enough border patrol agents to help direct those crossing illegally to the proper places, not enough support and cooperation with the states that were stuck with the initial influx or those which proved to be the final destination of some of those immigrants.
So, while separating children from their parents was horrific and forcing immigrant families to live in refugee camps for long periods of time while their asylum claims were processed as occurred during Trump's administration, was less than charitable, allowing the undocumented to put strains on local communities, both at the border and thousands of miles away, was ineffective.
And a losing election strategy, as it turned out.
I'm not sure when it will come to pass that a proper immigration system will be developed but in the meantime the democratic party must hone its message to support legal immigration by providing a much more efficient method for those crossing legally to become productive citizens, while emphasizing that those who cross illegally will be unable to attain that same level of acceptance.
More carrots, but some sticks as well, but sticks that deny pathways to citizenship, as opposed to inhumane rhetoric and treatment.
As for inflation, it is mostly under control at this point but I don't feel that Biden and Harris made enough of a point to admit that some of their policies added to its rise. It doesn't matter that most economists believe that inflation was inevitable after the pandemic, looking the American people in the eys and saying that perhaps we could have addressed the issue more quickly, may have stemmed some of the anger.
Perhaps that is my bias as it has always bothered me that Trump never admits any mistakes. I prefer people, whether family, friends or politicians, to admit when they erred as it is only when one admits a mistake that we can know that they will try something different next time, that they understand how their blunder hurt.
Along that line, I found that one of the most effective Trump ads was the one where Harris was asked if she would have done anything different as compared to Biden and she answers that she can't think of anything. Now, I know her answer reflected her loyalty to Biden, but we were past that, it was time to begin the differentiation, and the admission of some mistakes can be made in a way that is not mean or spiteful, but provides the voter with the knowledge that Harris would have pursued some alternate paths.
Those two big issues aside, at the end of the day the biggest focus must be to stop the migration of working class folks to the GOP.
I would like to think that connecting policy with the reduction of the cost of goods, and emphasizing the difference between legal and illegal immigrants and how they should be treated moving forward, might start that process.
And it is certainly possible that Trump may go too far with his dark intentions towards the undocumented within our borders. Should there actually be mass incarcerations and deportations, families ripped apart due to mixed citizenship status, higher prices from the reduction of the labor that does the base work in America related to the agriculture, meat processing, landscaping and restaurant industries, democrats may have less to do in winning back the everyday American should the economy struggle and Trump's immigration policies turn out to be just cruel.
I wrote extensively about student debt forgiveness in the past, specifically concerning the fact that this topic should have been presented as student debt interest forgiveness, the message being that students who have long ago paid off the principle of their debt in addition to hundreds/thousands of dollars in interest, would be the focus of any debt forgiveness plan.
Again, better message.
Same with gun control. The reality is, the vast percentage of Americans do not wish violence to come to their neighborhood. Violence control should be the message, through the use of laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, mentally unstable individuals, people with past violent acts, etc. Connecting that concept with the reason for better background checks, red flag laws that allow police to investigate and confiscate, if necessary, guns to prevent violence, and removing assault rifles from our streets to make those who defend our laws as well as our citizens more safe, should be the emphasis.
Remember, while this was certainly a disastrous election, at the end of the day, Harris lost Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by a total of about 250,000 votes.
Surely those voters can be flipped with a message that paints the democratic party as strong on the economy via infrastructure projects that provide jobs, reduced medical costs due to the allowance of Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, a balanced energy policy that incentivizes green jobs while stabilizing prices at the pump, and cognizance of the need for a border policy that provides encouragement for those seeking opportunity in America to follow the rules while emphasizing that lack of adherence to those rules will reduce such opportunity, while also treating those who have come here illegally in years past with humanity if they have followed the rules since.
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