By Michael Haughey
November 12, 2024
The Democrats are wringing their hands and analyzing exit polls to try to understand why people voted for the other candidate in the 2024 presidential election. They won’t find the most important answers there. The other candidate received about the same number of votes as in his previous election loss. He got a little over 75 million votes in 2020 while Biden got a little over 81 million and about 51.3% of the total vote. So far in 2024 (as of November 8, 2024, morning news) he has a little over 74 million and Harris a little over 70 million. After California and Arizona finish their counts there will probably be a little over 75 million for the other candidate and a little over 73 million for Harris. It is very likely that the end result will be a victory for the other candidate with less than 50% of the total vote. That is clearly not a mandate, but more of a message to work with all sides. To the Democrats it is a different kind of message. The difference is the people who didn’t vote. While perhaps not as easy to analyze, that is where many of the answers can be found. Most likely there are many reasons.
The polls before elections tend to sample “likely” voters and exit polls sample those who have voted. But this election was lost by the non-voters who stayed home or didn’t vote for president and the “unlikely” voters. It will be interesting to see the final numbers of people who voted but left the presidential selections blank.
The answers lie in the reasons many 2020 Biden voters felt in 2024 that no candidate adequately addressed their concerns and needs. That apparently overrode the fact that the other candidate was and is a grifter, a felon, a narcissist, a placater, and a person of few if any moral values.
Placing blame of course accomplishes little if anything at all. Understanding what happened and learning from that is important. No one opinion or analysis will be 100% correct, not the least this musing. Here it is anyway. While there are hundreds or more reasons for the loss, only a few will be mentioned in this overview.
There is of course Gaza. Failure of Biden to put his foot down and stop sales, at the very least, of offensive weapons for the destruction of Gaza most certainly played a role. Harris said nothing consequential on that issue. Supporting the efforts of one man to prosecute a cruel war just to stay out of jail is unconscionable. Voters get that and a lot of them stayed home or didn’t vote for any presidential candidate.
Biden got blamed for pulling out of Afghanistan when that was set in motion by the previous administration by agreeing to a short deadline that was guaranteed to end in disaster. It did.
Then there is the lack of effective messaging about what Biden did accomplish. He was waist deep in the swamp repairing the damage done by the previous administration and didn’t have the bandwidth to toot his own horn. The Democratic Party could have assigned a task force to that effort years before the election.
To be clear, the previous administration pretended that Covid-19 wasn’t a big deal. While unpopular, quarantines are one of the methods known to slow the spread of a highly contagious disease at least until it is understood more. Wearing masks also had some degree of effectiveness. The vaccine craze is a marketing phenomenon. With the pharmaceutical industry advertising more than any other industry how can anyone trust them? The USA once had research performed in universities that was a least somewhat independent. Now it is almost exclusively industry grant funded. Saying their products are proven by the studies doesn’t mean much anymore when there are essentially no independent studies. That’s not to say that all vaccines are unnecessary – quite the contrary. Some can be lifesavers that justify the risks. Another effective strategy is healthy diets and immune strengthening. The right vitamins and a healthy diet can go a very long way toward reducing the severity of Covid-19 and other health maladies. The typical American diet is just asking for trouble. The bottom line is that half a million Americans died needlessly. How quickly we forget.
The result of Covid-19 was a substantial slowdown in the economy worldwide. Demand dropped, especially for gasoline since so many people simply stayed home, resulting in essentially no inflation. That was Covid-19, not some accomplishment of the previous administration. The Biden Administration pushed an infrastructure bill that got the economy going again and better than probably any other nation. Joe Mansion insisted that it be named the “Inflation Reduction Act” which was about the worst possible name. Infrastructure Act or Jobs Act would have been 1000 times better. When people went back to work and demand came back, products were now scarce. The unavoidable result is inflation. But people were working and a serious recession or depression was avoided. That’s an accomplishment worth touting.
Also worth noting is that Biden’s accomplishments occurred in the face of an extremely obstructionist congress. The fact the he was able to accomplish anything at all is quite remarkable.
Biden’s age is claimed as a factor, but the other guy has his own cognitive issues. The debate of course revealed that Biden should have stepped down long before the Democratic primaries. Isn’t hindsight great?
The “Woke” agenda is a challenging one. It would be surprising if more than a few people could give a coherent and correct definition if such definition even exists. People tend to be scared of things they don’t understand. A more gradual, quieter, non-insulting approach would seem to be better. Then there is adding pronouns to signatures which fits the weird category for many people. Rather than scream about it, just be it. Lead by example, not by insults. Good chance that affected the election.
Race and ethnic tensions are more than a bit of a third rail. While the history is largely correct, the reality is that there will always be scapegoating as long as there is a large wealth gap. The wealth gap is the underlying problem regardless of race or ethnicity. Rather than applying the label of racism, it may be more accurate, and certainly more effective, to focus on the wealth gap issue. The other candidate talked to the poor white males and got their support even though his policies would do the opposite of improving their economic plight. There needs to be more explanation of the fact that trickle down doesn’t work, giving tax breaks to megacorporations and the wealthy doesn’t help reduce the wealth gap, and that voting for wealthy to be in charge does the opposite of creating opportunity for everyone else to become wealthy. One good example is Clarence Thomas on the Supreme court. Yes that is a milestone, but is certainly not an accomplishment for disadvantaged groups.
The environment and increasingly global warming are becoming very important to most people. Yet politicians seem afraid of the subject because fixing problems can cost money.
Near the end of the election campaign, partnering with and soliciting Republican politicians and voters was an odd move. That probably alienated more liberals than enticed conservatives.
One message emerging form the analysis of exit polls is that Democrats need to move more to the center. Seriously addressing environmental and global warming issues are still “left” issues although there is support among some true conservatives. An analysis of the “unlikely” voters might find support for environmental and global warming issues. The left-right divide is getting complicated by issues like the “woke” agenda. That has been overshadowing traditional “left” interests such as social democracy that really could find more widespread support.
The anti-government craze that gained steam during Reagan’s term has hidden the fact that the policies that are so hated are driven by the megacorporations and the wealthy that fund politicians. The missing and obscured message is that the government is our only protection against the policies and practices of the megacorporations and the wealthy.
Forcing Bernie Sanders out in prior years by working against him in the primaries rather than remaining neutral turned off a substantial voting bloc.
The two party system exists for a reason. Both major parties are heavily pro-megacorporate. One is better than the other in some areas, the other better in other areas, and neither provides a real choice or a real voice. Multiple parties could help. Instant Runoff Voting, now coined as Ranked Choice Voting, could facilitate adding more voices and more opinions to the mix. More voices in the simplest sense means more options for better solutions. No more claiming that heart-felt votes somehow swayed the election the wrong way. Elections are largely controlled locally, so here is a real chance to have a positive effect without needing to change the national systems.
Changing the two party system to a true multi party system will face headwinds. The real wealth that controls world affairs seems to like stability. They profit from both sides in a war. They will probably do whatever it takes to maintain the stability that keeps them wealthy and powerful. We mostly don’t even know their identity. We know who are the wealthiest individuals, but not so much the wealthiest families. Maybe stability isn’t inherently bad, except when it comes at the expense of most everyone else and results in the overwhelming lack of access to a good living and all that entails.
Open Primaries were coupled with a weird style of Ranked Choice Voting in Colorado in a ballot measure this election. Open Primaries would probably result in only wealthy individuals being able to run for office and would substantially reduce the ability of parties to craft a political philosophy to support different opinions and voices. Colorado voters turned that one down. That doesn’t mean opposition to a real and clean Ranked Choice Voting measure, just to the weird one coupled with Open Primaries.
No discussion is complete without acknowledging the massive efforts to take away the right to vote. The other candidate was in a way correct that voting system is “rigged”, but it is largely rigged in his favor. Probably to the tune of in excess of 6 million votes. Voter caging is one common method (the practice of sending mail to registered voters and challenging their eligibility to vote if the mail is returned as undeliverable or if the voter doesn’t respond, and in some states automatically purging the voters). Another is voter purging (removing names from the voter rolls, or the list of registered voters, for a variety of questionable reasons). The Help America Vote Act of 2002 allows provisional ballots for voters who show up and find out that someone took their name off the voter registration. But it doesn’t require counting of those provisional ballots. That is at the core of Jill Stein’s lawsuits regarding the 2016 election. Do a deep dive on that and you will be amazed (and perhaps dejected). The Federal judges ultimately decided that to rule correctly and require counting of the provisional ballots at issue in those cases would overturn the election and allow the people to see the dirty laundry. They couldn’t have that, so they ruled against democracy. There are many other methods of effectively taking away the right to vote, or at least making it very difficult. Perhaps more will be said in another musing.
The Democratic party shot themselves in the foot by claiming that the 2020 election was fair and unbiased and so on. It wasn’t. The system was rigged in favor of the Republican candidate. Has been for some time. In addition to caging and purging, a number of other practices have rigged the system. Polling places have been closed or reduced in number in communities that lean Democratic. The resulting long lines and long travel distance reduces the Democratic vote. Until recently most voting machines were easily hacked or pre-programmed to flip votes and many had no paper trail that could be audited (black box voting). Many States have now fixed that problem with auditable paper ballots, and Colorado automatically does a statistical audit of the paper ballots. Exit polls varying dramatically from pre-vote polls are used by the USA in foreign countries to determine if an election is rigged, yet now the claim is that exit polls are no longer valid. Crosscheck was (is?) a program where voters of the same name, typically common minority names, were (are?) purged under the false assumption that they were all the same person. For example, purging everyone named Garcia. Gerrymandering of course gives Republicans a huge advantage since most districts are drawn by legislatures, and most legislatures are controlled by Republicans. There are laws requiring voting at home residence polling places which makes it difficult for students to vote. Then there is the Electoral College that gives a large advantage to Republicans in most presidential elections since so many lower population states are Republican even though the majority of the population is not. Now that the other candidate has “won” the Democrats will look foolish even asking for investigations into whether the 2024 election was rigged. To be clear, no evidence seems to have emerged to support any behind the scenes monkeying with the election machines. But it is curious that we have been conditioned to believe that polls are now seriously flawed. It is interesting at least that the polls were so far off and that both the other candidate and the other candidate funder Elon (the wealthiest individual in the world?) both had significant motives for tampering with the election machinery. One does have to wonder, but the Democratic Party can’t because they declared that elections are fair and secure.
Finally, and most importantly, there is money. The obscene amount of money in politics is unhealthy for a democracy. It is not just Citizens United. The role played by big money was monstrous long before that even though it is many times worse now. Public funded elections with NO private money would go a long way towards enabling a true democracy. Getting there is not going to be easy, particularly with the ridiculous Supreme Court ruling that corporations are “people”. Absurd! Perhaps start by not just buying the cheapest product. Insist on quality comparisons. When is the last time you saw an ad for a car that even mentioned one item of quality? Then pay attention to the money behind the product. Do profits end up in political ads or influence? It is the money, so consider spending yours in a way that supports your long term aspirations and philosophies. How we spend our money has political impact.
The electoral college creates the illusion that there is a mandate, or widespread support for the winner. It is magnified by the red-blue maps that show so much red. But a true mandate would be more like 75% or so of eligible voters in a free and fair election with no rigging or monetary influence. The USA is a very long way from that. There are many reasons voters stayed home or didn’t vote for president. This musing touches on a few of them. Lots of good articles are being written on other reasons. It will be a challenge to separate those from the misinterpretations of the election results. Restoring our democracy may depend on doing that successfully. Copyright 2024: Creative Commons CC BY-SA
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