Trump win means woke fever broken?
Humility – they hadn’t displayed any before the election, but now their candidate had lost, heavily, they were recommending it for themselves and their side – humility. Screaming that Trump was a fascist, a racist, was a threat to democracy, wants to be a dictator on day one, wants to terminate the constitution, wants Project 2025 – Google it, will put a 20% sales tax on everything, will end Obamacare, will end social security, will end NATO, etc. – where did those 9 on the Richter Scale messages get them? Second place is where it got them. The electorate rejected the critique as hyperbole. Going by last time they didn’t think he was quite as crazy as what the Dems were saying. And the trans stuff, alphabet people with died hair and septum rings, it’s a bit OTT for the OGs.
The left – if that is what they are in the US – are all talking humility after Trump’s win and the Republicans gaining the Senate and likely the House. They are saying it, but being it is another thing completely. Professor Lichtman is a classic of the type.
I wrote a predictions section in my last post (02/11/2024):
The betting markets say Trump. The opinion polling says it is even in the swing States and close to even nationally. Lichtman’s Keys can be read either way, but my assessment is the Keys favour Trump. The early voting seems to be higher for registered Republicans than registered Democrats, but the Democrats seem to have a stronger ground game. Trump has made some headway with Black men, but has Harris made just as much headway with White women? Has either target demographic been pulled enough to slide if not flip?
Lichtman had an online show yesterday making a final “assessment” (he hates the word prediction) forecasting Harris will take all the “blue wall” mid-west/rust-belt states and win the electoral college handily 302 – 236. My forecast, based on the betting markets, the opinion polling, the rolling early voting returns and the media coverage is that Trump will win both Arizona and Nevada, win one or both of North Carolina and Georgia, and two of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania (and might pull an upset in New Hampshire) which would deliver Trump the Presidency.
I forecast the Trump win correctly, and did better than I expected (but was about three points off in NH). Trump was paying $1.55 when it was posted.
Lichtman on his election night live podcast with his son went through several stages of grief as his Keys got smashed. The trolling was so bad they put on members only comments. At one point, after calling North Carolina for Trump, he had his hands clasped together as if praying. He had put calling Georgia off because his wife was text nagging him every two minutes to keep hope alive, and him and his son looked at it fifty different ways but couldn’t find the maths, so he had to call Georgia for Trump, then there was just the 3 blue wall states plus Arizona and Nevada. That’s when he develops a thousand-yard stare, the empty desolation in the eyes, non-engagement, just stunned.
The blue dots around Philly were shrinking and his son kept reading out the heartbreaking numbers. Pennsylvania was going and Wisconsin looked bad too. His son said he felt scared for the first time tonight. Dad couldn’t understand. It was “all weird” and didn’t make any sense. His son leaves for a toilet break, so there’s this empty chair in the bottom right hand inset and there’s just Lichtman in the bottom left hand inset having a quiet mental breakdown. The map is all solid red or going red. Unblinking he stares into what must be a computer screen. Silence. He’s in shock. It’s America so we’re waiting for him to suddenly put a gun in his mouth.
He refused to call Pennsylvania (because that would mean the end of Harris) so he made a few very loud stage yawns, said he was tired, and would leave when the hour came up which was less than ten minutes away. He was frustrated by the trolling on his Youtube channel where haters had bought memberships so they could keep commenting. “Just ignore them, son!” “I am, Dad!”. He wasn’t calling 5 of the 7 swing states even though some networks were calling Pennsylvania. He was having problems processing the destruction of his professional career. His son prompted him to make a response before he walked off:
“Democracy is gone”
“[Trump is a] figurehead for the billionaires and Vance. He’s too lazy to actually govern.”
“Democracy is precious, but like all precious things it can be destroyed – and typically destroyed from within and throughout the 21st century democracy has been in decline everywhere around the world and America has now fallen in step.”
“It’s unfathomable, I’ll have an explanation when we ramp up again.”
He could not bring himself to say the words: Harris lost, or the words Trump won. He had more or less given up the pretense that it was all too close to call. He knew it was over. He dismissed himself at 1am EST so he was sure to miss Trump’s victory speech (which started at 2:30am EST).
Lichtman made a podcast the next day (08/11/2024) to Lichtmansplain that “a set of events [could] change the pattern of history” and was arguing it was a special case:
* “[Democrats] trashed their sitting President – never happened before, unique.”
* Made contest key problematic. Step down before the convention? – never.
* Extraordinary Harris nomination.
* Keys premised on “rational pragmatic electorate” to evaluate incumbent government. Trends exploded: disinformation, nothing remotely on these scales, Musk/Twitter.
* Disinformation.
* Xenophobia
* Misogyny
* Racism
* “Strange” fall-off in voting turnout.
* Hard to explain difference between Harris and abortion referenda.
* “Never seen numbers like this in American history”
* “So much hate and so many trolls” Members only comments.
* “I don’t think I called anything wrong… at the time was the reasonable call”
Either he called the Keys wrong this time round, or the Keys themselves are now wrong.
His calls were possible calls, but there were also other, more reasonable calls that a non-partisan, more objective person could have made that would turn out to have been right.
As for his analysis – it’s your typical Democrat cry-bully finger-pointing and blaming without self-reflection. Humility? No, rather excuses. Nothing novel about the elite blaming the masses for not appreciating their scripture. He thinks the electorate made an irrational decision because of Twitter. But if he wants to talk media, the mainstream media have been anti-Trump for eight years and he won despite the bias.
Lichtman was taken aback, but the Dems never had a good candidate in Biden or in Harris. At least she had a pulse. To give her some credit, Harris was a disciplined performer who managed to drastically subdue her air-headed giggling for the campaign and was favourite in the betting markets for a few weeks after the cats and dogs debate. She just never seemed to know what she was going to do. She was going to have a Republican in her cabinet, was going to invite her enemies to the table, was going to have an advisory council, was going to sign Bills from Congress, going to… rely on others to do everything on her to-do list of things that should already have started four years ago. Like her constantly throwing her hands up in the air it signified empty space, not substance. Men especially didn’t have confidence in her abilities – that’s what underlies the exit polling.
Trump on the other hand stood for his MAGA agenda that was a clear set of nationalistic policies everyone could understand. Trump never had to do the politicians’ flip-flop on fracking or taxes or anything else that reminded everyone Harris was a phony establishment politician. The American electorate is in an anti-establishment mood again. Each time Trump was in court his poll numbers would go up. Then he was shot on live TV. His weave saved his life and gets him #47.
The exit polls shows Trump gained support from Black and Latino voters. He won the popular vote. Will the Dems have the humility to acknowledge why? Has the woke fever broken?
The Demz campaigned Right and would have continued to govern Right had they won. Trump campaigned both Right and Left and will of course, govern Right. Did the Demz even want to win this election!
Wokeness is a tool conjured up by the powerful in order to divide and misdirect the people…it will only be broken when people realize this.
Great commentary Tim.
I admit to suffering shadefreude.
Schadenfreude.
Make America, make the world great again Donald
I don’t know that Lady MAGA would agree with this conclusion.
Perhaps as Chris Trotter says on the Good Oil, the Democrats made America great, and it’s for Trump to maga.
It’s a s**thole, always has been.
“The Left, if that what you can call the Dems”.
Well, yes, the Left / Right distinction hardly relevant. The old binary distinction doesn’t capture current reality. It hasn’t for some time, and especially in the USA. Others have argued for a different configuration, two axis, the economic and the social, giving rise to four quadrants. Where do the Democrats fit into this configuration? For that matter, where do the Republicans? The red brand complicated by the fact today’s Republican Party under Trump’s MAGA banner bears little resemblance to 30 years ago..
Ooh … Woke. Someone’s obviously done something you don’t like. That’s all woke means these days – it’s simply conservative snarl word to throw around in a hissy fit.
And if Trump introduces the policies he says he going to, they will hurt many of the people who voted for him. That probably won’t worry his base which is beyond redemption, but if he doesn’t introduce these hurtful policies, that will anger them. So he may well be on a hiding to nothing.
Even now people are having buyer’s remorse.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/124654e3788a4a53a34b7ee546b9c977666e7f41d6d64dae6144a63cc228ab54.jpg
Let’s not underestimate the role of sheer fucking ignorance here, given that most of the people that vote for Trump and Trump himself seem to think that tariffs will be paid by the Chinese not the Americans. Once he starts hurting the people he’s not supposed to hurt, the midterms will be another blue wave I suspect
Ooh … Woke. Someone’s obviously done something you don’t like. That’s all woke means these days – it’s simply conservative snarl word to throw around in a hissy fit.
And if Trump introduces the policies he says he going to, they will hurt many of the people who voted for him. That probably won’t worry his base which is beyond redemption, but if he doesn’t introduce these hurtful policies, that will anger them. So he may well be on a hiding to nothing.
Even now people are having buyer’s remorse.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/124654e3788a4a53a34b7ee546b9c977666e7f41d6d64dae6144a63cc228ab54.jpg
Let’s not underestimate the role of sheer fucking ignorance here, given that most of the people that vote for Trump and Trump himself seem to think that tariffs will be paid by the Chinese not the Americans. Once he starts hurting the people he’s not supposed to hurt, the midterms will be another blue wave I suspect
How much was spent? I heard it was a billion dollars.
Dr Buchanan on this week’s “View from afar” podcast (with Selwyn Manning) said he knew of no political scientist whatsoever who predicted the Trump win. There’s two ways to interpret that: 1) Political scientists are utterly useless at predictions, or 2) that he only knows of pro-Dem political scientists. What does this say about the profession? I’m a Pol Sci grad but not an academic so I guess I don’t count… but I did – according to Dr Buchanan’s claim – outperform his expert class who completely failed.
By the way for all the punters out there: I said Harris was a good value bet for Dem nominee following Biden’s awful debate performance – I tweeted that out when she was paying $3.50 (she was at $4.20 a couple of hours before I tweeted it so wasn’t fast enough!). If you reinvested that with my forecast in my last post about Trump at $1.55 how would you have gone?
$1 x $3.50 = $3.50 (paid out on getting nomination at convention in August)
$3.50 x $1.55 = $5.42
That’s a return of 442%.
The academics, like Lichtman and Buchanan, really need to do some introspection on why they got it so badly wrong. They seem to be arguing they underestimated the evil reach of Musk and the gullible, ignorant prejudices of the uneducated working class, ungrateful Black men, Latinos and Muslims – all of whom voted against their own interests. None of that condescending narrative seems credible to me. But what would I know?
China’s political scientists and statisticians told me the week before the election that Trump would win. I don’t fully understand their complex methodology but their work stood the test this time around, and these same Chinese analysts have been remarkably prescient in calling previous US elections. I would say that Paul Buchanan was blinded by his own prejudices. We don’t really need to know the outcome of an election before the fact, but if we think we do then we should be listening to non-partisan and competent foreign analysts rather than the liberal establishment’s favored pundits.
Oh, and let’s not forget that forget that predictions are based, in part, on polls. What people say and what they do aren’t always the same. More so recently is seems. Added to this sampling leaves a lot to be desired, not least the ‘easiest’ method giving a skewed result.
Well political polls aren’t what they used to be. For one thing they use to get 10 to 20% participation now they’re lucky if they get 2%. And let’s face it, you had a 50% chance of being right whatever.
Among the many Democrat actions which were morally and politically flawed was the advertisement suggesting that American women should secretly vote in opposition to their husbands. To many women, probably to most, that suggestion would have been egregiously offensive. Most women will want to talk through any political difference of opinion with their husbands. The Democrat’s proposal for furtive dissent does nothing for a woman’s marriage relationship and very little for the cause. Merely cancelling out a husband’s vote is not sufficient to achieve a positive political outcome.
The only good advice that could have been given was “Talk over this political divide with your spouse. Try to find a resolution. If your spouse does not allow you the dignity of having and expressing an opinion, then think about whether you should be in a relationship with him or her”. Instead Kamala Harris and the Democrats decided that they should demean American womanhood. Unsurprisingly, that did not work out well for them.
Even more politically and morally flawed was the reaction of one of the Fox news – I can’t remember if he is a pundit or a comedian, makes little difference on Fox I guess – that his wife voting for someone other than his candidate without telling him would be the equivalent of having an affair. Interesting considering his present wife for is the result of an affair with her while he was married to his previous wife.
And what’s your evidence for wives talking over their political choices with their husbands? My wife and I never discuss who we are going to vote for, either way it’s none of our business. Academics might need some reflection, but I don’t think guessing one election result gives you any great kudos either.
I predicted – stick my neck out – Harris would win comfortably, but I forgot that incumbents had been hammered all over the world post covid. Should have seen that coming then shouldn’t I.
Meh. Josh and Gretchen 9governorsd of Michigan and Pennsylvania) stand in 2028, the rust belt is Democrat and they win back the White House.
Bro won when woman started saying they were going to celebrate camel toes inauguration by getting abortions.