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Writer's pictureEliot Daley

Less Landslide Than Mudslide

My father was a careful man.  An architect.  A woodworker.  A builder. And a fount of axioms.  Given his passions, one favorite was “Measure twice, cut once”.  Another was its sibling: “Haste makes waste.”

 

I think I pretty much wasted my last post.  It was certainly hasty—written just hours after the election.  And as such, it was not measured at all.  I had read and hastily circulated a convincing piece from a New York Times opinion writer who insisted that Trump’s victory proved that we as a people have become just like him, rather than a more admirable people.  It fit my despair of the moment.

 

In the ensuing week, the press has been fixated on the “landslide” victory of the Republicans and the flaws of the Democrats that, they claim, are proof positive that America has swung wholesale to Trump.  To go by the preponderance of expert opinion and exit interviews, one might think that’s the whole story. Certainly that is what this map of voting proportions might suggest:



But I decided to measure twice.  I measured what they were saying, about proportions, and then I measured the actual size of the actual vote.  And I came to a realization that most of the major media have yet to notice in their obsession with "breaking news!" about Trump's reprehensible appointments--namely, the less earthshaking story told by those actual numbers (as of 11/11; may be slightly different now):

 

1.         There was almost zero net increase in support for Trump over 2020--he just about broke even.  A paltry 462,578 more citizens voted for him in 2024 than in 2020—that’s less than one percent of the 74 million votes cast for him.

2.        There was a whopping decrease of 10,318,809 in the number of votes for Harris in 2024 relative to the votes for Biden in 2020—that’s a monumental 12.6% of votes that would have sent Trump packing. 


That decrease in Democrat votes is what primarily accounts for those arrows showing proportional changes in preference., not a sudden surge of Trump-love.

 

Those 10,000,000 stayed-at-home Democrats are the ones who actually elected Trump.  Contrary to media impressions, a big electoral vote margin for Trump isn't some irreversible landslide. The Democrats’ mudslide is the real story of the election of 2024. 

 

To be sure, there are lessons galore for Democrats to learn in rebalancing their priorities and messaging, to be ignored only at grave peril. And also lessons galore to be learned from how skillfully and relentlessly the Republicans have captured offices and mindsets at every level throughout the country over past decades.  Left uncontested, only at grave peril.

 

But the most critical understanding Democrats must learn is why ten million of their voters who eagerly drove Trump from office just four years ago decided that this year—widely regarded as “the most consequential election in our lifetimes”—they would just slump down on the couch and allow him to resume his no-holds-barred onslaught to reshape America to his liking, Constitution-be-damned.

 

Just think: America would be planning the inauguration of  President Kamala Harris today if only someone had gotten a handle on the indifference of those ten million, had gotten even a handful of them to the polls.  Digging into this is Job #1


While we’re waiting for some analysis and insight and corrective strategies to forestall such a monumental blunder in the future, let us not grind ourselves into despair about “what America has become”.  We Americans as a people have not become Trumpians.  We are still capable of being “a city on a hill”, even if passing clouds sometimes dim our shining light.



I’ll bet you think I’m quoting Ronald Reagan, don’t you.  Nope.  I’m quoting John Winthrop from a lay sermon he delivered in 1630, describing his vision of this barely-newborn country.  He, in turn, has been quoted by nearly every President to hold office, Republicans and Democrats alike, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. 

 

Republicans, Democrats, Independents—the vast majority of us yearn for America to be a shining city on a hill.  That is the enduring aspiration of America, and it has not been lost forever just because some couch-potatoes didn’t do their part in 2024.

 

 

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5 Comments


Trump’s mandate isn’t all that. Trump's win is wide but not deep, in fact it is quite shallow.


Trump currently has 49.9% of the counted votes compared to Harris’ 48.2%. That 1.7% margin compares to the 2.1% margin that Hillary Clinton beat Trump by in the 2016 popular vote. President Joe Biden beat Trump by a 4.4% margin in the 2020 popular vote.


Trump’s popular vote victory compared to those historically speaking over the last 200 years ranks 44th out of 51, which is not strong. The only weaker popular vote is from 2000 and GW Bush's electoral victory over Al Gore (recall that GWB actually lost the popular vote).


While Trump won 6 swing states (PA, MI, WI, AZ,…


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To put it mildly, "I couldn't have said it better myself!" (although I try!) You have nailed it, John. This was a squeaker, during a year in which every single administration up for re-election in the top seven reasonably-democratic countries were soundly defeated. Blowback from the downstream effects of the pandemic made every country vulnerable to unhappiness over the worldwide inflation (it's always "The economy, stupid!"), despite the well-kept secret that Biden and team brought down inflation farther and faster than every other country on the entire planet (boo-hiss for their not touting this fact, even through it probably wouldn't have changed a single vote). Thanks for your fact-filled and thoughtful Comment, John!

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I feel like I'm in the movie "Don't look up." If a comet is headed toward us, does it really matter whether the cause is those who voted for it or those who choose to ignore it.

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Uncle Eliot: as always, your comments are well reasoned. AND I can't help but wonder how many of the other 205 views did not include a comment because many of the other viewers are feeling as jaded as I am about the likelihood of correcting the calamity. I sincerely hope that I feel differently in a few months, once the initial fog of acute grief begins to dissipate and the empirical impact of the hit becomes somewhat more clear. In the interim, I am coping by considering possible escape routes and interacting with those who I hold most dear.... including you of course. I am grateful that you, and at least one other in my immediate circle, already hav…

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