Eleven post-election takeaways
blind analysis of the 2024 results
Please note: This was a blind, unrevised series of hot takes. I have since updated the text to include a link to the Partisan Hex merchandise store at https://partisanhex.myspreadshop.com.
I did not watch the election results before I went to sleep on November 5, although I knew the vibes were getting bleak for my fellow Democrats, or “friends” as we more often call each other. Some plurality of the country did affirmatively choose to vote for a convicted felon known to his subordinates as a fascist. So blindly, I wanted to look at what factors might have caused this second failure before any introspection became corrupted by the traditional onslaught of Beltway analysis, axe-grinding, and finger-pointing. (As a Beltway native, I say this with loving familiarity.)
The results from Associated Press (last updated 12-22-2024):
(1) For voters with five-digit salaries, the economy is a loosed horse.
The Biden administration touted incredible economic accomplishments. Under their stewardship, we avoided a recession that was widely predicted, job numbers have been excellent, and inflation—which plagued the entire globe—was tamed. This sounds like a sick joke to people standing at a self-checkout and glaring at their bill. People did not only want prices to stop rising. They wanted them to revert to 2019 levels entirely. Our politicians have not explained to the public that this will not happen. We can say the economy is good according to all the metrics by which economies are measured, but voters are likely disinterested in the pedigree of a stallion when they are about to be trampled.
(2) Voters who most need a Trump loss are not carrying the Democratic Party’s water.
I embrace my partisanship, but most people prefer to imagine themselves as independent minds. Unlike Republicans, only a slice of Democrats are willing to engage in disingenuous hackery to defend the organization from criticism, and we do not have the same cultish personal loyalty and care for our politicians. If Vice President Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden are a little slow, a little late, and stumble or annoy the base, Democratic voters will not spend their free time online spinning their defenses.
Liberals and other left-leaners assume the Democratic establishment has its own paid shills and does not need us. But they do! We have to be the shills the Democratic Party needs, because if not us, then who? As a result, Republicans can weave their vices into virtues while we allow our warriors to be wounded.
I do not think the solution is that we ought to all be partisan hacks, and I am old enough to know Republicans will not suddenly learn shame or decency. But people who would be existentially threatened by a Republican victory should consider more enthusiastically supporting the only option the country has to make Republicans lose. Left-leaning independents signaling their dissatisfaction might be popular in the smoker’s pit outside the bar, but were that energy instead spent attacking Republicans or lauding the Democratic policy positions they do like, someone might actually be helped.
(3) 2016 is still an open wound—the Democratic Party’s operatives are not trusted.
When my man Joe Biden flubbed his debate against Donald Trump, I remained personally optimistic that he could handily trounce the felon even if he were in a coma. In my heart, I still believe this. Nonetheless, in no way can I defend his decision to seek re-election. My faith is that he and the people around him honestly believed that he was capable and that his decline was sharp and recent. If this is untrue and the party was protecting him, as the narrative has been, then those people ought to resign in disgrace. I do understand the reticence to hold a serious primary when you have an incumbent, but such conventions are predicated on trust—they no longer hold when you have an electorate that is suspicious of the party apparatus. It is unignorable that a large portion of the Democratic base is skeptical of the organization and uses the acronym “DNC” with contempt.
Whatever happened in 2016 with Debbie Wasserman-Schulz and Bernie Sanders—and to be clear, it does not matter what really happened or did not—the widespread, cultural takeaway was that, charitably, the Party put their thumb on the scale. Even if that were false, you will never convince tens of millions of people otherwise. That grievance was carried forward to 2020, where the same was imagined of Joe Biden’s primary victory. So, when in 2024 Biden did not participate in the primary and then was replaced by his logical successor, we did not have any grace or benefit of the doubt from our most suspicious voters. This injury has not healed and is vulnerable to repeated infections from conspiracy theorists, crank candidates, and well-meaning paranoids.
The Party must exert real energy and effort into regaining this trust, or I will go to my goddamned grave hearing the undertakers relitigate the 2016 primary.
(4) Not being Trump should be enough.
My horror story on Halloween night was learning that today’s youth were only just hearing about the Access Hollywood tape—which means my friends around the Beltway must sound like real psychos when we make “grab ’em by the [noun]” jokes.
Donald Trump doing a skit where he groped Rudy Giuliani in drag, in a department store, just as alleged by E. Jean Carroll in her rape suit, is another video I was shocked to learn fell out of public consciousness.
In our eagerness to “turn the page on Trump,” the public forgot how comically awful a human being he was because we all wanted to take our minds off his exhausting bullshit. As a result, our youngest voters never learned.
The threat was not subtle. It was as blaringly obvious as any cartoon villain. But because it was ridiculous and tiresome, the media “sanewashed” Trump in an almost parodic fashion. “Trump revisits fascination with genetics,” for example, was a gentle euphemism from America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, reporting a speech where Trump declared immigrants were “poisoning the blood of America.” Strange, dark rhetoric like this was rendered blameless, normal, and boring. The legacy media, which congratulated itself throughout the first Trump presidency for its stalwart and heroic reporting, decided that the public was simply too disinterested in stories about this ridiculous, evil man and his ridiculous, evil sycophants being ridiculous and evil. As such, a generation missed the memo that this dumb fuck was a dumb fuck.
(5) A majority of Americans do not watch TV.
Under half of households have a cable package, and I imagine that, like me, most people did not bother to buy the digital antenna you need to get over-the-air network TV now. That living room big screen is just a display for the Sony PlayStation or the Roku. So where the hell are we all getting our news from? Nobody is buying the newspaper anymore—some gas stations no longer even sell them. Do we learn about the world from social media? From podcasts? A weird Telegram channel? YouTube clips? TikTok? Reels? What is a Reel? I do not know. Do you?
Half the good news sites are paywalled now, and I have never met someone who admitted to paying for the Daily Beast, which was the only outlet reporting on Michael Wolff’s audio that Jeffrey Epstein called Donald “his best friend.” If an article is intriguing enough, people scour the comments section on Reddit’s r/politics hoping someone either pasted the text or will summarize it for them. America has no common fonts of knowledge.
So how does messaging work in that environment? I suspect it is easier for malign, chaotic, and dishonest Republicans (but I repeat myself) to thrive in this space.
(6) Twitter is a rotting building, not a demolished one.
I’ve always disliked Twitter. In 2008, when a co-worker was evangelizing it to me, I confidently declared it was a fad. I was wrong, but I still found it overwhelming and impossible to keep up with. Like a teetotaler watching alcoholics self-destruct, I never understood why people were so addicted to the platform that they ruined their careers saying weird shit in public. Still, I cannot deny that, as a communication platform, it had value.
Since the Elon Musk takeover, it has become yet more unpleasant. Unbanning Nazis? Disabling the block feature? Allowing anyone with $5 to self-verify? The site is a dark parody of social media now.
The ramifications of having a major communications platform suddenly re-orient itself around the business and personal interests of its new owner and a malicious political entity which thrives on dishonesty are serious. I had some hope that Twitter would be a non-factor as it decayed. This was naïve. Decaying buildings attract vagrants, vermin, and present health hazards so long as they stand.
(7) Cartoon women are not as attractive as they used to be.
Because people with Strong Opinions about Star Wars, video games, and cartoons are somehow a serious political force, it apparently matters that imaginary women are no longer sexually desirable. When a sequel to the beloved 90s X-Men cartoon was being marketed, creepy-eyed dudes noticed that Rogue’s buttocks appeared smaller than they remembered, and this made them angry.
This appears to be a major issue for a lot of right-wing cultural commentators. Video game breasts are not big. Cartoon butts are not plump. Comic book women are not wearing enough spandex. Even Tucker Carlson is mad that he does not find female M&Ms fuckable anymore.
Someone link these guys to https://nhentai.net/
There’s a broader issue here—conservative influencers are increasingly hostile to mainstream entertainment in ways that are distasteful to argue against. This sucks the joy out of media. You cannot talk about a Marvel comic or Star Wars movie online without someone making it weird. Still, I do not know how to take people seriously when they complain: “I watched a TV show and didn’t like it.” Read a book.
How does this affect the election? Every time someone is unhappy with some blockbuster—which is often, because most movies disappoint—they will quickly find hours of bad discussion explaining that it was too “woke.” Eventually, that weird chatter seeps into people’s brains, and the most normal-looking guy you know is telling you that back in his day, Lara Croft’s breasts were huge. I do not know how you fix these people, but they need to be fixed.
(8) Everyone hates the Cheneys.
I do think George W. Bush should have spoken out about Trump, as there likely are a few Republicans left who remember respecting him, but the Harris campaign touting the Cheney endorsement was loudly derided by everyone not associated with the Lincoln Project or the Bulwark. Did we forget that the consensus among the left was that Bush and Cheney stole an election, lied about WMDs to get us stuck in an illegal war, and tortured suspected terrorists?
Trump was a piece of shit for suggesting Liz Cheney go up against a firing squad, but I would suspect the majority of Americans would still be copacetic to Dick Cheney being tried at the Hague—and it’s weird for Democrats to forget that.
Dick is not his daughter, but Liz sucked too. I think it’s great that Liz Cheney stood up to Trump over January 6 after voting for his fascism twice. Serving on the J6 Committee was the right thing for her to do. Endorsing Kamala was not bad. The problem is that the way that endorsement was touted led people to mistakenly presume that Harris was endorsing Cheney. My opinion: I do not mind bringing repentant Republicans to the stage to denounce their party, but it should be treated like an allocution. When she comes to the microphone to declare Donald Trump a traitor to the Republic, there’s another thing I want to hear a Cheney say: My name is Reek.
(9) What about men?
As a white male, I have never, in my life, been made to feel lesser as a result of my race and gender. I appreciate that privilege. I do not need shit centered around me. I’m good. I definitely did not need this atrocious fucking ad to ever curse my eyeballs:
But when we are talking about Dobbs and reproductive rights, messaging that frames abortion, birth control, and family planning as purely women’s issues neglects a key demographic of stakeholders—sexually active men who do not want children. The worse crime is forcing women to be mothers, to be sure—their bodies are on the line—but regardless of what the involuntarily celibate tell you, most unmarried men are sexually active. At least, the cool ones are.
I doubt the majority of college-aged dudes are ready to raise a child anywhere, anytime, with anybody, which is what a post-Dobbs world promises them. Chad may well re-think his Trump vote if he realizes he might have to start a family with Stacy before he even gets his MBA. This NSFW masterpiece should have been the single most important ad of the entire campaign cycle if we were serious about getting young men off the X-Box to Pokemon Go to the polls:
Mad props to the Progress Action Fund for being the only group who knows how to make a damn good political ad anymore. I get shivers reading their donation solicitation:
(10) Gaza will not be ignored, Dan.
More ink will be spilled about this by savvier people than me. But the Uncommitted movement was not quiet about their intentions to shiv Harris if they were ignored. It was reported that they were targeted with inflammatory, explicitly anti-Semitic messaging from Musk. This clear vulnerability was left open and predictably exploited.
Meanwhile, Bob Woodward’s book War reported Biden fought Netanyahu extensively to get aid into Gaza. Uncle Joe might not have done enough for Palestine, but he did not do nothing. Yet instead of talking about this work that was done, we hoped the conversation would go away. Astoundingly, Democrats took the blame for every side of the issue, both for the war in Gaza and for whatever anti-Semitism emerged at student protests, and did not think to remind the public that Trump was Israel’s preferred candidate, that Netanyahu named a settlement in the Golan Heights after him, and that Trump has called for pro-Palestinian student protesters to be deported and protesters generally to be shot.
To save Gaza, well-meaning activists voted against Gaza. So why did we not warn them?
(11) Democratic “swag” is not aggressive enough
If you go to a Trump rally—or watch any episode of Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse—you will find that Trump supporters wear a lot of merchandise. Some of it is rude and vulgar. “Trump that bitch,” for example, is very popular.
How can we compete when we wear slogans like “Love Trumps Hate” or “Stronger Together”? A humble suggestion: “Trump is a Bitch.” You can buy “Trump is a Bitch” t-shirts and other merchandise at our web store:
This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, just some quick impressions.
I am sure there will be no shortage of mean-spirited recriminations, blame, and trolling over the coming weeks, all of which will be unproductive. I do not want to be part of that.
I believe, ultimately, in the Tolkien-esque notion that evil is self-defeating, but that offers no comfort to the people who will be harmed until then. America survived 2016-2020, but a lot of people were hurt, a lot of people died, and many of the institutions and individuals who resisted, slowed, and stymied the really bad shit have indicated they will not do so again. It falls to the Democratic Party this time. It falls to us, and we will not succeed until we learn to communicate and earn trust with the country again.