All right. It’s been almost a week, so it’s time to ask the question.
“WHAT THE F**K?!!!!!”
What, you thought there was another question?
First off, one thing is absolutely true about this election. The result of the 2024 presidential election was more about Kamala Harris losing than about Donald Trump winning.
Sound like sour grapes? It’s not. In 2020, Trump received a little more than 74.2 million votes. This time, as of today, he is closing in on 74.9 million votes.
Harris received a little less than 71.3 million votes. Four years ago, Joe Biden got nearly 81.3 million votes.
Yes, Trump got 700 thousand more votes this time, but Harris got 10 million fewer votes than Biden did four years ago. Biden got 63.5 percent of the vote in California. Harris was 58.5 percent in her home state.
Biden beat Trump by 5.1 million votes in the Golden State. Harris leads Trump by less than half that.
It has been more than 14 years since I left California, but it is still my native state and the one in which I lived longer than any other, and I can tell you one thing. California — actually the entire West Coast — does not love Trump.
Other regions apparently did. Trump carried all but one of the states that made up the old Confederacy and lost only two states that would be called Midwestern.
Where did the Democrats go wrong? I’ve written before that Biden should never have run for re-election. At the very least, he should have stepped aside as a candidate after the midterms. He was 80 then and showing signs of decline. If he had withdrawn as a candidate for 2024, Democrats could have gone through a normal race for the nomination.
Instead, we got a candidate no one had ever vpoted for in a presidential primary, either in 2020 or thid year. Yes, she had been through a vice presidential campaIgn, but the most memorable moment of that was the fly on Mike Pence’s head in their debate.
And while I am a little bit nervous about saying this, just because every president but one for 235 years has been a white man, that doesn’t mean Democrats should only nominate one white man in the last five elections. Especially since that one white man won.
When I think of Hillary Clinton as the nominee in 2016, I am reminded of “Two for the Road,” a 1967 movie with Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn about a couple having marital problems after 10 years. They encounter a family with an obnoxious young daughter. Finney later asks Hepburn if she still wants to have a child after seeing the young girl.
“Yes, I still want a child,” she says. “I don’t want that child.”
And while there are certainly a number of voters who don’t think a woman should ever be president, there are others who would gladly vote for a woman but wouldn’t vote for that woman in 2016. Add to that in 2024 the voters who might vote for a woman, but wouldn’t vote for a black person of either sex.
The idea is to find a candidate who best exemplifies your party who can have the broadest appeal to the general public.
Politics has become so incremental, and some increments matter more than others. Democrats were clearly wrong in believing abortion rights would bring women voters out in such numbers as to make everything else meaningless. Well, abortion rights were on the ballot in 10 states and won in seven of them.
In an eighth state, Florida, 57 percent supported them but the measure required 60 percent to pass.
But millions of voters supported abortion rights in those 10 states while either voting for Trump or not voting for president at all. Apparently Trump did a good job convincing voters he would not support a national abortion ban.
I’m not one of those people who believes Trump will try to stay in office past 2028. I doubt he’ll even serve his entire second term. His cognitive decline is obvious and I would bet J.D. Vance will probably be running things well before that.
If the Democrats don’t do a better job with both candidates and message, it may not matter who they’re running against.
You can’t beat something with nothing.