2024 Election POST MORTEM

Sure Nate

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It’s both. It’s the economy, but they’re blaming it on illegal immigration. The story someone posted from the Austin Stateman interviewed day laborers outside a home depot, and they were complaining how much harder it is to get hired because there’s so many more immigrants trying to get hired outside home depot. And how the less money they make isn’t going as far.

Also, they think the Trump admin will deport the other guys, not them.

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– Can we have a new rule for Democrats? If you give people money, fucking tell them . No, not just with signing statements or campaign speeches or ads; that’s not good enough (although those didn’t happen either). When Dems passed that temporary fully refundable family tax credit, those $500 checks should have been paper, they should have had Biden’s signature, and they should have been at the bottom of a letter saying, ā€œThis check is your tax refund from President Biden’s plan to improve lives for working families. You will receive one per month as long as the program lastsā€ with the names and numbers of their congressional representatives and how they voted underneath.

Dont know how politically feasible that is, but I think we can put the ā€œdo good things for people and only mention it once at signingā€ as dead. You’ve got to be telling everyone at any time what you did and how good it is

Trump’s coalition includes Latinos and Great Replacement theorists, billionaires and resentful union workers, a fierce determination to tariff everything and a lot of voters who just want prices to go down. That, to me, seems less like a new dominant political juggernaut and more like a minecart of dynamite with a lit fuse. It’s easy for everyone to have their own imaginary version of Trump when he’s not in office doing things.

You say that, but the ideal Republican society is one where every rung of the hierarchy is accepting of the rungs above it and pushing down the rungs below it.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/your-reactions-13

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where does nate silver go to get his apology

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Anyone who said this was 100% was always voting for him. The photo did seem to give him a boost from the rah rah Rogan types but I would doubt it was a significant driver of turnout.

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Basically every young guy I saw outside the Trump rally on election night had a t-shirt with either his mug shot or him bloody.

Trump has like seven brain cells left.

And Democrats are losing to him.

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My election post mortem, which no one should care about:

Dems should ditch ~all of the culture war, incredibly annoying bullshit and be all in on being the left economic party. Note: rich people = bad is also culture war bullshit, just pitch the policies without demonizing people.

Probably also ditch all of the stuff that makes cis white men think that you low key hate them. I vote dem 100% of the time because it’s clearly the party for non fucking morons but that does not work on many.

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Yes.

Talked to my old landlord from like 10 years ago. He’s never worked a full time job and became disabled in a car accident about 5 years ago. So he only gets SSI instead of SSDI. It’s like $300/month. His house burned down last year. He didn’t have home owners insurance so he’s basically SOL. On election night, he posted how Jesus wanted Trump to win. I told him there’s a good chance he’s gonna lose his $300/month if Project 2025 takes affect. He said it didn’t matter because Trump is the lesser of two evils but at least he won’t take anyone’s guns away.

There’s just no reasoning with these people.

Even though they saw record voter registration, actually voting was down in major Texas cities.

The majority of Hispanic men I’ve known in construction have not been citizens and thus don’t vote and among the minority who are, there’s a fair amount of resentment towards those who aren’t. One guy who I have known very well for a long time, since he was 17 and is now like 33, I got him to stop calling the immigrants ā€˜pisa’. It’s still immigration.

If the LA times just went to a construction site and found some Hispanic men who speak very good English, it’s not that surprising that they found some Trump voters.

I’m not sure we’re accounting enough for the fact that every time the dodgers win the world series there’s a one term president elected like a week later

There needs to be a villain. Billionaires make an easy villain.

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I think corporations make much better villains than billionaires.

Dont know if its wise to be villainizing guys like Pritzker at this point either. Reforming left-wing media is gonna require tons of capital. And we can still keep going full throttle on the real assholes like Musk and Bezos.

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I like this too:

If Dem elites feel like this is somehow improper, they need to get the true lesson of the last 30 years of Republican politics: decorum is for losers. Read any of the interviews with the undecided or disaffected voters who decided this election. Think what it would take to get a political fact to stick in their head and survive the talk radio/podcast propaganda. Act accordingly.

You have to smack people in the face with it. Democrats are giving voters way too much credit. The electorate is full of uneducated, misinformed, overworked, confused phone addicts who get their news from social media. You have to make it easy for them.

And this needs to start with the policy itself. Work backwards. Design the policy so people will be able to understand it and connect it back to Democrats. That means keeping it simple and branding it whenever possible. If you have a kid, you get a check in the mail. That’s it. No layers upon layers of complexity and bureaucracy and means testing. No hiding it away in a tax return. Send a check in the mail. And be proud of it! Give it a name so people know YOU did it. Ideally something catchy like Obamacare.

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The corporations fund all of the politicians, though. This is really the core of the problem. I don’t believe that grassroots campaign can really deal with the scope of it either anymore, especially now that the Supreme Court has ruled in the last year that bribery is essentially legal as long as you can frame it as a ā€œgiftā€

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Post mortem my friend shared from Reddit. Tracks with how I’m feeling.

From Harvard ethics professor Christopher Robichaud: "Everyone in the days and weeks ahead will use this loss as an opportunity to seek validation for their own hobby horse complaint. Harris lost because she campaigned with Liz Cheney. Harris lost because she didn’t embrace Gaza. Harris lost because she didn’t choose Shapiro. Harris lost because she wasn’t progressive enough.

Take a good hard look at the map, my friends. Trump has won the popular vote. Trump ran the table.

Explaining that with your hobby horse issue isn’t going to cut it, tempting and consoling as it may be.

The problem isn’t the electoral college. The problem isn’t that we didn’t have a full primary. The problem isn’t Harris. The problem isn’t that Dems didn’t have the right message. The problem isn’t even inflation or the border. The problem is so much worse than any of those things. Those are all technical problems, with straightforward expertise fixes. If only it were so!

No, our problem is not technical. It’s very much adaptive. A party that embraced the Big Lie, supported an insurrection, and has been selling conspiracy-addled madness for years was widely and enthusiastically embraced. Voter turnout was profound! People didn’t sit this out.

Simply put, the problem–as some of you have rightly posted–is cultural. America, culturally, has completely abandoned a politics of decency and respect and has embraced instead a politics of resentment, revenge, false nostalgia, and bullying.

And it you look at the demographics, you also won’t be able to comfort yourself that it’s just a white thing, or a working class thing, or an education thing. It’s multi-class, multi-gender, multi-educational and multi-racial. That’s what winning the popular vote means. That’s what running the table amounts to.

A culture that has descended to this level of debasement is not easily fixed. In fact it may not ever be fixed. The timeline for changing something like this is decades–at best–not two-to-four year election cycles. You can extend that in this case, because with the GOP likely controlling all branches of federal government and the courts, they will ensure that mechanisms are in place to keep them in power long after their popularity has waned. You can count on that.

The GOP evolved into a party of rage, lies, and revenge–and it correctly diagnosed that there was and is a large appetite for that. That’s what the country wants. At least, enough of the country wants it to ensure broad appeal and widespread electoral success. The old GOP will never return, and the Dems have nothing to say to American culture at the moment. Nothing. They’ve been speaking to a country that’s gone, like dust in the wind. And that’s my final thought, which my posts last night alluded to. The America I knew and loved is gone. This new America–nah, I won’t even bother. I will say that cultural change is less likely to occur in politics, or in the academy. You’re not going to get people to see how vulgar they’ve become through a clever argument or a nice campaign speech, that’s for sure.

This would be time for the arts, broadly understood, to step in. The arts can change hearts and minds.

Too bad the arts have been systematically dismantled in education in this country, and on the other end, the tech industry’s assault on the arts through Al is sure to hollow out any good-faith efforts that might emerge.

And for the rest of the world, America’s rightward lurch is, I’m afraid, bad news for you too. I know you know this. Because it’s not isolated, is it? It’s just at the moment the most prominent example of a burgeoning trend. And this will embolden others in other countries, to be sure. We need not speculate what happens when countries become mired in lies, embrace resentment, and savor bullying. We know exactly what happens. Bloody conflict and global destabilization.

The first quarter of the 21st century will therefore in hindsight be viewed as the seed-planting stage for the absolute shit show that’s about to unfold globally over the next two and a half decades. Count on it.

Adopt whatever coping and endurance strategies you have available. You’re going to need it. I think that’s all l’ve left to say."

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So what’s the plan for the immigrants here legally? Will ICE ask for papers and leave you alone if you here legally? Or are they just gonna round up brown people, detain them, and make them prove they belong?