by Michael Liss
We might have been a free and a great people together, but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. —Thomas Jefferson, “Jefferson Draft” of the Declaration of Independence, 1776.
George Washington may have been the “Indispensable Man” whose strength we used as our North Star, Benjamin Franklin the cherubic, ever optimistic face we showed to the outside world, James Madison the primary architect of our Constitution, but, for raw emotion wedded to soaring eloquence, no other American of the Revolutionary period quite approached Thomas Jefferson.
I have never been a big Jefferson fan. He runs a little hot for my taste. I prefer the brooding-yet cerebral miniaturist approach of Lincoln, who says, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
My passion right now is somewhat strained, and I’m concerned that being a free and great people together might be a bit far-fetched. Like just about everyone else on my side of the divide, I want to know what happened and why. How on Earth did we manage to break the GPS and end up right back where we started?
Let us take a deep breath, and, with the cool professionalism of the Federal Railroad Administration’s Accident Management Branch, examine the wreck. Yes, I know, Trump has targeted the Agency and plans to roll back safety regulations on hazardous gas transit, crew member requirements and fatigue risk, but this is only December 2024, and we are still living the good life.
OK, exhale.
This was not a landslide, not actually, and not by any historical metric. Harris clearly lost, Trump clearly won, but Trump’s popular and Electoral Vote margins are more in sync with the trench-warfare-limited-gains of the non-Obama elections we’ve had since 2000. Similarly, it was not a mandate for anything, no matter how often Trump and his team in Congress and the media claim that.
Why does this feel like a landslide, when historical context tells us it isn’t anywhere near one? For the same reason it feels like a mandate: our Constitutional system vests a considerable amount of power in the winner of an election, regardless of the size of the margin. It simply doesn’t matter what the losers think. Either a President wants to work with the other side (or has to, when Congress is controlled by the other Party) or he doesn’t.
But isn’t that always true? Every four years we have the drama of a Presidential election: the feverish coverage, the hyperbolic pronouncements, the insane amounts of money raised and spent, and the tedious efforts of writers (mea culpa) to explain it all—particularly the parts they predicted. Then the new Administration settles in, it starts to enact its preferences, there are brushfires of outrage here and there, and then the public returns to regular programming.
So, why is this different?
First, because it could be an inflection point, a precursor to a realignment. Kamala Harris lost ground pretty much everywhere, including places where her expectations were much higher. She couldn’t hold together the Biden coalition, couldn’t build one of her own, and Democrats in general suffered from comparative-to-2020 lower turnout. Did her failed effort show terminal structural weakness?
Second, it feels like it because Trump seems like an existential threat—and he likely is. New Administrations get a short honeymoon, then there’s resistance, and things start to slow down. The American system relies on this—a combination of human nature, good faith, and checks and balances. The latter two will soon be gone. Trump will appoint whom he wants, the GOP-controlled Senate will confirm just about all of them, and then Trump and his team will start the demolition phase on the “property” he reacquired.
Just about everyone knows this. In fact, many Trump supporters see profit and even pleasure in the prospect. Jefferson might have called them “unfeeling brethren,” and unfeeling they may be, but that’s their right as winners. Do not expect moderate voices to temper judgment’s harsh decree.
On November 5, 2024, no one seemed to care. What Democrats learned, not merely to their shock and horror, but to their utter astonishment, was that not many people outside their circle bought the existential threat argument. How was that possible after January 6th, how was it possible with so many former Trump staffers openly pronouncing his unfitness for the job? Perhaps it’s as simple as the electorate’s exhaustion with the constant negativity and pure bilge that poured out of every screen. After a while it all sounds like hyperbole.
The first real criticism I have about the way Harris and Democratic operatives ran the national campaign begins with their apparent lack of awareness that the “existential threat” argument wasn’t working—even as Trump’s performances in the final weeks became more and more threatening and even bizarre.
The public sees our institutions in very subjective ways—specifically, how does the government impact our lives, and is the government helping or hindering us? In theory, we venerate a democracy bound by norms, a common, shared history, and the rule of law—read this excellent piece by 3 Quarks’ Ashutosh Jogalekar on the importance of civic education—but that may be more aspirational than a statement of reality. This Founder’s-inspired Utopia is too airy for some, too slow for others. A great many Trump voters picked him precisely because he doesn’t respect norms and limits—and they assume from this that he will get results through egg-breaking that other, more conventional, more rules-following politicians, won’t.
One of Trump’s best lines, “what do you have to lose,” showed how aware he was of this dynamic. If I’m a transactional voter—or even a historically Democratic voter who is dissatisfied—that has some resonance. Kitchen-table issues matter, and by kitchen-table I don’t just mean household economics, but also those that disrupt traditional social norms. Everyone wants a better future, but a great many also want what might be an over-idealized past. Trump plugged into both. Blue-collar workers unsettled over job and community insecurity saw much to like in Trump’s protectionism and virulent opposition to immigration. But, somewhat counterintuitively, Latinos made a big turn toward Trump. Apart from the fact that some may have voted for him just because he was male, they simply filtered out the threat of Stephen Miller’s thirst for mass deportations, the end of birthright citizenship, and denaturalization policies in favor of Trump’s promises on jobs and taxes. The Harris campaign didn’t recognize the threat soon enough and never came up with a satisfactory response.
This “failure to anticipate” and “failure to address when obvious” weren’t just seen in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the other swing states. You could also see them in Blue areas where Trump made large inroads while never seriously threatening. Look at states like New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York. Trump gained modestly over his 2020 numbers in all three, but the narrowing of those margins was really driven by Harris’ losses—more than 1.5 million fewer Harris voters in just those three states amounted to three-quarters of Trump’s whole-country popular vote margin. That is extraordinary.
Let us move to some conventional wisdom. First and foremost, it’s all Joe’s fault. He hung out too long and grumbled when he left, his staff didn’t bond with Harris’s, he was just an elderly albatross who failed to articulate a compelling reason for the public to “continue” his Administration. This is a layered claim of causation, but it seems more a series of excuses and blame-placing than a dispositive explanation. First, Presidents don’t pass the torch well. Going back to Ike, there isn’t a single instance of an outgoing President enthusiastically backing his Veep as an anointed successor. I would suggest that every single incumbent President thought he was the superior choice, if only the 22nd Amendment would have allowed it. This leaves the Veep in question with the impossible job of trying to create some distance, in order to show executive skills, while maintaining a publicly respectful loyalty. The voters both know it and have a certain contempt for this—as do those writers who are looking for narratives to get clicks and book deals and tend to amplify every disagreement into something campaign-shaking. In short, it happens, but I don’t think an earlier withdrawal would have changed a thing in that dynamic.
What about the argument that an early Biden announcement would have left time for genuine competition among the top-tier Democrats and perhaps selected a better candidate—either someone other than Harris, or a more battle-tested Harris? Maybe, but dubious. If historical precedent holds, a sitting Veep has been credibly challenged several times (Bill Bradley took on Al Gore in 2000, Bob Dole (and Pat Robertson) ran against George H.W. Bush in 1988, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy tested Hubert Humphrey in 1964, and Nelson Rockefeller opposed Richard Nixon in 1960), but those credible challenges ultimately fell short—mostly justifiably so. I loved Bill Bradley, but he kept his charisma well-hidden. As for the sitting Veep’s skills being forged in the fire of competition, only Bush 1 went on to win the Presidency.
There is one area in which I think Biden’s condition did play a role. He was a markedly diminished presence after his withdrawal. Perhaps he was unable, more likely he lacked the desire, but the case for the Biden Administration’s accomplishments, in which Harris could have shared, would have been better made by an energetic, self-sacrificing-for-the-country Biden—and telegenic surrogates. He and they seemed to disappear. The Presidency is not a place for passivity, and this image had to rub off a bit on Harris. Was she big enough for the chair behind the Resolute Deck?
This “Biden Gap,” a failure to articulate a reason for a second term, seemed to leave a hole in general Democratic messaging. If “Trump is an Existential Threat” wasn’t drawing enough people into the Democratic coalition, what else did they have to offer? Republicans tried, fairly successfully, to define Democrats as the patron saints of woke and DEI and armies of transgender advocates ready to kidnap children from their correct bathrooms, all the while setting up all-you-can-eat buffets for the millions of cat-eaters flooding over the borders. The claims were largely ludicrous, but, like every good scam, had just enough of a kernel of truth to concern some voters, especially so because Democrats weren’t parrying with much beyond abortion rights. Trump, sensing a “blood in the water” situation, pressed hard on the trans issue in the closing weeks, and some professionals believe it was effective in moving late deciders.
There are some signs that the Harris loss has “awakened” activists to the potential consequences (The New York Times recently ran an article reporting that L.G.B.T.Q. activists may be moderating their demands), but that doesn’t bring Harris a do-over. Nor does heaping blame on a relative handful of organizations for merely trying to represent their constituencies effectively. Single-issue all-or-nothing voting on Progressive issues might have dinged Harris here or there, but she didn’t lose for failure to satisfy all the demands of a special interest group. She lost by failing to appeal to a larger audience on macro issues, where the voters didn’t see what they wanted in a President.
A good example of this was the campaign’s less-than-effective efforts to nurture its relationship with Labor, ordinarily a big source of ground troops and infrastructure for Democrats. Trump managed 45% of the vote from union households—up from 40% in 2020. That’s quite a bit, especially because of the outsized influence labor has in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. It’s fair to wonder what went on here. Scranton Joe was the most pro-labor President in recent memory, both policy-wise and symbolically. Along with several pro-labor workplace rules initiatives, he bailed out the Teamster’s pension—and he walked a picket line. This got Harris approximately nothing—Sean M. O’Brien, the President of the Teamsters, spoke at the RNC and just received a Trump deliverable of Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union Republican, as his nominee for Labor Secretary.
Oh, those deliverables. Trump is a maestro with them. Trump taketh away, but Trump also giveth. Whether we are talking about Labor, about to lose their Biden-enacted goodies, but excited by protectionist trade policies and Trump’s close-fisted approach to social issues, or Latinos, who want economic opportunities more than they worry about mass deportations, or deeply Red rural areas about to be pummeled by those same trade and immigration policies, or even well-heeled socially liberal voters, Trump finds a way to appeal to them. He has a genius for the “I will do this” and he’s made the sale. Democrats offer soothing words and complex government-run programs that may deliver a lot more—and no one believes them.
There’s a trick to Trump’s approach that Harris was never quite able to counter. He gets that neither austerity nor complexity sell. He doesn’t believe in hard data, particularly on the economy, because he knows that what people don’t feel in their gut they don’t believe exists. What they do notice is the price of a box of eggs, or a tank full of gas, or the skyrocketing costs of Frosted Flakes. That’s real to them—not announcements from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Trump says, “I will make it better,” and small pieces of what could have been part of a Harris coalition flake off and attach themselves to Trump.
All this leaves us…where? The independent journalist Aaron Rupar phrased it this way: “A failed president who incited a coup attempt and then was found liable of sexual assault and then was convicted of felonies won the popular vote and electoral college. I still haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation. Probably never will.”
I am going to try.
Donald Trump, regardless of how you feel about him, is an enormous political talent—in a class with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan. He has his own kind of eloquence—a mesmeric mass of malaprops, fabrications, threats, jokes, insults, syntaxial flights of lunacy—that all work for him. Trump has been accused of blowing the dog whistle. It’s true in the traditional sense of the phrase, but Trump adds a dimension like no other politician. His fans, his public, are able to hear a melody where the rest of us hear only noise.
Kamala Harris just couldn’t play at his level. I’m not in the category of those who say she was a hopelessly bad candidate. She wasn’t. But she was a lot closer to John Kerry than Barack Obama. Presidential power remains the power to persuade, and Harris had trouble closing the sale. The argument that she would have improved if she’d had more time, or more of a challenge in getting the nomination has some superficial appeal, but that’s all it is. Let’s not forget, this is the same Kamala Harris who stalled early in 2020, and, while she got better, it was by degrees, not leaps and bounds. It’s very hard for even the best pitching coach to turn a soft-toss specialist into a strike-out machine. Harris didn’t have the arm for it, and she was facing someone who did.
So, if Trumpism is ascendent, does it stay that way, and are Democrats going to go the way of the old Whig or Federalist Parties?
There are serious questions for Democrats going forward: How much of what we understand as our traditional democratic system will survive the coming assaults by Trump? Do we have credible candidates to challenge what will surely be a period of Trump/Republican dominance? Finally, and assuming the 22nd Amendment holds, who besides Trump can run the giant county fair with marching bands and street food and 25-ounce cans of your favorite beverage and a hallucinatory hodgepodge of (possibly fixed) carnival games where you can win a Trump-branded teddy bear or Bible?
Trumpism is fun bread and circuses. Yes, some of the stuff on sale has dubious provenance, and there’s a healthy dollop of crassness, but does that really matter? If so, maybe you should lighten up, get a beer, and stop being such a tight-ass. If good clean American fun isn’t to your taste, there’s a “gathering” for Kamala (or any future Kamala) at an Indy bookstore with canapes and a crisp vintage. Go ahead, knock yourself out.
Of all people, Jefferson might have understood this. Those fine, agonized words I quoted at the top of the essay never made it into the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. Here is the fuller quote:
[T]hese facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. [W]e must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. [W]e might have been a free & a great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. [B]e it so, since they will have it: the road to glory & happiness is open to us too; we will climb it in a separate state, and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our everlasting Adieu!
Jefferson didn’t delete them—he thought of them as the emotional heart of his argument for Independence and maintained that position for the remaining half-century of his life. Congress deleted them, thinking them too florid, not practical enough. Perhaps both were right. No one remembers “We might have been a great and free people together” but it is Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and, as a call to action, it remains unsurpassed.
Pick your path, Democrats. The choice is obvious. Engage in a moment or two of self-flagellation, because that’s what Democrats do, but then pull yourselves off the mat and put up your dukes. Let that be your legacy.