The big fact about the election that CAN'T be ignored
The dust is still settling, but there are some things we already know, and it might not be what you think.
Well, the election. . . happened.
I’ll spare you all of my thoughts and takeaways now — I imagine we will be covering it on the podcast next week. Needless to say, it’s not the result myself or Big John had certainly hoped for.
The data is still being gathered from the election — and all races haven’t even been called yet — so I want to be careful about drawing any big conclusions or absolute truths (that territory is saved exclusively for terminally-online politics-obsessed Twitter users who never set foot outside D.C.) However, there are some results that do tell us quite a lot at the jump. But before I get into that, let me heap a bit of praise on our friend Anderson Clayton — chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
North Carolina stemmed the bleeding that happened nationwide
This map from the NYTimes, showing the voting trends nationwide this year compared to 2020, was jarring to say the least. It is plainly obvious that 2024 was a “red wave” and almost everywhere in the United States saw a lurch to the right.
In the context of this nationwide bloodbath, North Carolina should have been a clean sweep for the Republicans…but it wasn’t. I’ve sung praises of Anderson Clayton before because of her commitment to showing up for rural parts of her state and investment in authentic organizing. She did not disappoint.
Democrats won 5 of 10 statewide races, including the governor’s office
Of those races, 2 of them flipped from Republican to Democrat
Democrats flipped a critical seat in the state legislature to break the Republicans supermajority rule
Democrats held on to a critical toss-up congressional seat in North Carolina’s first district
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Anderson and her commitment to bringing a new generation of leadership in the South, and she deserves a ton of credit for Tuesday night’s impressive showing given the environment.
Progressive policies won in “red” states when put in the voters hands
This data point cannot be ignored. Ballot measures across the country showed that voters support popular progressive policies like raising the minimum wage, providing paid family leave, legalizing weed, and restoring reproductive rights.
Just look at this damn list
These are popular policies in states that Kamala Harris resoundingly lost — most by double-digits.
I don’t want to make any broad judgements yet as to the reasons why Democrats have lost so resoundingly, but what I can say is policies like minimum wage increases, paid family leave, and rights to abortion are extremely popular. These policies benefit working class people, not the rich. The vast majority of Republicans do not support these policies, and many campaign against them.
There are a myriad of reasons for these results, but two I’m thinking about today are:
People don’t vote for president based on policy, or that isn’t the chief reason for their vote1
The Democratic Party brand has been extremely damaged — perhaps irreparably damaged.
I plan on writing a lot more about this in the future, but consider this final data point and chew on it. Dan Osborn is a union leader who ran a very credible and impressive campaign for Senate as an independent. He did not run as a Democrat, although he did tend to draw some support and financial backing from traditionally democratic resources.
Osborn lost, but his bid was impressive. Nebraska also held a special election for Senate the same night, where Pete Ricketts won by 26.4 points against Democrat Preston Love.
Sidebar: The Ricketts story is a wild one worthy of a side bar, so we’re throwing it into block quote formation. Ricketts (which sounds like a medieval disease eradicated by vaccines that RFK Jr. wants to abolish) previously served as Nebraska’s governor. Then-U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse decided to resign his seat and take a position as President of the University of Florida2 Sasse’s resignation conveniently occurred on January 8, 2023 — 3 days after Ricketts left the governor’s office due to being term-limited. On January 12th, Gov. Jim Pillen, who succeeded Ricketts, appointed Ricketts to fill Sasse’s Senate seat. **ain’t that America….**
Consider these stats
Incumbent Deb Fischer won by a margin of 7.8 points — which is sizeable, but not if you consider the make-up of the state and her incumbency status.
Trump’s margin of victory was 21.7 points
Deb Fischer ran 13.9 points behind Trump
Osborn ran 7.6 points ahead of Harris
Osborn performed 18.6 points better than the democrat who ran against Ricketts
I’m not saying that Osborn definitively did well because he wasn’t attached to the Democratic Party label — I don’t know jack about Nebraska politics, to be clear — but I do think its worth considering and examining further.
I can speak from experience that the Democratic Party brand and label is absolutely toxic in places like West Virginia, Tennessee, and most parts of Florida. Democrats have lost unconscionable grounds in rural America.
The margins of the 2024 presidential election should scare the shit out of Democrats. They lost significant ground in safe “blue” states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois (google the difference in margins from 2020-2024 in those states if you don’t believe me.
Again, I won’t fully opine on all the reasons for the red wave and rejection of Harris/many democrats until we have a fuller picture of what happened, but hopefully people will consider what I’ve laid out here as something to noodle on.
Kamala Harris didn’t campaign heavily on some of these issues, but broadly speaking she aligned with them much closer than Trump did
The self-proclaimed fiscal conservative blew the doors off the school’s budget by spending $17.3 million during his first year, compared to his predecessor’s $5.6 million budget the year before. He hired a bunch of his old staffers, let them work remote from places like Nashville, TN, and paid them a metric fuckload of money — including paying his former Chief of Staff nearly $400,000 to serve as the school’s VP for Innovation and Partnerships (a new position created under Sasse…..lol)