The Counterpublic Papers vol. 9 no. 8

I said I’d get this out last week, but am glad that I sat on it a bit. So before the election I wrote the following:

The biggest concern I have, even bigger now than the now debunked possibility that Trump tries to October Surprise the election to the House, is that there’s an electoral apparatus with the power to mobilize low propensity voters in rural areas in large numbers, that is far larger and more extensive than we realize. Such an apparatus would basically be a political movement with an electoral arm. I have some expertise in traditional politics. I don’t have expertise in right wing political movements. I can imagine a scenario in which, say, Christian nationalists cum evangelicals are performing the deep organizing work that a normal political campaign would perform, getting people out to vote and muck up the election in droves. I just can’t see that scenario as plausible though. And this is where I could be really really wrong. 

It looks like there was an apparatus. One that didn’t only propel Trump into the presidency again, but with a (very very thin) majority of the vote as well. 

What I’m going to do in this newsletter is talk a bit about the numbers, a bit about what this means, and then a bit about what happens next.

And I write “a bit” with intention—I’m not over it, and it’s going to take a minute. I’ve been thinking a lot of Astra Taylor’s Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone. 

Turnout overall was not as high as 2020, but it wasn’t that much lower—1%. But Harris turned out fewer voters than Biden while Trump added to his vote totals in most instances. Trump’s victory looks to be all encompassing because it feels that way. But it wasn’t. Trump won the two states I was most concerned with—Pennsylvania and Michigan, by 3 and 1.45% percentage points respectively. In addition, he won Wisconsin by 0.9%. He won Georgia by 1.2%. And he won the national vote by 3%. (Going back to turnout, from what I understand, the comparatively lower turnout numbers were concentrated in non-swing states, which makes sense.)

Turning to exit poll data in key states (taken from NBC news). He won white men handily (by 20 percentage points) and he won white women as well, but by less than 10 percentage points. He lost every age demographic except one (mine). 

Turning to the education and economic data. He won those without a college degree by very thin margin but he won those that never attended college (and those with associates degrees) by a large one. He lost those making under $30K by 4 percentage points but won those making 30-50K by 8 percentage points and then those making between 50-99K by 5. He lost the union vote.

The largest gaps are in attitudes and religious background. 

Those who think their fiscal circumstances are worse voted for Trump in large margins (81-17) as did those who feel they suffered from inflation (74-22). Those who think America’s best days are behind them voted (67-31). And those whose primary issues were the economy and immigration voted 80-19 and 90-9 for Trump. 

Trump won the vast majority of white Protestant voters (72-26) as well as white Catholic voters (61-35). The white Protestant vote is particularly important as these voters constituted 30% of all voters in the survey. Finally Harris won voters who felt that the president should care about people like them (73-25) as well as the voters who felt the president should exhibit sound judgment (82-16).

I want to use these numbers to quickly respond to a few takes, some of which appeared before the fact and some after the fact. 

Some wrote that Trump’s coalition was increasingly multi-racial and that he’d make gains among black and Latino men (usually smushed together). Half of this happened. Latino men split for Trump…but black men? Black men supported Harris at similar levels they gave to Biden (though not the levels they gave Obama). It simply isn’t accurate to say that Trump had a multi-racial coalition. It’s more accurate to say that Trump had a coalition that was multi-ethnic and more or less mono-racial. And while some might point to the natural conservatism of Latinos, as Joel Suarez smartly notes this doesn’t explain the success of Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum—Sheinbaum was one of the only incumbents to beat back the tide of anti-incumbent sentiment, doing so with an aggressively Left platform.

(I’m hoping we can get better data on Latino voters. Although the Latino vote is hard to parse because there are at least three different populations—racially, there are black Latinos, white Latinos, and an increasing population that sees themselves as “Latino Latinos” for lack of a better term. Then in addition the Latino population consists of a number of different ethnic groups—Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, etc.—and then there are first/second generation residents and those with a longer presence here.) 

Some wrote various versions (some from the left some from the center) of “it’s the economy stupid” takes. 

It is true that people who were concerned about the economy were more likely to vote for Trump than not. But one would think that electing someone with sound judgment and someone who should about people like them and exert sound judgment would resonate with economic concerns… we don’t see this here. 

Now given the thin election margins I think pretty much every take can use data to suggest their analysis is the right one. Those in the center can say that if Harris would’ve tacked more to the right, she’d have won. Those on the left can say that if Harris would’ve pushed a stronger economic message, or even run on Biden’s early 2020 policies, she’d have won. 

I’m going to come back to this, but I think these takes miss a couple of things. 

The media reality was shaped by three different dynamics—first the growing role of niche (as opposed to mass) media, second the growing power of the post-truth regime, and third the capitulation of the mass media. I don’t have the space to go into depth here, but it is telling that in examining the amount of coverage Harris received for her health policy vs the amount of coverage Harris received in her condemnation of Trump the former received far less attention. 

The international reality is that there’s a growing right wing populist movement that is global in nature and comes primarily though not solely out of Russia, combined with an anti-incumbency turn that saw governments in Japan, Great Britain, and South Africa among others. The movement is consolidating power and has taken over any number of political parties worldwide, including the Republican Party. 

Given the slim margins a number of arguments about what should’ve happened come to the fore. But some of these arguments not only have empirical support but are politically prudent going forward as well. In hindsight for example, it seems to me that Harris never should’ve involved never-trump republicans. If they couldn’t win a single election, why would she think they could get votes? My colleague Lilly Mason suggests that a bit over 17% of Republican voters found Trump so distasteful—but from the voting data it appears as if almost none of these voters even left the vote for President blank in favor of downvote ballots. And while younger voters don’t remember the Cheneys…voters older and a little bit younger than me do.  

Further, given the that there was a slight dip in turnout, taking the strategy of actually telling voters what was at stake politically might have had the consequence of turning out just enough voters to flip the election—120,000 voters make a different decision in a few states and we’re telling a very different set of stories. 

What we can do given the media landscape and the global dynamics is make a set of suggestions about how political institutions and individuals within them created the conditions for Trump’s victory. We can point to the actions of individuals—Biden should never have run again, giving the Democratic Party an open primary. Merrick Garland should’ve aggressively used the power of the DOJ to prosecute Trump. We can point to institutions. The mainstream mass media should’ve learned to cover MAGA and Trump in a way that rendered him illegitimate. Arguably after January 6 he should not have been given a debate platform. Finally, as Rep. Jamaal Bowman suggests, something should’ve been done to hamstring the ability of two right-leaning Senators (Sinema and Manchin) to make permanent the first real attempt to use government to deal with poverty in decades.

But none of this happened, and this is what we are left with. I don’t know what happens next. It is possible that the descent from here is swift, but it is also possible that Trump’s forces don’t have the capacity and ability to govern that we think they do. 

What I do know is that there is only one way forward. In a two party system like the United States, the Democratic Party itself has to become the vessel for a robust political movement, or the United States devolves further until it becomes almost unrecognizable. This requires a lot more of us, and in order to draw what’s required of us out, we need a combination of new institutions and old ones. 

By the time you read this I’ll likely be giving a talk at Brown—twenty plus one years to the day I gave my last talk there. If you’re in the general area let me know.

We’re just beginning. Find the people that matter, hug them tight.