The Second Pandemic Election
how Trump won, incumbents, podcasts, and vibes
Farewell Incumbents
The data says that Harris was destined to lose. I hate to parrot yet another Covid argument, but the pandemic did too much damage to not mention as a major factor in this election. This was, after all, the second Covid election. The electorate still felt the ripples (or tsunamis) of the prior few years. As a result, I don’t think there is a single candidate that the Democrats could have ran who would have won this election. Not a Newsom - Whittmer ticket, not Shapiro, not Bernie Sanders. The reality of it is that this election was destined to be lost.
In fact, if Harris had won this election, she would have been a global outlier. The Democrats would have been the only governing party in a developed country holding elections this year to NOT lose voter share.
You read that right - every single governing party in a developed country lost voter share. The last time something like this happened was in 1905, well over 100 years ago. John Burn-Murdoch from the Financial Times wrote about the graveyard of incumbents. He says:
Ultimately voters don’t distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world.
The UK Conservative party lost 19 points, Portugal’s Socialist party 13 points, Japan’s Liberal Democratic party 8 points - it was an incumbent wipeout across the board. It didn’t matter which side you were on.
Ultimately, higher prices make life worse for everyone - particularly the working class, and so we saw the working class shift its allegiance to whatever the other option was.
The entire world experienced extreme inflation because of the pandemic, and although the United States was able to bring that inflation down from eight percent to two percent, it didn’t matter. The eight percent inflation had done its damage. Prices went up, and they stayed up, and now they’re only going up more slowly than they were two years ago. It was an incredible feat — bringing inflation back down without causing a recession — but no one cares, because at the end of the day, the electorate is still paying more at their neighborhood Target. People don’t just want inflation to come down, they want prices to come down, and unfortunately that will never happen.
That’s what lost the Democrats the election, in my opinion. This disappointment in economic condition reverberated around the world, a right-wing, conservative party in the UK lost, so did a left-wing, socialist party in Portugal. And they both lost by a lot. In the US, we saw a magnetic shift to the right.
Echos From The Vibecession
I’ve referenced the Vibecession in my writing before. Coined by Kyla Scanlon, it basically says that we’ve seen a disconnect in economic data and consumer sentiment over the last few years. (Kyla just wrote a great post on the election) The labor market has been strong, people have jobs, GDP continues to grow, manufacturing and technological advancements are booming. But people still feel bad.
Where this ties into politics is that you can have good legislation and policy but it doesn’t matter if it’s not meeting people where they’re at. No one cares for the Inflation Reduction Act when grocery bills are up, no one cares for the CHIPS act when housing is more expensive, no one cares for the IIJA when they’re spending 20% of their income on childcare.
There’s a disconnect between policy, what that policy is supposed to do, and the needs of the electorate when that policy is passed. The CHIPS act didn’t do anything for stabilizing rent prices, but then again what would’ve? Perhaps some housing legislation, but it’s not easy.
The hard part is that it was REALLY tough to stave off inflation when global supply chains were all out of whack from the literal pandemic that the world experienced. And as a result, the vibes were off. And who was holding the political football? The Democrats.
David Sacks, the tech magnate, said on a recent episode of the All-In Podcast:
… Whatever you want to say about Trump, he ran a campaign based on issues. He talked about issues. What did Kamala Harris run her campaign on? On vibes…
But I actually entirely disagree. I think that Kamala ran a fairly policy-oriented campaign, making herself clear on most issues that mattered to the American public. Ultimately, she couldn’t convince them that she was the one to get the job done when Americans look back on the last four years with disdain and political promises yet to be met.
Trump on the other hand, I think he rode the wave of vibes — particularly bad vibes from the incumbent — not policy. From Yuval Levin at The Dispatch:
People around Trump—even in the more distant reaches of his camp—are all inclined to think they’ve won a mandate for their pet cause even though voters have no idea who they are or what they want, and likely wouldn’t be on board if they did. Most of what Trump himself is most eager to do, from mass deportations to steep tariffs, would likely prove fairly unpopular when actually put into practice.
This is the trap that our 21st-century presidents have tended to fall into. They win elections because their opponents were unpopular, and then—imagining the public has endorsed their party activists’ agenda—they use the power of their office to make themselves unpopular. This is why the public moved left on key issues during Trump’s first term and right during Biden’s. Voters in this election rejected the excesses and failures of the left far more than they endorsed the right—or much of anything else.
We’ve been in political hot potato for a decade now. And it’s not been a matter of who the future has in store, but rather all the unkept promises that lie in the past. The ultimate promise being “your life will be better”.
The Podcast Election
This was the podcast election. I strongly believe that Harris should have gone on Joe Rogan. I strongly believe that Tim Walz should have gone on Joe Rogan. I think that Trump and J.D Vance did phenomenally well for themselves by going on Joe Rogan.
But I don’t mean that this was the podcast election because of these specific instances. I mean that this was the podcast election because, over the past few years, there’s been a seismic shift regarding where people get their news from.
From Scott Galloway’s No Mercy No Malice:
And that’s just ONE podcaster. When you take into account all the other “greatest hits” — Lex Fridman, Jordan Peterson, All-In, etc. their viewership really blows traditional media out of the water.
I certainly think that these contribute to misinformation and the media literacy crisis we’re living in, but the popularity of these long-form shows can teach us a lot. Maybe our attention spans aren’t fried after all.
Joe Rogan is popular because he feels authentic. His show makes you think you’re right there in the room with him. There’s an aspect of this that ties into the loneliness that so many experienced throughout the pandemic, throwing on a podcast can make you feel like you have a friend in that room. And ultimately, he IS echoing a lot of the concerns and interests that every day people have. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be as popular as he is. He’s not sitting there saying “actually, we have inflation but nominal wages are marginally higher so real wages are positive and things are actually good and you shouldn’t complain.” No. And he’s gained an immense amount of relatability across a very important fraction of the electorate.
This is also largely where Democrats blundered. When Bernie Sanders began making the podcast rounds four years ago and went on Joe Rogan, he was scolded by Democrats. When he earned Joe Rogan’s endorsement, Democrats pushed him away. This was their chance to seize an entirely new faction of the voting population of the country. But they were playing identity politics, they said “Joe Rogan is bad and if you like Joe Rogan then you are bad” and a lot of people were looking around like “why can’t I listen to this dude talk about space or whatever” — and that pushed people away, and that was a miss.
Nietzsche has this quote:
There may be other methods for finding oneself, for waking up to oneself out of the anesthesia in which we are commonly enshrouded as if in a gloomy cloud — but I know of none better than that of reflecting upon one’s educators and cultivators.
The educators and cultivators in this election cycle were the podcasters — that may seem silly to say, and maybe it was for the worst, but I do think it’s true. They are the ones who seemingly repelled that gloomy cloud in which we are commonly enshrouded in. The pandemic, in a time of loneliness, certainly lined them up perfectly for that.
City Debates
The most daunting admission that Democrats have to make to themselves this election cycle is that several red cities are doing a better job dealing with issues that people care about than blue cities — particularly homelessness and housing. This isn’t a messaging issue, it’s an execution issue. I’m hearing a lot of debate as to where the Democrats need to tweak their messaging so that it gets through to people. They don’t need to tweak their messaging, they need to execute on it. They need to build housing; they need to find solutions to their homelessness crises. They haven’t done either of those.
Ezra Klein said in his return to Twitter:
Governing matters. If housing is more affordable, and homelessness far less of a crisis, in Texas and Florida than California and New York, that’s a *huge* problem. If people are leaving California and New York for Texas and Florida, that’s a *huge* problem.
Democrats need to take seriously how much scarcity harms them. Housing scarcity became a core Trump-Vance argument against immigrants. Too little clean energy becomes the argument for rapidly building out more fossil fuels. A successful liberalism needs to believe in *and deliver* abundance of the things people need most.
New York City shifted 17 points towards Trump. The California map now looks like this:
That’s an issue! I think California largely said “I don’t know what I want but I certainly don’t want this” and then voted the other way.
I wrote an article about housing a few months ago —
I really think these big swings we saw in large cities are largely attributable to that. Regardless of what Trump’s policy is for making things more affordable, people in large cities clearly echoed the sentiment that what is happening now clearly isn’t working, even if a lot of it was due to the pandemic.
The Democratic Party needs to get it’s shit together. I think this was a huge slap in the face. I’m curious to see where they go from here — I think it all starts with changes to the blue cities — if the Democrats lose those, they are cooked.
Final Thoughts
I’ve been thinking a lot about Trump’s policies. I struggle to think that he’ll pass blanket tariffs on everything. At face value, it seems too detrimental to the American electorate, and an easy way to lose support across the board. It makes me think — if you say something loudly to all the people that you govern, does that give you more bargaining power with other countries? By lying to your own people, are you more likely to strong arm foreign governments?
If Trump announces to everyone, “I’m tacking tariffs on all goods”, but in his head he’s really thinking “I’m just announcing this to everyone so that China sees this and takes me more seriously and then maybe renegotiates their tariffs” — is that a sign of a good leader? I’m not sure, I’m tempted to say no, but it seems on brand for Donald Trump.
If he says he’s deporting all illegal immigrants, is that just a public display to have less immigrants come into the country? I’m not sure.
Regardless, it seems like a wildcard of a presidency just around the corner. And the Democrats certainly have some rebuilding to do, and I really really hope that they do it successfully.
I hope you’re doin’ well, and as always, thanks for reading.