posted by jmog
Trump is going to end up pretty close to the same number of votes in 2024 as he did in 2020, +/- a couple million. The Ds dropped right back down to 66m ish
After going up 11ishM from 2016 to 2020 -- which was when the Ds had the huge bump in votes.
Which would mean, if cheating is an issue, that Biden cheated better than Trump in 2020. Then Harris didn't cheat to go back to pre-Biden numbers, while Trump maintained his cheating.
OR, it more likely came down to...
1. Trump was pretty unpopular outside his base at the end of his term and also had a ton of heat (whether correctly or incorrectly) over his COVID response, which the Ds were able to take advantage of to get the largest turnout of an election that had a historically huge turnout because way too many people used their months of lockdown to really devour any and all poli-shit.
2. And those people didn't bother with this one because of any number of factors ranging from Biden wasn't remotely what his voters were hoping to get and had popularity numbers as bad or worse than Trump's TO Biden's failing mental state TO him being abruptly replaced by a VP who had been amazingly unpopular when she tried for the presidential nomination in '20 TO how Kamala had no real answer after her immediate surge ended and reality set in.
3. And credit to Trump: He lived up to the "Teflon Don" nickname in so many different ways, as he was able to dodge and avoid shit that would tank almost anyone else. Basically ignored all the talk about his declining mental state and when that turned into "he's getting too tired to campaign", he picked things up and was doing multiple stops a day leading into the election. He crossed the finish line doing what he had to do in order to win; I don't think Kamala can say that.
In short, the way 2020 went down, a lot more people were fired up and wanted their voice heard. In 2024, most of those people were just numb and didn't GAF because it wasn't like doing so magically changed anything for the better.
I'd like to say things will be learnt by the Ds based on this failure, but their immediate reaction today online seems to be "big mad; flailing". I've seen people repeat the 2020 R line of "we had better crowds at rallies, so these numbers don't add up" and also seen people call Latinos stupid for "voting against their self-interest". Because in politics, it's never "Our messaging wasn't good enough and we cared more about pet project issues than what people wanted to see front and center."; it's always, "No. The people are wrong and we are right."
