Liberal anguish over Trump was never going to be a sustainable electoral strategy

Dylan, a 19-year-old first-time Trump voter in Colerain Township, Pennsylvania — November 5, 2024

I was in Pennsylvania on Election Day talking to a random sample of voters at polling places. This seemed like a more productive activity than scrolling social media and gnashing my teeth. The conversations, as usual, were instructive — more journalists and people in general should spend time non-judgmentally talking to random voters, if you want to have a better understanding of the country around you. One gentleman in his early 30s named Mike, in Quarryville, PA, had just voted for Kamala Harris. “I feel like he brings out the worst in people, and it’s exhausting,” Mike said of Trump, notably declining to offer an affirmative case for Harris. “I have seen friendships get ruined, I have seen families get torn apart by that man.” He also mentioned his consternation that Trump “wants to give Ukraine to Putin,” and that “people view him, especially around here, view him as this Jesus-like figure, and it’s weird. I just want to go back to the George Bush, John Kerry elections where it’s just — vote for whoever represents you the most.”

I asked Mike if I could take his photo for the little voter vignettes I was posting that day, and he said sure. Then he returned about 20 minutes later and asked me to delete the photo I had taken, because he worried my publishing it could jeopardize his family’s safety.

Mike embodied a typical Democratic voter profile in that his antipathy for Trump was the central animating factor in his political behavior. He was motivated by what he saw as Trump’s objectionable personality traits, and his belief that Trump generally degrades the overall culture and interpersonal relations. He pined for an allegedly bygone era when people could just blithely vote for George W. Bush or John Kerry and not worry about it all that much; he actually did say his family had been Republicans in the pre-Trump era.

And while the psychic anguish produced by Trump in much of the populace might have been enough to push Joe Biden over the finish line in 2020, it had predictably waned by 2024, and Democrats who harbored such anguish were talking to a diminishing pool of voters.

For instance, I spoke to a 19-year-old named Dylan in Colerain Township, PA (see above photo) who had just voted Trump for the first time. Dylan said he wasn’t very political, but found Trump “hysterical” — as in funny. Conversely, the “hysterical” liberals who have been fulminating wildly about Trump for the past eight years were clearly somewhat alien to Dylan; he was literally 11 years old when Trump was first elected, and the United States had not observably collapsed into a Trumpified tyrannical hellscape.

I don’t know whether Mike was justified in fearing that my publication of his photo would have subjected his family to danger in Lancaster County, PA — but I tend to doubt it. This seemed more a product of the overwrought psychic turmoil that liberals have eagerly marinated in for the past eight years, while the rest of the country grew increasingly removed from that drama. Still, I did delete the photo, because people are entitled to keep their vote private if they choose, however questionable their reasoning. (Mike’s misgivings on Trump and Ukraine are also probably misguided, but indicative of how Democrats have forfeited the salient issue of war-weariness to Republicans.)

As far back as April I was writing that Trump was on a “trajectory” to win, and I never really altered that view. I don’t make crystal-ball predictions, because I find them stupid — no pundit ever pays a price for making flagrantly wrong predictions. So I employ a method of analyzing information as it exists in the present moment, and then try to divine evidence-based intuitions from that information. This might seem like a distinction without a difference, but I think it’s possible to discern trends in the electorate without making capricious “predictions” akin to betting on sports.

One reason Trump struck me as on a trajectory to win was that he’s probably the most famous celebrity on Earth, and that’s going to penetrate the consciousness of huge swaths of Americans, particularly less-political Americans who don’t read The Atlantic and don’t watch CNN, and therefore don’t have much “lived experience” that tells them Trump ushered in a “fascist” dystopia.

Trump is also the first president to win two non-consecutive terms since Grover Cleveland. As a native of West Caldwell, New Jersey, I am pained that our native son Grover has been stripped of this unique historical distinction. Grover Cleveland’s birthplace is located in Caldwell, NJ on Bloomfield Avenue; I may go lay a wreath in mourning. I once dressed up as Grover Cleveland for an elementary school project by sticking a pillow over my stomach. (Caldwell and West Caldwell, despite being separate municipalities, have a joint school system and I always therefore kind of viewed them as the same town.)

Yes, I have a Grover Cleveland Birthplace polo shirt

More seriously, this Trump asset of having previously been president was hugely potent, and perhaps slightly underrated despite its obviousness and simplicity. Presidents have historically become more popular after they leave office, as the rose-colored nostalgic recollections kick in; George W. Bush’s approval rating was 61% in 2018, nearly double his 33% approval upon leaving office about a decade prior. Barack Obama similarly had a 66% approval rating in 2018, after leaving office, while his in-office approval had dipped at various points into the 40s.

Trump 2024 was historically anomalous in that for the first time in over a century, he could covert that inevitable rise in post-presidential popularity into an actionable electoral campaign. Trump’s net favorability was around -18 points when he left office in 2021, and by November 2024, his ratings had improved significantly.

None of this is a precise science, but my consistent intuition, buttressed by anecdotal interactions in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and elsewhere, was that a strategy which relied on the aberrational hyper-politicization of 2020 was not going to yield continued success for Democrats.

Interactions with committed Kamala voters usually involved them citing some elite-coded abstraction as a motivating factor in their vote. Another lady in Quarryville named Kelly, who was in her 40s, explained to me why she had voted for Kamala. “I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-women’s rights, I’m anti-fascist,” she said, “all the reasons an educated person should be.” Kelly added that Trump is “supported by racists,” is intent on “punishing women,” and “inspires a culture of hate.” (Kelly also didn’t want her photo taken.)

It’s not difficult to see why these overheated intangibles would fail to appeal to a first-time male voter in his 20s, across races, who rarely consumes political news. It just doesn’t line up with their reality in any conceivable way. I also have a hard time believing that a majority of Americans would have knowingly voted for someone they genuinely believed to have instigated a fascist “insurrection” — Trump will be the first Republican to win the overall popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004. Most Americans aren’t really interested in fomenting insurrection. Trump to them simply does not fall outside the bounds of what they consider to be normal.

In contrast with the Dems, Trump voters were much more likely to cite tangible issues such as the economy and their perception that it was better when Trump was in office.

I wrote before the election about how in my anecdotal impression, Trump was also generally favored among voters who were otherwise disengaged from the political process, or skeptical of whether voting was even worthwhile. I have a hunch that if the Republicans had a more robust voter-turnout and canvassing operation, the Trump margins of victory could have been even bigger in many states, because there was a noticeable cross-section of potential voters who might have been activated with some additional nudging. On the other hand, Democrats have ideologically embraced being defenders of the sacred “institutions” that many lower-middle class people have little or no fidelity to.

Presidential elections are huge, multivariate events that defy any single explanation, but here’s an early attempt at least, as I continue to digest all the info.

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