Post-Election Despair, Euphoria Yield to Reality

Why Democratic candidates in swing states won while Harris lost

I notice, in the comments on Heather Cox Richardson’s popular Substack, with more than a million subscribers, a deep bitterness and disillusionment with the American people, and consequently democracy itself. Several comments equated Kamala Harris’s loss with the defeat of the Union and victory of the Confederacy in the Civil War.

This extreme reaction was similar to a pre-election social-media post by a Trump-supporting friend who asserted that a Harris victory would be equivalent to Al Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11/2001.

These were conversation-stoppers for people with differing views. I don’t embrace these cartoonish caricatures by doomsayers. I'm not ready to concede that Donald Trump's election means, as numerous commenters on HCR’s Substack wrote, the "implosion of the American system," the end of NATO, the shift of Europe toward an authoritarian and emboldened Russia, and America’s dominance by misogynists declaring “your body, my choice.”

It might mean Republican infighting, stalemate, and failure within two years. It could even result in some perceived successes, or at least accountability at last because Republicans hold the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. There can be no more excuses that “the libs” blocked them from achieving their agenda.

Pete Buttigieg warns Democrats: “We cannot be mesmerized by the worst things that we see happening. We will be inclined to react with shock by some things that are done precisely with the intent of shocking us, we need to move very quickly through the shock.”

In 2008, Dems thought they reached nirvana with the election of Barack Obama. Within a year, the Tea Party emerged. Within two years, the roof fell in, with Republicans gaining 60 seats in the House and almost taking the Senate.

Politics in America is like physics. One action tends to spark an equal and opposite reaction.

Since 1968, voters have chosen divided government most of the time. They generally give a new president two years to over-reach, then slap him down by giving the other party control of at least one house of Congress. This, by design, promotes compromise and consensus.

We'd do well to show curiosity about why the American people voted as they did, rather than simply project reductive judgments that all Trump voters are stupid cult members and bigots, “fascists,” or all Harris supporters are Marxists, socialists and communists. This is an opportunity to learn from our fellow Americans outside media-created silos and cultural bubbles.

Voters weren’t persuaded by economic statistics indicating that inflation is fading, and seem to believe the U.S. is in recession though officially it is not. This is par for the political course. In 1992, as James Carville advised, “It’s the economy stupid.” His boss Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush because the voters thought the economy was in recession. It wasn’t.

Blaming the voters is not a comeback strategy. In 2024, Democrats won senatorial elections in the swing states of AZ, WI, NV, and MI -- if Harris won those states, she would have won the election. Why didn’t she?

Michigan elected a Democrat Senator but not Harris for president. Why?