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I think this post will displease or even enrage some readers. But I have to write it. I’ve spent the last several days thinking through various things Democrats will need to do to confront and challenge the incoming Trump administration and things Democrats should now do differently. That is not only with what they’ve learned from this campaign and defeat but with a hand now free of the locked-in realities of Joe Biden’s incumbency and the first two years especially of his administration. That to-do list is critical to get right. The tasks are real, super-important and Democrats need to get down to work on them right away.
But for many people, the dire consequences of Trump’s election are distorting our understanding of just how he was elected. They’re not the same thing. And the difference matters. I see repeated headlines about how the Democratic Party and its political coalition have been “shattered” or are now in “shambles.” I’m having an, I hope, friendly email exchange with one reader who told me this morning that he felt no one, including TPM, prepared him for Trump’s “overwhelming victory.” Analysis pieces in the big papers state as a given that it will take years or possibly decades of rebuilding for the party to recover.
I really have no choice but to say that all of this is immense and innumerate bullshit. This isn’t even a subjective point. What we have is a bout of escalating competitive hyperbole in which the wild overstatement keeps getting ramped up because no one is willing to step up and state the obvious for fear of being shouted down as being in denial or naive or not recognizing the gravity of the crisis or whatever. Without anyone willing to push back, the chorus just keeps moving to more and more over-the-top claims. A party with a bit more self-respect and spine would be less bowled over by claims from the opposition and a press in the habit of portraying Democrats in the most negative terms. But here we are.
A few facts.
Trump will likely end up winning the popular vote by between one and two percentage points. The margins in the Blue Wall states range from 2 percentage points in Pennsylvania to just under 1 percentage point in Wisconsin. Georgia: 2.2; North Carolina: 3.3; Nevada will likely be around 3 percentage points though they’re still counting. The one state that really wasn’t close was Arizona where Trump’s margin ended up being over 5 percentage points, though they’re still counting there as well.
This is not an overwhelming victory by any estimation. It’s basically a mirror image of the one Joe Biden won four years ago. Slightly larger margins in all but one of the swing states and a significantly smaller margin in the national vote.
Now, close only counts in horse-shoes and hand grenades, as they say. Presidential power is a purely binary equation. But when we’re talking about scale and whether a party or coalition is shattered, margins matter a great deal. You might say, so what? Sure by the math it was a close election. The numbers speak for themselves. But why is this such an important point when the real issue is the vast threat of four years of Donald Trump’s presidency?
It matters because the two points are deeply, inextricably conjoined. Democrats are not well-served by a meltdown, a spiral of demoralization that zaps their energy to counter the Trump administration and bounce back in two and four years. Understanding what happened is important because it impacts the future. Distorting reality is just as damaging to our ability to formulate next steps when it’s done on the downside, as it is when it’s done on the upside. It tells you what to focus on improving and when you decide to toss what you have and start from scratch. A political coalition that loses an election by one and a half points is by definition not smashed, moribund and in irremediable decline. All of these points can be summarized simply: You make the best decisions when you start from an accurate understanding of what happened. You don’t gain any psychic points or merit by exaggeration or falsehood. It may feel like that but it’s not the case.