The US Presidential election, two days later

We’ll be seeing lots of analysis of the surprising outcome of the US Presidential election. Even with his all-too-visible mental and emotional deterioration, with all his out-and-out Hitlerian rhetoric, his extreme racism, xenophobia, his incitements to violence – Donald Trump not only won the Electoral College vote but the popular vote, as well.

I don’t have any fresh take on the numbers. For now, just some more-or-less random thoughts about the tragedy. I was interviewed on an Austrian podcast on election evening along with some other Americans¹, but it hasn’t been posted for replay yet. The result wasn’t yet known then. And fortunately none of us predicted a certain win for Harris!

Harris did face prejudice as a Black woman and the Republicans promoted that. But there are plenty of women and Black candidates who get elected in the US, For Democrats to promote a just-the-way-it-is cynicism about nominating minorities or women for senior offices including the Presidency would be ridiculous.

Of course, racism really is A Thing in American politics. And will be for a long time to come. But the only pro-democracy position is to oppose it.

Biden was problematic as the Democratic candidate. If he had announced in late 2023 or 2024 that he would not be standing for nomination again, that would have allowed an active Democratic primary process that would have generated interest and enthusiasm.

One of the questions I was asked on the podcast is whether it was a good idea to replace Biden with Harris. My answer was yes, definitely. In first debate with Trump this year, Biden not only appeared frail but was at times downright incoherent. It was obvious that he was not in condition to run an extremely competitive general election campaign against a bloviating cult leader like Trump.

Given how quickly she had to gear up her Presidential campaign, and the fact that she basically had to take over Biden’s campaign team, Harris’ campaign seems to have functioned well. (Given the rivalries and inevitable disorganization in campaigns, “functioned well” is a relative term in this context.)

Tim Walz was an inspired VP choice. And his emphasis on pointing out the “weird” in the Republican ticket’s antics was a good way to make more specific the Democrats’ fighting-for-freedom-and-democracy theme. Because it had the effect of encouraging people to stop and think for a second or two when the Republican candidates said something odd. Like, “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.”

But they pivoted away from that too quickly. Part of the result was that Walz in his debate with J.D. Vance didn’t get to jam Vance on his more crackpot views. Which was probably a lost chance. Though Vice Presidential politics rarely have a notable effect on the outcome of the campaign.

The switch to a Harris version of the “bipartisanship” temptation into which the Democrats way too often fall was almost certainly a mistake. Given Trump’s margin of victory, it hardly seems to have attracted any significant number of Trump-leaning voters. Campaigning with Liz Cheney was a bad idea. Republican voters consider here a renegade. And Democratic voters cringe at the name “Cheney” and were left with the slightly nauseous feeling of, “Oh, no, here we go again with the Bipartisanship nonsense.”

Harris made good use of the abortion-rights issue and didn’t pull any punches on it. The popularity of state initiatives guaranteeing abortion rights showed, along with the polling results on the issue, that the Republicans’ abortion-ban position is very unpopular. But it doesn’t seem to have attracted the kind of numbers to Harris one might have thought and hoped.

I shudder at the developments to come in the immediate future in foreign policy. But the influence of the Russia-Ukraine War and Israel’s war with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran on the election’s outcome is hard to see. I won’t be surprised if Biden’s unconditional support for Netanyahu‘s genocidal war cost Harris important votes in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And, in general, ordinary people don’t like wars. Even though US direct involvement in both conflicts is limited, the nightmarish images out of Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon are unlikely to have given American voters a warm and fuzzy feeling about our current foreign policy.

The xenophobia problem

On the other hand, ethnonationalism and xenophobia are currently the political weapon of choice for authoritarians (fascists/Orbánists) in the US and Europe used to undermine the voters’ confidence in and support for the rule of law, which is an essential part of democratic governance. By hyping immigrants and refugees as a deadly danger, the authoritarian parties justify illegal action against them, and accustom the public to think that rule by law (and force) rather the rule of law is what is needed. Politics in the EU have provided numerous recent examples - particularly Britain, France, and Italy – that when centrist pro-democracy parties try to pander to xenophobic voters, it winds up strengthening the far-right parties and weakening the moderates. That’s how in this year’s parliamentary elections, the ancient Tory Party (Conservative) came in third behind a previously-minor nationalist party.

Biden’s hardline rhetoric on immigration that Harris also adopted, fell into the same trap. Democratic parties and group who want to defend liberal democracy including the rule of law have to be willing to push back directly on all the misrepresentation, phony anecdotes and xenophobic bigotry that the far right uses on that issue. Like most of what Donald Trump says, his position on immigration (and that of most of his foreign counterparts) is based on lies and hysteria, not reality. Pro-democracy parties can push back against that successfully with actual reality-based policies. But the Biden-Harris tough-on-the-border schtick just tried to “Me Too” the Republicans’ positions’. That was bad policy and bad politics.

The long story of Democratic neoliberal policies

One of the real surprises of this election is that general economic trends under the Biden Administration have been good. Very good, even. The results serve as a validation of the kind of Keynesian and pro-labor policies Biden embraced, which were a real and important departure from the Reagan-Thatcher/neoliberal/TINA (There Is No Alternative) policies that have done so much damage to Western economies and politics over the last several decades.

Paul Krugman posted this graph just before Election Day²:

Krugman, bless his heart, puts faith in actual facts. And he’s basically right on his point as far as it goes. I’ve also been astonished that the numbers on job and income growth and moderating inflation didn’t produce more obvious support for Democrats. Because it’s still a commonplace in US politics to assume that good economic performance benefits the incumbent Presidential party. The full-employment numbers recently have been particularly impressive.

However, there high-level statistics don’t capture everything. The price of housing in the US has been rising sharply across the board the last several years, in no small part because legislators permitted hedge-funds and private-equity funds to buy up large amounts of residential housing and convert them to rentals. This created a shortage of units to buy, which drove the price up. (Which in turn increases the book value of the rental hosing the funds own.) Homeowners are happy to see the value of their property increase. But the kind of price rises we’ve been seeing recently in the US also raise the prices for homeowners wanting to trade up to larger units. But even homeowners happy to see their housing equity grow also see the problems their kids and grandkids are experiencing getting into the housing market. And the rising housing prices have also led to a serious increase in homelessness with way too many politicians use a topic for law-and-order demagoguery.

Political analysts, even including academics, are often tempted to fall back on vague concepts like malaise, alienation, discontent, uncertainty to try to explain long-run political trends. But seeing how those vague concepts relate to longer-term political trends is complicated. The neoliberal economic doctrine – from which Biden very much to his credit backed away in a real way in favor of Keynesian stimulus and industrial policy, as well as support for organized labor – has definitely resulted in a general reduction of opportunities for the working-class majority in the US. The famous postwar suburbs (especially white suburbs) from the 1940s to the 1970s still present American voters with images of economic conditions and opportunities once were and that could be and should be available again.

In the current situation of the US, the COVID epidemic created a lot of vague uncertainty and real loss of life. And also gave an unfortunate boost to conspiracy theories and low-quality alternative media sites. But the support policies that were put in place to ameliorate the effects of COVID also had an effect when they went away. The expanded child tax credits that were temporarily in place largely eliminated child poverty as it’s measured in the US for a time.

Branko Marcetic points out³:

It’s almost unthinkable that a Trump II Administration will provide a better economic performance or more long-term improvements than Biden’s did. But few people vote on their reading of economic statistics alone. Economic issues are mostly processed as general impressions and feelings, for better or worse. And political rallies are not conducive to nuanced education on economic policy.

This is Bernie Sanders’ bottom-line take on the situation⁴:

The Austrian political analyst Natascha Strobl retweeted Bernie'S note on Nov. 6 with comment: "The one important Democratic politician who understood it early on and still gets it. He was right. The whole time."

1. US-Wahlnacht 2024. DorfTV 11/5-6/2024. <https://dorftv.at/blog/45286>

2. Krugman, Paul (2024): X/Twitter 11/04/2024. <https://x.com/paulkrugman/status/1853434778642419921> (Accessed: 2024-07-11).

3. Marcetic, Branko (2024): X/Twitter 11/06/2024. <https://x.com/BMarchetich/status/1854184234228867346> (Accessed: 2024-07-11).

4. Sanders, Bernie (2024): X/Twitter 11/06/2024. <https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1854271157135941698> (Accessed: 2024-07-11).

Pecorin, Allison & Deliso, Masredith (2024): Bernie Sanders blasts Democratic Party following Kamala Harris loss. ABC News 11/07/2024. <https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bernie-sanders-response-presidential-election/story?id=115582079> (Accessed: 2024-07-11).