I couldn’t help but think as I tried to fall asleep the night of the election last week, after we were assaulted with the news that Trump had somehow won — Trump who wailed for four years that the 2020 election was “Rigged!” “Stolen!” and claiming that he, “Trump!”, was “The legitimately elected President!”, that Biden had an “inside operator” who “fixed the whole thing” to ensure Trump would lose. I haven’t been able to sleep for over a week now, pissed off that that guy the Dems hired to steal the election again from Trump… HAD FAILED TO DO HIS JOB! WHERE WAS HE?! We learned from Trump that DEMS STEAL ELECTIONS!! WHY WASN'T THIS ONE STOLEN FOR HARRIS?! CAN’T THE DEMOCRATS DO ANYTHING RIGHT??!! I mean, we gave the Harris campaign nearly TWO BILLION DOLLARS! For two billion bucks we couldn’t even get a decent rigging using Hunter’s new laptop? ARRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!
Ok. Too soon. But am I at least allowed to make the case that if Trump was indeed the real winner in 2020, then by law he’s already been elected twice — in 2016 and 2020 as he’s said over a thousand times! So, per the Constitution, no president can be elected a third time! Right?
I’ve spent this past week trying to answer the questions we all have:
1. How did this happen?
2. What is going to happen after Trump is sworn in, other than the dismantling of the U.S. Government and the End of our Democracy?
3. What’s our plan? What do we do now? How are we going to do things differently?
First, let’s acknowledge that not all the votes are finished being counted. I have no desire at this moment to leap into all sorts of electoral analysis of what happened without knowing all the facts. Everybody with a microphone or a camera or a Substack seems to know exactly what happened! Here’s the truth: No one knows! All the pundits and bloviators who are just making shit up in order to hang onto their jobs are doing us no service. Those with agendas or axes to grind are in full spew-mode. Moderates and sell-outs attack the Left for protecting Trans kids and stopping the militarization of local police departments. The Left attacks the Party hacks who can’t win a race against a 34-time convicted felon.
And here’s the thing: Election Day exit polls are notoriously unreliable. Yet these exit polls have helped establish accepted narratives about elections that have turned out to be false. For eight years we’ve been saying that a majority of white women, 52%, voted for Trump in 2016. That became the oft-repeated trope — “White women gave us Trump!” — even by me, as I said it with a certain melancholy in my voice. As it turns out, with further research by real political scientists, it was revealed in August of 2017 that, in fact, Trump got less than half of the white women vote. It was not the 9 point difference that we all repeated ad nauseam, but only a 2 point difference. Trump got 47%, Clinton got 45% — a slim plurality, sure, but not a shocking majority, not the 52% that newspaper reporters who, at 3am on deadline that night, rushed their breathless and incorrect assessment to press in order to make the early morning papers that Americans would wake up to. With our coffee we were handed a juicy morsel as we were told the “truth” of who was responsible for Trump being president. Women! White women!
Through these eight long years, the punditocracy has failed to set straight this white women’s shame for “giving us Trump.” The shame should really be on us, all of us, for being so quick to demand the “electoral analysis” and then accept the narrative the media was so eager to feed us.
This year, this election, the “It’s a landslide!” narrative was already baked-in — and out of the oven before the double dose of NyQuil we all took that night kicked in. And once again, that rush to judgement was premature. “The working class gave us Trump!” Oh really? That’s funny because the average working class American in 2024 is a 30-year-old Black or Brown woman. And we know how they voted. So what’s the truth? Well, it’s a week and a half later, the vote count still isn’t finished and with every day that goes by, it gets closer and closer. Maybe we should wait and assess all of this once we have all the information. Isn’t that better than, after smearing an entire gender 8 years ago, we don’t do the same to an entire group of Americans who spend their day flipping your burgers, cleaning your restrooms, picking your fruit or taking your 1-800-call in their cubicle, helping you fix your $2000 computer, an item they will never possess.
So, yes, we desperately want to figure this out right now. You want to know why we lost! Who’s responsible! Who did this to us!
So, let me share my initial thoughts and findings — with the caveat that I’m going to take some more time to not only get to the bottom of this, but to actually discover and recommend a path forward. Because if there was ever a time to get something right, especially after it seems we got it so wrong, this would be that moment.
In other words, the moment just before Tulsi Gabbard becomes our Director of National Intelligence.
Here’s a few numbers to tide you over, a few doses of “instant gratification” electoral methadone with some of the facts we have now verified that may make us feel a bit better, or could make us feel a lot worse.
The original Election Night “landslide” story helps the Trump administration. After all, if the popular imagination imagines the popular vote to be a landslide, then what can’t Trump get away with? But the truth is, as of today, November 15, Trump’s lead has been dramatically cut in half — and may still be cut again by the time all the counting is actually completed. After all, 10% of California’s votes still need to be counted! That could mean Harris adding 2 more million votes to her popular vote tally. Right now, Harris has 73.2 million votes. Based on two predicted outcomes I’ve seen, the end result will leave Harris with just over 75 million votes and Trump with around 77 million. Overall voter turnout will only be about 3 million less than in 2020 and Trump’s margin of victory could easily be under 2%. As I write this on Friday, Trump’s vote total nationwide is only 50.1%. It’s possible he won’t clear 50% of the popular vote when all is said and done. This is not a mandate and it is not a landslide. Beating your opponent by what could be a minuscule 1.8% is never considered a landslide. In fact, it more closely resembles a children’s nursery rhyme: You’ve won just by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin.
There are some interesting trends out there that we already know. In eight states — most of them Red States — abortion rights won the majority of the vote (yes, including Florida). We also saw Red State victories for raising the minimum wage and for paid sick leave and two other Red States voted to defend public education, even as they voted for a President who may well dismantle the Department of Education. And then there’s the swing state women Democrats for Senate — Elissa Slotkin won her new Senate seat in Michigan, Tammy Baldwin won hers in Wisconsin, and Jacky Rosen won hers in Nevada even as Harris lost all three of those states. Same also goes for Ruben Gallego in Arizona.
And here are a few more of the facts that we can confirm are correct but you won’t see much trumpeting of them in the mainstream media: Nationwide, Kamala Harris came in FIRST with all Independent voters, with all Moderate voters, with all Women voters, Black voters, Latino voters, College Educated voters; she won the Gen Z generation and the Millennials and women 65 and older. She won the Jewish vote, the Asian vote, the Urban vote and the Suburban vote (that’s right, amongst the entire country that lives in either a city or a suburb, she came in FIRST, she won their votes!). She won the Single/Unmarried vote, the Union vote, the LGBTQ+ vote… I could go on and on. But for now, here’s my advice:
Instead of listening to this, that, and whatever, what do your instincts say? Not what the TV says, or what crazy comments on Twitter say — what does your common sense tell you? You know there is a fight ahead and you’re going to have to fight it, just as your parents and your grandparents and your great-great grandparents did when they abolished slavery, got women The Vote, organized themselves into unions to get a 25-cent raise and a day off, passed civil rights laws, ended the Vietnam War, and made it legal to marry the person you loved. It’s always been a fight, and the fight is here again today.
So let’s get the votes all counted, let’s rest our minds and rejuvenate our spirit and our bodies. Because what comes next is definitely coming — Attorney General Matt Gaetz, the new Defense Secretary from Fox & Friends Weekend Dude, Road-Kill Bear Connoisseur and Worm-in-Brain Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., Co-President and Chief Procreator Elon Musk. And as bad as we think it’s going to get, I’m sorry to tell you, it’s going to be much, much worse. There will be a national abortion ban. Preparations for the next pandemic will be non-existent and millions will die. (Thank you, Robert Kennedy Jr.) A Russian-American will be appointed to a top position to keep Putin informed. Media critical of Trump will be forced to shut down or back down. Many of our best thinkers, writers, artists, scientists and inventors will flee the country. Young girls will witness their mother’s struggles and learn to give up before they turn 18. Boys will be under a constant threat of being drafted and sent with guns to “protect” the border or to participate in militarized sweeps in cities across the country to apprehend Brown and Black people for permanent removal. And, of course, they are going to close schools and libraries and social services and anything that stands in the way of authoritarian rule. And you will try to preserve your sanity by telling yourself it won’t get this bad, and when it does on a morning like today when Trump’s new ambassador to Israel is Gov. Mike Huckabee who’s proclaimed, “There’s no such thing as a ‘Palestinian’,” just like the Supreme Court told 172 million women two years ago, There’s no such thing as a uterus that belongs to you, you will think about your brother-in-law, your uncle, your step-dad, your grandfather and the other men your mother no longer wants to invite to Thanksgiving Day dinner. After awhile you will understand why and wonder what you should have done or could have done to stop their rage, their hate, their misogyny. You may wonder if perhaps there was a better use for that mashed potato masher utensil sitting there on the kitchen counter at Thanksgiving. But reason will prevail. You will come to your senses. And you will cling to a newfound hope that this was all really just a bad dream and had nothing to do with how many doors you or I didn’t knock on in 2024…
Maybe I’ll have some better thoughts and ideas once I get some sleep, after they’ve finished counting the votes, and when I’ve talked it over with my female cousins while enjoying some warm pumpkin pie à la mode…
By MICHAEL MOORE NOV 15, 2024