Some Frameworks For Why We Lost In 2024

I'm just one guy synthesizing weeks of data. I could be wrong, missing things, all that jazz! But here are some things I've figured out.

Hello, friends,

I hope you’re as well as can be, and that your Thanksgiving was relatively argument-free.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. This post sums up a lot of my reasons why, but ultimately I’m back here, at least today, to kind of sit with myself and really think for a while, for the first time: “What went wrong?”

See, I’ve seen arguments on the internet ranging the entire gamut of ideas. I’ve even seen people - some who I know and respect! - say things like, paraphrased, “Nobody could have won.” And, “If it wasn’t Harris it would’ve been way worse.” Which are two different thoughts, one of which is right.

But you know how I feel about compliance-in-advance. I don’t believe Harris was doomed. I can’t accept that we cannot win based on the merits of our ideas, because at that point Democracy as an idea is dead.

I’ll repeat that: If ideas cannot win votes to win elections, than Democracy is dead and we might as well opt for a benevolent dictatorship. I feel like maybe it’s not too late for that second option, but that’s on Biden.

As is a lot.

See, back in July I wrote an article about how Biden could - if he stayed in it - win. And if you look through that article and this one, well, you might see some serious predictive ability. I kinda hate it, to be honest.

Anyway! As I’m still working a lot of this stuff out, myself, let’s get to the disclaimers.

Some Disclaimers Before We Begin:

- First of all, as I said in the article header, I’m just one guy synthesizing over two weeks of thought-leader output. I’ve talked to a lot of people before, during, and after the election - and read, watched, and listened to a lot of different ideas. The ideas I’m about to present are based on that information.

- I cannot say where I got every idea, nor find every link to every conversation I’ve read on a random social media service, or every video I’ve looked at, or every document I’ve read, or whatever. I will try to find/include links where I can, but you have the internet, too. Google’s search engine has enshittified, but there are others, as well. Even if I do have a link, check the facts on the link!

- I also could be very wrong about some things, or just misinformed, or forgetful of a fact, or what-have-you. I am, again, one person (with the help of friendly conversations, of course!) coming up with my own stuff, much of it probably as I sit here writing down my thoughts.

- Nothing prescribed below is meant to be a universal, “That’s the one reason they lost.” Granted, maybe the first point is a huuugeee contributor, but, ultimately that’s also the least about-the-election-itself. So just keep that in mind!

Reasons We Lost In 2024.

Yes I’m playing around with headers.

Biden Didn’t Take January 6th Seriously Enough.

Ultimately, following the January 6th, 2021 Putsch against the United States of America, Joe Biden had one single, solitary priority for his Presidency:

Hold Trump accountable.

On this solitary tack, he failed, and thus as far as I am concerned all of the good he did otherwise (and there was good) is either assumed to be KIA as soon as Trump takes office, and/or will be co-opted by Trump to the point that he claims credit for it.

Saving Obamacare? Republicans probably will tinker with it a bit, make it generally better for megacorporations, and then rebrand it as Trumpcare. And how many ‘legendary’ Tweets can you find of Democrats shouting at Republicans who crow about the money their district got from various bills, “You voted against it!” Apparently, it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t.

But, no. Biden had one job and one job only: To make sure Donald Trump suffered the consequences for attempting a coup. And he failed. His Presidency is, in my opinion, on a crash-course to being an F-.

In case you think I am being too strict, a reminder: When Adolf Hitler attempted a coup in Germany called the Beer Hall Putsch, he tried it in November and was jailed by April. Granted, he got off easy and it didn’t stop his rise to power, but that’s just it: Weimar Germany did a better job against their Hitler than the United States Of America did against “America’s Hitler” (-J.D. Vance).

The fault lies squarely with Joe Biden. He’s the one who chose to appoint Merrick Garland. It was a symbolic move - “Garland was blackballed from the Supreme Court in 2016, but now we’re getting him as Attorney General to go after you fucking Fascists!”

Except…Garland kinda just sat there. Oh, I’m sure he did stuff. But given that Joe Biden took office in January of 2021, why on fucking Earth did it take until November 18th, 2022 to appoint Jack Smith as Special Prosecutor? That’s nearly half of Biden’s administration that was wasted playing patty-cake.

Why couldn’t they (not-quite) literally just sit a Grand Jury down on January 30th, 2021, show them the fresh-in-their-minds tape of Trump giving his big speech and ordering his mob to march on the Capitol, then say, “He did it. Indict him.” Why was that not possible?

I understand some aspects were impossible to avoid. Smith drawing Aileen Cannon as his judge in his Florida cases was just hard. Even there, though, Smith played patty-cake. He was shut down time and time again and yet he refused to go over her head to the Circuit Court. I remember listening to many - many! - episodes of “Legal Breakdown’ with Brian Taylor Cohen and Glenn Kirschner where Glenn, a former Prosecutor, himself, wonders what it was gonna take for Smith to rock up and move forward.

And I guess the answer was…Never. He never was.

The bottom line on this one is that anyone who was depending on systems of norms, regulations, and laws to save us - myself included - was sorely fucking disappointed. Those things simply do not exist, at least not for Republicans.

Who knows? Maybe Biden will at least pardon his son, or commute some death sentences. I’d up his grade from an F- to an F+ if he did both.

Harris Was The Right Candidate - Moreso In 2020 Though.

First off, go back to that article I linked at the top. I said the only feasible Biden replacement - or, at least, the person with the right of first refusal - was Harris. For all the reasons. I’m glad we got that. (I know, I know: “She stole the primary.” She didn’t. You don’t know how an actual open primary works. Our elected delegates represented our interests as they best saw fit. That’s what we had.)

I remember a Kamala Harris who wanted monthly stimulus checks for…Well I followed the link from this article to Harris’ old Senate page, but it was apparently deleted, so I don’t know. I’ve read it could’ve just been three months, but if I recall correctly she’d wanted a permanent stimulus similar to Universal Basic Income? Hard to tell when shit is scrubbed off the internet.

Either way, this is a thing that never happened, and it tops off a list of things Harris just kind of abandoned from 2020, especially as the campaign went on.

Good news: There’s a Wiki for her 2020 campaign. Because finding them via Google as well as DuckDuckGo was proving complicated until DDG provided me with that Wiki link. Bad news, though; that link doesn’t really help. Maybe this one on her positions will? But that’ll be polluted by her 2024 changes, and, and, and—-

Do you see where this is going, yet?

Harris in 2024 was very different than Harris in 2020. In fact, the number one thing I saw when looking back through different search engines was just how many articles I saw with titles including language like “complicated history.” Because her positions changed to be more like Biden’s (which we’ll get to…).

But PBS came through: In 2020, Harris outright supported Medicare For All, something we’ve talked about more than once. Something I predicted in that article I linked in up at the top of this one. Something I know others have dismissed as a non-starter for helping her win, but…Yeah.

In 2024? We didn’t hear much talk about it. I didn’t! And I was pretty fuckin’ clued in, if you ask me. But that’s because Biden was never a Medicare For All guy. In fact, we never heard much about “Bidencare” other than that it’d improve the Affordable Care Act, which, sure - but, also, the ACA was always hatefully branded as Obamacare by the same Republicans who will, again, probably just tinker with it, make it worse, and rebrand it as Trumpcare and call it a win!

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of hate directed to Tim Walz.

He was, as was Harris, 100% the right pick for this election.

A man of dignity, a man you could respect, a man who knew his shit and had an understanding of just how fucking weird Republicans are about shit. Walz runs one of the best-run states in the nation, if not the best run. He does it with a much slimmer legislative majority than - say - New York has! But yet he does so much better than our governor that I wouldn’t even vote for our governor. I’d write in Tim Walz, or vote third-party.

Harris-Walz was absolutely the right ticket. The problem is that Harris ran the wrong race. At least, that’s the conclusion you’ll get if you go on Twitter and type in, “Walz right pick wrong race.” There’s a lot of echo-chamber-like agreement that Harris ran the wrong kind of race.

Shockingly, I agree.

Harris started off strong, running a more populist version of Biden’s campaign. Walz fit in perfectly - a working man, himself - a teacher, a coach (No wonder I liked him!); ex-military but chill about it; capable of calling Republican bullshit out!

But then Harris veered right. She picked up endorsements from people like Dick Cheney - and paraded them around like badges of honor. She was on stage with Liz Cheney often. It was often asked why George W. Bush was silent and not defending Democracy - as if he was ever one to do that except as an excuse to invade nations.

Harris was appealing to the ‘principled Republican’ and the ‘Anti-Trump, Pro-Haley’ part of that maligned Fascist party that she believed, based on limited data, existed.

It didn’t.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney was heavily involved in war crimes and torture, and right next to Bush with invading nations we had no real quarrel with.

That pissed off a lot of us on the left. It feeds into our next issue heavily, in fact, and it really did leave very little room for differentiation from Trump. But ultimately the whole concept of “Appeal to the sane Republicans and centrist voters” simply failed outright.

They don’t exist - or, if they do, they stayed home. (That’ll be our last point, BTW).

Jacobin (which I’ll note is a fairly left-leaning publication) charted out how Harris lumbered away from populist ideas like the ones I mentioned and moved towards a more corporatist, classic Third-Way Democrat campaign the likes of which made Bill and Hillary Clinton quite proud, and led to inevitable defeat.

Of particular note is the chart with the frequency-of-words showing Trump talked a lot about “Cost of living” - See also, the term “Inflation” - Bernie Sanders talked a lot about “Progressive Economics,” and Harris just kind of had a little of both plus a bit more of centrist stuff. The sort of status quo, everything-at-once stuff that sounds nice to those doing well, but doesn’t do much for those who are suffering.

There’s debate about why she ran the campaign the way she did. A Fox News article that I won’t link set off the rumor mill that they never had a poll which put Harris ahead of Trump, suggesting they really should have changed strategies. At the same time, it’s been argued whether her advisors wanted her to make a name for herself, versus whether they wanted her to tack to her predecessor’s record.

Ultimately, we have Harris’ own words on the subject.

When asked what she’d have done differently than Biden, Harris said she’d have a Republican in her cabinet. No I’m not kidding. That’s Harris willfully placing herself further right than Biden was.

It’s not Harris 2020, that’s for damn sure.

The bottom line is we had the right candidates for the wrong campaign. If Harris-Walz had run more like Harris 2020 instead of Biden 2020, guess what? We would’ve done a lot better, if not won.

The Chaotic World Stirred Up Fears From Gaza To Ukraine To The Border

Okay, okay, look. This is a hard thing to face, so I’m just gonna say it up-front:

We might be in a World War.

Fuck I actually wrote it.

Fuck.

But, see, it’s not necessarily World War Three, or at least the World War Three of the public’s imagination. It’s not a situation like the Cuban Missile Crisis, where tensions rose and a direct confrontation seemed imminent almost overnight - the kind of thing we think of when we watch movies like The Sum Of All Fears. (BTW, I know the book had Arab terrorists and the movie switched it to neo-Nazis because of 9/11; but, also neo-Nazis are a better candidate, anyway)

Instead, what we’re seeing is more Climate War One.

Why is Russia so interested in Ukraine? Primarily because it has bountiful natural resources, from mineral wealth to fossil fuels to farmland. If that farmland is in the “western” sphere of influence, it’s farmland that Russia’s enemies - as laid out in Putin’s playbook, Aleksander Dugin’s “Foundations Of Geopolitics” - can use to feed its people.

And, remember, Russia has been fucking with Ukraine since at least 2004, when Putin (we’re pretty sure?) tried to assassinate a pro-European Presidential candidate.

Then there’s the fact that both Iran and North Korea are substantially aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine. Iran was in it from the start, helping them out by providing Shahed drones. Now, North Korea is legitimately just sending front-line troops with internet porn addictions to help Russia invade a European country.

No, I’m not making that up.

Meanwhile, the Middle-East is a shitshow. The Gaza genocide (again, look at that article I linked up at the top - I talked about this!) not only has continued in full, unobstructed force, but has actually expanded into a ground war in Lebanon, complete with tremendous bombings in their capital Beirut, that may-or-may-not be at a ceasefire, depending on who you ask and when you ask it. I think it lasted like half a day? I don’t know. I’ve been kind of tuned out because I’m just sick of it all.

And I know that’s kind of unfair. The genocide is still taking place. It’s getting worse. People are dying, and I’m sitting in front of a computer screen typing about how I’m tapped out. But I fought as hard as I could - both against Biden-Harris’ policies on Israel, and against people voting third-party because of it. I recognized and advocated for the fact that as fucked up as it is, Biden-Harris was still the best realpolitik possible outcome for Gaza.

And now some far-far-left people are Shocked Pikachu that Trump’s choice for Ambassador to Israel thinks of the West Bank as “Judea And Samaria” - a Christo-Fascist wackadoo who might honestly want a world war because that’d mean Jesus is coming back, or something.

You know! The End Times! Armageddon! Rapture and Revelations!

But recently, Syria’s taken off again: Just 18 minutes ago (as I’m writing this, anyway), CNN reports that Syrian rebels have entered into Aleppo. You know! That city Gary Johnson was assailed for being a little clueless about in 2016, when legitimizing him and delegitimizing Trump might have helped Clinton by shifting Republican voters away from the Fascist and towards the goofy but better-qualified (ex-governor!) Libertarian?

Ah, well.

Next up who can forget Africa? I mean, besides when European countries are scrambling for control over it! Wait. What’s that? They’re doing it again.

Let’s start with the scrambling. Here’s, just, like, a link to a Wikipedia article about Russia’s Wagner group being involved in Africa. Let’s list some nations Wagner plays around in: Sudan (where there’s a whole-ass genocide taking place we seem to never talk about because of the Gazan one!); Central African Republic; Madagascar; Libya; Mozambique; Mali; Burkino Faso; and maybe Chad, we aren’t sure.

And, look! Look at this list of nations in the “Coup Belt!” Look at the overlap! It’s almost like Russia is destabilizing Democracy on a global level with the intent to make us all medieval Feudalistic plutocracies, or something like that.

Scary shit, right? Requires a grown-up response.

But how much did - say - Kamala Harris talk about the conflicts in Africa? Not much, if you ask me. Again, I feel like I was pretty plugged in. I know I reported on some of this stuff (and maybe I should have written more about it, myself?) but let’s turn to one last one. There’s one continent (well, more like region?) I saved for last for a reason:

Latin America.

You know, that area that’s technically my History BA concentration? Seeing as how I took a lot of special topics courses and wrote my thesis about it? Go ahead! Ask me how Buenaventura Baez tried to sell the Dominican Republic to the United States! Actually…Don’t, I haven’t looked at it in a while. But Luperon was no pirate, and Charles Sumner was a badass!

In most ways - other than Venezuela occasionally threatening its neighbors - the entire situation of Latin America is driven by U.S. intervention. To talk up Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for a minute: About 70% of the illegal guns Mexico catches are American-made; about 75% less migrants are making it to the U.S. border now than a year ago. To quote fucking CATO of all groups, 86.3% of all those caught smuggling Fentanyl are fucking Americans, and it’s our very own American desire for drugs that keep them flowing into the nation - and, by the way, have been destabilizing the entire “everything south of the border” for decades.

See: 1980’s, America, Cocaine and Columbia.

The big thing here is that cries of “Illegals are coming!” have been heard and ingrained into the average American’s consciousness, and those fears are simply not founded.

Go ahead: Dig into the difference in crime rates between immigrants and birthright citizens. Just remember to come back and say, “You told me so.”

The Bottom Line: In a time when the world is intensifying in its conflicts, Harris needed to present a bold defense of Democracy across the globe and at-home. And she did okay at this! She correctly identified Trump as a Fascist, even if she didn’t really explain that well. I did that for her. It’s a shame more people didn’t see it.

The Right Wing Has Captured The Media Ecosystem.

This one is a bit harder to digest, mainly because of the decades about how we’ve heard that the “Mainstream Media” is really “left-wing media.”

I’m gonna start talking about a lot of things, but there’s a common thread throughout all of them that I really hope you’ll pick up on.

For this one, I’m just gonna link you to Leeja Miller’s video on the topic. It’s long, so I’ll paraphrase it thusly: Nixon didn’t like the term “The Press,” as it sounded official and professional, so he switched to using “The Media,” which sounded…Less so. “Media” can mean a lot of things, ranging from documentaries to action movies. Who takes that seriously?

Elon Musk’s purchase and conversion of Twitter to a Nazi-flooded hellhole doesn’t help. For that, I’ll link you to Some More News’ video on the topic. Or, one of them. This is also long, so to summarize it briefly: Elon is pretty much a Nazi, spouting Nazi things and reposting Nazi accounts on a regular basis. His investment into Twitter wasn’t so much to make it anything special, so much as it was to create a right-wing echo-chamber (gee, and they say Bluesky is a left-wing one!) where certain accounts and terms are boosted in the algorithm, and others aren’t.

In fact, I dare say I remember when Elon deliberately slammed the door on Substack links. Makes it hard to participate in the “town square” when your voice is muted.

In fact, Twitter makes quite clear that any external links can be suppressed. They want you to post and interact exclusively within their little walled garden.

Oh, and Elon also owns Space X, which owns Starlink, so his megacompany is integral to national defense.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Meta (that’s Facebook and Instagram and Threads) started downthrottling political content in advance of the 2024 election. This meant that if I, Jesse, posted a Substack about politics (as I do), well, guess what? It’s gonna be downthrottled. It’s gonna be suppressed. It was. I wasn’t alone. And now Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is dining with Trump.

The Los Angeles Times, owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong, allegedly suppressed his Editorial board’s decision to endorse Harris. “Allegedly,” but this is coming via CNN quoting his fucking daughter. Of course, she claimed it was because of Harris’ Gaza policy - which, fine, and all? But that’s still no excuse for the paper’s owner to dive in and suppress their Editorial team’s decision-making. Pay no mind to the fact that he was meeting with Trump back in 2016.

Then there’s the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos. He earned the famed WaPo, which once said “Democracy Dies In Darkness,” numerous subscriber cancellations because he, too, squashed his Editorial board’s decision to endorse Harris. He claimed that it was better not to endorse even though Trump attempted a Putsch against the country. You know, because Democracy! He also had many fine, friendly words for Trump when Trump won, and never-you-mind that his space company Blue Origin had meetings with Trump at just about the same time as these decisions were made.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. And did you notice the thing that connects all of these people?

It’s that they are the hyper-wealthy who stand to benefit directly from Trump’s tax policy that are suddenly best buddies with Trump and helping him out via the media.

This led ‘the left’ to an idea: That we need our own “Joe Rogan,” because Rogan was viewed as holding on to a critical audience that might have been swayed had Kamala Harris just gone on his show.

…And, the thing is, no, we don’t need our own Rogan. Rogan is, to put it charitably, a foolish buffoon frequently wrong about the things he thinks he’s an expert in (such as his Pandemic advice - go look it up), frequently housing conspiracy theories that don’t make sense (and a big Alex Jones friend), and he also hosted Trump and Trump’s buddy Elon Musk.

We don’t need that.

What we need, instead, is probably twofold and honestly contradictory.

On one hand, we do need more choice in media outlets. What that means is that we need people - generally people with significant wealth - to do something that’ll make journalism-in-general, not just left-leaning stuff, more prominent.

When I ran The Weekly Freeporter for five years of weekly content, I got ONE paycheck from Google Adsense for about $100. That recouperated the cost of a voice recorder I bought to record board meetings, and it also probably paid for a tank of gas for when we explored Freeport and Long Beach following Hurricane Sandy. That was hyper-local journalism. In those five years I put out more than an average of one article per week, and I received virtually nothing for my time.

Some kind of journalistic endowment providing grants for hyperlocal journalism, maybe? If there had been something that would’ve given me the cash I needed to float myself while I wrote, I’d have been able to keep doing it longer and maybe make a career out of it! Instead, it was just a part-time side thing I did mostly for fun, and if you really think about it, I basically did it for free.

On the other hand, the ultimate goal is to get money out of politics. The Democratic Party must endeavor to make sure that the Citizens United decision is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a thing. How do we do that when Trump is probably going to have put five out of nine of the people on the Supreme Court before long? (I expect Thomas and Alito to retire.) Roberts - the decision-maker on that case - is also still there. How’s that work?

I don’t know.

But it starts with Democrats refusing to accept Super-PAC and otherwise-dark money. It doesn’t matter if it’s AIPAC money, if it’s some pro-Democrat billionaire’s money, or who-the-fuck-ever’s money. It needs to be rejected.

But that also means that people of such principles are gonna have a hard time starting media ventures of their own. Maybe the answer can be found in part with streamers like Vaush, commentators like Belle Of The Ranch (Beau Of The Fifth Column’s wife, who took over for him), and others like Leeja Miller, Some More News, Brian Taylor Cohen, David Pakman, and…Who knows?

I have an idea for a Dystopian Review themed podcast I might launch. Or might not. Depends on my mindset. We’ll see. Right now, I’m hard at work on a Tabletop RPG.

Anyway!

The Bottom Line: There is a right-wing media mega-machine that has been both metastasizing and consolidating for the past few decades. It is spurned on by people of tremendous wealth, who stand to gain even more tremendous wealth. The Left needs an answer to that, but it can’t just be copy-pasting the Fascists’ homework and presenting it as our own.

Oh. We also need less stupid media infighting.

The Final Nail, The Silent Majority - The Non-Voter.

In the 2020 election, turnout was an ominous 66.6% of eligible voters. Biden scored 81,283,501 votes to Trump’s 74,223,975.

Data is still technically coming in, votes are still being counted and re-counted, so we don’t have a static number for 2024. According to the National Association Of Counties, last updated November 19th, the turnout in 2024 was 63.3%. That’s a drop of a little over 3% of the total turnout.

If my math is right (and I hope it is): In an election where roughly 150 million people vote, that’s roughly 4.9 million voters who stayed home.

That’s in an election where Trump increased (yes, even after the Putsch, the sex crimes judgment regarding his assault of E. Jean Carroll, and his 34 financial crimes convictions from 2016 document fraud) to roughly 76,000,000 - and Harris only raked in approximately 74,440,000.

Somehow, I feel like if turnout had been the same, Harris might have had a much better chance to win. Is that guaranteed? Of course not. But where did those voters go?

Over one third of the country simply didn’t vote. When you factor in third-parties, Trump likely didn’t really get 50% of the vote. That means if you took Harris, Trump, and “No Opinion,” “No Opinion” wins the election.

Why does this matter? Well! It’s because Democrats spent so much time chasing Republican defectees and trying to seem like the “Adults in the room” that they failed to chase after and maintain at least some part of their base. Whether that’s third-party votes (Jill Stein got like 750,000 total? RFK Jr about the same?), or whether that’s just people who stayed home and didn’t vote, is hard to say.

But the bottom line is that it seems like Democrats were fishing in the wrong pond.

The Bottom Line is that Democrats really, truly need to work on expanding and growing their electorate, rather than - say - compromising on Human rights issues such as Trans people having bodily autonomy in order to try to catch up to Republicans.

Anyway, I’m nearing E-Mail Length Limits

So, there. That’s my analysis, along with some recommendations.

Take a moment, square up how my previous predictions align with my determinations here, and please - please - fact-check me. I’m one dude. Doing one thing. With one perspective I’m always open to reading constructive criticism of.

Feel free to comment.

And, hey, if this article blows up, maybe I’ll write more!

Or maybe a Dystopian Report’ll be my next big play. Who knows?:

Be safe in these trying times.

Jesse Pohlman is an author from Long Island, New York, whose dabbled in journalism, sci-fi, fantasy, and political writing. He’s a recovering Social Studies & ELA Teacher. Check out his website for more about him!