Although I shared some thoughts about the US election on other social media platforms, here are some items that emerged from the wreckage:
Campaigns based on hope do not always defeat campaigns based on fear.
Having dozens of retired high ranking military and diplomatic officials warn against the danger Trump poses to democracy (including people who worked for him) did not matter to many voters. Likewise, having former politicians and hundreds of academics, intellectuals, legal scholars, community leaders and social activists repudiate Trump’s policies of division mattered not an iota to the voting majority.
Nor did Harris’s endorsement by dozens of high profile celebrities make a difference to the MAGA mob. In fact, it enraged them. What did make a difference was one billionaire using the social media platform that he owns to spread anti-Harris disinformation and pro-Trump memes.
Raising +US$ billion in political donations did not produce victory for Harris. Outspending the opponent is not a key to electoral success.
Decisively winning the presidential debate–with 65 million live viewers–proved inconsequential for Harris. Conversely, getting trounced in the debate, where he uttered the comment that “they are eating the digs, they are eating the cats, they are eating the pets of people who live there,” proved no liability for Trump. The debate was just theatre and viewers retained the partisan preconceptions before and after its airing. In other words, debates are overrated as indicators of political mood shifts or campaign success.
Trump’s incoherent, racist and xenophobic rants did not give the MAGA mob any pause when considering their choices. In fact, it appears that the resort to crude depictions of opponents (“stupid KaMAla”) and scapegoats (like Puerto Ricans) strengthened the bond between Trump and his supporters.
Macroeconomic and social indicators such as higher employment and lower crime and undocumented immigrant numbers could not overcome the MAGA narrative that the US was “the garbage can of the world.” Positive macroeconomic data was drowned out by the MAGA drumbeat decrying high inflation and rising retail costs even if those costs are the product of global supply chain disruptions and corporate price-gouging. Nor could Harris, despite her accomplished resume in all three government branches at the local, state and federal levels, overcome the narrative that she was “dumb” and a DEI hire who was promoted for reasons other than merit. It did not help that she refused to stake a clearly different position from Biden on some key policy issues, something that ultimately cost her votes (Harris received 15 million less votes than Biden did in 2020, while Trump remained close to his 2020 vote total in a race marked by significant numbers of eligible non-voters).
Culture war narratives worked for Trump. Attacks on “woke” ideology and relentless negative advertising about the dangers of transgender people struck a nerve not only in red states, but nation-wide (remember that Trump won the popular vote and all seven of the so-called swing or battleground states). The same was true for Congressional races, where the GOP won the Senate and looks to be on the verge of retaining the House. The result is a MAGA mandate, which extends into the Supreme Court as a result of its ruling that sitting presidents are immune from prosecution for “official” acts and which will likely see more Trump appointees replacing some of the current justices over the next four years.
It did not matter to the MAGA mob that Trump threatened retribution against his opponents, real and imagined, using the Federal State as his instrument of revenge. In fact, they want him to do so and, in contrast, support Trump’s promised to pardon all January 6 rioters. It also did not matter that Trump’s second term agenda is more radical, punitive and comprehensive than his first term (Project 2025 and Agenda 47 are extensive in scope and will leave an indelible mark on the federal government). Calling Trump a fascist only whetted the MAGA appetite for his authoritarian approach to politics.
Having 34 felony fraud convictions, including paying hush money to a porn actress out of campaign funds and then covering the payments up using dubious accounting methods did not hurt Trump at all and in fact was seen as an example of Democrats using the legal system against him (“lawfare”). His losses in defamation suits, including an adjudication that he is a sexual predator, meant absolutely zero to more than 70 million voters. For many in the voting majority, voting for the felon was a badge of honour. There were t-shirts made and sold at Trump rallies that read out variations of “I am with the felon.”
Age was not a factor even though Trump displays evident signs of cognitive decline. In contrast, gender and race were negative factors for Harris. It appears that the US has a major problem with selecting female presidents and the re-emergence of overt racism courtesy of Trump’s foray into politics produced a backlash against her mixed-race heritage.
Reproductive rights were not the watershed issue many thought that they would be, including for many female voters. The economy and immigration were the top priorities of female voters. Conversely, MAGA efforts to court “bro” support via social media catering to younger men “Alphas” worked very well, as this usually apathetic voting bloc turned out in record numbers. In a way, this is a double setback for women: as an issue of bodily autonomy and as an issue of gender equality given the attitudes of Trump endorsers like Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro etc. Their misogyny has now been reaffirmed as part of a winning political strategy. Individually and collectively, women will bear the consequences of this intergenerational move backwards.
Undocumented immigrants in the US will now become targets for Trump’s mass deportation campaign. This could well force many underground since entire families, including US-born children of undocumented migrants, are targeted for deportation. The logistics involved in doing so may prove impossible to undertake, but it will not be for lack of trying (Stephen Miller will head the effort). This will have a decided negative effect on the low wage economy that underpins the US productive apparatus. Ordering the military to participate in the round-ups and detention of undocumented people and their US-born relatives could well spark a constitutional crisis (because that might violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878).
Ukraine and Western Europe have much to fear. Perhaps Taiwan as well. Palestinians will be forsaken by Trump. With the exception of Iran, authoritarians around the world will be pleased. So will the Netanyahu government in Israel. Liberal democracies new and old will need to adopt hedging strategies depending on what Trump demands of them. Some, like the current NZ government, may simply behave like obsequious supplicants bowing before the Orange Master.
Fear will extend to the federal bureaucracy and regulatory system, which will now be subject to Project 2025/Agenda 47, Trump loyalty tests, Elon Musk’s razor gang approach to public spending and RFK Jr.s public health edicts. In fact, it looks like the Trump second term approach to governance will take a page out of Argentine president Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” reforms, with results that will be similar but far broader in scope. Cost-cutting in and further privatisation of public services will have a profoundly dislocating effect on the social and economic fortunes of millions of people tied in one way or another to federal public services and good provision.
All in all, from where I sit it looks like a bit of a calamity in the making. But then again, I am just another political scientist that got the results all wrong–and there are many of us who did so. So much for the value of an advanced degree from a prestigious university and three+ decades of reading, writing and teaching about politics. I just as well could be a wino in the street when it comes to my US election prognostication skills.
I think that I will sit out on the deck and stare at the sea for a while because that is my saving grace: At least I am living in NZ and not in the US.
lol to that comment about your prognostication skills, and amen to all the rest that you said. How could it ever happen – and when will the US have its 1st female leader? when the rest of the world has had dozens. There’s been some interesting commentary on that in the mainstream media. What is America? its social make-up. Who are these ppl who voted for Trump after all the vileness his election campaign could muster. I just do not understand that, as a woman and a watcher from afar. I am happy for all the ex-pats that live here and elsewhere, I see Australia is opening its arms to those who want to leave. It remains to be seen whether Trump will temper his ambitions with the responsibility of the Office, but most commentators think that unlikely. Its all so depressing, and I am glad I am here, too, and not there … Though I fear for the rest of the world too.
Thanks for the commentary, enjoy that ocean and may its depth and distance bring you some peace, for now.
Thanks Barbara. I thought that women would prove decisive in getting Harris the win on the back of outrage against the reversal of Roe versus Wade and to a lesser extent Trump’s constant misogynistic and race-baiting insults against her. But that did not happen and they bought the “immigrants and inflation” narrative sold by Trump and his supporters. Voter turn out was also much lower than 2020, with 15 million less votes cast on the Harris side when compared to Biden, so otherwise Democrat voters either stayed home or switched sides. And for whatever reason Trump was able to attract black, latino and young male votes in a measure never seen before.
The one thing that I have read, by way of a general explanation, is that Harris and the Democrats failed to appeal to working class voters with specific policy initiatives directed at them (in spite of Biden’s infrastructure plan and other working class economic initiatives). That may or may not be true, but it is clear that in terms of framing the election narrative, Trump’s campaign struck a chord that Harris could not counter. But even then it took a lot of historical amnesia and revisionist history (for example, about Trump’s Covid policies, which he turned into a “blame Joe Biden” disinformation project) for people to forget everything Trump did and said while in his first term so that they could vote for him a second time.
And now we will never find out if that first “assassination” attempt was in fact real or staged (I happen to think that if staged the authors of the plan understood that some innocent people would have to die or be wounded along with the shooter in order for the act to be credible). Nor will the prosecutions of Trump for Jan 6 and the unauthorised classified documents removal ever see the light of day. These are grim days indeed.
Yes, thanks. Its hard to believe isn’t it.
I did wonder myself if Harris could have had more and specific policy. I did not notice too much policy in the speeches I saw of hers.
Interesting comment about the assassination attempt. I wondered about that too, though it seems ghastly given that people lost their lives, even the shooter.
Just watched another politics podcast – the American on the panel said he was ‘petrified’ for his country. Grim days indeed.
I think America is simply too large and is maladapted to the new information environment.
Nice summary Pablo, as depressing as it is true. As one who remembers the Citizens for Rowling campaign and associated high profile endorsements. I’ve since been cynical of such initiatives- the Brexit opponents’ campaign was another examplle). This outcome shows the benefit of the charismatic over the journyman (or woman) in politics. Which is why NZ Labour needs to switch leaders to McAnulty ASAP.
So, it seems the turkeys may have voted for Christmas. Sad.
Ha Ha! In the US the turkeys voted for Thanksgiving. Xmas is a ham fest. Either way, they are just fodder for a project that the MAGA morons do not understand.
Thank you Pablo for your illuminating post. I think many of us fell for the premise that women would get Harris over the line. With the benefit of hindsight I think it was desperate wishful thinking and was never going to happen.
My long since departed Dad made two prognostications about America back in the 1970s. Simply put they were:
1) There is a deliberate strategy to dumb down the American population.
2) The next Hitler will come out of America.
I fear his predictions, based on his many life experiences, are about to be proven accurate.
Thanks Anne,
Your father was a wise man. I have always assumed that the system of checks and balances would prevent the rise of an American Hitler, but in an age of social media and democratic sclerosis/backsliding, that may no longer be the case. I think that what Adrian said below is also true: the new information environment has overwhelmed the US institutional capacity to regulate it or at least put reasonable frames or boundaries on what it can disseminate. At a minimum, Democrats have been slow to recognise the power of dis-and misinformation in a highly atomised information environment that is clustered around polarised Left vrs Right issues.
The Democrats also may have misread the room when it comes to class versus identity politics. As someone wrote, they saw transgender rights as merely an extension of previous civil rights struggles, whereas many working class/non university educated people saw the issue as a bridge too far and final assault on “natural” gender differences and nuclear family hierarchies. It may seem inconsequential to us, since transgender folk are a distinct, traditionally marginalised tiny minority with no significant history of sexual predation, but as a friend in Oklahoma told me, the relentless bombarding of the airwaves with anti-trans political advertising turned the issue into an existential one: do you want boys lurking in girl’s toilets, or have your son go to school and come back as a girl, or have natural males competing with girls in sports, even contact sports, etc.? Likewise, my oldest son told me that in Ariona the adverts were about hordes of criminal migrants raping and pillaging their way across the border, then eating people’s domestic animals and getting luxury class welfare and accomodation courtesy of the Democrats.
None of this is true in the real world, but the GOP ability to control the election narrative by catering to the basest of prejudice and fear among “low information” voters proved a success. They may wind up having voted against their own economic and social interests, but these voters–who delivered landslide to Trump–got the satisfaction of “sticking it to” the libtards and “woke” usurpers of traditional values and the natural order of things. For them, short term satisfaction suffices, even if over the next four years they find out that Trump is not the hero he makes himself out to be. Nor, for that matter, is Elon Musk.
Anyway, it is time for me to go have another cry about the reason my side lost while sipping a craft microbrewery IPA beer made with pure springwater and only the finest of organic ingredients. That may provide me with the clarity I need in order to figure out what the heck happened.
Thanks for developing more insights in response to Anne, above.
I was curious too how someone (her Dad) could presage this, as far back as the 1970’s.
lol about the micro brewery beer … oh gosh, we can laugh from this distance.
Then seriously pray that nothing comes off, Trump shoots himself, dissolves, resigns … anything … where everything seems to be at stake.
Isn’t it awful how the world has to come like sycophants, to pay homage to this monster?
… I hope you’re right about Musk too, such a curious creature. I doubt his sincerity or alliance to Trump as a longterm thing.
Tks.
I am grateful that Rupert Murdoch didn’t get his poisonous claws into New Zealand although he tried. Hearing Fox Australia repeating Trump’s lies after the election result was announced is a salutory reminder. Heaven knows what the immediate future will bring or what a post Trump US will look like.
I have been watching the unfolding of this movement of totalitarianism in a large part of the world and think the reasons why have more to do with mass psychosis in part created by covid isolation than has been credited for.
Le Bon stated “The masses have never thirsted for truth. they turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error , if error seduce them, whoever can supply their delusion is easily their master”.
Jung considered this “Man is wolf to man”. The was in response to what he termed psychic epidemics. This is when a large percentage of society enters into delusions, such as witch-hunts in the 17th century. He argued society becomes more unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic and unreliable. He also noted that crimes the individual Alone would never have committed, are freely committed by the group..if you create a flood of negative emotions, mainly fear, ,it creates hyper emotions.
Threats then become real, imagined or fabricated. Merloo stated “ It is simply a question of reorganising and manipulating collective feelings in the proper way.” “An organised system of psychological intervention and judicial perversion through which a ruling class can imprint their own thoughts upon the minds of those they plan to use and destroy.” The big lie and confusion can not be dealt with by facts. The internet and the controllers of source information create waves of fear that create a situation where only one person or group can provide the answer. The problem is while facts are presented to negate the first lie, the next lie is already started. This means facts are always lagging behind the fiction. It is also likely the facts are censored by those who own the information platforms.
The other leg of creating this situation of mass psychosis is isolating the people, disrupting normal social interactions, and using platforms to spreading misinformation. This component was unfortunately created by Covid, and allowed logical fallacies to become predominant. Sitting at home questioning the meaning of life, and the noisiest voices are the harbinger of doom, when that is a real risk, gives confirmational bias. And in retrospect is shown that possibly it could have been managed without all the measures taken, means maybe the other issues could be true as well.
I am well aware of the uncertainty principle in management of infectious diseases, and safer is far better mid term than risk, but most people unfortunately have not been trained or educated as to why these seemingly over the top responses are required.
Pavlov explained behavioural conditioning was best done in a quiet space. In the real world, covid created a quiet place where voices overall were negative and removed positive examples were not heard. When you believe the first lie, the second is easier, and so on.
The enemy is increasingly defined, and targeted, so conformity and blind obedience is required to overcome these fears. A strong oligarchy or ruler is required to protect the people from these threats.
This system of creating the perfect storm towards totalitarianism has occurred time and time again. Covid created a platform for this round, together with a problem Micheal Moore identified in Bowling for Columbine, and that is Americans overall drive is one of fear. I thought he over estimated the issue but I am now unsure.
Trump was painted by liberal media as an idiot, who couldn’t string a sentence together, bankrupt, morally corrupt, non payer, (all of which is true!). But his message was exactly what a huge percentage of Americans wanted to hear. So either he is much better read, intelligent, and understanding of social psychology, than was portrayed or his handlers were able to control his narrative. I have yet to work out which option is more frightening.
The steps to resolving this is education, critical analysis tools, and the creation of a parallel society.
And this creates the reasons for removing educational devices that allow for deviancy’s from the “norm”. The book burning, lies about drag queen reading hours, the creation of quiet areas when differences are not allowed and so on.
It isn’t just Trump, it is a huge well planned machination, that has been allowed to exert dominance, without real push back, and is seen as the saviour of the moral majority.
I don’t see any simple solutions if education is controlled.
Good societal change tends to come from the minority, and the majority complain, but those changes are accepted and mainstreamed eventually.
In the US at the moment momentum of change is regression fuelled by fears of the majority, and whether they are real is now a moot point.
@ Grant on November 10, 2024 at 20:54 said:
RE “this situation of mass psychosis”…
The official framing of the mass formation (or mass psychosis) “phenomenon” is misleading and wrong in terms of what the whole true reality is. The false hope-addicted psychologists and their acolytes want you to believe this is “just some temporary occasional” madness by the masses when it is but a spike of a CHRONIC madness going on for aeons with “civilized” people: https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
One of these mainstream psychologists who have been spreading this whitewashed reality, Dr. Desmet, also fails to see that the PLANNED Covid Psyop is a TOTALLY deliberate ploy because he doesn’t think (after more than 1 year, 2 years, even 3 years, into this total PLANNED scam!) it’s ALL intentionally sinister as he stated in a prior podcast (this makes him witting or unwitting controlled opposition).
In the May of 2022 podcast with James Corbett he stated that “some people tend to overestimate the degree of planning and intentions” (behind the COUNTLESS, VERIFIABLE, FULLY INTENTIONAL, FULLY PLANNED atrocities by the ruling tribe of psychopaths over the last century alone) and see all of it as being PLANNED which Desmet called “an extreme position” … Sound logical thinking is “extreme” and therefore false and sick in his demented delusional view!
This all means Desmet is ALSO a member of the masses of lunatics, an ACTIVE CARD-CARRYING MEMBER of mass formation!
And nearly ALL of the “alternative media” too has been mindlessly spreading Desmet’s fake and misdirecting narrative endlessly…
“My experiences with “alternative media” have been, for the most part, just as dreadful as with the mainstream media. Most are unprincipled scavengers, shills and prostitutes, willing, and even eager, to sell out for ego-gratification and/or financial gain.” — Barbara Hartwell, CIA Whistleblower
If you have been injected with Covid jabs/bioweapons and are concerned, then verify what batch number you were injected with at https://howbadismybatch.com
“We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public [and global public] believes is false.” —William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
“Repeating what others say and think is not being awake. Humans have been sold many lies…God, Jesus, Democracy, Money, Education, etc. If you haven’t explored your beliefs about life, then you are not awake.” — E.J. Doyle, songwriter
“There are large numbers of scientists, doctors, and presstitutes who will sell out truth for money, such as those who describe people dropping dead on a daily basis as “rare” when it it happening all over the vaccinated world.” — Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., American economist & former US regime official, in 2024
Ellen,
I am going to leave your comment up as a reminder of the weird stuff we get at KP because it is completely off topic and full of conspiracy theory strangeness. The resort to FULL CAPS is a very useful indicator that the comment is going off into a rabbit hole tangent. Like Robert, I suggest that you shift your gaze elsewhere because you will get no traction here.
I love reading your insights, but this segue was a master stroke…
“it is time for me to go have another cry about the reason my side lost while sipping a craft microbrewery IPA beer made with pure springwater and only the finest of organic ingredients.”
Stuart,
Glad that you enjoyed the quip. Just trying to extract some self-deprecating humour from this debacle.
Hello Barbara,
I’m a bit late responding to you about my father’s prognostications.
I think Pablo touched on his reasoning when he talked about…
“catering to the basest of prejudice and fear among ‘low information’ voters.” That is of course what Hitler did.
Whilst he was not as diplomatic as Pablo in his vocabulary, he was an insightful person. Much of it was borne out of numerous adventurous experiences which included a hush hush incursion [of sorts] into Northern Russia in the 1920s.
Thanks Anne, no worries.
I thought it an extraordinary thing to conclude as far back as the 70’s – I mean, I was a young adult, it was the age of protest, we thought we were informed, well-educated … I would never have thought that then about the US. But then, I do not have nor ever have had any connections to the place. Some of the best observations are anecdotal – those that come from people with feet/noses/eyes on the ground there, as Pablo often quotes in his podcasts (eg his friend who was bombarded with anti-trans propaganda – latest podcast – above). Its the incidental experiences of those that live there day to day that are often the most enlightening. And we don’t really get any sense of that here in NZ, not at all.
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