Pete Hegseth wouldn't say that word!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2024

Not even when he was reading: Over the past year, we've mentioned Pete Hegseth fairly often at this site.

During that time, he's been one of the three regular co-hosts of the "cable news" show, Fox & Friends Weekend. Now, at age 44, he's been nominated to serve as the incoming president's Secretary of Defense. 

Hegseth's most recent book bears this title: The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. Upon its publication in June, it entered the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction best-seller list at #1, as you can see at this link.

It listed at #1 for two weeks, then stayed on the list for seven weeks after that. It always carried the mark of Cain—the dagger sign which "indicates that some retailers report receiving bulk orders," whatever that may be taken to mean.

Hegseth grew up in Forest Lake, Minnesota. This is the way the leading authority on his life starts to tell his story:

Pete Hegseth

[...]

Hegseth was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and raised in nearby Forest Lake. He attended Forest Lake Area High School, where he graduated in 1999 as the valedictorian. Hegseth played football and basketball.

Hegseth went on to receive his Bachelor of Arts in politics at Princeton University in 2003. While there, he wrote for the Princeton Tory and played basketball for the Tigers under coach John Thompson III...

In 2013, he received a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Hegseth is of Norwegian descent on both sides of the family.

Out of this background emerged a person with strong claims and beliefs. We've been especially puzzled by the apparent certainty of his beliefs, some of which may imaginably be accurate or justified, but also by the apparent role of religious belief in his beliefs and claims.

Last Sunday morning, we got to enjoy a mordant chuckle at this co-host's expense. Right there on TV, it happened again! A member of the Fox News Channel family refused to say the forbidden word! There they went again! 

During Sunday morning's 6 o'clock hour, it fell to Hegseth to read part of an essay by Evan Barker for the website, The Free Press. You can get the gist of Barker's lengthy essay just from reading the dual headline under which it appeared:

I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week, I Voted for Trump.
The Democratic Party turned its back on me and my family long before I turned my back on it.

This is extremely typical fare for Fox & Friends Weekend, a propaganda-adjacent "cable news" program co-hosted by three friends who think exactly alike. 

The comedy came when Hegseth confronted a dirty word and seemed to know how to respond. With the Internet Archive back on its feet, you can watch the episode by clicking here—but here you see that dual headline as Hegseth chose to read it

I Raised $50 Million for the Democrats. This Week, I Voted for Trump.
The Democrat [sic] Party turned its back on me and my family long before I turned my back on it.

Bowing to Hard [Fox News Channel] Pundit Law, Hegseth refused to read the dirty words, "Democratic Party." As he continued, he read one short passage from Barker's essay. As you can see on the tape, he balked when he encountered the devil's term for the second time:

The actual passage from the essay, as Evan Barker wrote it:
The Democratic Party has evolved into a group that signals virtue but lacks real values. It’s a group that panders but never produces. Advancing LGBTQ rights and a woman’s right to choose...

The text of that actual passage as the dainty Hegseth read it:
The Democrat [sic] Party has evolved into a group that signals virtue but lacks real values. It’s a group that panders but never produces. Advancing LGBTQ rights and a woman’s right to choose...

It was a genuine "Goofus and Gallant" moment! 

For unknown reasons, Barker was willing to write the actual name of the actual political party. Brother Hegseth, the Princeton / Kennedy School man, wasn't willing to say those words!

We offer this as a bit of (tragi)comic relief, but also as a small case study in our imperfect human nature. In our view, it's OK if you go ahead and emit a rueful laugh.

Other parts of Hegseth's story seem to lead into deeper questions about the nature of our flailing nation's fragmenting culture. We're especially interested in the role played by religious belief in this particular matter. 

Today, we offer you a small piece of (tragi)comic relief. In the next few days, we'll try to take things a bit further.

At any rate, Hegseth encountered a no-go word. Like others on his "cable news" channel, he seemed to know exactly how to handle this chance encounter.

Fuller disclosure: We saw Hegseth avoid the dirty word during Sunday's 6 o'clock (Eastern) hour. 

For unknown reasons, the Internet Archive didn't record that hour. The Archive did record the 8 o'clock (Eastern) hour, and Hegseth went ahead and did the same thing, live, when the friends returned to this pleasing topic.

They aren't allowed to say that name! The friends all seem to know this.

EARNED OUR WAY OUT: We can't believe we lost to this guy!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2024

And yet, explanations abound: Just to establish a factual record, here's where matters currently stand, according to CNN's count:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 75,536,884 (50.2%)
Candidate Harris: 72,390,344 (48.1%)

That's where matters stand to date. That said, consider this:

Based on CNN's reckoning, well over two million votes remain uncounted in deep blue California. Something like an additional one million votes remain uncounted in three other blue states—Washington, Oregon, Maryland. 

Something like a half million votes are still uncounted in the state of New York, with a quarter million additional votes outstanding in New Jersey. Something like 300,000 votes remain in Illinois.

Based upon CNN's account, the redder states seem to count a lot faster! That said, Ezra Klein's estimate may turn out to be right:

On a nationwide basis, it may turn out that this election was lost by less than two points. Ezra has estimated that the margin will end up at 1.5 points. Prevailing Storyline to the side, that may turn out to be right.

This very morning, in the 6 o'clock hour, Joe Scarborough said that Candidate Biden won the 2020 election in "a very close race." For the record, Candidate Biden won that year by 4.5 points nationwide. 

At present, Candidate Trump's win this year is frequently being described in a different way, usually with no numbers offered. For example, here's the inexplicable Mark Leibovich, novelizing for The Atlantic, dual headline included:

In Praise of Clarity
There is no ambiguity here.

[...]

If nothing else, the party’s electoral battering last week should provide a clarity that Democrats clearly lacked before. They were shocked by the results. I knew a bunch who were indeed predicting a rout, but with Kamala Harris doing the routing. “This could be glorious,” a Democratic operative friend said to me last weekend after the now-ingloriously wrong Des Moines Register poll that showed Harris leading Trump by three points in deep-red Iowa was released. Trump wound up winning the state by 13 points.

At minimum, the prevailing sentiment was that the election would be very close. Pundit consensus seemed to place the race at the cliché junction of “razor-thin” and “wafer-thin” (personally I thought it would be “paper-thin,” but then, I was an outlier). The contest, many predicted, might take many days to call. Election lawyers swarmed battleground states. I don’t recall speaking with more than one or two Democrats in the final weeks who foresaw the ultimate beatdown the party suffered.

Then came the knee-buckling curveball that electorates have a knack for throwing.

[...]

First, listen to the results: They were not close. Trump won all seven battleground states and the popular vote; made big gains with Black and Hispanic voters, as well as with young people; and even polled 52 percent of white women. Republicans took the Senate and kept the House.

As it turned out, Democrats were much closer to delusion than the reality that voters would impose. 

"There is no ambiguity here," the headline absurdly says.

Here within this vale of tears, Storyline will often function that way. A 4.5-point win can be said to be "very close." A loss of something less than two points can be said to have been "an electoral battering." 

Explicitly, it can be said that the narrower margin wasn't "very close." It can even be said that the election results in question were "not close" at all! 

Leibovich presented almost no numbers in support of his Great American Novel. He didn't precisely say what he precisely meant by his eye-popping formulation.

In fairness, he did present that one statistic concerning the way white women voted this year. Candidate Trump "even polled 52 percent of white women," he said, thereby fleshing out his claim that this year's election result wasn't close.

Almost surely, exit polls are less reliable—are less precise—than are competent pre-election polls. That said, white women always favor the Republican candidate, according to the exit polls! 

Here are the numbers, such as they are, for every election of the current century:

White women nationwide, presidential elections:
2000: 49-48, in favor of Candidate Bush
2004: 55-44, Candidate Bush
2008: 53-46, Candidate McCain
2012: 56-42, Candidate Romney
2016: 53-43, Candidate Trump
2020: 55-44, Candidate Trump
2024: 53-45, Candidate Trump

Based upon the exit polls, Candidate Trump has won the vote among white women in all three of his elections! This year, his slightly narrower victory margin among that group is somehow supposed to convince us the rubes that this year's election wasn't close.

Was this election "close?" If we're looking at the nationwide popular vote, we'd say it pretty much was. If you're writing the latest American novel, you can fabulize it however you please, without feeling any need to explain, with any precision, what you precisely mean.

(Also, without feeling any need to confuse your readers by reporting the nationwide popular vote.)

Editors will wave your copy into print. In such ways, Storyline grows.

So it goes—and goes and goes—as present-day Storyline continues taking form. That said, a second major question obtains:

Should those of us in Blue America be surprised by the fact that Candidate Harris lost?

Should we be surprised that Harris lost? In many respects, we'd have to say that the answer is no. We'll mention two obvious points:

First reason: As has been widely reported, incumbent parties have been driven from power all over the developed world. In the most immediate sense, this seems to be a reaction to the dislocations brought on by the global pandemic. 

(We'd be inclined to assume that other global phenomena are part of this pattern as well.)

Second reason: The second reason goes something like this:

In one of the most clownish phenomena in modern political history, the Democratic Party's candidate decided he wouldn't seek re-election in late July of this year! This meant that Candidate Harris had to mount a full-blown campaign from a standing start with just over three months to go!

Under those circumstances, should anyone be surprised that this replacement candidate didn't win? If anything, we should perhaps be surprised that she came so close.

(Almost surely, the narrow margin nationwide is a measure of the un-electability of the other candidate—of the Red American candidate who rather narrowly won.)

Why did Blue America's candidate lose this year? As of yesterday morning, we had listed four possible reasons. We'll return to our list tomorrow.

In general, it seems to us that the cluelessness of us the people provides a large part of the answer. More specifically, we refer to the cluelessness of us the people of our own Blue America, "where the children are all above average.".

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—but as with all known human tribes, our deeply self-assured Blue American tribe just isn't preternaturally sharp. Also, as with all human tribes, we tend to have a very hard time understanding that basic fact about our spectacular selves. 

According to experts, we human beings are wired to be blind to such states of affairs. Did that wiring help take us down this year? Stating the question a different way:

Through our hard-wired human shortcomings, did we perhaps, in some array of ways, manage to "earn our way out?"

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!" So said SNL's version of Candidate Dukakis, way back in 1988.

This year, we lost to the most unelectable candidate in the history of modern politics. Does tribal denial keep us from seeing the ways this (surprisingly narrow) defeat disastrously came to pass? 

Tomorrow: The list continues to grow

It was a (maybe) six-point shift!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2024

Not an unknown phenomenon: Back in the day, presidential election outcomes could really jump around.

In 1960, Kennedy won the nationwide popular vote by one-tenth of a point. Four years later, Johnson won by more than 22 points!

In 1968, it was close again—Nixon won by less than a point (with Wallace draining off votes).

In 1972, the deluge again. Nixon won by just over 23 points.

Where have all the landslides gone? All in all, blowouts have ceased to exist. Still, the victory margin still can change in substantial ways from one election to the next. 

Let's take a look at the record! These are presidential elections:

Victory margins, popular vote
1984: Republican candidate by 18 points 
1988: Republican candidate by a bit less than 8
1992: Democratic candidate by more than 5
1996: Democratic candidate by 8.5 

2000: Democratic candidate by half a point
2004: Republican candidate by roughly 2.5
2008: Democratic candidate by a bit over 7
2012: Democratic candidate by 4 

2016: Democratic candidate by 2
2020: Democratic candidate by 4.5
2024: Republican candidate by (possibly less than) 2

You can possibly see our point. Victory margins do jump around, sometimes involving a change in which party wins. Sometimes, the change in voter sentiment can still be substantial.

There was a 13-point change in 1992. That was followed by an 8-point change in 2000 and a 9.5-point change in 2008.

The change this year will be maybe 6 points—and that was with an accidental Democratic candidate who thought she'd be saying "I'm with Joe" until quite late in July.

In our view, Blue America needs to figure out how to do better. Based upon basic human wiring, there's little chance that we'll consider the ways we ourselves may perhaps have possibly earned our way out.

For extra credit only: "It wasn't close," Gayle King interjected.

This is prevalent Storyline. Our basic questions would be these: 

Do you think that statement makes sense? Also, Where do they get these people?

EARNED OUR WAY OUT: Tribal denial is bred in the bone!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2024

Maureen Dowd pours it on: Imaginably, it could be better that we in Blue America took our (two-point) shellacking now.

Obviously, it depends, in part, on what the incoming president does. On the other hand, consider this:

If Candidate Harris had squeaked out a win, she'd already be under a vicious attack. Almost surely, she would have experienced a very bad four years—a very bad four years in which the tribal antagonism would only have grown.

It might be better to have it out now. There is, of course, no way to tell—and then again, there's this:

In part, the way of the future will depend, in part, on Blue America's ability to evaluate the causes of this year's defeat. Is it possible that we "earned our way out"—that there could have been things we said and did that contributed to, even caused, this defeat

Is it possible that we earned our way out? For better or worse, we must report this:

Tribal denial is part of the deal. Such denial is bred in the bone.

What do we mean by "tribal denial?" Tribal denial involves a pair of well-know, ancient beliefs:

If our tribe did it, it has to be right. If their tribe did it, it's wrong.

Such prehistoric beliefs are bred in the bone. Over here in Blue America, our ability to rebound from this year's potential disaster will turn on our ability to resist the effects of such wiring. 

Is it possible that we the Blues have somehow earned our way out? In yesterday's reports, we focused on Tim Alberta's statement on last Friday evening's Washington Week.

Alberta has long been anti-Trump. Culturally, though, he hails from Red America. 

In our view, what he said is very important. For the third and final time, this is what he said:

ALBERTA (11/8/24): As someone who has spilled a lot of ink on Donald Trump's lies over the past decade, I just want to say this when we talk about propaganda. Arguably, the three most determinative things in this election were propaganda from the Democratic Party. 

Number one: "Joe Biden is fine and totally fit to be president for another four years." He wasn't. 

Number two: "The border is closed. It's under control. There's nobody coming in."  That was not true. 

And number three: "Hey, don't worry about inflation. Prices are fine. Bidenomics! Everything's great. You guys don't know what you're talking about. Actually, the economy is in great shape." 

This is propaganda to millions of Americans who said, "None of that is true, and therefore, I don't trust you."

They might not trust Trump, but they don't trust Democrats either.

Almost surely, Alberta knows more of Red America's voters that the average Blue American does. Setting aside the word "propaganda," he was saying that we Blues helped earn our way out through our behaviors in three basic areas:

Ways we allegedly earned our way out:
1) Denial concerning the southern border
2) Denial concerning the economy
3) Denial concerning President Biden's fitness

Last Friday evening, Alberta cited those three areas. In Sunday morning's New York Times, Maureen Dowd added a fourth. Putting it a different way, Maureen Dowd poured it on:

Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics

Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.

Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.

Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.

We could do without the rhyme-time word play, but Dowd had added a fourth point of concern to Alberta's list:

"Woke is [now] broke," she alleged.

Along the way, it's been known as "political correctness," but also as "identity politics." In recent years, the terms "wokeness" and "woke" has been dumped in the mix.

Did Blue America earn its way out through some manifestation of this cultural stance? Did "many people" vote for Candidate Trump because they disliked us woke Democrats even more than they disliked him?

Could that possibly be true? Continuing directly, Dowd said this:

I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.

Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism—Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).

This alienated half the country, or more...

Was Candidate Dukakis somehow an "avatar of elitism," while his opponent (George Bush the Elder) wasn't? 

(We'll grant you: Dowd doesn't explicitly say that.)

Also, how was Obama an avatar of elitism—but only the second time around?

We're slightly puzzled by that overall formulation. But is it possible that Dowd's larger claims are accurate? 

Is it possible that Democrats really have developed an unmistakable sense of disdain toward working-class voters—and not just recently, but "over the decades?"

Is it possible that Democrats actually have "turned off many working-class voters" through their exhibition of that disdain? Is it possible that the Democratic Party has "embraced a worldview of" correctness and condescension in such a way as to "alienate half the country, or more?" 

Is it possible that those claims could possibly even be true? Is that part of the way we managed to lose a (fairly close) race to a candidate who was basically unelectable as judged by traditional standards? Is that part of the way we managed to lose a fairly close election to someone like Candidate Trump?

Will Blue America be able to make a comeback from this year's defeat? In large part, that depends on our ability to cast off the chains of tribal denial and look at ourselves in the mirror.

Given the way our brains are wired, there's absolutely no reason to think that we'll be inclined to do that. Still, a person can dream.

Yesterday morning, Mika read the entire text of Dowd's column during Morning Joe. On that tribally pleasing "cable news" program, viewers had been told—again and again and again and again—that there was no possible way a candidate like Donald J. Trump could possibly win.

That statement never made any sese, but it felt good going down. At any rate, Dowd (and others) have now added to Alberta's list of concerns:

Ways we allegedly earned our way out:
1) Denial concerning the southern border
2) Denial concerning the economy
3) Denial concerning President Biden's fitness
4) Hyper-political correctness, otherwise known as high woke

Tomorrow, we'll add an item or two to that list. Sometimes, it's hard to believe that Candidate Harris ever got any votes at all!

We've posted a list of four allegations. Tomorrow, we'll add to the list.

Full disclosure:

As a resident of Blue America, you aren't required to believe that there's any merit in any of those allegations. 

It's always possible that your denial is right—or it may just be bred in the bone.

Tomorrow: At least one other fairly obvious point 

BREAKING: We'll be posting a bit later today!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2024

Margin now 2.1 points: This being an alternate Tuesday, we'll be posting a bit later than usual today.

Out in the world of slow vote counting and actual facts, the nationwide popular vote now looks like this, according to CNN:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 74,989,915 votes (50.2%)
Candidate Harris: 71,794,548 votes (48.1%)

Just for the record:

The victory margin is sliding down toward two points (or less), with something like three million votes still uncounted in California alone. Just for the record, this is the current state of the overwhelmingly massive landslide victory amassed by the candidate who won.

Our general view: 

As a general matter, it's good to establish some basic facts before we start writing our novels.

Paul Krugman notes an intriguing point!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2024

Could that explain the border? Could Tim Alberta have a point in the shocking thing he said?

He made the statement on Friday evening's Washington Week. We posted the transcript this morning:

ALBERTA (11/8/24): As someone who has spilled a lot of ink on Donald Trump's lies over the past decade, I just want to say this when we talk about propaganda. Arguably, the three most determinative things in this election were propaganda from the Democratic Party. 

Number one: "Joe Biden is fine and totally fit to be president for another four years."

He wasn't. 

Number two: "The border is closed. It's under control. There's nobody coming in." 

That was not true. 

And number three: "Hey, don't worry about inflation. Prices are fine. Bidenomics! Everything's great. You guys don't know what you're talking about. Actually, the economy is in great shape." 

This is propaganda to millions of Americans who said, "None of that is true, and therefore, I don't trust you."

They might not trust Trump, but they don't trust Democrats either.

Ignore the word "propaganda." Is it possible that those three declarations—and yes, those declarations were constantly made—helped elect Candidate Trump?

Starting tomorrow, we'll continue to puzzle that out. We'll add a fourth major area of concern, an area Alberta skipped—the general area which has come to be known as "Woke." 

With respect to such issues, we'll eventually posit a basic law of human behavior:

There has never been a good intention which can't be unwisely pursued.

For better or worse, also this:

Sometimes, our (apparent) good intentions may cloak something more primal.

For today, we'll suggest that you consider a passage from Paul Krugman's new column. It takes us back to a very basic question:

What explains President Biden's policy at the southern border over his first three and a half years? Candidate Harris was repeatedly asked, and she repeatedly ducked the question.

Does Krugman's new column suggest a possible answer to this unanswered question? Here is the passage we'll note:

Why Trump’s Deportations Will Drive Up Your Grocery Bill

[...]

Deficits—contrary to what you sometimes hear—don’t always cause inflation. After the 2008 financial crisis, warnings about deficit-driven inflation proved wrong because (as basic economics predicted) deficits aren’t inflationary in a depressed economy. Even President Biden’s big spending in 2021 took place in an economy with depressed employment, and the inflationary impact was further mitigated by a surge in immigration, which expanded the labor force and helped create the capacity to meet higher demand.

Krugman said it, and we believe it! During President Biden's term, "a surge in immigration...helped create the capacity to meet higher demand."

We devised a theory a few weeks back concerning President Biden's border policy. Our theory is more like a speculation, but we're willing to speculate that our theory could possibly even be right!

Krugman's statement brought our theory to mind. At some point, we'll spell it out.

EARNED OUR WAY OUT: Did Blue America earn its way out?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2024

We'll never be able to see it: Down below, we'll get to what Tim Alberta said. 

First, though, let's set the stage with such manifestations as this:

We've long been amazed by the way Blue America's journalistic elites continue to shower Saturday Night Live with cultural respect. 

In our view, the program rolled over and died decades ago. But at The Atlantic, they keep assigning writers–at last one with a PhD–to critique its routinely vapid presentations.

This past Saturday night, the program opened with this remark, twenty seconds in: 

COLD OPEN (11/9/24): Donald Trump, who tried to forcibly overturn the results of the last election, was returned to office by an overwhelming majority.

Was Donald J. Trump elected to office "by an overwhelming majority?" Also, within the norms of human culture, does anyone even care whether such statements make sense?

On Saturday night, SNL opened with that assertion, This very morning, Morning Joe opened, at 6 o'clock sharp, with the videotape of that statement.

Before we got see Mika or Joe, we Morning Joe viewers saw SNL make that assertion. In such ways, Storyline starts.

Below, we'll look at where the nationwide vote currently stands. First, though, consider some of what happened when the longest-running show in television history made an attempt to assess last week's event.

Long ago and far away, five blind men groped different parts of an elephant. The leading authority on this event thumbnails it as shown:

Blind men and an elephant

The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the animal based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. 

The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true. 

The parable originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has been widely diffused.

That instructive event took place in the distant past. In an unrelated development, Kristen Welker welcomed four guests to her roundtable segment on yesterday's Meet the Press. 

As Storyline continued to grow, the panelists started by marveling at the size of Tuesday's win:

WELKER (11/10/24) Garrett, let me start with you. You've been covering the Trump campaign from the very beginning. I spoke to President-elect Trump. He believes he's got a mandate after this decisive victory. What are you hearing from inside the campaign and your sources?

HAAKE: Yeah, look, his team really feels vindicated. They had a theory of the case—it proved out. They won big, they won bigger than I think even some of them anticipated that they would.  And they see their mandate as really broad...

WELKER: We saw a pattern-shattering event.

AMY WALTER: Yeah, this was a big–yeah, it was. And it was a big win, it was a decisive win. But I also like to sometimes step away from the numbers.

WELKER: Yeah, please step away.

Full disclosure! When Storyline is starting to form, we humans will almost always be encouraged to "step away from the numbers."  In the end, it's largely the way we humans are wired–the way our species is built.

In fairness, it may be just as well. A bit later, here's what happened when another panelist brought some numbers in. 

Storyline continued to grow, but with respect to the numbers, do you really understand what she said?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: I mean, the party of the people did not turn out the people. And to give you a perfect example. In Texas– 

In Texas, we saw record voter registration turnout. But then, those folks didn't come out. It was down 6 percent. 

In Philadelphia, where it's 70 percent African-American, their turnout rate was 6 percent down from 2020. 

Do you know what those numbers mean? We aren't sure we do. Something was "down 6 percent" in Texas. We're not entirely sure what it was.

Meanwhile, did "the party of the people" fail to "turn out the people?" That's a very fuzzy claim, but it's emerging as Storyline as the days slide past. 

In yesterday's report, we showed you some basic numbers. In the battleground states–the only states which actually mattered–the total vote for Candidate Harris seems to have matched the total vote for Candidate Biden back in 2020.

In those states, Candidate Harris matched or possibly topped Candidate Biden's vote. But through whatever means, Candidate Trump's total vote exceeded his total from 2020–unless you were watching Friday's Morning Joe, in which case you were told that Candidate Trump had lost four million votes!

This is the way we humans tend to function when it comes time to explain. For the record, many of the observers in question did in fact go to the finest schools. Simply put, this is simply what we "rational animals" are secretly like.

Where do the vote totals stand today? Nationwide, the winning candidate's victory margin is sliding toward two percentage points. 

Many votes still have to be counted. Mainly, those votes will come from a set of Blue America's west coast's states, California chief among them.

CNN has it like this, with many votes still unreported:

Nationwide vote, 2024 (to date):
Candidate Trump: 74,675,379 (50.3%)
Candidate Harris: 71,146,680 (48.0%)

That victory margin is likely to shrink as unreported votes get counted. 

Keeping that in mind, is it true? Did Candidate Trump "win bigger than even some of his aides anticipated?" If so, riddle us this:

Just how narrow did Trump's aides think his win was going to be?

What lessons should we the people take from this year's outcome? In many ways, there are as many lessons to take as there are pundits to draw them.

The blind men felt different parts of an elephant. Our pundits have emerged at the New York Times (and elsewhere) with their mitts on hobbyhorses. 

That said, we'll start our weeks of review with this. In some ways, the most striking account we've seen was offered by Tim Alberta.

There he sat, on Washington Week–and he's long been anti-Trump. In the excerpt shown below, he spoke with Jeffrey Goldberg

Alberta has long been anti-Trump–but he isn't part of our Blue American tribe. This failure to belong to our tribe permitted him to see what he saw, and also to say this:

ALBERTA (11/8/24): As someone who has spilled a lot of ink on Donald Trump's lies over the past decade–

GOLDBERG: A couple of books worth.

ALBERTA: –a couple of books worth, I just want to say this when we talk about propaganda. Arguably, the three most determinative things in this election were propaganda from the Democratic Party. 

Number one: "Joe Biden is fine and totally fit to be president for another four years."

He wasn't. 

Number two: "The border is closed. It's under control. There's nobody coming in." 

That was not true. 

And number three: "Hey, don't worry about inflation. Prices are fine. Bidenomics! Everything's great. You guys don't know what you're talking about. Actually, the economy is in great shape." 

This is propaganda to millions of Americans who said, "None of that is true, and therefore, I don't trust you." 

They might not trust Trump, but they don't trust Democrats either.

Let's sidestep the word "propaganda." Arguably, were those alleged presentations by Democrats the three most determinative things in this year's election?

Arguably, we'd have to say that they may have been! They don't exhaust the long list of "determinative things," but they represent an obvious place to start.

Did those of us in Blue America earn our way out this year? We'd be inclined to say that we pretty much did, but we'd quickly add this:

Given the way we humans are wired, those of us in Blue America will never be able to see this! We'll be strongly inclined to deny the obvious every step of the way, in much the way our neighbors and friends in Red America have persistently done.

Did Blue America earn its way out? We'd say that process started a long time ago. By pure coincidence, we were physically present–we were right there on the scene–when this destructive practice got its unfortunate start.

It seems to us that we earned our way out! But given the way our species is built, will we ever be able to see it?

Tomorrow: Whatever seems to come next in this very long trail of tears

SUNDAY: How many Democratic votes did Harris shed...

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2024

...in the seven swing states? We were struck by something Tim Alberta said on Friday night's Washington Week.

Inquiring minds quickly wanted to know. Could this statement be accurate?

GOLDBERG (11/8/24): Tim, how did Trump win?

ALBERTA: I think the long and short of it is that—it's interesting, Jeff. If you look at the seven battleground states, in most of them, Kamala Harris won more raw votes than Joe Biden did four years earlier. So, she actually did her part, to a large degree, at least in those seven states.

Say what? Could that statement be accurate?

Let's be clear. In 2020, Candidate Biden won the nationwide popular vote by roughly 4.5 points. This year, Candidate Harris is going to end up losing by something like two points.

That's a substantial step in the wrong direction—especially since the winning candidate was essentially unelectable by any traditional reckoning. 

That said, in all the novelized talk about this year's overwhelming landslide disaster, is it possible that Candidate Harris won more votes, in those seven swing states, than Candidate Biden did?

We decided to take a look at the record!  (We'll be the first to admit that such things are rarely done.)

We decided to check it out! When we did, this is part of what we found:

Statewide vote, Pennsylvania
Candidate Biden, 2020: 3.46 million votes
Candidate Harris, 2024: 3.37 million votes

Statewide vote, Michigan
Candidate Biden, 2020: 2.80 million
Candidate Harris, 2024:  2.73 million

Statewide vote, Wisconsin
Candidate Biden, 2020: 1.63 million
Candidate Harris, 2024: 1.67 million

Statewide vote, North Carolina
Candidate Biden, 2020: 2.68 million
Candidate Harris, 2024: 2.69 million

Statewide vote, Georgia
Candidate Biden, 2020: 2.47 million
Candidate Harris, 2024: 2.54 million

Those are the five swing states where this year's vote has been fully counted. (Possibly with a few votes yet to trickle in.)

Technically, Alberta got it right! On balance, we'd say that Candidate Harris basically matched Candidate Biden's vote total in those five swing states. 

Why then did Candidate Trump win those five swing states? For the record, he won those states by fairly narrow margins. Here's Alberta's assessment:

GOLDBERG (continuing directly): Although we were looking at that map just a few seconds ago, and the Blue Wall is pretty red.

ALBERTA: The Blue Wall has gone red, and, and you ask yourself, "Well, how could that have happened?" Because actually, Donald Trump was able to turn out significantly more votes than he had turned out in either 2016 or in 2020 in those states.

And if you think about what his campaign had been talking about all summer and all fall, this idea of mobilizing low propensity voters, specifically looking at men under 40, white men, Latino men, black men, all of whom are not regular voters, not regular parts of any party's coalition, turning them out in numbers that we had never seen before.

[...]

We're not just talking about persuading erstwhile Democrats to flip and go Republican. We're talking about turning out voters who had never been registered to vote before, bringing them out in these states specifically...

In Alberta's (rough) assessment, Candidate Harris didn't lose votes in the handful of states which actually matter. Candidate Trump added voters (and votes).

For the record: Votes are still being counted in Arizona and Nevada. But it looks like this pattern is going to hold in those last two swing states too.

In fairness, there may be more eligible voters in those states than there were in 2020. But with many Great American Novels being written about this year's election, we thought those actual statistics—those actual numbers—ought to be placed on the pile.

Breaking every rule in the book, we decided to take a look at the record! When we did, that's what we found.

Concerning the right to choose: Our modern journalistic culture gives you the right to choose. 

You can choose to look at the actual numbers, as Alberta apparently did. Or you can listen to Blue America's cable news stars, in which case you may be told that Candidate Trump lost four million votes nationwide, as compared to his total vote back in 2020.

Also, the Ravens beat the Bengals on Thursday night, 35-34. 

It was a very exciting game. It's possible that a certain "cable news" lord actually knew the actual score of that important encounter!

An example of what we've been talking about!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2024

"Overwhelmingly voted," he says: The letter appears in today's New York Times. 

It comes from a reader in Seattle. Here's what the letter says:

To the Editor:

Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Were he alive now he would likely add polls to this list.

Once again pollsters were egregiously wrong in predicting the outcome of the election. They told us that it was a dead heat between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, right up to the morning of Election Day. However, Americans ignored the polls and overwhelmingly voted for another four years of Trumpian chaos. Who knew that it wasn’t really a contest after all?

How long would your local TV weather forecaster keep their job if they were so consistently wrong? Borrowing from Bob Dylan, isn’t it time we finally learned that we don’t need a pollster to know which way the (political) wind blows?

That's the full text of the letter. Americans "overwhelmingly voted for" Trump, the letter overwhelmingly says.

Meanwhile, back at the vote-counting stations:

In the nationwide popular vote, Candidate Trump's victory margin is moving down toward two points. Ezra Klein has estimated that it will end up at 1.5 points, and he could even be right.

By the time the votes have all been counted, Trump may not even have 50 percent of the nationwide vote. But in Seattle, the angry excitement runs high.

Get rid of the pollsters, the Times reader says. We (or possibly they) the people "overwhelmingly voted" for Trump!

Also this: The next letter writer is all-knowing too. 

His letter was written right there in Gotham. It goes exactly like this:

To the Editor:

The fact is that America is not voting for a Black woman president—but no one is going to say that to a pollster or an interviewer. “He gets me” sounds much better.

We're not quite sure what that last sentence means. But that's the full text of the letter. 

Is "America" going to vote for a Black woman president? Not necessarily, no—at least not in every case. 

But in this instance, more than 70 million Americans did that very thing. And as the votes keep getting counted, the number continues to rise.

These are Great American Novels. We humans are wired for the writing of such novels, but also for the subsequent act of putting such novels in print.

SATURDAY: He made a "very important" point!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2024

There is no cure for hapless: In all candor, it would be hard to be more clueless.

It was 9:25 on Friday morning. On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was describing the lay of the American land.

Through no fault of her own, Jen Psaki was forced to deal with his remarkable cluelessness. At any rate, in a striking display, the cable news star said this:

SCARBOROUGH (11/8/24): I'm a huge believer in humility in victory and humility in defeat...I just want to follow up on something you said, because what Democrats need to be asking is, "Why did so many people stay home and not vote?"

PSAKI: Yes.

SCARBOROUGH: Two numbers. The first number is, 12 million less people voted for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden.  

But here's the kicker. Are you ready?

Already, the youthful analysts were glancing around in a state of pre-despair. What was the cable star talking about? Did he actually think that all the votes, nationwide, had already been recorded?

It almost sounded like his did! And then, quite quickly, sure enough! His oration continued as shown:

SCARBOROUGH (continuing from above): Two numbers. The first number is 12 million less people voted for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden. But here's, here's the kicker. Are you ready for this?

Donald Trump got four million votes less, Jen, this year than he got four years ago. If Democrats had turned out, and Independents and Republicans... 

He blathered a bit at this point. But as you can see by clicking here, this was the gist of his speech:

SCARBOROUGH: Two numbers. The first number is 12 million less people voted for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden. But here's, here's the kicker. Are you ready for this?

Donald Trump got four million votes less, Jen—

PSAKI: Yes!

SCARBOROUGH: —four million votes less this year than he got four years ago. If Democrats had turned out, and Independents and Republicans—

[...]

And Jen, how shocking is it that, again, Donald Trump got four million votes less, and now Democrats are going, "Oh my gosh, this is the greatest landslide of all time. How did this happen?"

It happened because they stayed home, or because a lot of voters that voted for her last time stayed home. Forgive me for going on, but this is an important point.

As you can see if you click that link, Scarborough continued making his astonishing misstatement. On a vastly brighter side, the Internet Archive is back on its feet, a full month after being taken down by a cyberattack. 

For that reason, we're able to link you to videotape of this fuller pseudo-discussion.

As for Psaki, she gently tried to mention the fact that many votes were still uncounted. But in accord with Hard Cable News Law, she didn't tell her cable news host that he didn't know what he was talking about—that he seemed to be astoundingly clueless.

It's hard to know less than Scarborough did as he made his important point. It's as we've told you in recent days:

There's never been a cure for human. That becomes especially true when very large corporate salaries are handed out to cable news stars in search of larger cable ratings and higher profit margins.

It would be hard to know less than Scarborough did that day. Today, with millions of votes still unrecorded, let's take a look at the actual record as it currently exists:

As of today, Candidate Trump has in fact received more votes than he did in 2020. Here are the nationwide vote totals for the past three elections, even as millions of votes remain unrecorded this year:

Nationwide popular vote, 2016 election
Clinton: 65,853,51 (48.2%) 
Trump: 62,984,828 (46.1%)
(Turnout: 60.1%)

Nationwide popular vote, 2020 election
Biden: 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Trump: 74,223,975 (46.8%)
(Turnout:  66.6%)

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024 election
Trump: 74,263,792 (50.5%)
Harris: 70,355,827 (47.9%)
(Turnout: To be determined)

As you can see, Trump's vote total has already surpassed his total from 2020. It's true that Harris trails the Biden total from 2020, but she's now eleven million votes behind that total, with millions of votes to go before we get to sleep.

At this point, a bit of unintentional comedy comes in. 

If you click the kink from the Internet Archive, you can see the chyron producers were playing even as their host kept misstating. Their own chyron was showing Trump with more than 73 million votes. 

Sad! He was already very close to surpassing his 2020 total.

Even as we type today, how many votes remain uncounted and unrecorded? Out in some of the western states, the wheels of vote-counting grind slow.

According to the AP's current (ongoing) tabulation, the state of California's vote is only 63% reported. That suggests that as any as three or four million votes may still be unrecorded in that large state alone.

Other states in the laid-back west are reporting their votes at the usual leisurely pace. According to the AP tally, these are the percentages currently reported:

Percenatge of votes already reported:
California: 63%
Oregon: 84%
Washington: 90%
Arizona: 82%
Utah: 80%
Colorado: 91%

For the record, it isn't just the western states. Right here in Maryland, on the east coast, the percentage stands at 85%. 

By the way:

Does that mean that 15% of Maryland's total vote remains unreported? Or does it mean that the vote in 15% of Maryland's jurisdictions hasn't yet been reported?

What does that percentage actually mean? The AP tally doesn't say! We humans are strongly inclined to blow past such distinctions. We're disinclined to notice the fact that such distinctions exist.

All in all, across the nation, millions of votes remain unrecorded. It happens this way every four years. Every four years, people like Scarborough don't seem to have grasped this fact.

Meanwhile, full disclosures:

As those votes are added to the total, Candidate Trump's victory margin will likely move toward two percentage points, or possibly even less. It's even possible that his share of the nationwide vote will drop below 50 percent.

This isn't exactly the major landslide you'll see some cable stars cite, especially (but not exclusively) in Red America's cable landscape.

That said, Candidate Trump has already surpassed his 2020 total, and he'll likely add several million votes to his total before the counting is done. Candidate Harris will still lose the nationwide vote, but the margin by which she lost will almost surely grow smaller.

Scarborough's one point will remain true. If Harris had matched Biden's total vote from 2020, she would have won the election. 

(Eventually, this year's turnout figure will even be known!)

At some point, we'll actually know what the real numbers actually are.  But the shortfall will be much smaller than the self-assured cable news star was saying as Psaki played along. 

That said:

On Friday morning, there he sat, the most clueless man on the planet. He had an important point to make—and he seemed to have no earthly idea what he was talking about. 

Just a guess:

He'd probably watched the Ravens and the Bengals with Jack on Thursday night. As a general matter, this is the way this cable news program had gone all through the course of this White House campaign.

There is no cure for such conduct. Major experts, now in hiding, describe this remarkable detachment from fact as "human all the way down." 

They insist that it's unlikely to change. "For better or worse, we're built this way," these experts hotly proclaim.

Coming next week: The endless stream of endless examples of Blue America's endless paths to self-defeat

NEW NORMALS: What explains the outcome of the campaign?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2024

Great American Novels gone wild: When it comes to the nationwide popular vote, how large will Candidate Trump's victory margin be?

At present, we can't say. As of this morning, we still have counting of votes—but this is where the numbers currently stand:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 73,407,735 (50.7%)
Candidate Harris: 69,074,145 votes (47.7%)
Turnout: At present, unknown

At present, the candidate's victory margin is three points. 

As we noted yesterday, Ezra Klein has estimated that the margin may end up at 1.5 points. We'll go ahead and take a guess, placing it at two points.

Among the votes which have been counted, the winning candidate received slightly more than half the total vote—slightly more than half the votes from the people who chose to vote.

He received none of the votes from the people who didn't vote. For the record, this is roughly the way the nationwide vote ended four years ago:

Nationwide popular vote, 2020
Candidate Biden: 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Candidate Trump: 74,223,975 (46.8%)
Turnout: 66.6%

As far as we know, California has finished counting its votes from that election. For the record, that turnout number suggests that something approaching 80 million people who were eligible to vote didn't turn out to vote that year. 

They didn't vote for Candidate Biden or for Candidate Trump. If you score them as voting for Candidate Neither, it can almost seem that Candidate Neither ran quite well that year!

These are some of the basic numbers from the last two White House elections. As a general matter, a lot of Americans turn out to vote, but it's also true that tens of millions of Americans don't.

Our elections involve large numbers of Americans! That said, nothing can match the volume of Great American Novels which swiftly appear in the wake of our presidential campaigns. That's especially true in a year like this, when the campaign was especially fraught and its outcome has struck many people as shocking.

According to some of our favorite experts, there is no cure for what happens when we start writing our novels. For one example of such a novel, we'll offer comments by a pair of readers at a Blue American blog.

A bit sardonically, the author of the blog post in question had offered a lengthy list of reasons—a list of reasons which have already been offered as explanations for the one candidate's loss. 

As best we can tell, the blogger was being a bit sardonic. That said, why did Candidate Harris fall short? The commenters offered this:

COMMENTER (11/7/24): Occam's razor: America wanted DJT. That's who we are as a people. It's depressing, but it's the simplest hypothesis that fits all the facts.

This one's on us, folks.

COMMENTER IN RESPONSE: Apparently, he got more than 50% of the vote. Every single day he showed us exactly who he is. No punches pulled. Thus, you are right. A bitter pill to swallow.

It's "a bitter pill to swallow." Is it one we're inclined to gulp?

"America" wanted Trump, the first commenter said. It's "who we are as a people."

Is it true that "America" wanted Trump? It's certainly true that many Americans went out and voted for Candidate Trump as opposed to Candidate Harris. 

(Some of them may have wanted something better. But that's who they voted for.)

We voted for Candidate Harris ourselves. So did almost half the people who turned out to vote.

That first commenter was writing a novel—a dystopian novel at that. He or she produced the screenplay for a political horror film. A third commenter offered this in response to the original comment:

COMMENTER IN RESPONSE: Among those people who did vote, "this is who we are as a people" by an eventual margin of maybe two percent.

Trump beat Harris by maybe two points. Is that "who we are as a people?" 

In all honesty, the formulation makes little sense—leads us away from clarity in the direction of horror. But according to experts, this is very much the way we humans, as a species, are wired to respond to important events of this type.

It isn't anyone's fault, these experts say. On balance, it's just the way we're built!

On balance, we humans aren't exactly "the rational animal." To a greater extent, we're the animal which is inclined to construct enormously simplified novels to explain major events.

As a species, we humans are inclined to construct simple stories about major events which take place in the world. On this very Friday morning, those novels are appearing all over the web site of the New York Times. 

These novels aren't coming from commenters jotting quick reactions at a blog. They're coming from journalistic mental giants who often went to the finest schools!

The author of one of these novels is nine years out of college (St. John's, class of 2015). His novel appears on the front page of this morning's print editions—but does this really make sense? 

CAMPAIGN NOTEBOOK
How Trump Connected With So Many Americans

The forces that propelled President-elect Donald J. Trump to victory will be endlessly analyzed. Many Americans woke up on Wednesday morning shocked that he could win again. But there is no doubt about one thing: Mr. Trump was a ferociously effective campaigner.

To watch him up close on this third run for president was to see him blend comedy, fury, optimism, darkness and cynicism like never before. He was an expert communicator, able to transmute legal and mortal peril to build upon his self mythology. He won new supporters and kept old ones in thrall.

At dozens of events, I watched as he connected with all sorts of people in all sorts of places...

That's the way the novel started. Our question:

Does this sudden new assessment—the candidate was "an expert communicator," we're suddenly being told—actually make good sense?

Nationwide, the candidate won by two points against a relatively little-known candidate who was thrown into the race very late in the game. Does a person have to be "an expert communicator" to achieve a two-point win in that unusual circumstance?

A second novel appears on the front page of today's print editions. That novel has a different theme—but does this novel make sense?

NEWS ANALYSIS
For Black Women, ‘America Has Revealed to Us Her True Self’

From the moment Kamala Harris entered the presidential race, Black women could see the mountaintop.

Across the country, they led an outpouring of Democratic elation when the vice president took over the top of the presidential ticket. But underneath their hope and determination was a persistent worry: Was America ready, they asked, to elect a Black woman?

The painful answer arrived this week.

It affirmed the worst of what many Black women believed about their country: that it would rather choose a man who was convicted of 34 felonies, has spewed lies and falsehoods, disparaged women and people of color, and pledged to use the powers of the federal government to punish his political opponents than send a woman of color to the White House.

[...]

“This isn’t a loss for Black women, it’s a loss for the country,” said Waikinya Clanton, the founder of the organizing group Black Women for Kamala. “America has revealed to us her true self,” she added, “and we have to decide what we do with her from here.”

As with the comment to the blog post, so too here. According to this presentation, "America" has revealed "her true self," and what she's revealed isn't good.

This novel is pleasingly simplified. That said, to what extent foes this "news analysis" hold up?

Needless to say, it's true! By a margin which may end up at less than two points, Americans who turned out to vote favored the one candidate over the other.  But as to why those (tens of millions of) people made that particular choice, this novel seems to have settled on One Possible Reason Only. 

Meanwhile, our favorite novel of the many appears in today's Letters section. According to experts, this novel turns on a formulation which is very common among us humans:

To the Editor:

If the results of this election teach us anything, it’s that American voters of all demographics consistently vote against their own interests. Tens of millions of women just voted for the candidate who is likely to remove their fundamental rights. Arab Americans favored the candidate who used executive orders to bar Muslims and Middle Eastern refugees from entering the country. Latino men voted for the candidate who tried to build a literal wall to keep people just like them out.

Do these voters not think that the pendulum of misogyny, racism and bigotry so readily wielded by their candidate of choice and his followers won’t soon come swinging for them?

There are many reasons for this electoral outcome, but one thing is certain: Americans no longer vote based on policies or principles. Instead, they vote for the person who promises them what they want to hear—even when he consistently, and remarkably, does the exact opposite.

G— D— / Detroit

According to this particular novel, we now seem to have learned that "American voters of all demographics consistently vote against their own interests." 

More precisely, we seem to have learned that "American voters of all demographics consistently vote against their own interests" as those interests are understood by people like the letter writer.  

Meanwhile, one thing is certain, this Michigan novelist says:

"Americans"—presumably, every American but him—"no longer vote based on policies or principles." If someone based his vote on years of unexplained chaos at the southern border, that American wasn't basing his vote on policy.  He simply voted for the candidate who said what he wanted to hear!

For the record, this last novel has been quite common here in Blue America. Experts say that we humans are fundamentally wired to see the world in such ways.

There's no cure for any of this, these experts all insist. But they also stress this important point:

When we humans create such novels, that doesn't mean we're bad people. It simply means that we're people people, these experts hotly insist.

Next week, we expect to review some sober assessments of why the Blue candidate lost—why she lost by a margin which may end up at something less than two points. With that, we reach a final point:

Regarding these novels, those experts say this:

Their production is very much an old normal. There's nothing new about this impulse. It dates back trillions of years!

Great landslides of the American past!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2024

What ever happened to landslides? When all the votes have been counted, how will this year's presidential election look? Ezra Klein offers this in the New York Times:

Where Does This Leave Democrats?

[...]

Donald Trump’s victory was not one of the grand landslides of American political history. As I write this, estimates suggest that [Trump] is on track for a 1.5-percentage-point margin in the popular vote. If that holds—and it may change as California is counted—it is smaller than Barack Obama’s win in 2008 or 2012, Bush’s in 2004 and Bill Clinton’s in 1992 or 1996. It may prove smaller than Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016.

It won't be "one of the great landslides," Ezra somewhat sardonically says. Indeed, if the margin turns out to be less than two points, it won't be a landslide at all.

Here's what the Times' Nate Cohn says:

How Trump Won, Again

[...]

Despite Jan. 6, the end of Roe v. Wade and a felony conviction, Mr. Trump won a clear victory. He is on track to win all seven battleground states. He made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group: If you look at The Times’s map of what has changed since 2020, you’ll see a sea of red.

According to our estimates, Mr. Trump is also on track to become the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years.

At the same time, the scope of his victory shouldn’t be overstated. This was no landslide. A one- or two-percentage-point victory in the national popular vote with roughly 312 electoral votes is not unusual. It’s not as large as Barack Obama’s modest win in 2012, and falls far short of “change” elections like Mr. Obama’s in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s in 1992.

Cohn mentions that felony conviction, the venerated object of Blue America's cable news over the past several years. The outcome constitutes "a clear victory," but it was "no landslide," he says.

Alas! Depending on circumstances, an election can change the world without having been a landslide. 

In 2016, Candidate Trump lost the nationwide vote—but that particular lack of a landslide allowed him to place three people on the Supreme Court. President Obama, who won elections by 7.2 and 4.9 points, only got to name two Justices over his eight years in office. 

(In a sign of what was to come, one Justice was stolen, of course.)

What ever happened to landslides? At one time, there actually were such beings. Let's take a look at the record.

Did the modern political era start in 1960? However you answer that question, that election was very close:

Nationwide vote, 1960
Kennedy 49.7%
Nixon 49.6%
(Turnout: 63.8%)

That was no one's landslide! According to Theodore White, Kennedy learned that he had won when he arose on Wednesday morning.

Four years later, the deluge! By now, President Kennedy had been murdered. We the people said this:

Nationwide vote, 1964
Johnson 61.1%
Goldwater 38.5%
(Turnout: 62.8%)

By American norms, that was a genuine, stone-cold landslide. The others which followed were these:

Nationwide vote, 1972
Nixon: 60.7%
McGovern: 37.5%
(Turnout: 56.2%)

Nationwide vote, 1984
Reagan 58.8
Mondale 40.6
(Turnout: 55.2%)

Turnout was sliding but landslides lived on, though that was the last of the breed.  

In 1988, President Bush the elder won by almost eight points. In 1992 and 1996, President Clinton won by 5.6 and 8.5 points, each time in a three-way field. 

As of 1996, turnout had declined all the way to a bit less than 52%. Since then, only Obama's margin, that one time, has exceeded five points.

Will Trump end up with a two-point win? We don't know at this point. That said, a relatively slender nationwide win could still end up changing the world. In Blue America, we badly need to understand how it ever got this far—though some such belated comprehension may no longer matter.

For the record, Kennedy's very narrow win had been preceded by a landslide. 

In 1952, Eisenhower beat Stevenson by almost eleven points, with a turnout of slightly better than 63%. Four years later, when they did it again, the numbers looked like this:

Nationwide vote, 1956
Eisenhower 57.4%
Stevenson 42.0%
(Turnout: 60.2%)

In 1960, Eleanor Roosevelt—FDR's widow—wanted to nominate the highly erudite Stevenson again!

Out of one of those elections, a famous story emerged. In all likelihood, the story isn't true, but the story goes like this:

Still Madly for Adlai

Like many of the best political stories, this one about Adlai Stevenson, the former two-time Democratic presidential nominee, is probably apocryphal. It was late in a long day on the campaign trail in 1956—or 1952, it varies with the telling—when a voice called out of the crowd: 

“Every thinking person in America will be voting for you!” 

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Stevenson retorted. “I need a majority.”

We Blues! We've never quite stopped thinking that way. Our human wiring inspires us to truly believe that such thinking is plainly correct.

We Blues have never stopped thinking that way. In our view, it doesn't help. 

NEW NORMALS: It's hard to know how this story will end!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2024

The world awaits news normals: We've been recalling what Viktor Laszlo says at one point in Casablanca.

Lazslo is an important, world-renowned freedom fighter. On the run from the Third Reich, he has landed in Casablanca—and, by happenstance, he has walked into a gin joint run by the sardonic man his beloved wife secretly loves.

The details of a complex love story slowly unfold from there. Midway through the film, Lazslo speaks frankly to the Bogart character, the man his beloved wife loves. 

Lazslo speaks to Mister Rick. When he does, he tells him this:

LAZSLO (1942): I know a good deal more about you than you suspect. I know, for instance, that you are in love with a woman.  It is perhaps a strange circumstance that we both should be in love with the same woman. 

The first evening I came into this cafe, I knew there was something between you and Ilsa. Since no one is to blame, I demand no explanation.

So says the freedom fighter, midway through the film 

By now, Lazslo has discerned the basic outline of what happened in Paris. He has asked his wife if she wants to tell him the story, but he hasn't insisted.

"No one is to blame," he now correctly says.

Casablanca places one of film's greatest love stories within the vastly larger context of a fight to save the world. The heroic Lazslo demands no explanation from the Bogart character. 

The brilliantly insightful story, leavened with spectacular uses of humor, continues on from there. With the help of the Bogart character, Lazslo escapes from Nazi-held Casablanca, still determined to save the world.

This very morning, we thought of what Lazslo said as we watched the Morning Joe gang giving voice to tribal regularity with respect to President Biden. 

President Biden has come under criticism for what happened this Tuesday. Early in Morning Joe's first hour, Mika demanded regularity from the Washington Post's Gene Robinson. 

We jotted down this part of their exchange:

MIKA (11/7/24): Was his presidency a failure?

ROBINSON: No. He was a very successful president.

In fairness to Robinson, Mika was plainly demanding that me make some such declaration.  Under the circumstances, Robinson may have felt that he pretty much had to comply.

That said, as in Casablanca, so too possibly here! In Casablanca, people like Lazslo (and his wife) were trying to save an existing world order as a slouching beast drew near. 

Imaginably, so too today, as the nation—and the world—await the highly likely unfolding of a whole new set of new normals.

What will President Trump do in this second term? There is no way to answer that question, Imaginably, though, prospects are remarkably dour.

In our view, major elements of President Biden's behavior helped bring us to this precarious place. That said, it seems to us that there's no one to blame—or at least, it seems to us that we can't blame President Biden himself, who seems to us to have undergone a loss of cognitive power.

Other people disagree with that assessment. To date, there has been virtually no attempt, within the mainstream press, to examine the question of President Biden's possible cognitive state.

Has the president been the victim of some sort of cognitive shortfall during his term in office? Is it possible that there was some attempt to hide some such state of affairs from the American public?

If you live in Red America, you've seen such assertions being made all through the past several years. If you live in Blue America, you've seen no attempt to address any such possible point of concern.

At some point, someone will probably venture forth with some reporting about this matter. We'll guess that Bob Woodward may be gathering information even as we speak—statements offered under embargo, awaiting some later release.

At present, some are saying that President Biden should have announced, after the 2022 midterm elections, that he wouldn't seek re-election. 

Our own frustration with the president's conduct is somewhat different. It involves his remarkable failure to confront the two basic issues which made it so hard for Candidate Harris to prevail as his replacement, once he'd been persuaded to step aside after his debate debacle in late June of this very year.

We refer again to President Biden's remarkable silence. To wit:

What explains President Biden's feckless behavior with respect to the southern border during the first three years of his term? As far as we know, the president has never made any attempt to explain.

(We'll be offering our own speculation within the next week.)

Also, what explained the economic situation which was confronting many voters as this year's election drew near? President Biden never made any serious attempt to address that situation either. In our view, the sitting president had virtually disappeared.

We're inclined to assume that President Biden was struggling with cognitive issues. (Others disagree.) This may explain why he made so little effort to speak about these major topics.

In that sense, there may be no one to blame for his failure to speak. No one to blame except, perhaps, the people around him.

That said, those of us in Blue America now face a dangerous state of affairs. We were sorry to see the way the Morning Joe gang seemed to feel they had to persist with the mandated statement about what a remarkably successful presidency this president has performed. 

Was President Biden a remarkably successful president? There may be no one to blame, but the extremely strange fourth year of his presidency has left the nation and the world in a perilous state,

In the past twenty-four hours, we've heard a lot of insightful assessments of how those of us in Blue America managed to get to this place. We'll start to review those assessments next week. 

Right now, on this very day, we'll merely offer this:

There may be no one to blame for the mess which finally became impossible to deny during that June 27 debate. There may be no one to blame for what may have happened to President Biden. 

Beyond that, no one knows where Tuesday's result will in fact lead the nation and the world. That said:

In our view, the nation is now in the hands of a badly disordered group of people. An obvious question remains in search of an answer:

"How did it [ever] get this far?" How did we ever get to this place?

This is a story without an ending, the Bogart character says at one point, midway through Casablanca. 

It was a story without an ending. So too today, as the nation, and the world, await an array of new normals.

This afternoon: Landslide elections v. this

What was the matter with Iowa?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

That is, with the Iowa Poll: In the past, Ann Selzer's Iowa Poll had frequently landed pretty much right on the money.

Every four years, results of the final survey would be released on the Sunday before the election. This year, that final poll showed Candidate Harris ahead of Candidate Trump by three points statewide, 47-44 percent.

We'll say this for the Iowa Poll—when it finally missed the mark, it held little back. Here's the current report on the topic in the Des Moines Register:

Pollster J. Ann Selzer: 'I’ll be reviewing data' after Iowa Poll misses big Trump win

Renowned Pollster J. Ann Selzer said Tuesday she would be reviewing her data to determine why a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released just days before the election produced results so far out of line with former President Donald Trump's resounding victory.

Trump handily won Iowa for a third time, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris by 14 percentage points with more than 90% of the vote counted―a sharp contrast to Saturday's Iowa Poll that had Harris leading by 3 points.

"Tonight, I’m of course thinking about how we got where we are," Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducts the Iowa Poll, said in a statement.

"The poll findings we produced for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom did not match what the Iowa electorate ultimately decided in the voting booth today. I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened. And, I welcome what that process might teach me."

As Kevin Drum noted last week, there are many ways a survey of this type can go wrong. So-called "margin of error" is only the start of the possibilities. And by the way, just a guess:

No journalist could possibly hope to explain the way that statistical artefact works. We couldn't exactly do so either, but at least we'd know not to pretend.

Simply put, everyone talks about margin of error, but no one does anything about it! In fact, basic "sampling error" comes into play if you're simply pulling red and blue ping-pong balls out of a big giant drum. 

Sometimes, the sample you pull out of the drum will match the proportion of red and blue balls found inside the drum—but a fair amount of the time, the sample you pull out of the drum won't be a perfect match.

That's how it works with ping pong balls in a big giant drum. If you're polling a presidential campaign, other factors come into play, potentially messing things up.

Many people won't answer their phone when you try to reach them. Some people will answer their phone, but they won't answer your question.

Some people won't tell you the truth if they decide to answer your question. Some people may have changed their minds by the time they cast their votes.

The possible ways a poll can go wrong continue on from there. 

On 24-hour "cable news," the pundits spend a lot of time, before an election, puzzling over the polls. At some point, this becomes an excellent way to kill giant amounts of time—a way to pretend you're presenting "news" as part of a process called "journalism."

This past Sunday, the Iowa Poll had Candidate Harris up by three points, with nine percent still floating around in the ether. (Three percent had said that they'd be voting for Candidate Kennedy Jr.)

For one brief shining moment, that's where matters allegedly stood. According to this AP post, here's where the statewide vote in Iowa stands with 98 percent reporting:

Statewide presidential vote, Iowa 2024
Trump: 55.9%
Harris: 42.7%
Kennedy Jr.: 0.8%

Three other hopefuls got handfuls of votes. Eventually, though, the day had to come:

Trump won by more than thirteen points! The Iowa Poll got it wrong.

NEW NORMALS: "The American people are pretty sharp!"

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

Except actually, no—we aren't: For at least a generation, it's been a standard bit of messaging from "highly educated," high-profile American pundits:

The American people are pretty sharp!

That has always made for excellent messaging. Whatever else may have been involved, repetition of this bromide helped pundits remain well liked.

The American people are pretty sharp? Actually no, we aren't! That includes this gaggle of "highly educated," high-end journalists—and who knows?

 In some cases, it's possible that some of those tribunes even believed what they said!

Last night's outcome wasn't a revolution—except to the extent that it may become one. Numbers changed in a limited way—in a way which makes total sense at a time when people feel, by a very wide margin, that the nation is on "the wrong track."

Tens of millions of neighbors and friends believe that we're on the wrong track. Having said that, so what?

In Blue America, we kept ignoring the still-unexplained, manifest strangeness which was allowed to transpire, for more than three years, at the southern border. To this day, we're still conflating the cost of living with the current inflation figure.

Our tribunes kept insisting that President Biden was sharp as a tack. Over on the Fox News Channel, they kept playing the pieces of videotape which seemed to debunk that claim.

Are we the people actually sharp? This morning, the C-Span web site has joined that of the Internet Archive. For a reason we can't explain, C-Span's website seems to be down. 

Has C=Span been hit by a cyberattack, like the Archive before it? We have no idea! But C-Span's failure to respond robs us of the chance to transcribe a trio of phone calls the network received during Sunday morning's broadcast. of Washington Journal.

How sharp are we the American people? Based upon our notes, the three calls were received, one after the other, starting at 8:55 a.m. Eastern.

The American people are pretty sharp? Here's what three callers said, one right after another:

Caller One: Caller One said that she would be voting for Candidate Harris. She cited the fact that Candidate Trump has had three wives as the defining point of concern.

Caller Two: Caller Two said that he would also be voting for Harris—and he was predicting a blowout. He noted the fact that Candidate Trump doesn't have a pet, while Candidate Harris has a dog.

Caller Three: Caller Three said she'd be voting for Candidate Trump.  Who was in office when the Dobbs decision was reached? "The Democrats," she sagaciously said, plainly suggesting that the Dobbs decision was therefore the Democrats' fault!

You'll think that we're inventing these calls. You'll think that, but we aren't.

To our ear, there was no sign that these callers were anything other than fully sincere. We can't link you to the audiotape of these calls because C-Span, like the Internet Archive, is now, for some reason, down.

When we listened to those phone calls, we heard America singing, if only in very small part. Rather, we were hearing the voices of three fellow citizens—three of the well over 100 million neighbors and friends who would be going out there to vote.

In all honesty, we the humans aren't especially sharp, and there's exactly zero sign that we ever were. That includes the class of experts who get dragged into Blue America's messaging venues to feed us the porridge we like.

Last night's outcome wasn't a revolution. Candidate Trump will almost surely end up winning the nationwide popular vote, but only by maybe three points.

That's a change from four years ago. On the other hand, it isn't a giant change, given the circumstances under which this campaign took place.

How did we Blues approach this election? Let us count (a few of) the ways:

For starters, we operated under an amazingly braindead bromide:

Don't ask, don't let them tell!

Please don't interview Trump voters, we said again and again. Please don't ask them how the world looks to them. Don't ask them why they're supporting Candidate Trump.

Any time a major news org dared to do some such thing, we Blues begged them to stop. It's hard to be much dumber than that, but we (highly educated) Blues were constantly willing to try.

We didn't leave things there. Starting at 4 o'clock Eastern each afternoon, Blue America's "cable news" channel focused its attention on this pleasing porridge:

Trump Trump Trump Trump jail!

Lock him up, our tribunes said, all day and then into the night. In the process, they completely ignored the facts of life which were driving the outlook of The Others.

They ignored the outlook of the deplorables who went out and voted yesterday, even possibly of the "garbage" out there.

(Once President Biden had blurted that latter term, we insisted that Red America had blown right past his implied apostrophe! It's hard to be more pathetic than that, but as a tribe, we've always been willing to try.)

In the end, one of those deplorables called C-Span with that ridiculous claim about the Dobbs decision. That said, this is who we the people are—and at some point, those of us in Blue America have to ask ourselves this basic question:

Do we like other people, or not?

All through the annals of human history, the general answer to that question has generally been no. We humans are wired to like our own, to refer to the Others as "trash."

That's where Candidate Vance just went, in the campaign's dying days. In part due to the landlocked nature of our own Blue American world, we are now looking ahead to rule by a gaggle like this:

The brain trust which has emerged: 
Donald J. Trump
Elon Musk
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
JD Vance
Tucker Carlson

Next in line will be fellows like Bannon. It was Bannon to whom Carlson made his latest confession—his claim that our problems with hurricanes stem from our many abortions. That followed his account of the way he was bloodied in bed by unseen demons, even as his wife and his four dogs soundly slept.

We've now purchased rule by that peculiar crew, and on downward from there. To us, those people all seem to be disordered—but the mental giants in Blue America all agreed, from beginning to end, that any such medical possibility must never be mentioned or discussed.

So it was decided by Us—by the plainly brighter class among us the rational animals.

Are we humans "the rational animal?" Is it possible that we ever were?

Isn't it pretty to think so! A decade ago, writing for the New York Times, Professor Horwich shot that notion down.

Interpreting the later Wittgenstein, the professor brought in the mail. The highest achievements of western world thought were really "the misbegotten products of linguistic illusion and muddled thinking," the professor said that the later Wittgenstein had said.

We think the professor got it pretty much right! Over here in Blue America, we motored ahead into an era when we pleasingly wiped away the age-old distinction between misstatements and lies.

So it went with our own muddled thinking, with a thousand examples to follow. Over there in Red America, the others were routinely able to see what our tribunes kept choosing to do.

On our side, we wanted to lock him up. The business types inside our own tribe's "cable news" channel kept using that as the pretty idea which would keep us returning for more.

On and on and on we went. On our side, we're so dumb that we somehow managed to convince ourselves that Stormy Daniels was a "feminist hero," based on the way she struggled and strained to shake Trump down for cash.

It's hard to be much dumber than that; we were willing to try. Over there, in Red America, the lesser breed was persistently able to see what we, the finer people, were haplessly trying to do.

What will President Trump do this time around? We have no way of knowing.

If he goes ahead with his apparently lunatic tariff plan, the economy may get very bad. If that happens, it will take a lot of violent rhetoric and action, in other areas, to keep us the people in line.

(Or he may just dismiss Jack Smith, then go play golf for four years. We have no way of knowing what the fellow will do.)

That said, there will likely be a lot of new normals in the days ahead. Almost surely, there's one thing which will never change:

We Blues will never understand the way we look to Others. According to a handful of actual experts, our human wiring doesn't equip us for some such task.

We humans aren't built for that task! Is a new beast slouching toward Bethlehem now, as one anthropologist foretold?

We the humans just aren't super-sharp! At some point, we Blues may have to ask ourselves this. It's a question straight outta Bill Clinton:

Do we like other humans, or not?