BLUE DENIAL: In our view, there's none so blind...

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2024

...as Blues who will not see: As it seems to have shaken out, Candidate Harris lost a fairly close election to Candidate Donald J. Trump.

Judged by any traditional metric, it wasn't a landslide, and it wasn't even a rout. According to the Cook Report, here's where the nationwide vote currently stands with few votes left to count:  

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 77,027,112 (49.86%)
Candidate Harris: 74,557,993 (48.26%)

He didn't get to fifty percent? As it turns out, he didn't even get to 49.9!

Nationwide, the winner won by roughly 1.6 points. Meanwhile, his margin in the Blue Wall states was even more slender than that:

Winning margin in the Blue Wall states
Pennsylvania: 1.7 points
Michigan: 1.4 points
Wisconsin: 0.8 points

His winning margins weren't great. And those are the margins by which he vanquished an accidental opponent who didn't even get in the race until late July of last year!

On the other hand, the winning candidate was Donald J. Trump. Over here in Blue America, many of our fellow citizens are wondering how a candidate like Trump could possibly have won—indeed, how a person like Donald J. rump could possibly have received any votes at all.

Why would anyone have voted for Candidate Trump? This morning, on this latest of many Blue Mondays to come, the New York Times has published letters in which We Who Can't or Simply Refuse To See are trying to puzzle it out.

Why would anyone have voted for Trump? Seventy-seven million people did, but many of us in Blue America can't seem to imagine any respectable reasons which might lie behind such a vote.

In the Times, today's letters are responding to a column in which David Brooks noted some demographic outcomes within this year's exit polls which he found surprising. Here's part of what Brooks wrote:

BROOKS (11/15/24): In 2024, Kamala Harris did worse among Black voters than Joe Biden did in 2020. She did worse among female voters. She did much worse among Latino voters. She did much worse among young voters.

She did manage to outperform Biden among two groups: affluent people and white voters, especially white men.

According to Brooks, Candidate Harris did worse among black voters than Biden did, but better among white voters! Meanwhile, full disclosure:

The exit polls are subject to error! That said, the exit polls seem to show that Harris (2024) and Biden (2020) each received 41% of the white vote.

Also, they seem to show that Trump gained one (1) point among black voters in 2024, moving from 12% versus Biden in 2020 to 13% against Harris. Those exit polls are subject to error, but those changes don't seem to be vast.

(For the 2020 exit polls, just click here. For this year's exit polls, you can just click this.)

All in all, whatever! Candidate Biden won in 2020; Candidate Harris lost this year. On this latest of many Blue Mondays, we citizens of Blue America are trying to figure it out.

Let's take a look at the record! One letter in the Times comes from Bala Cynwyd, Pa. In full, the letter says this:

To the Editor:

David Brooks wisely quoted the British jurist Patrick Devlin’s warning: “Without shared ideas on politics, morals and ethics, no society can exist.” And Mr. Brooks concluded, “We need a national narrative that points us to some ideal and gives each of us a noble role in pursuing it.”

I really thought Vice President Kamala Harris provided that positive narrative, that noble role, when she told us repeatedly she wanted to unite the country, which has been seriously divided by Donald Trump, and asked us to join her to work together to help working people and the middle class; to lift all people, regardless of party, age, identity or background; to cut the red tape and create more housing, reduce costs and propel American children out of poverty.

What more could she have said to convince the public that she really cared about all of the American people and our future, and that she would be a better president than a felon, racist, misogynist, insurrectionist, liar, bully and cheater? What am I missing?

"What am I missing?" the writer asks. In our view, it's an extremely important question.

In the view of this Harris voter, Candidate Harris offered a positive narrative, proposed that each of us had a noble role to play. That said, she was defeated by a candidate who is "a felon, racist, misogynist, insurrectionist, liar, bully and cheater."

What more could Harris have done, this writer asks. "What am I missing?"

Another writer seems to know what she's missing.  He writes from Great neck, New York—and the Times notes that he's a psychiatrist:

To the Editor:

David Brooks, whom I regard highly, failed to emphasize the obvious: 76 million people elected a patently unqualified person to be president of the United States.

I would not venture an explanation for the cause of this mind-boggling phenomenon, but the hold of irrational over logical thinking comes to mind. Interviews with voters reveal the “feel” factor: “I feel things were better,” or “I feel he didn’t mean it.” Whatever the snake oil magic Donald Trump had, it was “feeling,” not rational assessment, that fed him to a receptive people.

The writer says he won't offer an explanation, but then he instantly does. The receptive people who voted for Trump succumbed to the hold of irrational thinking. Trump had offered these people snake oil magic, and these sub-rational voters succumbed.

"What am I missing?" the one writer asked. The second writer answered. Neither writer seemed able to imagine a reason why rational or decent person might have decided to vote for Candidate Trump.

The one writer seems to be puzzled by the way those 77 million people voted. The other writer seems to have a sweeping explanation.

Ever since November 5, such ruminations have been general over Blue America. In the days which follow, we'll list some of the obvious reasons why some of those 77 million people may have decided to vote for Candidate Trump—or may perhaps have decided to vote against Candidate Harris.

Why did people vote for Trump? Within the past week, Thom Hartmann seemed to say that Trump's voters are all "deeply racist." 

Writing in last Sunday's New York Times, Roxanne Gay seemed to say that Trump's voters are bigots, but she explicitly sad that they are participating in "a mass delusion."

She said they want to believe nonsense and conjecture—that we shouldn't act as if they're sharing the same reality as ours. To peruse the text of what she said, see last Wednesday's report.

Last Friday night, Speaker McClinton (D-Pa.) grasped a different part of the elephant. As we noted on Saturday, she told Jonathan Capehart that this is why "America" voted for Trump:

MCCLINTON (11/22/24): We need to be honest. This nation does not want a woman in charge. That is what we need to agree upon. 

We need to agree upon the fact that people understood everything our former president stood for, all of the promises he made on that campaign trail abut dismantling our democracy. The deadly insurrection that he provoked on the sixth of January in 2021. 

Nevertheless, all of the things that occurred, they decided they didn't want what will probably be one of the most accomplished women to ever run to be the president—a former prosecutor both locally and at the state level, a member of the United States Senate, the first woman vice president. 

That is what we need to acknowledge. This nation decided they [sic] didn't want that.

Telling us what we need to acknowledge, she seemed to grab the misogynist part of the elephant. As with Hartmann, so too here. There was no suggestion that there could be any understandable reason behind a vote for Trump. 

On this, the latest of our Blue Mondays, letter writers in the Times are trying to puzzle it out. In our view, there is none so blind as we Blue Americans when we refuse to see. 

That said, our Blue America is full of such dysfunction. It keeps us from seeing the long list of ways those of us in Blue America have long worked to earn our way out, down through the past five or six decades but also during the Biden years.

For ourselves, we never considered voting for Trump. That said, it's easy to compile a list of reasons which explain why the Others may have cast that vote.

The list goes on and on and on, but in a very dangerous move, we Blues keep refusing to see.

I'll count you as part of the problem, Maher said. We think he got it right.

Tomorrow: Back to our starter list