BLUE DERISION: These Low-Information Voters Today!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2024

Could they perhaps include Us? Just how badly was she defeated in this year's presidential election?

It all depends on what the meaning of "how badly was she defeated" is! Also, it all depends on the origin of the tribal messaging.

If you're watching the Fox News Channel, the messaging continues unabated. It's delivered by the ever-changing assortment of Stepfords placed on the air every night. 

How badly was Candidate Harris defeated? Here are snatches of that messaging, as delivered on a pair of yesterday's primetime shows:

How badly was Candidate Harris defeated? 

Harold Ford, The Five, 11/26/24: Let me be clear. I said this yesterday. The Democrats need to step back and understand, we just lost. We got thrashed at the polls. I agree with you, Dana. One interview is not going to change that.

Jim Norton, Gutfeld!, 11/26/24: She reminds me of an incel at a sorority party. She just won't leave. Like she's just lurking from person to person, going, "Hey's what's going on?" and they're like, "Nobody likes you. We don't want to talk to you. We're not interested in you, somebody else invited you," and she just won't take the hint.

It's gotta be hard when you're that close, when everybody's telling you that, "Oh, Trump sucks, he's not going to win," and then all of a sudden you get creamed. You gotta think, like something went wrong.

To watch Ford's statement, just click here. To see Norton offer his thoughtful remarks, click this. 

On Fox News Channel programs, the insults continue apace. They accompany the messaging in which Candidate Harris got "creamed" on November 5, or perhaps got "thrashed at the polls." Very few numbers will ever be offered—numbers which now look like this:

Nationwide popular vote (to date), 2024
Candidate Trump: 77,108,788 (49.83%)
Candidate Harris: 74,709,131 (48.28%)

As votes continue to trickle in, the victory margin is nearing 1.5 points. In the three Blue Wall states, the overall margin is closer to one percent.

By normal standards, that would be scored as a close election. Then again, until quite recently, insults of the type Norton delivered would never have been permitted within major news orgs, with major orgs in Blue America agreeing that they mustn't notice or report such departures from long-standing norms.

Yesterday, the insults were general on Fox News Channel programs. These insults are delivered each night from deep within a revolt of the masses.  Over here, in Blue America, our own tribunes can often be numbered among the ranks of "they who choose not to see."

When an election is fairly close, its outcome can be "explained" a hundred different ways. In a close election, many such "explanations" are plausible to some degree or another.

In the current case, 77 million different people decided to vote for Candidate Trump. Within the ranks of Blue America, millions of people who lean Blue decided not to vote. 

Presumably, many reasons lie behind the tens of millions of decisions which produced those numbers. That said, we who frequently choose not to see prefer to offer simple solutions to the puzzle of Why Our Blue Candidate Lost:

Blue American explanations:
Thom Hartmann: More than half of American voters are just "deeply racist."
Speaker McClinton: "This nation does not want a woman president."
Roxanne Gay: People who voted for Trump don't share the same reality We do.
Michael Moore: "We [Americans] are not a good people."

The Stepfords are crawling all over Fox. But the Stepfords often seem to be general in our own Blue America too. 

Long ago and far away, all the way back on November 8, a person who was perhaps a bit less verklempt offered a starter list of possible reasons for Candidate Harris's defeat. 

We refer to Tim Alberta, speaking on the PBS program Washington Week. As a cultural matter, Alberta doesn't hail from Blue America, but he's strongly anti-Trump. Simplifying matters a bit, he offered this starter list of possible explanations:

Tim Alberta's possible reasons:
1) The Biden administration's handling of the southern border
2) The cost of living in the past four years
3) The apparent dissembling about President Biden's apparent mental decline

We'd be inclined to agree! Almost surely, all those topics helped move the electorate over towards Candidate Trump. 

Before we're done, we'll add at least four more possible reasons for Harris's (rather narrow) defeat. But for today, let's look at one more (self-defeating) explanation—an explanation which comes with great regularity from our own Blue American camp:

Additional Blue American explanation:
BLUE AMERICAN OBSERVER (11/16/24): That Harris was swept in all of the battleground states suggests that 3-4% of Americans—the folks we call low-propensity/low-information voters—had bought what Trump was selling.

Why would they buy his lies? Because they're low-propensity/low-information Americans...

Lots of groups and people are responsible. The only solution is to let these folks see the consequences of their choices so that it won't be repeated in the midterms. Beyond that, well, Americans have short memories.

Why did Candidate Harris lose? According to this familiar explanation, "the folks we call low-information voters" bought what Candidate Trump was selling, all of which is represented here as a passel of lies.

(Is it possible that Candidate Trump, however disordered, ever made any valid points? Not in this presentation, no!)

Without any question, certain parts of that observer's full presentation are accurate. Sadly, one such accurate element is this:

Over here in Blue America, we do refer to people as "low-information voters." In fact, we do so with great regularity. When we discuss the Others, we do that all the time!

We also have a strong inclination to refer to "Americans" as if the term doesn't include Us. In this presentation, "Americans" are said to have short memories. We'll only suggest that this sneering denigration doesn't seem to be directed at any of Us.

The passage we've posted is drawn from a comment to this post by Kevin Drum. This comment seems to come from a regular person. As far as we know, it doesn't come from a Democratic Party official or from a media figure..

That said, this kind of comment is quite common in Blue America. In the past two days, two major movie stars have given voice to their versions of this familiar denigration. In our view, it's the kind of reflexive denigration which helps explain why the candidate of our Blue America could possibly have lost an election to a widely disliked and disordered candidate like Candidate Donald J. Trump.

We Blues! We love to refer to "low-information voters" (transformed in that presentation into "low-information Americans"). It never seems to occur to us that the ranks of "low-information Americans" could also perhaps include Us!

Indeed, Pogo may have said it best. We'll adjust his statement a bit:

We've met the low-information voters and the low-information voters are Us!

Why dd Candidate Harris (narrowly) lose to a guy like Trump? We'll be expanding on Tim Alberta's list of possible reasons on the days ahead. 

We expect to end up with a list of (at least) seven possible reasons. In those ways, we Blues could be said to have earned our way out. Tribal denial, a powerful force, tends to blind us to this fairly obvious state of affairs.

It may be too late for a gain in tribal self-awareness to mitigate the damage which has already been done. Sacred Troy must die, Hector said. The same may be true around here!

Having said that, we'll also say this:

We Blues!  Our role in this mess dates back many years. We ourselves were there at the start!

Next: An additional, angrier list