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