THE SEARCH: Why did Harris lose to Trump?

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2024

Could the problem (in part) be Us? Why did Candidate Harris (narrowly) lose to Candidate Donald J. Trump?

The question deserves exploration. We restate a basic framework:

On the one hand, it's amazing that Harris came so close, given the ridiculous circumstance which thrust her into the campaign in late July. 

(We refer to President Biden's withdrawal from the campaign, roughly one month after his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate.)

No candidate had ever been asked to run a presidential campaign with such a late start. A person could imagine that Harris performed a political miracle by making the race so close.

On the other hand:

On the other hand, she may have lost by a narrow margin, but she lost by that margin to Trump. For many people in Blue America, this brings a few larger questions into play:

How could she, or anyone else, possibly have lost to him? 

Also, how could any decent person possibly have decided to vote for a person like Candidate Trump? 

Many people in Blue America can't seem to come up with an answer to those questions. In our view, that inability to compute points to a lingering problem over here within our own Blue American nation. 

Meanwhile, Van Jones has been conducting a search—a search which touches on those very same points. We think his search is worth reviewing. 

Last Saturday, Jones described his search, at some length, during a 53-minute discussion with Chris Cillizza. You can watch the videotape of that colloquy here. For Newsweek's report, click this.

Jones and Cillizza spoke at length. At the 19-minute mark, the slightly agitated Jones offers this assessment of his own political party:

JONES (12/14/24): The Democratic Party is in a ditch, upside down, with wheels spinning, going nowhere, on [BLEEPED]. 

Already, that doesn't sound good! But here's the fuller assessment:

JONES: The Democratic Party is in a ditch, upside down, with wheels spinning, going nowhere, on [BLEEPED]. And the people driving it are saying, "This is fine. This is fine."

So they can keep drinking their own pee water if they want to. I would be much more interested in having an honest conversation.

He wants to have an honest conversation. Or perhaps he's conducting a search.

For the record, the fact that Jones thinks X, Y or Z doesn't mean that those assessments are accurate. In our view, though, Jones has long been sharper than the average bear. We skip ahead to the part of the tape where he describes the fruit of his search.

At minute 27, the CNN commentator starts to describe a revolutionary fact. 

JONES: The mainstream media is now, by the numbers, the fringe. And the fringe, by the numbers, is now the mainstream...

If I'm sitting next to Anderson Cooper, I'm talking to a million people, maybe a million two. Down the road, on Fox, they're talking to three million people, maybe three point two.

Already, that sounds bad from the Blue American perspective. But here's the fuller assessment:

JONES: If I'm sitting next to Anderson Cooper, I'm talking to a million people, maybe a million two. Down the road, on Fox, they're talking to three million people, maybe three point two.

And there's some Twitstreamer—a Twitstreamer you've never heard of—talking to 14 million people!..[So] the fringe is now the mainstream, and the mainstream is now the fringe.

In that passage, Jones is describing an outcome which has been delivered by the "democratization of media." We're guessing that he doesn't intend for the term "Twitstreamer" to be viewed as a term of high praise.

Jones is describing the way our world now works "by the numbers." Under these new arrangements, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, as it says in a very old book! 

According to Jones, "We [Democrats] woke up in a body bag on Election Day" because we hadn't come to terms with this change in the way information (and its opposite) now gets delivered.

"We got beat on platforms I never heard of," he says as he continues. "Twitch, Kick, Rumble. All these platforms sound like symptoms of somebody in the hospital, OK? Twitch, Kick, Rumble? What is it?"

The numbers get even more overwhelming as Jones cites the 48 million people who watched part of Joe Rogan's session with Candidate Trump. And then, he turns to this, the essence of his search:

"So guys, get out of my face," he says. "We had the wrong analysis. We didn't even have the conceptual framework to understand what was happening to us." 

So Jones says, and at that point, Cillizza poses a question. When he does, Jones states the essence, at least to date, of his ongoing search:

CILLIZZA: How the hell did Donald Trump figure out the mainstream media is the fringe, and the fringe is now the mainstream?...How the hell was he, the 78-year-old guy who doesn't even have a computer and still like writes hand-written notes— How did he become the guy who cracked the code?

JONES: ...The problem is, you have a framework in your mind, "How can Donald Trump? How can Donald Trump? How can Donald Trump?" 

Guys, can we cut it out? Donald Trump is not an idiot! Donald Trump—Let me just be very clear. Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all of his critics.  You know how I know? Because he has the White House, the Senate, the House—

CILLIZZA: Totally agree.

JONES: —the Supreme Court, the popular vote. He has a massive media ecosystem bigger than the mainstream built around him and for him, and a religiously—a religious fervor in a political movement around him. And his best buddy is the richest person in the history of the world, and the most relevant Kennedy is with him.

This dude is a phenomenon. He is the most powerful human on earth and in our lifetime. And we're still saying, "Well, how is this guy?"

We look like idiots to ordinary people.

CILLIZZA: You're totally right.

Is Jones "totally right" in that assessment?  If you take him literally, we would largely say no. Otherwise, we'd  strongly recommend that you consider what he's saying. 

In some literal sense, is Donald J. Trump "smarter than all of his critics?" Taken in a literal sense, we wouldn't agree with anything resembling that assessment. 

Also, we don't know if Candidate Trump actually figured anything out in the way Cillizza's question might seem to imply.  It may be that someone else figured something out—or it may be that Trump simply stumbled into an approach which let him achieve a narrow win over an accidental candidate who was thrust into the race in late July of this very year.

We don't think of Candidate Trump as being "smart." At this site, we regard him principally as "disordered"—disordered in a way the mainstream press has agreed we must never discuss.

That said, does Jones really think that Donald J. Trump is smarter than everyone else? Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. It may just be his (visible) frustration speaking. We have no idea.

Whatever Jones may actually think, there's one more key part of the account he offers of his ongoing search. Around the 32-minute mark, we find him saying this:

JONES: Everything starts to come apart. All the old conventional ways of thinking and seeing have to be challenged. 

And what you have is, everybody's down on Trump. "He's a Big Dummy. He has a bunch of idiots around him." That's a lie! It's not true! 

He's not a Big Dummy. He doesn't have a bunch of idiots around him. And just because we don't understand it, that doesn't mean that he's dumb. If we don't understand it, that means that we're dumb!

The first thing we have to acknowledge is, we got beat by something we don't understand. And then all these liberals are wandering around, "Well, I just don't understand it."

Well, maybe because you're dumb and he's smart! Try that on! Because suddenly you're going to have lenses to say, "Well, how is he smart? How am I dumb?" Not, "I know he's dumb. Why are all these voters also dumb?" 

With that, the gents confront the poison in the piece. We refer to the reflexive explanation, widely seen inside Blue America, which holds that Candidate Trump's 77.3 million voters are just stupid—or perhaps are something worse.

For ourselves, we wouldn't describe Candidate Trump as being "smart." Eventually, though, Jones toys with the most significant fruit of his search—with the possibility that those of us in Blue America have met the real Big Dummy, and the real Big Dummy right now might possibly be Us.

Why did people vote for Trump? Imagining it a different way, why did so many people vote against our own candidate? Or possibly even this:

Why did so many people decide to vote against Us?

Why did so many people decide to vote the other way? We think the possible reasons go on and on and on. We think the story dates back many years, all the way back to its start in the autumn of 65. 

Why might decent people have voted for Candidate Trump? When we Blues can't name any possible reasons, could that suggest that we've met the problem, and the problem might include Us?

Next week: At long last, the (rather long) list