History Was Made in 2024 Election, Now What?

Right after Vice President Harris’ dominant debate performance against former President Donald Trump, I wrote a piece detailing the state of the race. I made a case the VP was a tilts favorite that had forecasts, a favorability edge, enthusiasm, fundraising, and ground game on her side. Well, it turned out that all those things ended up not mattering much, because Trump was trusted on key issues and got to run as an outsider in an open-seat race with an unpopular sitting incumbent President in the background.

Inflation and Biden’s deep unpopularity brought the 45th President back to the White House for a second non-consecutive term, a feat not accomplished since Grover Cleveland. In a way Cleveland and Trump have many similarities – both have dodgy pasts with women, both survived scandals in the middle of an election campaign, and both were known to stay up too late. They also had similar electoral paths to the White House: Cleveland won an open seat race against a controversial and unlikable opponent in 1884, lost a very close election in 1888, and then returned to win back office in 1892 with an even bigger win than his first go-around.

Of course, this campaign itself will go down in history for being one of the more chaotic ones. A sitting President deciding to not seek re-election, the first black woman to be nominated by a major party, two assassination attempts, a controversial rally, and the re-election of a former president who was convicted of felony counts earlier in the year. If I had to compare this race to any year, it might be 1968 when Nixon got in on his second try against a happy warrior VP thanks to LBJ’s unpopularity and frustrations with the Vietnam war while riots happened in the streets.

Forecasts and polls will have done much better than 2020 and in some respects than 2016. The average forecast had Harris as just a 53% odds favorite to win and her lead in the electoral college was a normal error away from falling apart. Polls also caught how tight it was in the battlegrounds, and the fact it remained tight even as major shifts happened in the red and blue states. As someone who values polling to give me a proper picture of public opinion, I think it was a major win for them after getting accused by so many of herding.

From the standpoint of political science, Trump’s win is no big shock. Close your eyes and pretend he wasn’t Donald Trump. Now imagine a Republican with near-universal name recognition ran against the sitting Vice President of a President who had approval ratings in the low-forties. Now imagine the public feels the country is in the wrong direction and that the economy is worse off than it was four years ago. Doesn’t seem so stunning in that respect, does it?

But it’s not as simple as that. Trump is a man who elicits emotions. He’s rude, he’s selfish, he’s off-putting, he’s loud, he’s been convicted of crimes, he’s an adjudicated rapist, and he attempted to overturn the results of the election he lost. But for as much hate as he gets, he has a following that will crawl through broken glass to vote for him, and he has successfully created an image of a man voters could trust on the economy regardless of whatever issues they have with his personality. He is poised to make gains with Puerto Rican voters (Though he lost a straw poll in the Island itself by decent margins), even after a racist joke about them was uttered at his rally. Its maddening for Democrats, and as someone who personally loathes the man (Not to mention I’m Puerto Rican myself) I can understand the frustration myself.

You don’t win as big as Trump did without winning over all kinds of voters. Not only did Trump do better with rural voters and non-white voters, he also was able to mitigate losses in the same suburbs that sunk him in 2020. Basically, he won with persuasion as much as he cut into demographics. Voters were unhappy and they made a change. Just as they did four years prior when they booted him out. I can go on and on about the campaign missteps by the Harris camp (That answer on Biden on The View in particular), I can go into the rightward shifts we saw across the country with certain demographics and blue states, but at the end of the day the non-incumbent won a change election. Not only do I think Biden loses in her place, but I also honestly think he does even worse. In a way 2024 was what 2022 should’ve been.

So, what now? Obviously, there is going to be a very uneasy tension in the country as Trump prepares for his inauguration. While he would have won by bigger margins than any Republican has in twenty years, we’re still not talking about the kind of big consensus landslides of yesteryear. He’s coming in with promises to pardon certain bad-faith actors and get revenge on anyone he feels crossed him. He also comes in with a much more radical and loyal bunch trailing behind him. I remember the never-ending media circuses of 2017-2021, I suspect we’ll return to that for the next four years.

For Democrats this will be a gut-punch of a loss. Though it was more foreseeable than 2016 was, to see their entire coalition sliced and diced the way it’s been the last decade puts them in a position where they have to go back to square one. The party is at an inflection point, and where it goes from here will be interesting to watch unfold. They will make a comeback as all parties in the wilderness eventually do. They made one after Trump won last time, mostly thanks to the man himself frustrating voters during his time in office. The pendulum always swings back, and I suspect Trump will take a hit in approval ratings when some of his more unpopular policies piss off voters or when thermostatic public opinion hits; and historically Democrats should have a blue wave midterm in 2026. The best way to get out of the wilderness is to watch those in power get all the blame and then pounce. But for now, they’re understandably dejected and having to find a new path forward.

The result means we will get three straight one-term presidencies right after we had three straight two-term presidencies. You have to go back a long time to the last time we had this much whiplash in the White House. It also means the Overton window will shift right, as the median voter has told Democrats they want a change in their message and priorities. This also likely means we will unfortunately not see a major party nominate another woman for a few more cycles. I also think this result has confirmed that we are so polarized that even poor ground game and great fundraising can only take you so far.

Four years ago, after Biden’s victory, I warned him in a piece of mine that if he was as unpopular as Trump was that four years later, he and the Democrats would pay the price. Well, they did. This time around I give a warning to Trump by bringing back around the man whose electoral history he’s emulated. Early into his second term, just as he made his big comeback, Grover Cleveland was hit with an economic disaster; he never recovered, and his party suffered for it. He and Republicans may feel unstoppable right now, but second terms are notoriously rough, and Trump has lost the faith of the voters before. If he also follows the path of the typical second term stumbles, he will become unpopular again and his party will suffer. As Democrats learned the hard way this year, you cannot lose the faith of voters in you.

But let me leave you with another warning; but this time the warning is for you the reader. You may or may not have voted against the returning President, but even if you didn’t, we as a collective are the ones who decide who is in office making decisions. We pull that lever, we touch that screen, we fill in that ballot. We know about Trump’s lack of morales, criminal acts, and we even fired him once before. We know all this and yet we put him back in office. If the next four years end up as bumpy as his first four, just remember with every new media frenzy, every new unpopular policy, every new controversial cabinet appointment, etc that we all wanted this. We, the American people backed this. We knew the risks, and we took it. If this gets even more off-the-track than the first term, we are the ones who are to blame. We are the ones who will be judged a hundred years from now for making this decision. Elections have consequences, and the voters will face those consequences whether good or bad; and I plan to remind you of that for the next four years.