1) Trump got 2 million fewer votes than 2020. This election turned on the 12 million who voted for Biden in 2020 but not Harris. I guess there’s historical value in finding out why they didn’t vote. Gaza was clearly one factor in this. I’m not saying it was all Gaza but Michigan would have gone to Harris except for Gaza. This is very clear when you look at Michigan’s vote count, Fewer than 100,000 votes would have given Michigan to Harris. But this doesn’t account for the 12 million nationwide.
2) As I wrote, this was inevitable Dems have been fighting a holding action for decades, and the dam broke. I wrote about how this loss is the culmination of the long-term, strategic, billionaire/corporate-funded “Conservative Movement” plan that has played out since the 70s. The Master Plan podcast does an excellent job of showing how this played out. If you want to know what has happened, please listen to this podcast. You can’t fight that with short-term efforts at election time. The country was lost long before this election.
3) I think if there is a root of this loss during the Biden admin it was that big Build Back Better bill was split in half, with the social spending split from the infrastructure part. The Chamber of Commerce wanted the infrastructure part. Biden promised not to allow that part to pass without the other part. They passed the first part. Manchin/Sinema worked with the right to kill the social spending. Progressives refused to vote for one but not the other, then corporate Dems used that as a cudgel to defeat progressives.
That social spending was what would have made people FEEL that the economy was working for them. That’s why the Chamber got it knocked out of the bill.
4) But really it is #2, which many of us “dirty hippies” have been warning about since the early 2000s at least, trying to get ANYONE to set up a counter-effort. Democracy Alliance was an attempt…
5) I do not see a way to overcome this. The world has entered a new era of oligarchal control. Democracy was defeated some time ago. Just look at all the studies showing that literally nothing has been passed in the US without the support of the wealthy, regardless of population support.
6) If it is as bad as we think the “blue” states will have to decide their own way forward apart from the rest of the country. California and others should become countries and try to fight off what is happening.