What a Night, Eh?

It’s 5am, I went to bed at midnight, woke up every hour or so to see if anything had changed, and now can’t get back to sleep so I might as well write some thoughts I’ve had over the past 24 hours.t’s 5am, I went to bed at midnight, woke up every hour or so to see if anything had changed, and now can’t get back to sleep so I might as well write some thoughts I’ve had over the past 24 hours.

Please, please no more #resistance

I told Emily on the pod that I’ve been wanting to write a post entitled “There is No World in Which I Vote for Kamala Harris, Except This One.¹” The point was basically going to be that while I was very happy to cast my vote for Joe Biden, I seriously considered casting my first vote for Trump this time around. Because Kamala Harris and the faction of the Democratic party she represents is just out of touch with the average American - as we saw tonight. Ultimately, January 6th is disqualifying in my mind, but it was genuinely a tough decision, FOR THE FIRST TIME, whether or not to vote for Donald John Trump. If you voted for Kamala without a second thought, think about that. Me, a college educated never-Trumper who gleefully donated to Biden’s campaign² seriously considered voting for Trump.

She was, and always has been, an exceptionally bad campaigner. You may remember she nearly lost her race for Attorney General of California to a Republican or that she couldn’t even make it to the Iowa caucuses in 2019. You may remember that her approval ratings were always below those of Biden until literally the day he dropped out of the race. There are a litany of reasons why she was bad, including basically being Selina Meyer from Veep, but I want to focus on one that I think Democrats need to internalize: “Donald Trump is Bad” is not a winning message, so please leave it in the garbage where it belongs.

Look, he is a bad person. He’s been held civilly liable of rape, he’s apparently not allowed to operate a charity because he stole from one, he incited a riot at the Capitol that led to the deaths of multiple police officers and one of his supporters and then did nothing while it was going on. I could go on, but I think we’ve established that he’s not a good man. And yet, he is favored to win the popular vote. He not will likely sweep all of the swing states, pulled the senate to a Republican majority with him, and is winning the popular vote. Something Republicans haven’t done since 2004 when Bush was riding high on post-9/11 good will.

So it’s clearly not a winning message because it was basically Kamala’s entire campaign. “We cannot go back,” “I’m not him,” whatever the slogan used, most of what she said was about Donald Trump, not herself. She definitely also talked about inflation and price gouging and abortion was supposed to be the issue that put her over the line, but one of the main parts of her campaign was not being Donald Trump. And it was a losing message.

The people of this country had resoundingly decided that they don’t care about Trump’s character. And you know what’s not going to change that? Screaming at them again for four more years about how bad he is. We’re all sick of Trump. And the Democrats need to be a check on his power, the media needs to expose the crazy stuff his administration is going to try to do³. But by and large, Democrats should be focused on 2028 and starting now to convince people that the Democratic party cares about the issues voters care about. Because clearly they don’t believe that now.

Your anxiety isn’t going to change anything

I don’t want this to come off as harsh or insensitive. What I really mean to say here is if you’re mad about what happened, do something different. Fretting about the changes that are going to happen on the Supreme Court isn’t going to do anything. Honestly, protesting probably isn’t going to do anything, even though it feels really good to get out there and yell at people with other like-minded individuals. And tweeting⁴ isn’t going to do anything at all.

So what can be done?

1. Quit donating to candidates in deep red states that are never going to win. Nothing is so infuriating as seeing millions of dollars going to candidates who have no shot, but are running against an unpopular sitting Republican. Texas this cycle was a good example. If Beto couldn’t do it in 2018, it can’t be done. As unpopular as Ted Cruz is, even among Republicans; he ain’t going nowhere and there’s no reason to think Texas is getting purple enough to bet on that changing anytime soon. But more generally, there seems to be one every cycle and it needs to stop. If you want to know who to donate to, follow Matt Yglesias. Every cycle he puts out a list of Democrats in swing districts who don’t have good fundraising. I would advocate for donating to normal Republicans in primaries as well, but that seems like a lot to ask of a true-blue Democrat.

2. Look, you need to be introspective⁵. Democrats have really unpopular policy positions right now. And wherever you can, you need to tamp those down. I think we’ll know in coming days and weeks what actually made the difference as we dig into the returns and exit polls, but to name a few possibilities: extreme transgender ideology (meaning going beyond advocating for housing and other civil rights⁶), not securing the border, not standing up to these idiot college students about Gaza, this obsession with identity⁷. And the thing is, you could very easily make all of these winning issues if you would just tell the extremes of your party to shove it. Because Republicans are the party of power and vindictiveness right now, they’re not interested in doing things with an eye towards the humanity of the individual, they will seem extreme if Democrats will moderate. Be the compassionate, yet sane party. Rather than the compassionate, yet insane, and maybe a little nitpicky⁸ party.

3. Get involved. If you’re really, really upset at the outcome, then actually do something. Run for something, get involved in your local political party, volunteer on a campaign, volunteer at a local charity, start going to church, join a bowling league, anything. Just get involved in something that actually makes a difference in the world. Change comes from a lot of places, but you’ll have the biggest impact at the local level and I promise it will make you feel better than doomscrolling.

To end, I just want to say that I personally don’t think it’s going to be that bad. I’ve been wrong before - I also thought the supreme court wouldn’t overturn Roe v Wade - but we had one Trump presidency already and the country is still doing fine. We still have millions of people desperately trying to get here; we still are the center of business, tech, and innovation; aside from one riot at the Capitol, government has run basically as expected; things are, were, and will remain just fine. I know my words are probably basically meaningless to you as I can’t predict the future, but neither can you and I also know that a lot of my friends are going to waste a lot of time and energy worrying about something they can do nothing about and I really don’t want you to do that. I want you to live happy and fulfilled lives and politics and social media basically encourages the opposite of that.

1. I was really excited to make some version of the following joke: I’m excited to vote for a woman for the first time, in part because it means we can get having the worst woman president out of the way and then the glass ceiling will be shattered and the bar set really low. Win, win.

2. I had forgotten to register the state in which I was living at the time and didn’t feel comfortable voting in Utah where I no longer lived, so I didn’t vote for Biden, but not for lack of desire.

3. Though I’d appreciate it if they’d stop doing that by lying and misrepresenting him, that only drives people to him.

4. Or writing blog posts to 25 subscribers

5. I cannot emphasize enough how much I think both parties are completely unwilling to learn from these elections. You lost, you got routed. DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

6. Stop having HR meetings telling my dad he’s a bigot because he believes there are two genders.

7. I’ll tell you, nothing made me want to vote for Trump more than seeing people say stuff like “Men who care about their wives and daughters will vote for Kamala.” How dare you. My wife has made very clear to me how scared she would be to get pregnant in a state where there was confusion on the abortion law, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her more than anything, had I ultimately decided to cast my ballot for Trump.

8. Maybe just say Master Bedroom again, for example. It’s not racist, I promise.