This is MAGA country. You're just living in it.
As of writing, the election isn't over yet. While Trump has won, there are still states yet to be counted - but it would take a miracle to alter the map. MAGA has won the hardest it has ever won since being established. More EVs then 2016, the popular vote, Senate seats flipped, and likely the House is staying red. After needing a lucky break from Comey in 2016, getting crushed by a Blue Wave in 2018, losing in 2020 and the Red Drizzle in 2022 that saw the Dems gain in the Senate, Trump has finally achieved a total victory. America looked at what Trump offered, and it collectively decided that Trump had the stuff. For this little longpost, I want to first observe why I think Trump beat Harris - what Trump did right, what Harris did wrong, then analyse the results of this crushing victory.
The Campaign Trail
Trump's campaign, by most standard metrics, has been butt and fries . He had far less money then Harris , even with Musk's backing, a much worse ground game and was always held in a lower personal estimation then Harris. He was generally agreed to have lost the debates , and his surrogates Vance and Musk are some of the few men to be less liked than Trump . And christ, Vance deserves his own section discussing why he was such an awful choice - Rubio and especially Burgum would have been far better choices. But he was clearly doing something right, as can bee seen by his tremendous margin of victory. I believe his strengths can be tied to 5 big things;
1. The media game
Be it going on livestreams with Zoomer dipshits or going on podcasts, Trump was tremendously cunning about his media outreach. He was sure to stick to mostly friendly interviewers, only attending one neutral to hostile interview with Vance, and cashed in on the good will of the various dipshits to earn credibility to a mostly untapped demographic to win the election.
Vance proved himself a capable campaigner on this front as well. While Trump was fricking with Adin Ross, it was Vance that'd be on TV and getting into details with interviewers. Vance's approval rating was the lowest in the entire race, and he was a constant punching bag for basically anyone with eyes and ears - but this actually worked in his favour, I believe. When the voter hears about this sick freak that fricks couches and wants battered wives to stay in abusive marriages, and sees a fairly articulate and affable conservative, Vance sprints over and leaps over a bar set in heck. Perhaps they don't like Vance, but they don't loathe him like they may have expected too.
He's still r-slurred btw
2. Constant association with policy
This is a slightly esoteric one. It's not the policy itself, but the fact he was constantly addressing policy gave him a real sense of legitimacy. Be it his 20% tariffs on everything, planned deportations, states rights on abortion, his constant rejection of Project 2025 and No-Taxes-On-Tips - the actual policy doesn't matter, voters simply felt comfortable with a man discussing issues. I want to go a bit deeper into this when I talk about Harris' weaknesses, but the short version is that Trump isn't the "Frick You" protest vote he was in 2016. He's considered a legitimate politician, and the policy discussions enhanced this image.
3. Memories of 2018
Trump's greatest strength was long considered to be his status as an outsider, but the problem with that is that you can't be an outsider after you win and govern like a pretty normal Republican - he didn't really drain the swamp, he cut taxes and failed to end Obamacare. However - times were decent in 2018. Prices were low, Afghanistan was less a current occupation and more a memory, and the rest of the world seemed at peace. The Trump Presidency was many years ago - what's remembered, it seems, is that the President made mean tweets while times were good and Joe Biden was a nice r-slur that fricked everything up.
In essence, the outsider's new strength is his status as an experienced insider.
4. RFK Jr and the nutjobs
But you can never forget your roots. Kennedy Junior's Quixotic adventure ended with him becoming one Trump's top guys, being given some kind of Health job in the future Trump administration, did a lot to rebuild bridges with Trump's insane person base. Now, they always made up Trump's base, but for those disillusioned with Trump following his presidency, Kennedy throws them a lifeline. Tulsi Gabbard does something similar, to a lesser degree.
5. Having a weak opposition.
Why Kamala lost
Because Joe Biden is unpopular.
There are other reasons I'll get into, but that's the main one. She couldn't define herself as an agent of change, and that killed her stone dead. Joe Biden is associated with high prices and global instability, and as his Vice-President she was linked inexorably to that. No election is ever decided by a single event, but if it was, then it was this..
Definition was Ha-Ha Harris' problem in general. She never stuck to her guns on anything except abortion. She's the Democratic warrior fighting to ensure "We're not going back!" while promising to put a Republican in her cabinet, she loves policing and was prosecutor but don't worry she supports reform, she wants to crackdown on the border but in a progressive way unlike mean old Trump - it was just a mess of a talking out of both sides of her mouth. The consequences were simple - progressives were depressed by her flip flopping from her 2020 stances, while Independents she was courting were turned off by her flip flopping without an actual plan, and the conservatives she was courting by touting that fricking Cheney endorsement were worried about her 2020 stances.
Her lack of commitment meant that she was very easy to paint. Dropping Joe for Kammie could have been more than swapping an r-slur for a less r-slurred r-slur, but the Republican's admirable messaging discipline (they managed to go from President Biden's inflation to Vice-President Harris' inflation very smoothly) and her lack of concrete positions let the Republicans paint her as anything they liked.
Her Vice-Presdential pick was perfect - Walz remained the most popular person in the race, and honestly he was underutilised. He's fine giving speeches, but if Harris was refusing to give interviews, then it should have been Walz. Maybe picking Shapiro could have saved Pennsylvania, but even if it did, that still doesn't get her past 270 while pissing off other states even more.
As for the Gaza shit in general - to the degree it mattered, it ties back to Joe Biden. The average voter vaguely supports Israel, but isn't that invested in the war. The war is like Afghanistan - just another example of Biden causing problems where there were none before. The specifics don't matter. Not at all, as I'll get into later.
The question emerges from this - could Harris win? Was Trump's victory certain? The answer may surprise you.
The Results
The results are bad for Harris. She's the first candidate to lost the popular vote since John Kerry in 2004, who was the first to lost the popular vote since Dukakis in 1988 - and unlike Kerry, Kammie doesn't have an excuse like 9/11 to justify her piss poor results. The main reason Harris lost the popular vote are her poor results in safe blue areas. For comparison;
Biden won New Jersey by 57%, Harris won it by 51%
Biden won Illinois by 57%, Harris won it 53%
Biden won California by 63%, Harris won it by 57%
Biden won New York by 60%, and Harris won it by 55%
And despite what leftists hope , this can't be tied to Jill Stein and the Greens . Of the above mentioned states, Stein was only on the ballot in California and New Jersey, and she didn't do so well in the states that she managed to frick up her margins. While the precise results are being counted, looking at the key swing states;
The difference of votes between Trump and Harris in Pennsylvania are 130,487, Stein won 33,544 votes
The difference of votes between Trump and Harris in Georgia are 130,487, Stein won 18,162 votes (which means she came in 4th, after Chase Oliver)
The difference of votes between Trump and Harris in North Carolina are 130,487, Stein won 24,289 votes
The difference of votes between Trump and Harris in Wisconsin are 29,634, Stein won 12,266 votes and came in 4th after RFK Jr
Even in Michigan, Stein's best state, the difference is 81,750 and Stein only got 44,642 votes.
The difference of votes between Trump and Harris in Arizona are still being counted, and has technically not been called for Trump, but as of now Stein is also behind Oliver there.
These results are a horror story. Harris is losing popularity in her safest spots, the left didn't cost her anything - the American people just liked Donald Trump and his platform a lot more. It looks like a devastating defeat for Harris at first glance... but what if, for fun, we add just 2% to Harris, in every state. Just a small upgrade. How does she do?
A measly 2% does not change the shocking collapse in safe areas. But it does massively alter the electoral college - Harris actually wins with just a 2% change, while still in all likelihood losing the popular vote. Despite the seeming dominance Trump's victory has presented, the coalition he's built is a bizarrely fragile one. It's difficult to see this coalition surviving social media and 24 hours news cycles... but that's J.D Vance's problem.
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Okay, remember when we argued about this before? I basically said Vance was a play for podcast bros, fake centrists, anti-liberals, both-sidesers, etc. People who want to be smart and heterodox and special. You said that these guys would vote for Trump anyway, but most of them were actually low-propensity voters. Liberals and conventional wisdom considered chasing these guys to be a waste of time. Meanwhile, I believed that they were persuadable, but that they'd need something a little more substantial than Trumpian bloviating to actually pull the level for orange man.
Now that young men, and young male first-time voters, turned up for Trump, I think I was right. Vance may not have delivered this demographic all by himself, but he was part of a coherent strategy that paid off, and would have been weaker with someone like Burgum or Rubio. Do you really think Burgum goes on Joe Rogan?
As a pseud debate chud, Vance also did much better against Walz than the other options would have. This became especially important because there was only one Trump/Harris debate, which Trump lost, so the VP debate framed the race much more than usual. Friends and family were telling me that the VP debate was better than the presidential one, that it had "actual ideas" in it, etc. Viewers walked away feeling the Trump ticket had some real brains on it. I don't think the Rubot would have given viewers that impression.
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Yeah? Burgum has been pushing a lot of tech bullshit in North Dakota, that's been his thing.
While the boost in turnout for Roganbros probably helped out a lot, I don't see it as election defining. I think the mealy mouthed weakness of the Harris campaign had a bigger impact than Trump and Vance's specific strategies
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Burgum is a conventional politician with no distinguishing characteristics. He ran in the GOP primary and got 0.5% of the vote, and that was after quite literally paying people to donate to him..
Regardless of whether Burgum would sit for a 3-hour interview, I would also say that I don't think the Rogan audience would want to watch it. Vance is a better fit for that audience because he fits a "smart crank" sort of role. He's right on the line between a serious politician normies can support, and a weird heterodox politics guy that online politics bros can add to their ever-expanding cast of contradictory faves along with RFK, Tulsi, etc.
I do agree with your OP that actual voters perceived the Trump ticket as more policy-focused than Harris's. This was also true in 2016. Journos were always blind to it because they considered Trump's policies too stupid, low-brow, unachievable, etc. to be "real" policies, and then they just told everyone the race was "actually" about vibes or racism instead.
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I don't necessarily disagree with anything you wrote, but if you think Dems are bad, mainstream Repubs are bad, Trump is bad and that "fake centrists" are bad, who is actually good? Where, if anywhere is a correct opinion?
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Not in politics. Lol. Dems are r-slurred and too arrogant, Republicans are (now) spineless and hypocritical, and "Centrist" Muskoids too self serving. Wake me when someone actually purges congress and deep money, removing the stranglehold McDonald's and co have on our politics.
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wait, you actually think someone must be good? Because Cosmos, or...?
Everyone is bad.
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Mocking everyone is par for the course here. I was caricaturing a demographic that I basically belong to. I spend a lot of time hating liberals online, but have never actually voted for Trump.
This time, I ended up voting for Jill Stein as a protest over the war in Gaza. If that hadn't been an issue, I might have been persuaded to vote DDR by someone like Vance, which is why I could see the reasoning to pick him even a few months ago.
Since I did not end up voting for a major party, in my individual case I back up the idea that going for young male contrarians is pointless. However, the GOP managed to turn enough of us out to make a difference., which I sensed was possible.
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Vance was tweeting immigration studies and long prayers within 24 hours of each other. He's a brilliant pick.
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