There was a lot of talk about gut feelings in the last days of this presidential election. Some people, i.e., Nate Silver, said he had a gut feeling about a Trump victory. But it was based on what he always does. He used the data and his methodology to determine the probability of a GOP win was the most likely outcome. James Carville had a gut feeling we were going to see the first female president, which exposes the inconvenient truth about relying on one’s innards for answers. Gut feelings, above all, are what you want to happen, not what will happen. They are personal. And most helpful when the person for whom a decision is most consequential is relying on his/her internal decision-maker. Example: Will I be happier attending a small liberal arts college or a big state university? Since you know yourself better than anyone else on earth, how you “feel” about that choice is all that matters.
Trusting your gut to tell you how 150 million people are going to vote is an entirely different matter. Yesterday morning, 51 percent of voters would tell you their gut feeling that Donald Trump would become the 47th president of the United States was correct. But the truth is each one of those people simply believe that Trump was the better choice. And a majority of voters had the same individual gut feeling. That is how majority coalitions emerge. There is no collective decision. Individuals, acting on their own instincts, reach the same conclusion based on their observations, experience, and yes, biases.
This morning’s New York Times editorial page was filled with explanations for the Trump’s “shock” victory. They run from the sublime to the ridiculous. Most are based on gut feelings, things the writer wanted to be be true. It was about the economy, stupid. No, it was a revolt against the elites. If only the Biden administration played a stronger role in ending the Israel/Gaza conflict. Maximizing the number of Republicans in the Harris coalition cost more votes than gained among progressives in the Democratic base. The one thing I know is that each of these columnists, based on their pre-election columns, used Tuesday’s outcome to tell their readers, “I told you so.” It does not matter what they told you was of no importance, some importance or great importance to your ultimate choice of candidates.
I started this blog nine years and 916 entries ago to promote the value of counter-intuitive thinking. The path to an alternative view (versus alternative facts) of the world begins with accepting the possibility everything you think you know about a situation is wrong. So, buckle your seatbelts as I take you on a winding a trip to Dr. ESP land.
- Assumption #1: the outcome would have been different if the Democrats had an open primary to pick their nominee.
- Assumption #2: this was a “turnout” election.
- Assumption #3: putting Donald Trump back in the White House goes against 250 years of American history and tradition.
- Assumption #4: the election is won or lost in the battleground states.
A counter-intuitive explanation of the outcome must then be based on the following. The nomination process and eventual nominee was irrelevant. For a so-called “turn-out” election, both parties did a piss-poor job of energizing their bases. History was the best indicator of the potential outcome. Battleground states are not special, they are just more competitive.
Allow me to work backwards. There are said to be six battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. For this reason, candidates spend a disproportional amount of their time and resources in these jurisdictions. However, in most wars, you win some battles and you lose others. Seldom does one side come out on top in every engagement. More unlikely is that one combatant sweeps the battles, and in the reenactment, the other combatant does the same thing. But that is exactly what happened. Not just two times, but in the last three election cycles. Trump carried all six states in 2016. Biden reversed that outcome in 2020. And they all fell into Trump’s column again on Tuesday. Instead of driving the outcome of a presidential election, there is a real possibility, though more competitive, swing states are now merely reflections of the national mood. Nothing more. Nothing less.
When it comes to Assumption #3, it is ALL about history. Though I hold three degrees in political science from UVA and Johns Hopkins, I must confess historians should be better predictors of electoral outcome than political scholars. Only, however, if they base their predictions on the totality of history and not single events. That is how the likes of John Meachum, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss failed us this year. Each focused on one or two historic election cycles they felt mirrored the 2024 contest. Consider the following.
With the exception George W. Bush (5’11”) versus John Kerry (6’4″), the presidential candidate with a significant height advantage over his opponent (more than three inches) has won every election since 1900. This may sound like a sick joke, but it suggests if we ever expect a woman to be win the presidency, perhaps we need to add growth hormones to girls’ diets. No, it is not rational, but voting choices seldom are. Donald Trump (either 6’3″ or 6’1″ depending on who is doing the measuring) towered over his two female opponents: Hillary Clinton (5’5″) and Kamala Harris (5’4.5″).
What may be more relevant from a historic perspective is the fact Harris was a sitting vice president. In the nation’s history only 13 former vice presidents have become president. Eight ascended to the presidency due to the death or resignation of the president. And Richard Nixon did not win as a sitting vice president. His success came eight years after the Eisenhower administration in which he served. As trivial as it may seem in what was called “the most consequential election in our lifetime,” the shorter, sitting vice president was fighting a strong, down stream current from day one.
Assumption #2 exposes “the big lie” of the 2024 election, enthusiasm and a superior ground game would carry Harris to victory. Pundits pointed to three proxies for enthusiasm in the Harris campaign: rally crowd size, number of volunteers and doors knocked. What we learned Tuesday night is that this “enthusiasm” did not translate into votes. When all votes are counted, Harris will fall 10-12 million votes short of Biden’s national total in 2020. Nor did Trump add to his 2020 total. The only conclusion a Harris supporter can take away from this experience is that enthusiasm may have been deep, but it was not as broad as the prognosticators assumed.
Which brings me to Assumption #1. None of this mattered. Biden was handed a bucket of shit on January 20, 2021. U.S. recovery from the pandemic was the envy of free world. His administration did what every economist said was unprecedented, taming inflation without a recession. It did not matter when he was in the race. And it did not carry over when he stepped down. Biden’s accomplishments were NOT GOOD ENOUGH. And while there is a consensus that the Harris campaign, with a few minor hiccups, out-performed all expectations for an enterprise that launched just 110 days ago, that too was NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
One explanation is that Americans are consumed by irrational expectations. Incremental improvements are never fast enough and seen as shortfalls. Perfection is the standard. Some people are still struggling. But, as conservative financial analyst Steve Rattner constantly reminds us, “Even in the best of economic times, some people will struggle.” And when Americans expect an unrealistic standard they are susceptible to disinformation which affirms their predisposition that the incumbent administration has failed.
Which leads to the most likely explanation why the glass ceiling in the Oval Office remains intact. It was never going to be about the candidate. Nor the quality of the campaign. It is the timing in which female nominees get the chance to shatter that barrier. In the case of both Clinton and Harris, they were perceived by many voters as an extension of the administrations in which they served. A position akin to a football team that goes into the game restricted to playing offense in only one quarter. Most of the game they are forced by voters and the media to play defense.
As strange as this may sound, Trump’s second term gives the Democratic Party the best opportunity to ensure the next president is a woman. In 2028, as was the case in 2020, the Democratic nominee can play offense the whole game. She can remind voters what the incumbent administration did wrong, what she would have done differently and given a mandate, what she will do in the next four years. Democrats have a strong female bench, especially among the nation’s governors. Surely, one can overcome both the gender bias and, minus growth hormones, the height bias.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP