What went Wrong in the 2024 US Elections?

Written by Devin A.C. Dadah | Nov. 9th, 2024

On Election Day, I went to an open-mic poetry reading on my college campus. It was a solemn mood there, as if we all knew what the outcome was going to be. Most poems were about people's own internal struggles, which I thought to be selfish, but these are Americans after all. Mine was about Gaza, obviously, and others were astutely about the United States. Specifically, what it was like to live as a Black or Hispanic person in America; what it was like to live as a woman in America. In a perfect mode of precession, the last poem read was Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes. 

The reader of this poem was a professor, and before he read this poem he said, to my memory: “I thought this poem would be fitting today, of all days, because America will have a decision to make. A decision of what direction this country will take. What this country will stand for.” He then spoke the opening words of the poem:

“Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)”

Later that day, America chose who it wanted to be. America in all her beauty and all her viciousness chose Donald J. Trump to be her leader. We need to come to this realization: that this is Trump’s era, this is Trump’s America now. No conspiracy peddling on election interference, or demanding of a recount is going to change that fact. The voter disproportionality was so vast, it is undeniable. Our social and economic issues have finally caught up to us.

Most of the political analysis out there is either wrong or not painting the full picture. It has become obvious that Biden was an incongruent inauguration in 2020, a simple reaction to the pandemic and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. For perspective, after the pandemic only one country in the entire world had an election where the incumbent won. This trend has continued in 2024, where for the first time since WWII, governing parties in developed nations around the world have lost the majority of their voting shares. When you lift your head out of the American bubble you notice a global trend. Harris lost votes, Macron lost votes, Ishiba lost votes, Sunak lost votes, and the list goes on. This demonstrates that the world is rejecting Liberalism. Remember how I mentioned the outcome of the 2020 global elections? Well the only incumbent who won globally was Obrador in Mexico. Why? Because he ran a social democratic progressive populist campaign, akin to Bernie Sanders in the United States. Obrador raised the minimum wage, spent money on infrastructure, enacted labor reforms, directly paid Mexicans living in poverty, and overall bridged the wealth gap. After his presidency, Sheinbaum (the first female President of Mexico) won in a landslide victory where she vowed to continue Obrador’s policies. Do you see the parallels here? Yes, being a woman for Harris was a factor, but I do not believe Mexico is any less misogynistic than the United States; and yet they still voted in their first female president, who was also representing the incumbency.

Liberalism is an extremely limiting ideology. There is a reason why the earlier structures of American society were built around it and why it is perpetually fed to us by our elite institutions. That reason is the securing of a strong capital class by the wealthiest members of society. Why are Liberals presenting themselves as the opposition to fascists, when historically this has never been the case? Historically it was the social democrats, the anarchists, the socialists, the communists, and the impoverished revolutionary class which defeated fascistic regimes. Why did we expect the Democrats, verdant neoliberals, to oppose fascism in any meaningful way? When the majority voting population is not given a way out of a classist political gambit, then they will vote for the nearest populist campaign. If that nearest populist campaign is a fascist one, then those Liberal voters will be easily co-opted. Liberalism will always cater itself to the Right wing in any given society. It is because of this that Liberalism is incapable of defeating fascism. A band-aid may be placed on the problem, but the wound will bleed again. This is why the far-right AfD and ECR are regaining control in Europe, because West Germany and Italy never dealt with their fascist problem. If we want to defeat Trumpism, and fascism globally, we have to return to unwavering revolutionary Leftist organizing. We have to bring back a populist socialist, social democrat, and anarchist coalition strong enough to combat the fascistic far-right.

Running as a president ultimately comes down to the ideology and attitudes you are presenting. A president is trying to sell themselves. Harris failed to sell herself to the American people. She came off as inauthentic in interviews by repeating the same talking points. She said openly that she would do nothing different from Biden. She backtracked on progressive policies she supported during her time in Congress. She ostracized progressives by pivoting to the Center and campaigning with neoconservatives, like Liz Cheney. The aligning of herself with the Cheney’s (a family who has made a career out of killing Arabs and Muslims) had a layered effect with Muslim voters, especially when she brought Richie Torres on the campaign trail in Michigan, and wheeled Bill Clinton out from his undead slumber. Where she really failed was her alienation of young male voters. Her campaign ran the most condescending, disrespectful, and demeaning campaign advertisements directed at young men. Additionally, she refused to go on Joe Rogan or send a representative on his podcast. For perspective, Donald Trump went on Joe Rogan and instantly reached 40 million people. This is equivalent to going on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News everyday for a week straight. Trump also went onto Adin Ross, Andrew Schulz, Theo Von, the Nelk Boys, Lex Fridman, Patrick Bet-David, and many other online shows with a large young male audience. Every election cycle brings a new medium of campaigning into play. For this election cycle it was podcasting, live streaming, and other forms of alternative long form content. Trump constantly appeared on online shows for several years, which humanized him and made sure he was a persistent figure in the American psyche. Harris did not go on nearly enough online shows and when she did, her campaign managers didn’t allow her to loosen up. When she went on The Breakfast Club, Charlamagne Tha God even pressed her on this blatant inauthenticity and she gave an even more insincere answer. Americans don’t want politicians anymore. We want controversial and charismatic leaders. We want celebrities, comedians, and bombastic “clip-farmers.” We’re living in the age of online media content. Nobody reads newspapers anymore, nobody thinks deeply about anything, Americans have been conditioned to consume short clips on TikTok that inject them with a rush of dopamine. In this market, Trump simply had far more compelling clips and thus greatly expanded his voting base.

These weren’t the only problems with the Harris campaign. The Democrats over relied on a “mystical” serendipitous appearance of white women voting against their husbands in the name of “a woman’s right to choose.” This elitist, out-of-touch, arrogant decision is directly related to the previously indicated social quandary in American society: that our social media algorithms ensure there is no bipartisan consensus on reality. Americans have been relegated to their ideological “bubbles” and do not stray from it. The average white woman is not hearing the same horrifying abortion stories that your average Democrat voter hears. It’s absolutely delusional to think this would be the case or to assume that white women would turn against their Republican MAGA-totting husbands. The Democrats also over relied on white suburban men who voted for Biden in the 2020 elections. This was their main reason for moving to the Center and adopting neoconservative policies. Which makes no sense because the Iraq War is literally the most unpopular war in recent memory, but I digress, this is the Democrats' delusion, fine. The issue is that moving to the Right doesn’t solve the issues facing men, because the Right does not solve the issues facing men. The Harris campaign didn’t address male suicide rates, male loneliness, male incarceration rates, poor male academic performance, and class disparities amongst men. Why would you expect suburban white men to vote for an incumbent Black woman, who addresses no male issues, and runs on “well Trump is worse.” That is simply not enough to mobilize the millions of suburban white men who voted for Biden largely as a reaction to the pandemic.

Sadly, I now believe Democrats have been destined to lose this election since 2016. When they castrated Bernie and rejected populist mobilization in their party, they also destroyed any chances of defeating Trumpism. If in 2016 the Democrats chose Bernie, he without a doubt in my mind would have beat Trump and the United States would have entered into a prosperous social democratic era. One only needs to look at his Fox News Town Hall to see how much he bridges the bipartisan gap. In the long term, Democrats cannot exist in this liminal Centrist political space. If they want to win the next election they need to mobilize a populist Leftist coalition. Many have been throwing around Jon Stewart for 2028 and I couldn’t agree more. He is a charismatic controversial celebrity comedian who can farm clips and will be unapologetic in his convictions. Zelensky of Ukraine was a comedian, and now he is competently defending a fascist invasion of his country. If Stewart runs on universal healthcare, universal basic income, building of critical infrastructure, minimum wage increases, paid family leave, green energy, the ending of wars, and the abolition of billionaires, he could win the presidency. I’m not entirely hopeful of this outcome. The Democrats are openly stating they need to move further Right and they have already started blaming everyone but themselves. They are learning all the wrong lessons from this election. Don’t be fooled, this loss is entirely their fault. The Democrats irresponsibly absorbed “never-Trump-Republicans” into their campaign strategy teams and used their idiocy to sabotage themselves on the campaign trail. They listened to the corrupt capital class and to failed vampiric loser politicians every step of the way. This delusional cranially compromised political party failed us, and they will fail us again unless we do something about it.