It’s true that much of what I feared about a Trump presidency — overturning Roe v Wade, stacking the Supreme Court, binning environmental protections, cruelty to refugee families — came to pass.
Well, for starters, whose fault is that? Trump didn’t overturn Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court did. As for “stacking” the Supreme Court, isn’t Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ridiculous desire to “Hang on until Hillary got elected” at least partly to blame?
“Cruelty to refugee families”? Nope – Kids in cages goes back to at least Obama…
Even the foundations of their delusions are delusional.
The left needs to ask itself what it wants more: to get high on its own moral rectitude, or to fix things and win elections.
Which starts by an open and detailed appraisal of why voters overwhelmingly rejected the Democrats at the ballot box. Pissing and moaning about “racism and misogyny” isn’t an answer.
According to the most recent polls, the most common reason swing voters gave for rejecting Harris was “she was too focused on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle classes”. It turns out that if you mindlessly parrot niche academic theories, the mainstream public will think you’re bananas.
“The economy, stupid” might at least be a better answer, not that James Carville should be seen as a source of universal Democratic truth, but he was right about that in 1992 and it certainly applied in 2024.
Most voters didn’t give a crap about allegations of Trump’s racism, misogyny or as a potential dictator.
They cared about the price of eggs and the price of gas.
Boganboy
‘We are at the end of the vibe era, when the left could chuck around terms such as “democracy”, “empathy”, “progress” and “optimism”, and expect people to vote for them.’
Well, maybe.
philip
It may be true that the candidates’ personalities were important. That allows commentators to ignore underlying issues.
How is late term abortion going to fix the economy? Answer, it isn’t. Trump’s economic policy – higher tariffs – may be self harming, and last time out he increased the debt by 40%, but at least he had some proposals. Harris had none. And she wasn’t even a good enough liar to claim that the green shit was going to save the voters $300 a year.
bloke in spain
How is late term abortion going to fix the economy?
Oh easy one! The 51 female percent of the public not suffering crippling angst. Or something.
Steve
Paywalls don’t exist if you use archive.is
First came shock. Then anger. And after that, WhatsApp groups. God, so many WhatsApp groups. In the days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, I joined dozens of WhatsApp groups, all with names such as “Resistance” and “Wrong Timeline” — a Back to the Future reference capturing my feeling that something had gone wrong on an existential level. I marched on every anti-Trump march I could find. And most of all, I ranted. None of this made sense! This was end times!
Hadley Freeman is supposed to be a journalist for the Times.
Yes, there was racism and misogyny in Trump’s campaign
You’re all racists and sexists, explained the party that thinks black people, Hispanics and women are its property.
Similarly, yes, it’s a bitter irony that a man found liable for sexual assault last year was more popular with voters than a woman.
No, not really. All of Trump’s legal troubles were manufactured by Democratic prosecutors, handpicked bent juries and kangaroo courts, while Brown Hillary was an objectively terrible candidate who also lost badly in 2019.
But when Trump’s campaign aired an advert showing Harris in 2019 reassuring the (sigh) ACLU she would, if elected president, fund sex change surgery for transgender prisoners, accompanied by the unforgettable tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you”, it shifted the race 2.7 points in Trump’s favour.
Loooool!
The Meissen Bison
philip:« It may be true that the candidates’ personalities were important. »
Try counting the personalities and see if you get past 1!
Esteban
Well, she bought into the vast majority of Dem crap, but give her credit for recognizing that when people’s lives are getting much worse (cost of living & crime primarily), they are less likely to roll over & just buy that he’s Hitler.
Norman
Hadley Freeman. A search brings up many, many pictures of a woman you really, really wouldn’t want to fuck.
dearieme
Look it’s easy. Trump is xenophobic. That’s why he married a Slovenian.
He’s racist: that’s why he chose a VP candidate who’s married to an Indian.
He’s anti-semitic – that’s why he’s happy with a daughter who converted to Judaism and is raising her children as Jews.
Et bloody cetera. He won partly because he’s an extrovert, camp showbiz figure, but camp in a manly style. Partly because of his grit when the Dems had him shot and, indeed, when they waged lawfare, impeachment, and mass lying against him. And partly because the Dems run turds against him while only once pulling off enough vote-rigging to change the result (as I assume they did).
Chris Miller
stacking the Supreme Court = doing what every administration has done since the Supreme Court came into existence, appointing replacement judges favourable to their world view. Had Kameltoe won, the Dems planned to create enough extra judges to ensure a ‘liberal’ majority, but that’s not ‘stacking the Court’, only evil Republicans do that!
Paywalls don’t exist if you use archive.is
Some paywalls are archive-proof. Most paywalls on publications aimed at the general public aren’t intended to be serious: the Telegraph’s disappears if you disable JavaScript, and many are just pop-ups to cover the text, which can be defeated by judicious use of the Esc-key.
Steve
Dearieme – He’s anti-semitic – that’s why he’s happy with a daughter who converted to Judaism and is raising her children as Jews.
Piers Morgan made a good point (bound to happen sometimes). He was at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the one the press said was a Nazi rally. The place was full of Trump-supporting Jews flying Israeli and USA flags.
Some “Hitler”.
Chris – Yes, it doesn’t work every time but does work with most newspapers.
Paywalled, so no idea if it’s a fair point or not.
Unpaywalled version
Well, for starters, whose fault is that? Trump didn’t overturn Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court did. As for “stacking” the Supreme Court, isn’t Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ridiculous desire to “Hang on until Hillary got elected” at least partly to blame?
“Cruelty to refugee families”? Nope – Kids in cages goes back to at least Obama…
Even the foundations of their delusions are delusional.
Which starts by an open and detailed appraisal of why voters overwhelmingly rejected the Democrats at the ballot box. Pissing and moaning about “racism and misogyny” isn’t an answer.
“The economy, stupid” might at least be a better answer, not that James Carville should be seen as a source of universal Democratic truth, but he was right about that in 1992 and it certainly applied in 2024.
Most voters didn’t give a crap about allegations of Trump’s racism, misogyny or as a potential dictator.
They cared about the price of eggs and the price of gas.
‘We are at the end of the vibe era, when the left could chuck around terms such as “democracy”, “empathy”, “progress” and “optimism”, and expect people to vote for them.’
Well, maybe.
It may be true that the candidates’ personalities were important. That allows commentators to ignore underlying issues.
How is late term abortion going to fix the economy? Answer, it isn’t. Trump’s economic policy – higher tariffs – may be self harming, and last time out he increased the debt by 40%, but at least he had some proposals. Harris had none. And she wasn’t even a good enough liar to claim that the green shit was going to save the voters $300 a year.
How is late term abortion going to fix the economy?
Oh easy one! The 51 female percent of the public not suffering crippling angst. Or something.
Paywalls don’t exist if you use archive.is
First came shock. Then anger. And after that, WhatsApp groups. God, so many WhatsApp groups. In the days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, I joined dozens of WhatsApp groups, all with names such as “Resistance” and “Wrong Timeline” — a Back to the Future reference capturing my feeling that something had gone wrong on an existential level. I marched on every anti-Trump march I could find. And most of all, I ranted. None of this made sense! This was end times!
Hadley Freeman is supposed to be a journalist for the Times.
Yes, there was racism and misogyny in Trump’s campaign
You’re all racists and sexists, explained the party that thinks black people, Hispanics and women are its property.
Similarly, yes, it’s a bitter irony that a man found liable for sexual assault last year was more popular with voters than a woman.
No, not really. All of Trump’s legal troubles were manufactured by Democratic prosecutors, handpicked bent juries and kangaroo courts, while Brown Hillary was an objectively terrible candidate who also lost badly in 2019.
But when Trump’s campaign aired an advert showing Harris in 2019 reassuring the (sigh) ACLU she would, if elected president, fund sex change surgery for transgender prisoners, accompanied by the unforgettable tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you”, it shifted the race 2.7 points in Trump’s favour.
Loooool!
philip:« It may be true that the candidates’ personalities were important. »
Try counting the personalities and see if you get past 1!
Well, she bought into the vast majority of Dem crap, but give her credit for recognizing that when people’s lives are getting much worse (cost of living & crime primarily), they are less likely to roll over & just buy that he’s Hitler.
Hadley Freeman. A search brings up many, many pictures of a woman you really, really wouldn’t want to fuck.
Look it’s easy. Trump is xenophobic. That’s why he married a Slovenian.
He’s racist: that’s why he chose a VP candidate who’s married to an Indian.
He’s anti-semitic – that’s why he’s happy with a daughter who converted to Judaism and is raising her children as Jews.
Et bloody cetera. He won partly because he’s an extrovert, camp showbiz figure, but camp in a manly style. Partly because of his grit when the Dems had him shot and, indeed, when they waged lawfare, impeachment, and mass lying against him. And partly because the Dems run turds against him while only once pulling off enough vote-rigging to change the result (as I assume they did).
stacking the Supreme Court = doing what every administration has done since the Supreme Court came into existence, appointing replacement judges favourable to their world view. Had Kameltoe won, the Dems planned to create enough extra judges to ensure a ‘liberal’ majority, but that’s not ‘stacking the Court’, only evil Republicans do that!
Paywalls don’t exist if you use archive.is
Some paywalls are archive-proof. Most paywalls on publications aimed at the general public aren’t intended to be serious: the Telegraph’s disappears if you disable JavaScript, and many are just pop-ups to cover the text, which can be defeated by judicious use of the Esc-key.
Dearieme – He’s anti-semitic – that’s why he’s happy with a daughter who converted to Judaism and is raising her children as Jews.
Piers Morgan made a good point (bound to happen sometimes). He was at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the one the press said was a Nazi rally. The place was full of Trump-supporting Jews flying Israeli and USA flags.
Some “Hitler”.
Chris – Yes, it doesn’t work every time but does work with most newspapers.