What analysts dont really talk about is Turnout ratings, what we re seeing is a significant drop compared to 2020.
As we speak, Harris got just short of 69 Mio. votes and Trump 72.6 Mio.
Now compare that to Biden's 81.2 Mio and Trump's 74.2 Mio votes in 2020.
That is 14 Mio less voters than 2020 election
What we see is Trump's base was mobilized for the vote but a significant drop for Harris.
69M is better than what H. Clinton got but still 12 Mio less than Biden in 2020.
Those are not definitive results but turnout is far from Historical like Trump would obviously brag about.
When you do the math, she lost MI, PA, Wis, GA for a combined 350k votes...litterally nothing. It was a very fine margin unlike what most say, due mainly to abstention in Dem's ranks.
the slim difference is in these swing states' big cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Atlanta where Harris got slightly less votes than Biden 4 years ago and allowed Trump to flip those states.
Why the turnout drop then?
Harris had a short campaign vs Trump's 4 years, she probably wasnt ready, no primaries to show more a programme or who she really was and was still quite unpopular in Dem's ranks, esp with the progressive wing.
The Gaza war cost her votes esp. in Michigan.
And of course, we cannot forget Musk's X factor with Putin's help for the final push these last few months, buying votes, sharing lies and fake news.
X was probabbly the decisive factor for that 350K difference.
Musk must be a happy man, he didnt invest all these millions in the campaign for nothing, Trump will pay him back big time with Goverment contracts, even more Tax cuts and a position in DC.
Sorry if this is harsh, but this seems like eurocentric analysis, which is throwing blame on everything bar perhaps the people who made this 'easier' for Trump.
"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right." -Bernie Sanders
If Democrats want to win elections again, this is what they have to understand. The Democrats were once the party of the working poor, regardless of race. In 1988, the Democrats won West Virginia, while losing California and Vermont. But since, the party has abandoned the working poor and progressively moved to only talking about "the middle class" and has focused more and more on appealing to highly educated white people with greater and greater focus on socially progressive issues, and if we're honest, lately it's increasingly more and more fringe socially progressive positions that even most Democrats are coming to believe are nonsense.
The Democrats were able to hang on for a while because the Republican party was even more elitist. It's not like John McCain and Mitt Romney even tried to appeal to the working poor. But then Donald Trump came along, and compared to the increasingly elitist Democrats, the working poor finally had someone who at least spoke to their concerns (despite it being self-serving bullshit).
I know that many are having difficulty understanding how a majority of voters could vote for an authoritarian misogynistic bigot, but everyone I see that cannot understand this is either 'highly' educated (you know, college degree +) and/or earns considerably more than average. They seemingly cannot understand what it is like to have to compete with illegal immigrants* (please see below) for jobs and housing, so they write off all such anger as nothing more than bigotry. Well, this is the luxury of being highly educated and financially secure; you can prioritize things like democracy and decency and the environment and racism and women's rights and gay rights and trans rights and preferred pronouns over the need to make ends meet and provide basic necessities for your children.
If I'd have voted, I would have voted for Kamala Harris in this election (or more correctly, I voted against Donald Trump) because I would have had the luxury to do so. But unless the Democratic party wakes the fuck up and starts actually caring about and actually listening to the working poor again, the same old folk will be whining like the entitled shits they are after every fucking election.
* I definitely don't blame immigrants at all for what happened as FYI, and think that some of the illegal immigrants I personally knew are some of the nicest and most admirable people I've ever met. I completely oppose demonization, and singling them out as a criminal threat is definitely based in racism.
But as policy, the US shouldn't be allowing in low-skill immigrants (at least currently) except for under special programs in areas where it is genuinely needed, most notably for seasonal agricultural labor. Employers that break the law in order to drive down wages should be severely punished. And the asylum system is brutally abused and needs to be dramatically reformed and limited. So I distinguish between demonizing immigrants themselves and recognizing that allowing low-skilled immigrants drives down wages and drives up the costs of rental housing (sometimes dramatically in areas with large influxes) at the bottom end of the income spectrum and thus should be severely limited.
Immigration/asylum reform is just one small piece of the puzzle (although a necessary one), and other policies would be significant increases to the minimum wage nationwide (Though I worry if this will actually work - varying papers on the matter give me much concern), expanding the earned income tax credit, increasing rental subsidies, increasing the housing inventory, making certain aspects of real estate investment illegal or taxed at higher rates, increasing food assistance, increased healthcare subsidies and other programs for free or low-cost healthcare, increasing workforce training and apprenticeship programs, and increasing spending on public works projects. And pay for these things with the necessary increase (it won't be drastic - i.e. no need to scare those folks!) in taxation on the rich (at least the top 5%). Don't see an issue with increasing taxes on capital gains in general, as well as corporate taxes and penalize those that game the corporate tax system.
