What really happened on Election Day?
Or, was Kamala undone by Kendi, clowns and clits?
As we know, pre-election polling has always undercounted Donald Trump’s popularity. This is because, still today, even with the overall MAGA movement louder and more loyal than ever, a given percentage of people are reluctant to tell anyone (probably including their priest or therapist) that they’re Trumpers. Social penalties endure; and if you don’t believe me, look at some of the ire being directed at Trump voters on X, in the legacy media, and even by the editors of once-respected science journals.
To my mind, a similar phenomenon compromises the accuracy of exit polling on why people voted for Trump (or against Kamala). Most of those polled said “the economy” because that’s the safe answer, something an adult would say. And it’s mostly true. But I doubt that that answer tells the whole story. I think the real answer is way more complicated and visceral.
While it only polls as a tertiary concern or worse, the culture war strikes me as an off-label ingredient baked into every single higher-level concern. Everybody, after all, is concerned about the economy. R’s and D’s alike. Everybody is concerned about immigration. But what pushes those big-picture concerns over the top with R’s is the wokeism that attaches silently to every issue, as a barnacle attaches to an orca.
Take the economy (please). For most of us, it’s among several issues that, while important, are perceived as ambient, passive annoyances of daily life: It’s just there (encompassing any number of subsidiary budget realities are just there, like the requirement to have car insurance); so even if you have to pay $2 more per gallon to gas up, well, we’ve been through stuff like this before, and we know at some non-reptilian level of brain function that you can’t really saddle poor Joe Biden with all the blame—not given black swans like COVID and the fact that both parties have been fueling an apocalyptic debt crisis for decades. And certainly in the case at hand you can’t really blame Kamala, who was put in place as mere window dressing and whose vice presidential slot was even more of a sinecure than usual.
OTOH, when you hear a story about fifth-graders coming home from school and telling their parents they were sorted into Oppressors and Oppressed during math, or that their teacher is reading them a new book that familiarizes them with the proper way to handle an erect clitoris, among other exotica, that’s an OH NO YOU DIDN’T! moment. That stays with you. Few voters want to say that, however, as it sounds relatively petty, and opens them to all those (unfounded) allegations of Hitlerism.
But see, you can’t both make my bread cost twice as much and have freakish-looking Sam Brinton as a top official in your Department of Energy. (See also Rachel Levine.)
You can’t both welcome millions of undocumented immigrants into my country and ignore anti-Semitic riots on campus.
You can’t both tell me what kind of car I should drive and make me attend diversity coursework in which some self-styled Kendi surrogate explains why concepts like “excellence” and “punctuality” are markers for a culture of white supremacy.
I think in the end, the calculus for not a few voters went something like so: Trump may be a bit insane, but he’s just one man, whereas the entire Democratic party is a bit insane, or awash in insanity-sympathizers. This may also be what suppressed the Kamala vote. I’m sure some faithful Democrats who sat it out were thinking, No, despite what Trump says, she’s not responsible for the economy or immigration—then they see that infamous “they/them” ad and they think, Is it really worth my tank of pricy gas to go pull the lever for someone who sees life that way?
That is a much newer “gut” concern that the economy or immigration or crime, and it’s incumbent on the Democrats, pun intended, to regard it as THE major area of soul-searching going forward.
OTOH...😂 you're as racist and transphobic as you ever were.