by Dan Burns

Nov 10, 2024, 7:30 AM

About the election

When I checked at about 7 this (Sunday) morning the vote totals were 74,650,754 for Trump, and 70,816,946 for Harris. In 2020 it was 74,223,975 Trump, and 81,283,501 Biden. So (and any coming changes will be inconsequential, in the context of this screed) Trump gained about 427,000 votes, and Harris lost 10,467,000.

Trump undoubtedly had a loss due to attrition among the oldest voters, and very likely lost some women among all ages as well. But many of those women must have sat out instead of voting for Harris. In any case those losses were more than overcome by Trump’s “hidden voters,” who only show up with Trump’s name on the ballot. This is borne out by how Harris underperformed Democratic congressional candidates. Many of the hidden voters likely only went in to vote for Trump himself and call it a day. They see Trump as the ultimate “anti-politician,” and are drawn like moths to a flame by his proudly crass, crude, resentful selfishness because it seems to validate their own. Including continuing to live in denial of the reality that some things that aren’t great about their own lives are possibly the results of their own decision-making, rather than always somebody else’s fault.

The details of the massive Harris drop-off are harder for me to figure. It likely took place across almost all of our voter groups. I’ve seen claims that are all over the place about what really happened with the Latino vote, for example. Exit polling has long been an even bigger joke than pre-election polling is now. It appears to have become impossible to get representative samples, in both cases. I’m going to wait for hard, valid data, the “voter books” or whatever they’re called, rather than drive myself crazy about it at this time.

But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the primary reason for it is that our utterly disgraceful, failed, “mainstream” political news media somehow managed to actually reach new depths.

The voter clip above and its many near-duplicates are indicative of two things. One, which we already knew, was that most Americans don’t read or watch any news that’s not just a headline or “person says thing” clip. They have lives, and the great American dream now requires them to work for most of their waking hours while squeezing whatever cheap joy they can get from the remainder. It’s not fair to ask them to plant themselves in front of a desk and “study” the issues, damn it—that is what journalists are supposed to be doing on our behalf. They are supposed to be telling us the true facts in their headlines, not acting as funnels for falsehoods.

The moment any media outlet decides to frame any news issue as “political,” the issue goes away and the coverage becomes whatever that media outlet’s equivalent of “two rich men in suits, slapping each other with small fish forever” happens to be. It is a grotesque failure, a dereliction of the one duty journalism supposedly has, and in prioritizing the propaganda of liars it will inevitably lead to democratic decay and the rise of authoritarian power.

So, you know, thanks a bunch for that, assholes.
(Uncharted Blue)

The only thing that seems to get apathetic would-be Dems out is when they feel personally threatened, financially and/or otherwise, by what’s going on. I honestly don’t know how to fix that, in a system where the greedheads and militarists still mostly run things and negativity bias makes even well-meaning people fear real change. The one lasting right-wing conservative societal “success” since the 1970s has been creating and maintaining cynicism and distrust in government’s ability to do good things. Many of our casual voters pay little or no attention to politics – a state of mind that at times I admit that I almost envy. But things would be better if they did.

Comment from Joe Musich: Yep… “…The people who are in most danger from authoritarian-minded corruption are the people who are hearing the least about it. And it’s killing us.”

Great article. I see Steve Grove has a commentary in today’s Strib. Your referenced article would have been a better column than what he had to say.

Thanks much

Comment from Mac Hall:Did you see the Trump team list of the 19 counties that they said would determine the election ?

If my memory is correct, there were three in Florida and Pennsylvania, a couple in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona … plus some individual counties … including Cuyahoga County in Ohio which is primarily Cleveland. Why would they consider Cleveland to be indicative of the country when no one considered Ohio to be a battleground state ? Answer … to see if a Democrat dominated county would garner the participation rate to move the race closer than 2020. The answer to that question was a resounding “We don’t care” as the turnout went from 71% in 2020 to under 64% in 2024. Over 60,000 less voters participated in total even though the total number of registered voters increased by 9,000. Ohio had a competitive US Senate race with the Republican candidate coming from Cleveland. There were over 65,000 Biden voters that did not vote for Harris while Trump only lost 12,000. Sherrod Brown actually got 8,000 more votes in his Senate race than Harris got in the presidential contest.

Apathy won again.

Yet another consideration should be the impact of Covid on voting. Because of Covid some States like Ohio automatically mailed ballots to registered voters … this year, voters had to request it. I can hear the argument from the Trump supporters that Trump really did win the 2020 election because so many fraudulent ballots were mailed in … I suppose that is possible but some of those ballots may also have been supporting Trump (ya know, a spouse fills out the ballot for all registered voters at that address without asking each voter how they wanted their vote cast.)

This year, I get the impression that Republican embraced early and mail-in voting as I recall Pete Stauber tweeted to encourage it.

Further in Minnesota, some precincts are exclusively mail ballots. In my mail-in precinct, the 2020 election had 507 registered voters with 478 ballots cast … over 94% participation. Trump got 276 votes to Biden’s 190 with 12 for others. In 2024, there were 513 registered voters with 488 ballots cast … over 95% participation rate … of which Trump got 283, Harris 187 and 18 for others. I saw some media reports that Minnesota’s overall participation rate was 76%. Funny thing is that since my mail-in ballot was sent out once the early voting period started and I returned it within one week, I received only one campaign mailer (a DFL candidate for the House) … so campaigns that do not get mailers out prior to the start of the early voting period are already at a disadvantage.

Now, to the comment about “greedheads”, IMO money was spent early attacking DFLers in the state legislature long before the candidates were even endorsed. You may recall my previous comment in April, that there were attack ads running against Jeff Brand for not being bipartisan and for outrageous spending. You may also recall another story that I have told about the CUB cashier who represented a problem for Democrats. She was a long-term CUB worker … I could sense that she saw herself as working at slightly above minimum wage while processed purchases from people using SNAP cards and thinking why are they getting food that my tax dollars are paying for ? She told me that she couldn’t trust Democrats because they will raise her taxes … I informed her that unless she was making more than $200,000 a year, she would not see her taxes increased … she didn’t buy it. Today that is $400,000 and that CUB cashier is no longer working there because they only have two cashiers and a dozen of self-serve wand-it-yourself lanes.

Jeff Brand was a perfect Democrat candidate … grew up on a dairy farm, educated at MN State -Mankato … started a small business and a family … served on the St. Peter city council. He won his first Statehouse race … and then in his second race he was narrowly defeated by a Christian Trumper in 2020. In 2022, in a rematch, Brand won by 411 votes … and then the attack ads came. And for the past two months, my television and Internet has repeatedly attacked him with some “factually twisted” commercials. Brand lost this time by just over 800 votes…. with over $1.25 million spent by outside groups, that means over $50 was spent for each vote.

That’s the problem that I see … we should have all mail-in voting which I believe is done in other states. And until the “greedheads” money is restrained, the only way to counter it is to win the campaign messaging in May … before they start to have $1 million giveaways and “factually twisted” commercials. Until then, America will be like Kansas … that would be the Kansas cited in the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” (by Thomas Frank) which asked the question, why do people vote against their own interests.