Presidential Election Outcome

 

My opinion on why Harris lost is that:

    Biden should have dropped out much earlier than he did.

    The campaign should have aggressively countered disinformation about Harris (swift-boating goes back to 2004—20 years ago!).

In hindsight, I would add:

To its base, to the registered Democrats, to the people who previously voted for Biden and other Democrats, regardless of whether living in a swing state or not.  (Many of these people did not vote for Harris, but presumably share Democratic Party values.) 

    The Democratic Party needed to emphasize the value of government, the expertise required: in international affairs and defense, in law enforcement and legal process, in managing nuclear energy, in maintaining long-standing government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, in regulating food safety, medical and drug safety, in workplace safety, in consumer rights, etc. all at risk due the Trump-mindset.

    The Democratic Party needed to emphasize the values of character and morality in a presidential candidate.

    The Democratic Party needed to emphasize administrative fairness (along with its successes) in dealing with immigration issues.

    The Democratic Party needed to emphasize fairness in dealing with “new,” “cultural” issues such as transgender sports participation—and that it should probably not be a large role for the federal government at this time.  It probably would be best to have the lead taken by parents on a local basis and from local school systems and athletic organizations.  Perhaps, a place for pilot projects.

And finally, post-election analysis comes back to misinformation and disinformation, cognitive biases, confirmation bias in self-selection of news and social media sources.

    Misinformation is false or inaccurate information, getting the facts wrong.  Lack of full context is also a factor.  Disinformation is intentionally false information which is deliberatively intended to mislead. 

    The main-stream media is not doing enough.  False equivalency, equal time, and sane washing bat-shit crazy ideas is not helpful.

“54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).”  https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now [Cited by Heller, infra.]

See Nathan Heller, The Lede: “Republican Victory and the Ambience of Information” https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/republican-victory-and-the-ambience-of-information  [New Yorker Newsletter, 11-13-24; accessed 11-30-2024; cited by Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC.]  Excerpts below:

“[M]any of us scroll through social networks, stream information into our eyes and ears, and struggle to recall where we picked up this or that data point, or how we assembled the broad conceptions that we hold.”

“Trump’s command of the ambience of information wouldn’t have been possible without his own platforms, such as Truth Social, as well as allies such as Fox News . . . and Elon Musk . . .  .”

“The communications researcher Pablo Boczkowski has noted that people increasingly take in news by incidental encounter—they are ‘rubbed by the news’—rather than by seeking it out. Trump has maximized his influence over networks that people rub against, and has filled them with information that, true or not, seems all of a coherent piece.”

The reality at present:

For the Democratic Party to be successful in the future, it has to consider that many Americans lack an understanding of civics, of the US constitutional system and the rule of law.  The Democratic Party has to face today’s information systems and the “ambience of information.”  The Democratic Party has to build strategies that incorporate social psychology findings on cognitive biases.

The 2025 Semiquincentennial Celebration could be an opportunity for the Democrats to create a new narrative for civic participation.

 

When voting for president, please consider moral character.

In the last few weeks, and Trump in the presidential debate, Trump and JD Vance, the Republican candidates for president and vice president, have publicly lied in saying: “Haitians are eating dogs and cats.”

The vice presidential candidate admitted he lied.  

 On State of the Union (Sept. 15, 2024) with Dana Bash of CNN, Vance said:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do . . . .”

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/sotu/date/2024-09-15/segment/01

In that television interview, Dana Bash reported:  “First of all, the Clark County sheriff and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reviewed 11 months of 911 calls. They only identified two instances of people alleging Haitians were taking geese out of parks. They found zero evidence to substantiate those claims.”

Lying to foster hatred (in a self-servicing way), should be a disqualification for the offices of president and vice president.  But apparently neither Trump nor Vance believes it.

Bill Kristol in his Bulwark column today warned:  “Lies in the service of justifying and encouraging hatred for a minority group. That seems familiar. It’s familiar from the last century in Europe. It’s also familiar from periods of American history, especially with respect to race and immigrants.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/vance-trump-and-the-politics-of-hate?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=9qsp7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email