The temptation to recriminate is strong, and healthy when constructive, but feels more useless than usual right now, especially in these first few shell-shocked hours. Pick your own adventure, and go back as far as you like. Joe Biden could have dropped out earlier. Maybe Joe Biden shouldn't have run at all in 2020. They could have crammed in a sprint primary. Maybe Kamala Harris could have run as something other than an extension of an unpopular administration. Maybe she could have courted the right more. Maybe she could have courted the left at all. Maybe she could have been tougher on Israel, or maybe being even more deferential would have gained her some votes among the bloodthirsty. Maybe Liz Cheney was not the right person to make her most visible endorser. Maybe she should have chosen a more polished VP pick, or maybe she shouldn't have muzzled Tim Walz's seemingly popular early attacks. Maybe no plurality of Americans was ever going to elect a woman, or a black and Indian woman. Maybe the demographics are fundamentally Republican now: second-generation immigrants have gone rightward from four and eight years ago, as did younger voters. Maybe that side's threats of implicit or actual violence have given it an unsurmountable advantage at the ballot box. Maybe offering more policy specifics would have helped, or maybe they wouldn't have, given that so many voters cited a crime wave in a time of sharply decreasing crime and inflation at a point where inflation is nosediving. I have my opinions on all of these, as do you, but the point is that there is no "for want of a nail" in this election, no one thing that if addressed could have given Harris the edge. The margins were too wide, in too many places.
This is my feeling, too. This was too systemic and too pervasive to be attributable to a single misplaced platform plank, or a single strategic blunder. This isn't due to [insert pet peeve here]. This was a nationwide cry for a course correction. It was the tangible manifestation of a disconnected electorate seeking the comforting embrace of a father figure. Even if sometimes they don't like the way daddy treats them, they still love him, deep down. They still trust him to take care of them. They're attached to him on an emotional level, and emotions are not rational, nor do they have to be internally consistent with beliefs and ideals.
Immigrants voted to deport immigrants. Black people voted for a loud, unapologetic racist. Women voted for a rapist. They care more about what he's going to do for them than they do about how he treats or talks about them.
I have several very politically disconnected friends, and a month or so ago a divorced blue collar white guy told me, "I'm fucked either way, and neither of them are going to do anything for me, so I might as well vote for him." I can't even fucking argue with that. Dude's just trying to make ends meet, and he's grasping on to anyone who says they're going to help, even if he knows it's probably a lie.
That shit's dark.