The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Bret Stephens (N.Y. Times) on the Causes of Harris's Defeat
I liked this piece (by someone who "voted reluctantly for Harris"), and thought I'd pass it along. An excerpt:
How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.
It's a theory that has a lot of explanatory power—though only of an unwitting sort. The broad inability of liberals to understand Trump's political appeal except in terms flattering to their beliefs is itself part of the explanation for his historic, and entirely avoidable, comeback….
Why did Harris lose? There were many tactical missteps …. But these mistakes of calculation lived within three larger mistakes of worldview. First, the conviction among many liberals that things were pretty much fine, if not downright great, in Biden's America—and that anyone who didn't think that way was either a right-wing misinformer or a dupe. Second, the refusal to see how profoundly distasteful so much of modern liberalism has become to so much of America. Third, the insistence that the only appropriate form of politics when it comes to Trump is the politics of Resistance —capital R.
There's more, though paywalled, sorry to say. I think the "inability … to understand Trump's political appeal except in terms flattering to their beliefs" point is a particularly important one, because it describes a facet of human nature that's broadly shared by many people of all political views.
