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LEFT WING LOONS Title: "Democrats Get a Wake-Up Call about How Unpopular Their Agenda Really Is" "On the menu today: We have so much to talk about. Wait, Wait, Harris Can Still Win This If Mike Pence Has the Courage to Do What’s Right (Lol) Wow. Wow. The Red Wave arrived, two years behind schedule. You know who’s really hurting this morning? The Grover Cleveland fanbase. Not quite so special anymore. Donald Trump is the same man he was yesterday — same flaws, same obsessions, same temperament. But for today, conservatives can salute him as the man who dealt the Democrats the single most painful butt- kicking since George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988. Yes, Trump’s victory in 2016 was more surprising, and Democratic overconfidence was comparable in the Bush victories of 2000 and 2004. But Democrats will be having PTSD about Election Night 2024 for years to come — a relentless infliction of pain, up and down the board, coast to coast. At this hour, Trump has won or is leading in and projected to win all seven key swing states; he’s been declared the winner in North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and is ahead Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. A whole bunch of blue states that people didn’t think would be competitive — Virginia, most notably — took hours to call. And a whole bunch of deep-blue states like New York and New Jersey showed Trump improving dramatically upon his numbers from 2020. The only presidency Kamala Harris will ever see is perhaps that of UC-San Francisco. Republicans will have at least 52 Senate seats, and as of this writing, Dave McCormick leads in Pennsylvania, Mike Rogers leads in Michigan, Sam Brown leads in Nevada (!), and Eric Hovde is trailing by just 1 percent in Wisconsin. The outlook for control of the House is a bit murkier, but at this hour, Republicans have won 204 seats and Democrats only 182 (at least on CNN’s map). Democrats have won two of the endangered Republican-held seats (New York’s 19th district and 22nd district), and Republicans won one of the endangered Democrat-held seats (Michigan’s 7th district). Republicans will probably control the White House, Senate, and U.S. House starting January 20, 2025. As of this writing, Donald Trump has 71,078,802 votes nationwide, for 51 percent, and Kamala Harris has 65,985,511 votes for 47.3 percent. Only 57 percent of the vote is counted in California, only 73 percent in Oregon, and only 64 percent in Washington state, so Harris’s numbers in the national popular vote will improve. (I know everyone’s going to scoff at my “don’t underestimate her” newsletter, but as of now, she already has the fifth-highest number of votes in presidential history, and she’ll probably end up fourth all time.) But Trump is either going to win the national popular vote or come pretty darn close to winning it, and I suspect that is a scenario that a lot of Democrats are just not psychologically or emotionally prepared to confront. Break out the Legos, cookies, and coloring books. Don’t underestimate the emotional value of Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote back in 2016. It allowed Democrats to convince themselves, and others, that Trump’s 2016 was a quirk of the Electoral College, a fluke, a reflection of Clinton never visiting Wisconsin and Russians buying ads on Facebook and FBI director James Comey’s late announcement and a million other excuses. Think about how many times you were reminded that Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes. Democrats believed that progressivism was still popular — and the traditional midterm backlash of 2018 convinced them that Trump had proven to be so unpopular, they could move as far to the left as they wanted, and the electorate would still always pick them over Trump and his MAGA candidates. They thought wrong. Progressivism, liberalism, woke-ism — they will never be the same. They won’t wither away completely. But the Democrats just learned the hardest of hard lessons: The electorate — not just straight white males — doesn’t want their brand of deeply divisive identity politics, deliberate conflation of legal immigration and illegal immigration, policies that reflexively recommend and enact permanent bodily changes for teenagers questioning their gender identity, and basically the entire agenda of the 2019 Kamala Harris presidential campaign. At the Bradley Impact Fund conference last month, I told the joke about the advertising genius who’s brought in to revitalize the sales of a brand of dog food. He redesigns the packaging, runs a whole bunch of appealing commercials, and gets a bright, vibrant display for the brand right in the front of the supermarket. But as he’s shopping for groceries, he watches a customer walking a dog reach down to buy the other leading brand. Exasperated, the advertising genius goes up to the man and asks why, despite the new packaging, commercials, and display, he bought the other leading brand and not the ad man’s client’s brand of dog food. The customer shrugs and points to his dog, saying “He won’t eat it.” Democrats, the electorate is just not going to eat your dog food. It doesn’t matter if you raise more money and spend more on ads and have more campaign offices and have more doorknockers and volunteers. The sales pitch isn’t really the problem; the product is. At this hour, Harris, with Tim Walz on the ticket, is winning Minnesota 51.1 percent to 46.7 percent. Four years ago, Biden won Minnesota, 52.4 percent to 45.2 percent. As I pointed out a few times during the campaign, adding Walz to the ticket hurt Harris in Minnesota. The argument that Walz was going to help Harris in those “blue wall” states with his folksiness and stories about high-school football and getting under the hood of his 1979 International Harvester Scout turned out to be specious nonsense. And J. D. Vance proved, at minimum, to not be a liability and likely a strength when and where it counted the most, particularly in the vice- presidential debate. I notice that four years ago, Trump beat Biden in Ohio, 53.2 percent to 45.2 percent. As of this writing, Trump is winning Ohio, 55.1 percent to 43.9 percent. A lot of people give David French grief, but he calls them as he sees them. Shortly after midnight, French wrote, “If present trends continue, this Trump victory will swamp all the micro-explanations. Shapiro as VP wouldn’t have changed this. Keeping Arab-Americans in Michigan wouldn’t have changed this. It’s all the big stuff — defeat in Afghanistan, a porous border, inflation, and (yes, this really matters) Biden’s refusal to acknowledge reality and step aside in time for Democrats to have a real primary.” With Trump sweeping the swing states, no, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro probably couldn’t have saved her nationwide. But with Harris trailing Pennsylvania by 164,000 votes or so, or 2.5 percentage points, with an estimated 97 percent of the vote in . . . maybe he could have salvaged his home state. The Walz pick was a giant unforced error. And if picking Walz over Shapiro was designed to avoid antagonizing Arab-American, Muslim-American, or Palestinian-American voters and improve Harris’s odds in Michigan, well . . . that didn’t work: Donald Trump won Dearborn and made significant gains in Hamtramck compared to 2020 amid anger in Arab American and Muslim communities about deaths in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. The two cities, which have the highest percentage of Arab Americans among all cities in the United States, were courted by Trump and his campaign as the former president visited both places in recent weeks. In Dearborn, where 55% of the residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Trump won with 42.48 percent of the vote over Vice President Kamala Harris, who received 36.26 percent, according to results, with 100 percent percent of precincts counted, provided to the Free Press from City Clerk George Darany. Jill Stein received 18.37 percent of the vote. Voter turnout in Dearborn was smaller compared to 2020. Shadi Hamid, a columnist for the Washington Post: “It’s time for us to just be honest. This version of the Democratic Party is arrogant and patronizing, taking minority voters for granted and treating them like children. Well, maybe minority voters aren’t into that.” A mere . . . four hours and 40 minutes after the polls closed, MSNBC projected Kamala Harris would win Virginia. There will be a lot of questions about “how did the pollsters miss this . . . again?” (Ann Selzer says she’ll be reviewing her data after her final poll of her home state of Iowa had Harris winning, 47 percent to 44 percent. Last night, Trump won Iowa, 55.8 percent to 42.6 percent.) But there should also be really tough questions asked about how the heck the Harris campaign was so blindsided by their weakness in places like Virginia, and softer support than Biden everywhere. I believe it was our Michael Brendan Dougherty who theorized that a significant chunk of Biden’s support in 2020 amounted to, “I’m tired of the pandemic, and so I’m voting for a different president.” There will be a lot to chew over and analyze in the coming days, but allow me to offer my favorite explanation for why last night’s results blindsided Democrats (and a lot of other folks; I predicted a Trump win and a Republican Senate, but didn’t foresee wins on this scale). The mainstream media’s coverage of American politics is so often so indistinguishable from cheerleading for the Democratic Party that Democrats never actually have a good, reliable, realistic sense of how they’re doing. As I wrote a few days ago, Democrats hate self-scouting and can never take a clear-eyed look at how they’re doing: “Instead of self-scouting, Democrats walked around in a fog of optimistic happy talk.” Allow me to point to a handful of Senate races to illustrate. In Florida, anyone with a realistic sense of that state’s politics knew Trump was going to win handily, and incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott was going to win reelection. But you didn’t have to look hard to find left-of-center columnists insisting Democrats might finally have a path to victory in Florida’s Senate race. In early September, Ed Kilgore wrote over at New York magazine, “The possibility that Scott could actually lose this race is manna from heaven for Democrats not just in Florida, but nationally.” The Nation magazine, September 30: “Could Harris Take Florida and North Carolina? The Data Suggests She Can.” Last night, Trump won Florida by more than 1.4 million votes, 56 percent to 42.9 percent. Rick Scott won reelection by a margin of 1.37 million votes, 55.6 percent to 42.7 percent. Similarly, almost all of us knew Ted Cruz was going to win reelection in Texas . . . emphasis on almost. The New York Times wrote that Cruz was “again fighting for political survival” in late September. Bloomberg columnist Nia-Malika Henderson’s October 4 column was titled, “A Democrat Could Actually Beat Ted Cruz in Texas.” Last night, Ted Cruz won reelection with a margin of more than 980,000 votes, 53 percent to 44.6 percent. This morning, even Beto O’Rourke is scoffing, “I could have done better.” Finally, I kept telling you that there was no reason to expect Republican incumbent senator Deb Fischer to lose her bid in Nebraska. I might have even gotten a little obsessive about it, but this is what happens when someone suggests I’m oblivious to a huge Democratic — er, “independent” — upset under the radar. This morning, with 99 percent of precincts reporting, Deb Fischer has 53.9 percent of the vote and “independent” Dan Osborn has 46.1 percent, a margin of more than 69,000 votes. I don’t think Fischer was ever in serious danger of losing her reelection bid in a deep-red state. As I wrote back on Halloween, the Osborn campaign convinced a whole bunch of gullible national reporters and columnists that the race was neck and neck, just by releasing internal polls. Finally, as I mentioned last night, the notion that Joe Biden gleefully stabbed Kamala Harris in the back as revenge for being pushed out as a nominee is a fun and entertaining one. But it’s not particularly likely, because as much as Harris lost tonight, Biden lost, too. First, there’s a strong case that if Biden had remained as the nominee, he would have lost by an even worse margin. Second, whatever else Democrats felt about Biden, they loved him for being “the man who beat Trump.” And now, approaching 82 years of age, Biden is the man who couldn’t beat Trump, and who picked a running mate who couldn’t beat Trump, either. In January, Trump and Republicans will get to work dismantling the Biden legislative legacy. Biden was not the end of the Trump era. He was just the intermission. 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