The absolute worst election takes of 2024
Smile, your confidence is on camera. 📷
Before I sharpen the blade for others who fumbled the dynamics, mood, data and ultimate outcome of Campaign 2024, let me first fess up to my own misses. I hesitantly believed Kamala Harris would win the presidential election despite her inherent weaknesses as a candidate because the country simply wouldn’t re-invite the tornado of chaos that could be brought to bear by Donald J. Trump. Wrong. I forecast an Electoral College map of 292 to 245 for Harris. Wrong. (Though Arizona, I knew, was gone early. Point for Dave-o!) And I found experts who read the early vote gender gap as good news for Democrats credible. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
(Some saving grace for your boy? I nailed my maps in 2022 and 2020.)
Now that I’ve conceded my own sins, I feel empowered to sanction the delusions and fallacies of others, some of who contributed to my own view of this unprecedented campaign’s architecture and storyline.
Political campaigns are like NCAA brackets — it’s nearly impossible to find a participant who hasn’t gotten something wrong somewhere along the way. What’s important is to learn from history — embrace humility — and realize that while it doesn’t always repeat itself, the past provides archival context that should impress upon our next best-laid assumptions.
Now … to the absolute worst takes in 2024 and why they were so embarrassingly off >
1.
Dmitri Mehlhorn is a prominent Democratic Party donor, former political adviser to LinkedIn owner Reid Hoffman and co-founder of Invest in US, which channels funds to progressive campaigns and causes. He was also among the self-deceiving Democratic elites who wholly dismissed the idea of Joe Biden abandoning his campaign, even after the June debate calamity and rounds of poor polling. “He hasn't plummeted. He's dropped in the averages by less than 3 points,” Mehlhorn told Ryan Grim in early July, arguing that Biden’s poll position wasn’t as bad as being portrayed. “The way the polls are moving, the odds of him stepping down are very low.” Mehlhorn estimated this with about a 90% confidence level. Thirteen days after this interview was published, Biden was out. This is not to pick on Mehlhorn; there were plenty of Democrats sticking to the script about riding or dying with Biden. But Biden’s late break pullout is just the latest example that the unprecedented *can* and *will* occur, especially in an era defined by restlessness among the populace and a clamoring for disruption of our institutions. Democratic powerbrokers eventually understood the necessity of a seismic convulsion; it was just too late.
2.
Formulated in the heat of BRAT summer, John Stoehr’s assertion that Harris was winning by avoiding traditional media looks downright silly now, especially since her tour of alternative and friendly shows often went sideways or still managed to looked cautious and canned vis a vis Trump. (Imagine fucking up The View as a lib.) At the time, the risk averse strategy may have looked savvy as Harris inched closer to Trump in polls compared to Biden, but it was a mirage. The Democratic National Convention was all fun and party poppers for activists, but produced a sugar high that voters spat out in September when things got serious. It left Harris playing catch up to try and convey a substantive message and more importantly, confidence in her leadership. Those early weeks in August when the VEEP was ducking questions and sit-downs now looks like precious time frittered away. Even Harris’ own campaign heads acknowledged this. “Being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or were afraid to have interviews is completely bullshit and also like took hold a little bit. It gave us another thing to fight back for that Trump really never had to worry about,” lamented Jen O’Malley Dillon on Pod Save America. No, Harris wasn’t taking power back from the media, she was shedding voters’ confidence by looking cowardice and unprepared. I don’t think you’ll see any serious Democratic candidate in 2028 adopting her duck-and-run posture, even early on.
3.
