Election Day is Almost Over

Final 2024 thoughts

1. The most likely outcome tonight is a Kamala Harris triumph and a Republican-controlled Senate. This doesn’t mean the outcome will come to pass. The polls have been extremely close and a few small breaks in Donald Trump’s direction in any number of the seven states that will decide the election will hand him a victory. The vice president is very likely to win the popular vote—the trouble for her, of course, is the Electoral College. The most likely outcome of the 2016 election resembles this one: victories for a female Democratic candidate and a GOP-run Senate. There is no hubris on the Democratic side this time. Many fear Harris will lose. Given her spending advantage, more professionalized operation, and Trump’s many glaring weaknesses, she must be considered the slight favorite today. I would not be surprised if she lost—I’ve criticized her campaign plenty—but I’d be more surprised if Trump won.

2. Perhaps I should be less surprised because almost all of the macro conditions favor Trump. Incumbent parties have been losing across the world. The Conservatives, for example, were annihilated in the United Kingdom. Inflation is a drag on any party in power, and it’s undoubtedly undercut the Biden administration. Immigration has been a losing issue for the Democrats. Though their growing strength with white college-educated voters will negate some of the GOP’s built-in Electoral College advantage, it’s still very much true Trump can lose the popular vote and win the presidency. If Harris loses the popular vote, she’s been defeated in an Electoral College landslide. The fact that Trump can barely manage any significant national polling leads speaks to all of his inherent deficiencies as a candidate. Yes, he’s a great showman. Yes, he’s got a knack for striking iconic poses. Yes, he has fundamentally altered the Republican Party, perhaps for good, yanking it in a more economically populist, nativist, and conspiratorial direction. No, this does not mean he’s anyone’s ideal of a general election candidate or that J.D. Vance was a strong choice for a running mate. This is a deeply flawed ticket that is alienating to many millions of voters, especially those who are not particularly liberal and would, in a high inflation environment, happily throw a vote to the Republican candidate. The mythical Brian Kemp/Glenn Youngkin ticket (Kemp could never make it out of a GOP primary) could be doing to Harris right now what Bush did to Kerry in 2004.

3. The Republican-run Senate would be a disaster for Harris because she would be unable to confirm most cabinet nominees and would certainly be locked out of appointing new Supreme Court justices in the event of a retirement or death. (Addendum: A narrow GOP majority could allow her to appoint some cabinet picks, if filling the Supreme Court will be far harder.) Unlike Joe Biden in his first two years, Harris will not be able to fill the lower rungs of the judiciary with liberal judges. The Biden administration and Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, very efficiently countered Mitch McConnell in 2021 and 2022, matching or even surpassing his rate of judicial confirmations. What a Republican Senate would do is freeze the Biden cabinet members in place, assuming Harris wins. The plutocrats who want her to dump Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission will be out of luck; Harris isn’t going to change course if it means the GOP won’t even allow her to pick someone else to replace Khan. This would also mean Pete Buttigieg, if he chooses, can run the Department of Transportation for another four years, Lloyd Austin will run the Pentagon, and nothing, as Biden once declared, will fundamentally change. A Republican Senate, like a Republican House (another possibility), would make most of Harris’ legislative agenda dead-on-arrival. She’d have to govern through executive orders. She’d also have to focus much more on foreign policy. Her agenda, in that realm, is ill-defined at best.

4. If Trump wins, he’s arriving with a Republican Senate and, plausibly, a Republican House. Unlike the Senate, the House is a genuine toss-up, and it’s easy to imagine either Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries being the speaker next year. A Democratic House would roadblock Trump and make his own legislative agenda impossible to achieve. Trump would be left to focus on executive orders and appointing judges. If you’re a left-leaning person, this is still deeply unsettling—the Trump Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, after all—but it is not exactly fascism. Expect Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to strategically retire if Trump wins. There’s plenty of damage Trump could do at the executive level, like gutting the EPA anew, breaking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and stuffing the FTC with corporatist conservatives. His Justice Department could be empowered to pursue his political enemies. The only upside for Democrats is that a second Trump term seems fated to trigger a 2026 backlash, perhaps handing them many new House and Senate seats.

5. What does the next president do about the war in Ukraine? The war in Gaza? The war in Sudan? Trump’s first term offers a guide, as well as his platitudinous threats. Harris, on foreign policy, is much more of a cipher. Overall, foreign policy is the biggest question mark of this election, and it’s why so many countries across the world are riveted today.

6. Do the Democrats have a chance in the Senate? I’m intrigued by Dan Osborn, the union organizer in Nebraska who is running against the Republican incumbent, Deb Fischer. Osborn is one of those candidates who has thrilled centrists (Matt Yglesias) and socialists (Matt Karp) alike. Osborn is campaigning as an independent, mixing a mostly left-wing Democratic platform (funding public schools, passing pro-union legislation like the PRO Act) with calls for a toughened border and a defense of gun-owners. Osborn has not said which party he’d caucus with, but he has much more in common with the Democrats and could vote with them the way independents Bernie Sanders and Angus King already do. If the left has any hope of winning over voters in states that are going to overwhelmingly choose Trump—and they need to figure out how to do this in a world where rural, Republican states hold great sway in the Senate—it will be with candidates like Osborn. It was certainly smart of him to ditch the Democratic label. I do not know if he’ll actually win, just as I think Colin Allred in Texas, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida, and Jon Tester in Montana are all long-shots. If any Democrat can defy the Trump wave, it might be Sherrod Brown, the incumbent in Ohio. Brown is an adept campaigner, but more importantly his opponent, Bernie Moreno, is among the worst Senate candidates out there.

7. If Harris loses, the 2028 Democratic primary begins in earnest. Ambitious Democrats like Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsom probably hope (in secret) this happens. If she wins, there may not be an open Democratic primary until 2032, which would mark a stunning twelve years between competitive, conventional presidential primaries. Since the primary era, which began in the 1970s, this has never happened.

8. If Trump loses, his grip on the party will terminally weaken. I did not believe this in 2020 and I did think he’d eventually run again. I also thought, as early as 2022, he’d be the GOP nominee and defeat Ron DeSantis. But losing two elections in a row is something else entirely, and since he is not president, he cannot simply recreate Jan. 6. He can foment street violence and drive a deeper wedge between Americans. He can’t storm the White House. Or, if he tries, he’ll be promptly jailed. As a private citizen, Trump won’t have any presidential immunity, and those federal indictments against him will proceed in court. Trump, meanwhile, has no obvious successor. Vance, for now, is anointed, but he lacks Trump’s charisma; he should’ve been a podcaster, not a vice-presidential candidate. There will be a bloody fight within the Republican Party to replace Trump.

9. Divided government seems like a strong possibility, regardless. That means no party is getting much done, legislatively, in the next four years. Biden and Obama notched all of their great policy achievements with a Democratic Congress. In roadblock eras, Republicans tend to thrive.

10. This will be my first “normal” presidential election night since 2012. In 2016, I was invited to speak on a few panels at Web Summit in Portugal. I took in Trump’s black swan victory in the company of horrified Europeans. (2020 was the Covid year, so no one had a normal election night.) I’ll never forget heading to the American embassy’s election night party and some joyous emcee announcing to the crowd that Hillary Clinton had won more than 80 percent in their straw poll. My recollection is that it wasn’t a poll of who you preferred to win but who you thought would win. (Clinton probably wins 98 percent of the room if it’s a pure preference vote.) Though I had an inkling all year that Trump could pull off the upset—these final paragraphs here in January 2016 show me very open to that possibility—I was mostly pressured into accepting the line that Clinton was destined for victory. This was my great lesson in groupthink. I was a 26-year-old political reporter (freshly turned 27 for election day) and I was only going to buck the consensus so much. Seeing this great failure of the media class, I knew I had to chart a different course. It’s been a wild ride since.