Maybe Democrats Didn't Do So Badly After All

Thursday, December 19, 2024

Russell Berman: Trump's popular-vote margin has shrunk to about 1.5 percent -- one of the tightest in the past half century -- and because some votes went to third-party and independent candidates, he'll fall just short of winning a majority of the vote nationwide. And in the House, they gained a seat, leaving the GOP with the second-smallest majority in history.

Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 11:30 AM | 47 COMMENTS | permalink

"A clearer picture of the election has emerged, complicating the debate over whether Democrats need to reinvent themselves--and whether voters really abandoned them at all," @russellberman.bsky.social writes: theatln.tc/Vdizauyy

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-- The Atlantic (@theatlantic.com) December 16, 2024 at 7:36 AM

Comments

FTA:

"If the Democratic brand was fundamentally broken and needed to be thrown out, this election would have been a complete blowout. And it was not. It was way too close," Yasmin Radjy, the executive director of Swing Left, a Democratic organizing group, told me. Another Democrat, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, put it this way: "We lost an election. We didn't lose the country."

In some areas, the election looked like a red wave; compared with four years ago, the presidential vote swung to the right by about 10 points in some of the most populous blue states, such as New York, California, and New Jersey. But down-ballot races offer a solid case for Democratic optimism. The party label appeared to be far less of an albatross for Democratic congressional candidates than it was in strong Republican years such as 2010 and 2014. In the Senate this year, although Republicans flipped four seats, Democratic candidates prevailed in four battleground states that Kamala Harris lost to Trump. And according to the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman, Democrats could have retaken the House majority with only 7,309 more votes across three congressional districts.

#1 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-12-18 08:29 AM

Just going to link to something I posted shortly after the election:

Democrats Join 2024's Graveyard of Incumbents
The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records. The cause? Inflation.
Dems actually did far better than governing parties in almost every other nation.
drudge.com

Incumbent-parties-lost-vote-share-2024-Gby4hbz-WAAMl-WLo

In 2017 at the start of Trump's first term, the breakdown in Congress was:

241 Rs to 194 Ds in the House

51 Rs to 47 Ds & 2 Is (who caucused with Ds) in the Senate.

www.thecongressproject.com

In 2025 at the start of Trump's second term, the breakdown in Congress will be:

220 Rs to 215 Ds in the House (with 3 GOP seats scheduled for special elections in the spring)

53 Rs to 45 Ds & 2 Is (who caucus with Ds) in the Senate.

That's part of the perspective I have in mind when I say maybe Democrats didn't do so badly afterall.