Which would be fine if you were just listing things people perceive about him, but you had to go further and state that these are all definitely things that happened for sure.
He did not “suggest injecting disinfectant might be good” he said “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.” A reporter asked him to clarify if Trump was taking about injecting disinfectants into the body to fight COVID and Trump said “"It wouldn't be through injection. We're talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work. But it certainly has a big effect if it's on a stationary object."
All of this was in the context of a speech where one of his officials was talking about the effectiveness of using uv light and disinfectants to clean surfaces, so it wasn’t some random idea Trump popped up with. Trump was asking that official whether we could disinfect the inside of the body and the lungs the way we disinfect surfaces. It might seem like a dumb question, but it certainly wasn’t advice and he clarified that he didn’t mean injecting disinfectants into the body when asked.
Of course that didn’t stop his opponents from claiming for years that he told people to inject bleach to cure COVID. When Trump lied a hundred reporters rise up to correct him, when Biden or Kamala lie you hear crickets. People have started to notice! That was a point Rogan has brought up in multiple shows now, it’s harder to get away with lying in this age of independent media.
>He did not “suggest injecting disinfectant might be good” he said “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.
>he clarified that he didn’t mean injecting disinfectants into the body when asked.
Why was he asked that question about whether he meant injecting disinfectant? The reporter was just trolling? Hallucinating maybe? And not because Trump said "And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?"
Good post. Let me perhaps complicate it a bit. Two preliminary points:
First, Trump's election was not single event. There were about 150 million votes cast by different people, and so it was an aggregation of 150 million separate events. There are of course multiple factors that any particular voter considered, and different voters picked Trump or Harris (or a third-party candidate) based on weighing these factors. So we can certainly say something intelligent about these aggregate choices, but we can't really identify "the" reason Trump won. There are multiple factors.
Second, voters are systematically and rationally underinformed. Public choice theory has explained this quite well. Voters bear the full cost of informing themselves about particular issues, but the benefits of doing so (better choices) accrue to the public as a whole. And the probability of changing your own state's outcome, let alone the outcome of the election as a whole, are trivially small. Informed voting is a huge positive externality, and like all positive externalities, we get too little of it. As a result, people rationally choose to underinform themselves.
Given those, your cult-leader explanation certainly makes sense and partially explains the vote. Some might object that no rational person would choose person like Trump, but a rationally underinformed voter might, and might do so for "cultish" reasons.
But other explanations also explain the votes of some voters.
1. Issues. I have heard numerous people argue that Trump is icky is various ways, but at least he supports certain policies that those voters agree with and the Democrats do not (support for Israel, strong border policies, etc.) So while it is a choice between two bad candidates, those votes are willing to pick the one they agree with on the issues, despite his other numerous negative factors.
2. Voters who admire negative characteristics. You identified Trump's masculinity / assholeness as one negative factor some admire. But some voters are racist, sexist, etc. Repugnant as it is, those people might find Trump more appealing than a black woman candidate.
3. Harris herself. She took much more leftist positions in 2019, changed her mind in 2024, and never explained why. She said her values were the same, but she never explained how those values led her to those positions in 2019 and those same values led her to different positions in 2024. And compare her speaking style to Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama, and Buttigieg. Reagan was not a deep thinker, but seemed trustworthy, likeable, and inspiring. Clinton was a policy work and seemed to have a deep knowledge of issues. Obama had a broad philosophical vision of American. And Buttigieg seems thoughtful and can articulately explain issues. Harris has none of these qualities. She emphasized joy and happiness at the beginning of her campaign, but that only worked up to a point, and then she shifted to attacking Trump. (Her surrogates should have done this. She should have stuck with joy.)
Her policy explanations seemed shallow. Yes, prices are high, but she did not address the underlying problem and stuck it to Trump. (E.g., Covid which is over. Trump's tariffs made things a lot worse. Trump's new tariffs would make things even worse. The problem here is Biden kept the tariffs and Biden's two bid spending bills contributed as well.) Instead, she said we will give money to some people to help. Not very inspiring or deep.
* * *
All in all, I think there were multiple factors that influenced enough of the 150 million voters to vote for Trump that he won. How we disaggregate them is a difficult task, but I think you nailed one of them.
“Many across America are fed up with the bullshit on the left”
I suspect this is it. I just restacked a note on this since Huemer’s comments are for paid only. Although he says it’s a minor point I think the bullshit on the left is actually one of the biggest drivers of Trump‘s win, especially among swing voters and relatively normal center right people who don’t actually like Trump but who also despise far-left politics, especially the race-centric stuff
I find No. 3 unconvincing. And no. 6 is a lot more important than he treats it. More attention needs to be paid to the problems on the extreme left and the way the more centrist Democrats cater to it.
Yeah - there's a lot of this out there. A nod of understanding that people are fed up with "the Left" using some vague and all-encompassing term (fed up with "bullshit", fed up with "woke", fed up with "elites", whatever), but it's never enumerated, and then is followed by a lengthy list of supposedly dealbreaking behavior by Trump and eye-rolling that people don't "see" how bad it is.
For a lot of people the "bullshit" that the author acknowledges and then quickly dismisses contains dealbreaking behavior too, and given the industrial scale of it can seem more alarming than the actions of one guy.
It's refreshing to see an election post-mortem that offers something besides just "conservatives are baddumbmeanevilwrongstupid." My favorite passage:
>I don’t think most voters seriously think about what is good for the country or what sort of person makes the best leader. They just vote emotionally, especially the low-propensity voters that Trump managed to inspire.<
I entirely agree, and I love how poorly this reflects on the idea of mass democracy. Mass suffrage democracy sucks! If it takes Donald Trump to convince you of that, well then, there's at least one good thing he's done.
I would guess that polarization also has a big part to play in this story. While I agree with the analysis of Trump as a cult leader to explain his fanatical supporters, polarization may be the reason why so many people who aren't full-on cult members were still willing to throw in their lot with him, enough for him to continue winning elections. In times past you can imagine that a "normal" Republican voter who is disgusted by Trump might be more willing to cross the aisle and vote for the Democrat instead, but that's unthinkable today.
Today's Democratic party is so deranged and extreme that large numbers of people, including influential factions of elites, are willing to side with Donald Trump against them--Elon Musk is an excellent example of this, it seems fairly clear that he is not some kind of low IQ cult worshiper, rather he has simply decided that the Democrats are his enemies and that they must lose, and that is his top priority. That happened because the left alienated him, not because Trump cast some sort of hypnotic spell on him, Musk was a lifelong liberal up until two seconds ago.
Pro: They mutilated my child and shut down society for two years over the flu. My home state of California is a shithole despite having all the "smart" people. I do not want them to import enough third world trash that America becomes like what I grew up with in South Africa.
>Elon Musk is an excellent example of this, it seems fairly clear that he is not some kind of low IQ cult worshiper
When you start retweeting Newsmax coverage about election fraud, there's no way for your public persona to not come across as low iq cult worshipper. Or even funnier, his retweeting of the Paul Pelosi gay lover conspiracy theory from a literal fake news website that claimed Hillary Clinton died and was replaced by a body double. If you're blind to Elon's degeneration into a knuckle dragger that's probably because you're blind to how mentally retarded conservative news sources and their consumers are.
See, you're degenerating straight back to "anyone who voted for Trump is evil and bad and stupid and Hitler." This is extreme intellectual laziness. Elon didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. Why did he turn into a "low iq cult worshipper" now? What changed? It wasn't Trump, Trump has been Trump since 2016.
You're right, he saw Newsmax winning all their defamation suits for lying about voter fraud in the 2020 election, the intellectual titans on his platform like catturd2 and Black Insurrectionist correctly calling out politicians that were replaced by body doubles, and Trump's "weave" that totally isn't incoherent off topic rambling whenever he's asked a direct question, and decided that was the party for him.
He started gunning for Trump because Republicans are traitors to the country that worship Trump even if he falsifies electoral votes to overturn an election. Trump has full control of the Republican party and as long as you get the kneepads out to pledge your loyalty to him, he'll award you with political power and destroy your career otherwise. Elon is acting in his own power hungry self interest, saw that a madman is going to control the most powerful country in the world again and take even more dictatorial steps towards consolidating and holding onto power, and he wants to be part of that ingroup. If you seriously think instead that it's because one of his 12 children were "killed by the woke mind virus," you are utterly incapable of taking in any info about the world, like the 70-80% of Republicans that still think the 2020 election was stolen.
So your explanation is "because Elon Musk is evil." Proving my point once again, thank you. Everyone who isn't on your side is some combination of stupid and evil, usually both, there's simply nothing else at play. It must be nice to live in such a straightforward world!
He's almost as evil as Trump is for giving such bad dick to two of his jilted ex gay lovers that they tried to kill him with guns in public. Guess he should've given some of his campaign finances to them rather than Stormy Daniels.
Why does this "explanation" post not contain any mention of inflation, COVID or immigration, or the general anti-incumbency trend in most developed countries?
Surely, by the definition of "explanation" given (true facts that increased the expectation of "x"), these points qualify?
One could argue that these points are subsumed by the "policy" point, but they're really not. Voters could rationally punish Harris for Dems' policies, while not really preferring Trump IN PARTICULAR.
The writer vastly underestimates #3. Every politician lies incessantly, it’s their stock and trade. But the lies of the left and their shameless full court press of gaslighting and character assassination around such topics as “a man can become a woman,” “giving everyone free money doesn’t cause inflation,” and “the vaccine is safe and effective” is is the reason I voted for Trump after 3 elections voting for Jill Stein. I have interacted with countless people who share this story. I call bullshit on your bullshit evaluation, but please continue to indulge your projection and delusion on these issues, the more you gaslight the more reasonable people you alienate and the more permanent the shift of power from people who can write an article like this to people who can actually see clearly the game afoot.
Vaccine conspiracists belong in indefinite lockdown. I pray Biden enacts the Insurrection Act before leaving office and National Guard troops forcibly weld your doors and windows shut China style.
Nate Silver argues Harris was a poor candidate. I continue to think there are multiple reasons why she lost and Trump won, and disaggregating them is difficult.
Yikes, this "argument" is bad. If this is what some august philosophy prof same up with, then I am glad I steered clear of this in college (thinking, then and now, its all just post-hoc intellectual masturbation).
I can't do the whole article, but here's a couple I want to absolutely grenade:
"When asked why they support him, Trumpists will often claim to be bothered by Trump’s well-known problems, but claim that they just had to vote for him because the other candidate is incredibly, existentially-threateningly awful.
I think this is total bullshit. You could maybe say that about one other candidate, one time. But if you’re saying that about Hilary Clinton, and Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, and all fifteen of his primary opponents in 2016, and the dozen or so primary opponents in 2024, then you’re bullshitting me."
Did you ever stop to think HOW they might be telling the truth, instead of assuming everyone is lying about their preference? The simple fact is, for Trump voters, each of these Democrats IS a huge threat. They all demonstrably share the same overarching worldview, making them effectively the same person to their opponents. And whoever the next Dem nominee is, they will ALSO likely be seen as an existential threat! As would Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, etc, had they been the Rep nominee--you would have seen thousands of articles about how (this candidate) "is WORSE THAN TRUMP!!"
The single biggest political science story, going back to 2000, has been the cleaving of America into 2 tribes, red and blue, that are increasingly alien to each other and increasingly seen as a threat. How did you miss this, Mr Professor?
"I don’t think the main explanation is about Trumpian policies either. There were multiple other Republicans who offered similar policies (insofar as you can ascribe policy positions to Trump) while having none of his disadvantages, and they got nowhere with it."
Just asinine garbage. Have you ever TALKED to Trump supporters, or was it enough to just philosophize about them? The story conservatives tell themselves, for decades now, is one of betrayal--they elect a "right wing warrior" who becomes a turncoat "RINO". Paul Ryan, George Bush (either), Marco Rubio--it seems to happen all the time. So, to start, no way do Rep voters think "all these guys will give me the same policy".
And Trump? Right and left in America both make the same colossal mistake--they treat his words as de facto action, a fait de accompli. So the left freaks out at obvious jokes (dictator from day one); the right acts like his tough talk (poisoning the blood of the country) means his actions will be tougher.
Both are wrong, imo; Trump is, if anything, a pussy (can I say that here?). Ron DeSantis, my preference, would have been FAR more capable of actual policy execution. But that's not the argument; the argument is that voters mistake the valence of Trump's language for following through; the severity of the talk for actual accomplishments. So yes, "policy", as defined BY THE VOTERS belief, was foremost among the reasons for voting for Trump. They think Trump will actually follow through, but Haley, Desantis, etc will all betray them once they are called "racist" enough.
And the author's other "explanations"? Just warmed over TDS, as other commentators have pointed out.
I still think the primary reason is that the Democrats lost a lot of votes between 2020 and 2024 (around 9 million). Trump has his cult sure, but his popularity as measured by the popular vote barely increased between 2020 and 2024. He was not unbeatable or something, the Democrats have some soul searching to do after this election.
almost always agree with heumer but this case is the exception that proves the rule since these are imo paltry & pathetic reasons that don't remotely track mine. these are overwhelmingly the reasons i voted for trump & they're not particularly hard to see so i'm very puzzled by the above.
I do think there's one part missing here, which is that a lot of people are purely partisan and willing to vote for whoever their party runs pretty much no matter what. I know people who don't admire Trump - in fact, they find his character almost as disgusting as I do - but who voted for him anyway simply because they're lifelong Republicans who despise the Democrats with all their hearts. This is basically the, "It's the other candidate" explanation, but it has a perfectly good answer for why it applied to all three of Trump's Democratic opponents. Of course, this isn't a complete explanation - after all, Republicans don't win every election, so there must be some factor beyond partisan Republicans choosing to vote for him that explains why he won when other Republicans have lost, but I don't think any explanation is complete without it.
Great article! I think you have identified a lot of key reasons, though I am a bit confused how you can understand and accept that people may be emotional voters right up until point 7 and then you chastise them for that.
Also I think spite is not quite the right emotion to describe how people feel perceiving "elites" to have "said mean things about them". I think alienation or rejection are better descriptions of the feelings involved.
I think people finding a different crowd to relate to / belong to after being called names and rejected by their prefered crowd is super normal human response, not an act of spite (could you imagine trying to advise someone in highschool to not to succumb to spite and find a different crowd if their current crowd ridicules them).
It's interesting to see you also couldn't manage to avoid name-calling these "childish" people. Although in some ways maybe this could be labelled a childish response (after all my example references high school), I don't think anyone grows out of the emotional desire to be liked, listened to and respected.
I probably do it too when I'm frustrated but I really wish all the smart leftist and centrists would stop including name-calling in their "arguments", as I think that's such a big reason they lost so much of the crowd.
>Advanced foolish ideas like injecting disinfectant to fight disease.
He didn’t do that. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-19/
Which would be fine if you were just listing things people perceive about him, but you had to go further and state that these are all definitely things that happened for sure.
He didn't tell people to inject bleach but suggested injesting disinfectant might be good which is what Huemer said.
He did not “suggest injecting disinfectant might be good” he said “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.” A reporter asked him to clarify if Trump was taking about injecting disinfectants into the body to fight COVID and Trump said “"It wouldn't be through injection. We're talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work. But it certainly has a big effect if it's on a stationary object."
All of this was in the context of a speech where one of his officials was talking about the effectiveness of using uv light and disinfectants to clean surfaces, so it wasn’t some random idea Trump popped up with. Trump was asking that official whether we could disinfect the inside of the body and the lungs the way we disinfect surfaces. It might seem like a dumb question, but it certainly wasn’t advice and he clarified that he didn’t mean injecting disinfectants into the body when asked.
Of course that didn’t stop his opponents from claiming for years that he told people to inject bleach to cure COVID. When Trump lied a hundred reporters rise up to correct him, when Biden or Kamala lie you hear crickets. People have started to notice! That was a point Rogan has brought up in multiple shows now, it’s harder to get away with lying in this age of independent media.
>He did not “suggest injecting disinfectant might be good” he said “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.
>he clarified that he didn’t mean injecting disinfectants into the body when asked.
Why was he asked that question about whether he meant injecting disinfectant? The reporter was just trolling? Hallucinating maybe? And not because Trump said "And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?"
Once I saw the “injecting bleach” lie, I knew this was an article by yet another sufferer of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
But he didn't say anything about injecting bleach!
Yes, I was very surprised to see that listed here.
Good post. Let me perhaps complicate it a bit. Two preliminary points:
First, Trump's election was not single event. There were about 150 million votes cast by different people, and so it was an aggregation of 150 million separate events. There are of course multiple factors that any particular voter considered, and different voters picked Trump or Harris (or a third-party candidate) based on weighing these factors. So we can certainly say something intelligent about these aggregate choices, but we can't really identify "the" reason Trump won. There are multiple factors.
Second, voters are systematically and rationally underinformed. Public choice theory has explained this quite well. Voters bear the full cost of informing themselves about particular issues, but the benefits of doing so (better choices) accrue to the public as a whole. And the probability of changing your own state's outcome, let alone the outcome of the election as a whole, are trivially small. Informed voting is a huge positive externality, and like all positive externalities, we get too little of it. As a result, people rationally choose to underinform themselves.
Given those, your cult-leader explanation certainly makes sense and partially explains the vote. Some might object that no rational person would choose person like Trump, but a rationally underinformed voter might, and might do so for "cultish" reasons.
But other explanations also explain the votes of some voters.
1. Issues. I have heard numerous people argue that Trump is icky is various ways, but at least he supports certain policies that those voters agree with and the Democrats do not (support for Israel, strong border policies, etc.) So while it is a choice between two bad candidates, those votes are willing to pick the one they agree with on the issues, despite his other numerous negative factors.
2. Voters who admire negative characteristics. You identified Trump's masculinity / assholeness as one negative factor some admire. But some voters are racist, sexist, etc. Repugnant as it is, those people might find Trump more appealing than a black woman candidate.
3. Harris herself. She took much more leftist positions in 2019, changed her mind in 2024, and never explained why. She said her values were the same, but she never explained how those values led her to those positions in 2019 and those same values led her to different positions in 2024. And compare her speaking style to Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama, and Buttigieg. Reagan was not a deep thinker, but seemed trustworthy, likeable, and inspiring. Clinton was a policy work and seemed to have a deep knowledge of issues. Obama had a broad philosophical vision of American. And Buttigieg seems thoughtful and can articulately explain issues. Harris has none of these qualities. She emphasized joy and happiness at the beginning of her campaign, but that only worked up to a point, and then she shifted to attacking Trump. (Her surrogates should have done this. She should have stuck with joy.)
Her policy explanations seemed shallow. Yes, prices are high, but she did not address the underlying problem and stuck it to Trump. (E.g., Covid which is over. Trump's tariffs made things a lot worse. Trump's new tariffs would make things even worse. The problem here is Biden kept the tariffs and Biden's two bid spending bills contributed as well.) Instead, she said we will give money to some people to help. Not very inspiring or deep.
* * *
All in all, I think there were multiple factors that influenced enough of the 150 million voters to vote for Trump that he won. How we disaggregate them is a difficult task, but I think you nailed one of them.
Good stuff.
“Many across America are fed up with the bullshit on the left”
I suspect this is it. I just restacked a note on this since Huemer’s comments are for paid only. Although he says it’s a minor point I think the bullshit on the left is actually one of the biggest drivers of Trump‘s win, especially among swing voters and relatively normal center right people who don’t actually like Trump but who also despise far-left politics, especially the race-centric stuff
I find No. 3 unconvincing. And no. 6 is a lot more important than he treats it. More attention needs to be paid to the problems on the extreme left and the way the more centrist Democrats cater to it.
Yeah - there's a lot of this out there. A nod of understanding that people are fed up with "the Left" using some vague and all-encompassing term (fed up with "bullshit", fed up with "woke", fed up with "elites", whatever), but it's never enumerated, and then is followed by a lengthy list of supposedly dealbreaking behavior by Trump and eye-rolling that people don't "see" how bad it is.
For a lot of people the "bullshit" that the author acknowledges and then quickly dismisses contains dealbreaking behavior too, and given the industrial scale of it can seem more alarming than the actions of one guy.
Your a 'philosopher', which means you get paid to mouth the platitudes of your caste, nothing more.
This entire article could be summed up in one sentence, 'These people are not my tribe so I despise them'.
But, being a 'philosopher' you had to stretch this rather obvious condition into hundreds of words.
You are the enemy.
Why does it not surprise me that your first word is misspelled.
It's refreshing to see an election post-mortem that offers something besides just "conservatives are baddumbmeanevilwrongstupid." My favorite passage:
>I don’t think most voters seriously think about what is good for the country or what sort of person makes the best leader. They just vote emotionally, especially the low-propensity voters that Trump managed to inspire.<
I entirely agree, and I love how poorly this reflects on the idea of mass democracy. Mass suffrage democracy sucks! If it takes Donald Trump to convince you of that, well then, there's at least one good thing he's done.
I would guess that polarization also has a big part to play in this story. While I agree with the analysis of Trump as a cult leader to explain his fanatical supporters, polarization may be the reason why so many people who aren't full-on cult members were still willing to throw in their lot with him, enough for him to continue winning elections. In times past you can imagine that a "normal" Republican voter who is disgusted by Trump might be more willing to cross the aisle and vote for the Democrat instead, but that's unthinkable today.
Today's Democratic party is so deranged and extreme that large numbers of people, including influential factions of elites, are willing to side with Donald Trump against them--Elon Musk is an excellent example of this, it seems fairly clear that he is not some kind of low IQ cult worshiper, rather he has simply decided that the Democrats are his enemies and that they must lose, and that is his top priority. That happened because the left alienated him, not because Trump cast some sort of hypnotic spell on him, Musk was a lifelong liberal up until two seconds ago.
Elon:
Con: Trump sends mean tweets (I do too).
Pro: They mutilated my child and shut down society for two years over the flu. My home state of California is a shithole despite having all the "smart" people. I do not want them to import enough third world trash that America becomes like what I grew up with in South Africa.
>Elon Musk is an excellent example of this, it seems fairly clear that he is not some kind of low IQ cult worshiper
When you start retweeting Newsmax coverage about election fraud, there's no way for your public persona to not come across as low iq cult worshipper. Or even funnier, his retweeting of the Paul Pelosi gay lover conspiracy theory from a literal fake news website that claimed Hillary Clinton died and was replaced by a body double. If you're blind to Elon's degeneration into a knuckle dragger that's probably because you're blind to how mentally retarded conservative news sources and their consumers are.
See, you're degenerating straight back to "anyone who voted for Trump is evil and bad and stupid and Hitler." This is extreme intellectual laziness. Elon didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020. Why did he turn into a "low iq cult worshipper" now? What changed? It wasn't Trump, Trump has been Trump since 2016.
You're right, he saw Newsmax winning all their defamation suits for lying about voter fraud in the 2020 election, the intellectual titans on his platform like catturd2 and Black Insurrectionist correctly calling out politicians that were replaced by body doubles, and Trump's "weave" that totally isn't incoherent off topic rambling whenever he's asked a direct question, and decided that was the party for him.
He started gunning for Trump because Republicans are traitors to the country that worship Trump even if he falsifies electoral votes to overturn an election. Trump has full control of the Republican party and as long as you get the kneepads out to pledge your loyalty to him, he'll award you with political power and destroy your career otherwise. Elon is acting in his own power hungry self interest, saw that a madman is going to control the most powerful country in the world again and take even more dictatorial steps towards consolidating and holding onto power, and he wants to be part of that ingroup. If you seriously think instead that it's because one of his 12 children were "killed by the woke mind virus," you are utterly incapable of taking in any info about the world, like the 70-80% of Republicans that still think the 2020 election was stolen.
So your explanation is "because Elon Musk is evil." Proving my point once again, thank you. Everyone who isn't on your side is some combination of stupid and evil, usually both, there's simply nothing else at play. It must be nice to live in such a straightforward world!
He's almost as evil as Trump is for giving such bad dick to two of his jilted ex gay lovers that they tried to kill him with guns in public. Guess he should've given some of his campaign finances to them rather than Stormy Daniels.
Why does this "explanation" post not contain any mention of inflation, COVID or immigration, or the general anti-incumbency trend in most developed countries?
Surely, by the definition of "explanation" given (true facts that increased the expectation of "x"), these points qualify?
One could argue that these points are subsumed by the "policy" point, but they're really not. Voters could rationally punish Harris for Dems' policies, while not really preferring Trump IN PARTICULAR.
The writer vastly underestimates #3. Every politician lies incessantly, it’s their stock and trade. But the lies of the left and their shameless full court press of gaslighting and character assassination around such topics as “a man can become a woman,” “giving everyone free money doesn’t cause inflation,” and “the vaccine is safe and effective” is is the reason I voted for Trump after 3 elections voting for Jill Stein. I have interacted with countless people who share this story. I call bullshit on your bullshit evaluation, but please continue to indulge your projection and delusion on these issues, the more you gaslight the more reasonable people you alienate and the more permanent the shift of power from people who can write an article like this to people who can actually see clearly the game afoot.
Vaccine conspiracists belong in indefinite lockdown. I pray Biden enacts the Insurrection Act before leaving office and National Guard troops forcibly weld your doors and windows shut China style.
Chappelle shows some insight here among the “poor whites” of rural Ohio. https://youtube.com/shorts/oVj0QvXYskM?si=Zf9sTbAmMZluvrgX
Nate Silver argues Harris was a poor candidate. I continue to think there are multiple reasons why she lost and Trump won, and disaggregating them is difficult.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/kamala-harris-was-a-replacement-level
Yikes, this "argument" is bad. If this is what some august philosophy prof same up with, then I am glad I steered clear of this in college (thinking, then and now, its all just post-hoc intellectual masturbation).
I can't do the whole article, but here's a couple I want to absolutely grenade:
"When asked why they support him, Trumpists will often claim to be bothered by Trump’s well-known problems, but claim that they just had to vote for him because the other candidate is incredibly, existentially-threateningly awful.
I think this is total bullshit. You could maybe say that about one other candidate, one time. But if you’re saying that about Hilary Clinton, and Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, and all fifteen of his primary opponents in 2016, and the dozen or so primary opponents in 2024, then you’re bullshitting me."
Did you ever stop to think HOW they might be telling the truth, instead of assuming everyone is lying about their preference? The simple fact is, for Trump voters, each of these Democrats IS a huge threat. They all demonstrably share the same overarching worldview, making them effectively the same person to their opponents. And whoever the next Dem nominee is, they will ALSO likely be seen as an existential threat! As would Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, etc, had they been the Rep nominee--you would have seen thousands of articles about how (this candidate) "is WORSE THAN TRUMP!!"
The single biggest political science story, going back to 2000, has been the cleaving of America into 2 tribes, red and blue, that are increasingly alien to each other and increasingly seen as a threat. How did you miss this, Mr Professor?
"I don’t think the main explanation is about Trumpian policies either. There were multiple other Republicans who offered similar policies (insofar as you can ascribe policy positions to Trump) while having none of his disadvantages, and they got nowhere with it."
Just asinine garbage. Have you ever TALKED to Trump supporters, or was it enough to just philosophize about them? The story conservatives tell themselves, for decades now, is one of betrayal--they elect a "right wing warrior" who becomes a turncoat "RINO". Paul Ryan, George Bush (either), Marco Rubio--it seems to happen all the time. So, to start, no way do Rep voters think "all these guys will give me the same policy".
And Trump? Right and left in America both make the same colossal mistake--they treat his words as de facto action, a fait de accompli. So the left freaks out at obvious jokes (dictator from day one); the right acts like his tough talk (poisoning the blood of the country) means his actions will be tougher.
Both are wrong, imo; Trump is, if anything, a pussy (can I say that here?). Ron DeSantis, my preference, would have been FAR more capable of actual policy execution. But that's not the argument; the argument is that voters mistake the valence of Trump's language for following through; the severity of the talk for actual accomplishments. So yes, "policy", as defined BY THE VOTERS belief, was foremost among the reasons for voting for Trump. They think Trump will actually follow through, but Haley, Desantis, etc will all betray them once they are called "racist" enough.
And the author's other "explanations"? Just warmed over TDS, as other commentators have pointed out.
I still think the primary reason is that the Democrats lost a lot of votes between 2020 and 2024 (around 9 million). Trump has his cult sure, but his popularity as measured by the popular vote barely increased between 2020 and 2024. He was not unbeatable or something, the Democrats have some soul searching to do after this election.
almost always agree with heumer but this case is the exception that proves the rule since these are imo paltry & pathetic reasons that don't remotely track mine. these are overwhelmingly the reasons i voted for trump & they're not particularly hard to see so i'm very puzzled by the above.
https://www.maximumtruth.org/p/the-rational-case-for-trump
I really enjoyed progressive myths. Thanks for writing it.
I do think there's one part missing here, which is that a lot of people are purely partisan and willing to vote for whoever their party runs pretty much no matter what. I know people who don't admire Trump - in fact, they find his character almost as disgusting as I do - but who voted for him anyway simply because they're lifelong Republicans who despise the Democrats with all their hearts. This is basically the, "It's the other candidate" explanation, but it has a perfectly good answer for why it applied to all three of Trump's Democratic opponents. Of course, this isn't a complete explanation - after all, Republicans don't win every election, so there must be some factor beyond partisan Republicans choosing to vote for him that explains why he won when other Republicans have lost, but I don't think any explanation is complete without it.
Great article! I think you have identified a lot of key reasons, though I am a bit confused how you can understand and accept that people may be emotional voters right up until point 7 and then you chastise them for that.
Also I think spite is not quite the right emotion to describe how people feel perceiving "elites" to have "said mean things about them". I think alienation or rejection are better descriptions of the feelings involved.
I think people finding a different crowd to relate to / belong to after being called names and rejected by their prefered crowd is super normal human response, not an act of spite (could you imagine trying to advise someone in highschool to not to succumb to spite and find a different crowd if their current crowd ridicules them).
It's interesting to see you also couldn't manage to avoid name-calling these "childish" people. Although in some ways maybe this could be labelled a childish response (after all my example references high school), I don't think anyone grows out of the emotional desire to be liked, listened to and respected.
I probably do it too when I'm frustrated but I really wish all the smart leftist and centrists would stop including name-calling in their "arguments", as I think that's such a big reason they lost so much of the crowd.