Tag: 2024 election
No, Donald Trump Didn't Win This Election By A 'Landslide'

No, Donald Trump Didn't Win This Election By A 'Landslide'

As the tallying of votes approaches finality, with no happy outcome for Democrats, the triumphal narrative proclaimed by Republican cheerleaders needs correction. There was no MAGA “landslide” on Election Night – unless, like so many other aspects of American life, we have decided to diminish what that term has always meant historically.

Donald Trump appears to have won the popular vote by just over two percent, according to the latest numbers published by the Cook Political Report, which netted him 312 electoral votes. While that represented a big improvement on Trump’s weak record in presidential runs (and certainly warrants deep Democratic introspection), it was far from anything that could be defined as a landslide. In California, where Kamala Harris won the state with nearly 60 percent, there are still more than three million votes yet to be tallied..

So let's nudge the Republicans and their media cheerleaders back toward reality.

The last time that a Republican presidential candidate achieved what we have traditionally called a landslide was in 1988, when George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis by eight percent of the popular vote and won more than 400 electoral votes. Ronald Reagan notched two landslide victories: the first in 1980, when he beat incumbent Jimmy Carter by more than nine percent in the popular vote and nabbed 489 electoral votes (although Carter was hobbled by the third-party candidacy of John Anderson, who got nearly seven percent); and the second four years later, when he crushed Walter Mondale with nearly 59 percent of the popular vote and carried every state except the Democrat’s Minnesota home.

And let’s not forget Richard Nixon’s similar trouncing of George McGovern in 1972, when the Republican won 520 electoral votes and 61 percent of the popular vote. (Tricky Dick resigned in disgrace two years later when after revelations about his cheating in that election and numerous other crimes.) Democrats have won big too, notably in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson won 486 electoral votes and more than 61 percent. The last Democratic victory that approached a landslide came in 1996, when Bill Clinton won reelection with 379 electoral votes and came in nine points ahead in the popular vote against the incumbent Bush (who also had to contend with self-funding third-party gadfly Ross Perot).

So no, Trump’s roughly two percentage points do not place him in that category. It’s scarcely more than half as big as President Joe Biden’s margin in 2020, which the MAGA Republicans have repeatedly insisted was no victory at all. Democrats are far more gracious losers (and winners) than the Trump Republicans, who don’t hesitate to threaten and employ violence when they don’t get their way. (Notice how all the pre-election claims of “fraud” suddenly vanish when they win?)

Whatever the final numbers say, this election was assuredly disastrous for the Democrats, the nation, and the world. The damage has only just begun and the recovery remains distant and uncertain. Yet there many signs that the Republican narrative is too simple and simply wrong – from the Senate races that Democrats won in four of the five battleground states to the ballot initiatives where Republican ideologues were defeated on paid family leave, private school vouchers, and especially abortion rights.

The other cliché that Republicans keep repeating as they yammer about their pseudo- landslide is “mandate.” But having lied about their intentions, pretending to disown the authoritarian Project 2025 agenda that they now openly embrace, they have no mandate.

Donald Trump

Trump's Win Is A Presidential 'First' In So Many Embarrassing Ways

If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election, inauguration day in 2025 would have seen several landmark firsts in American history: the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first Asian woman—sworn in as president.

Instead, Donald Trump won, and he will be the “first” in far more embarrassing ways.

Trump will be the first president in American history who will be sworn in after having been impeached. Twice. Trump was impeached for his plot to use the powers of the presidency to pressure Ukraine into smearing President Joe Biden. Later, Trump was impeached for his role in whipping up his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump will also be the first inaugurated U.S. president with two federal indictments under his belt. He has been indicted for attempting to interfere in the electoral process in the 2020 election following his defeat against Biden. Trump was also indicted for improperly taking classified documents and keeping them at his Mar-a-Lago estate, notably in the bathroom next to the toilet.

At a more local level, Trump’s conviction in New York on 34 felony counts will go with him into the Oval Office. Trump made history when he was convicted by a jury of his peers for trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election via hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

That presidential first will be paired with Trump’s upcoming sentencing for those convictions—the kind of thing even former President Richard Nixon did not have to contend with.

Trump will also be the first president to be found liable for sexual abuse. In 2023, a New York jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million for Trump abusing her in 1996. The jury also found that Trump had defamed Carroll in repeated public statements personally attacking her and her allegations.

There has never been a president sworn in with racketeering charges hanging over their head, but Trump has broken through that barrier. He is currently facing charges in Georgia related to his schemes to subvert the 2020 election in that state. The Georgia prosecutor who brought the case against Trump, Fani Willis, was reelected on Tuesday night.

These blots on Trump’s record were known for months and in spite of them—perhaps even because of them—Republicans chose him as their nominee and never backpedaled even as more details of his actions became public.

Now he and the party are breaking new ground ahead of his second inauguration, but it is a far cry from breaking the glass ceiling.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Donald Trump

'No Ground Activity': Republicans Fret Over Lackluster Trump Campaign

With the final two months of the 2024 election at hand, some Republicans are privately fretting that former President Donald Trump's campaign isn't doing nearly enough basic voter engagement necessary to win.

According to a Tuesday report in Semafor, several GOP operatives — including former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel – are bearish about Trump's chances in several must-win battleground states due to his campaign's relative invisibility compared to Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign. Semafor's Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett reported that McDaniel recently "grumbled to allies that the [Republican] party’s on-the-ground efforts are lacking."

One unnamed "Republican strategist in a swing state" speaking anonymously told the publication that they've seen "no ground activity at all" from the Trump campaign, but instead have only seen "election integrity" efforts. This is in reference to Republicans' strategy of deploying activists to voting precincts and litigating election results in key swing states.

“They’re really only focused on recruiting folks to volunteer to be poll watchers,” the strategist said. “I mean, they do a lot of that s—. But what’s the point of watching the vote if you haven’t turned out the vote?”

Another swing state Republican voter speaking anonymously said they were concerned about the field strategy they were seeing from the Trump campaign. While both campaigns rely on field offices in various major battlegrounds to deploy volunteers to knock doors, drop off campaign literature, conduct phonebanking outreach efforts and distribute lawn signs, this voter said they felt out of the loop when attempting to connect other potential voters to the campaign.

"I’m as plugged in as they get — and yet I don’t even know who my friends and family back home can contact for a yard sign or to knock doors in their precinct," the Republican voter said.

In the 2024 cycle, the Trump campaign's ground game has been somewhat outsourced to far-right activist Charlie Kirk's group, Turning Point USA (TPUSA). The Arizona-based group has identified 300,000+ potential voters apiece in both Arizona and Wisconsin that it feels could help win those states, another 40,000 in Michigan, and roughly 30,000 more in Nevada. The group hoped to raise $108 million to engage with those voters, but it has so far not reached that amount.

A decision earlier this year by the Federal Election Commission allowed for more communication between campaigns' official employees and members of outside groups. One operative said that's helped the former president shore up his ground game in certain key states.

“The FEC ruling allowing party committees to more closely work with outside groups on ground game has been a huge benefit when it comes to targeting low propensity and swing voters,” National Republican Senatorial Committee political director Tim Edson said. “We also expect the Trump campaign to bring out a number of low propensity voters that pollsters often miss, as he has done in the past.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Fox Anchor Faulkner Spins For Trump After His Disastrous NABJ Panel

Fox Anchor Faulkner Spins For Trump After His Disastrous NABJ Panel

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner co-moderated a panel interviewing former President Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. The major headline coming out of the panel was Trump’s claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, his likely opponent in the 2024 election, “was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person.”

Faulkner went on Fox News following the panel to discuss the event, immediately going into spin mode for Trump.

Asked about her “take on what happened,” Faulkner’s first takeaway was: “What I loved about what you couldn’t see today was how much of that audience was enjoying the moment of hearing from a candidate that they might not always agree with.”

Harris was then asked to respond to two claims Trump made during the speech: that he was “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln” and “his questions about whether or not Kamala Harris is Indian or Black.”

Conveniently, Harris didn’t respond to either.

Harris wasn’t the only Fox anchor to try to help spin Trump’s performance, but she was the only one to do so after helping moderate the event in question.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters .

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