2016 All Over Again?
Louis Napoleon’s coup in 1851
For my mental health and intellectual sharpness, I have pledged not to read any polling or “horserace” news articles related to the 2024 election. Paying attention to that discourse makes me anxious and clouds my ability to see the long view, which is how I prefer to write about things here.
Looking at the upcoming presidential election I am aware of the truth that we make our own history, but not under conditions of our choosing. Marx made this point in his essay on the rise of Louis Napoleon, with his immortal quip that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. The conditions in 2024 look remarkably like 2016 to me. At the risk of being obvious, here are the specific parallels:
Electoral College Math
The electoral college’s tilt means that a Democrat needs to do more than win the popular vote. It also means that a small number of “swingy” states can determine the election’s outcome. A slight shift in Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania upends everything. In my guts, I doubt that Georgia or Arizona will stay in the blue column. The smallest things could end up changing the entire outcome.
Unpopular Democratic Nominee
I don’t read the polls, but I am generally aware of Joe Biden’s low poll numbers. I do not have the time here to discuss or interpret that. Instead, I want to focus on the echo of 2016. Hilary Clinton also had high unfavorables, setting a hard ceiling for the number of voters she could get. Trump’s unpopularity might be unprecedented for a major party nominee in both 2016 and 2024, but if he runs against another unpopular candidate it’s basically a wash. A lot of Democratic voters showed up in 2020 to get Trump out of office, but turnout in 2024 will likely be more akin to 2016. Democratic voters just do not seem motivated or inspired by Biden, and as 2016 showed us, they need to vote FOR something and not just AGAINST something.
Third-Party Candidates
Disaffected anti-Trump voters who pulled the lever for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in 2016 are a highly underrated factor in Trump’s victory. They helped siphon off votes in key states and win the electoral college. He did not have that assist in 2020, and the conservative fixers have learned their lesson. Nominally progressive candidates like Cornel West and RFK Junior will likely get the votes of people who don’t want Trump but who are also dissatisfied. At the rate things are going, the combination of electoral college math, Biden’s unpopularity, and the effect of third-party candidates makes me think a Trump victory is as likely as not.
Conservative Cohesion
Even though conservatives in Congress are tearing each other to shreds, they still will unite behind their champion. Back in 2016, some prominent conservatives came out as “never Trumpers.” They ended up having no effect or quietly acclimated themselves to him. Trump carried out a disastrous presidency, lost the 2020 election, tried to overthrow the government, and is under multiple indictments, but has maintained his support in the conservative ranks. All his internal critics can do is quit in frustration, like Mitt Romney. This also means that third party candidates will not peel away Republican voters and that no matter what happens with his many legal cases, they will not lose him votes. In fact, his narrative of being harried by the federal government will likely solidify his support.
Media Landscape and “Scandal”
January 6th was a test for this country, and we failed. After trying to overthrow the government, Trump should have been jailed. At the very least, he should have been drummed out of public life forever. That didn’t happen and is part of larger pattern. Back in 2016, the Access Hollywood tape should have lost him the election, but soon the Clinton email “scandal” changed the narrative. It worked because of two different. but intertwined media landscapes.
Conservative media has a tremendous amount of power, and shields its consumers from the worst of Trump’s behavior. These outlets stopped castigating Trump for January 6 and instead repeated his narratives of it being a mere “protest” and of supposed Deep State persecution. They also downplayed his scandals in 2016 and played up the Clinton emails.
Of course, conservative media was not alone in this dynamic. The Times infamously went whole hog on the email thing. In 2016 this was likely due to the mainstream media’s monomania about “bias.” This obsession meant they had to give the same coverage to HRC’s as they did to Trump’s, despite their clear differences in severity. After January 6th, they stopped this foolishness for a bit, but now they are back on it.
The endless coverage of Hunter Biden’s travails will do the same work as the emails coverage. It will penetrate the radar of the lowest-info voters. Those voters will reply by saying “they’re all corrupt!” and then can feel like voting for Trump is not some kind of problem because “the other side is just as bad.” They will think they came to this bright idea on their own, not via a media framing that demands a “both sides” outlook. The media landscape means that conservatives will not have their worldview challenged, and a lot of normie voters will have the waters muddied.
Voter Discontent
Trump’s rise and victory in 2016 fed on a broader, inchoate sense of discontent among the kind of normie, low-info voters who decide our presidential elections. I remember talking to a childhood friend in 2016 who said he was voting for Trump to “shake things up.” He then told me his dad had voted for Bernie in the Democratic primary, but was planning on voting for Trump in the general. This decision makes absolutely no sense from the point of view of policy or ideology but has a certain logic from an aesthetic point of view. A lot of people have a bone-deep disregard for the perceived Establishment, whoever that happens to be. After eight years of Obama, Trump gained from this feeling. It hurt him in 2020, when the many upheavals of that year made a change in a more orderly direction more attractive. Now that Biden is in office, however, this dynamic is going to hurt him.
At some other point I will get into the strange nihilism that I witness all the time from other middle-aged suburban white guys, but for now I want to acknowledge that it exists and is real. It’s also a very male thing, borne out by Trump getting more support from Black and Hispanic men in 2020 than in 2016.
It’s not all nihilism, though. Inflation has remained stubborn. While wages have risen for many low-wage occupations, people who hold them vote at lower rates than other Americans. Who votes in high numbers? People who complain about service at McDonald’s and react by seeing their employees ask for higher wages by saying “nobody wants to work.”
The discontent back in 2016 could get vague, but nowadays it’s far more concrete. Drug overdoses are even worse. Housing prices are even higher. Inflation still bites. Health insurance is more expensive and using it when you need it is a bureaucratic nightmare. The pandemic seems to have permanently enshittified public spaces in this country. Conservatives have helped make things worse through courts that block student death relief, states that don’t expand Medicaid, and withdrawing support for pandemic-era direct payments to families. I doubt the kind of voters who decide elections know this or even care. In 2016 as now Trump will have a handy set of people to blame: immigrants, “woke elites,” trans people, and city dwellers of color.
The problems that make people unhappy require complex solutions and the mobilization of resources. Our dysfunctional political system makes those solutions and mobilizations impossible. Trump has a far easier task, because he can tell people these problems can be solved if we smite the “wrong” people. That message worked in 2016, it will work better in 2024.
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Despite all of these parallels I do not think the election is a lock for Trump. It looks more like a coin flip to me. That’s still unacceptable given the stakes. To win the Democrats need to motivate their voters. In an ideal world Biden would step aside, but we all know that’s not how political power operates. Instead, Biden and Democrats need to give people something to vote FOR and to directly engage with the discontent. Back in 2016, Clinton tried to tell people it was actually all okay. We need a clear narrative about what can be done to fix things and to paint Republicans and their corporate backers as the real establishment, not public librarians. Sadly I don’t think “we need to save democracy” will work on the low-info swing voter types. Having faced the difficult road ahead, let’s get to work.