The Case of the Missing Voters

It’s the turnout, stupid.

Donald Trump has won an astonishing second term after a gap in Presidency, only the second President in American history to do so. He not only won the Electoral College, but also the popular vote, which makes his achievement even more astonishing.

The people have spoken. Maybe we need new people?

Seriously, I think it’ll be best for everyone to take a break, a couple of deep breaths, and think for a bit before we start opining on why this happened. Having said that, let’s recap what actually happened.

Here’s what happened: We elected Barack Obama twice in 2008 and 2012. Obama dominated and scarred the Republicans so much that they had no choice to burn the party down and hand it over to Trump. Democrats, on the other hand, assumed that they had a dynasty in the making. So much so that they decided to hand pick a candidate in 2016 instead of letting the nomination process work. No one who could have presented a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton was allowed to run. If we could get a Black man elected and gay marriage passed, we certainly could get a woman into the White House, right? We were giddy with success. Those are precisely the times when the best of us makes rookie mistakes. Hillary was never seriously battle tested. Then came along Bernie, an angry but cute old Jewish grandpa, who didn’t have a prayer in hell of winning the Presidential race. Or so they thought. To everyone’s surprise, Bernie won a few states in the primaries. No one paid attention to this. We had checked the boxes and presented a façade of a competitive primary. We were in a hurry to anoint our first woman President. This didn’t end well as we all know now. It wasn’t Hillary’s fault. She was possibly the most qualified candidate for Presidency, but we did ourselves a disservice by assuming she needed help in securing the nomination.

Then came 2020. We had gone from believing that we were destined to rule forever to “I don’t know if we can ever beat Trump” in just four years. Yet again, Bernie showed up and began winning the primaries. Biden finished fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire. All of us panicked. Once again, we elbowed Bernie out of the way and anointed Biden. Luckily, it worked because no one got to see or hear Biden in a Covid year. So, we figured that we had gotten away with it. Trump was put away, and we kept learning the wrong lessons. The cockiness returned.

So much so that Biden, who should have never become President in the first place, began to hallucinate about a second term. Incredibly, the party just went along with it as though it was perfectly okay to have an 82 year old running the country. Biden, who was not exactly a bright bulb even in his youth, began to dim alarmingly. Inflation was raging and the man was taking frequent naps. His job approval dropped to below 30%. 70% of the country did not want either Trump or Biden. Finally, when things became untenable, we forced him out and appointed his Veep in his place. Given the late switcheroo, there was no time to find out who else could have been better.

When Kamala Harris was anointed, Biden trailed Trump by 5-7 points nationally, and 7-9 points in swing states. She stepped into a pile of horse manure, and she had about 100 days to clean it up. To her credit and everyone’s surprise, she pulled up in the polls to draw even with Trump. Till the Election Day, no one had really any idea who was going to win. The fact she drew even with Trump is by itself an extraordinary achievement.

There was more hope than reason on either side. No one really knew what was going on. Yesterday, we found out that our hopes were misplaced. Trump, yet again, is pleasantly surprised to find himself on the winning side. He spent the last three months complaining about how the whole thing was rigged against him. He spent the last four years denying he lost in 2020. Today, he is a believer. Tomorrow, he might decide that he doesn’t care for such uncertainty anymore and do away with elections altogether. Or he may not. Who knows what goes on in that decrepit brain.

It's easy to draw the wrong lessons from all of this. There will be plenty of analysis and theories in the weeks to come.

One thing is clear. We have got to stop tampering with the primaries. We have got to stop panicking. We must start playing the long game. We must stop blackmailing people by saying “If you don’t vote for me, you’ll get him.” When you blackmail people, it is a matter of time before they call your bluff.

In this election cycle, the most telling statistic, in my opinion, is the turnout. Overall, fewer Americans voted compared to 2020. Even fewer Democrats voted this time. My guess is we are all tired of the Democrats and Trump taking turns to drive our fear levels up. Many people decided to sit this one out.

Kamala Harris, to her credit, ran a positive campaign. She evoked joy and unity as her themes. When you raise the specter of a fascist while speaking about joy, it gets confusing. Am I supposed to be alarmed or am I supposed to be joyful? When you are the woke party that cancels people for one wrong glance, it is hard to sell unity and inclusivity. In hindsight, this was an unwinnable election for any Democrat, let alone Harris. Joe Biden had already made it unwinnable a year ago. The Democrat voter had had enough. Millions did not even show up to vote. And yeah, there was plenty of racism too.

It annoys the hell out of me that we have wasted two well qualified women candidates by acting as though they needed help in winning instead of letting them sink or swim. The road to hell is paved with misplaced chivalry.

If we stopped electing clowns like Biden, maybe the other team will stop electing clowns like Trump.

And maybe, just maybe, a woman will be able to climb that daunting hill to Presidency someday, unhindered by good intentions and false hopes.

I’m not annoyed that Trump won. It’s going to be another four years of nonsense, but I’m sure we can get through it. We’ve already done it once. Worst case, we might lose a few teeth this time because Bobby Kennedy removed all the fluoride in the water. I am annoyed that we let Joe Biden do this to us. I’m annoyed that 80-year-olds continue to be elected. Seriously, we can do way better than this.

More on everything else the next time. Have a great week!