For a lot of people, I’m the political nerd they go to when politics and elections are in the news. A lot of them have been coming to me this week, asking me what I think about last Tuesday’s results.
Also, I topped a guy over the weekend. A Latino guy from Southern California, who I had a surprising number of contacts in common with, from the Ivy League/business school/law school worlds. I spanked him, shoved his face into my pits, pulled his hair, and called him a filthy little slut.
He also asked me what I thought about the election, about Trump, about how Latinos voted, the whole kit and kaboodle. So, I told him.
And now, I’m going to tell you, too.
**
The way things felt the day after Election Day 2024 reminded me of the way they felt after the 2004 presidential election.
Still a kid then, I was nevertheless heavily invested in that election. I was a John Kerry volunteer from the very start, around 2002 or so. I worked on his finance and advance teams, campaigned in New Hampshire for the primary, worked at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston—where Obama gave his famous speech—and then traveled cross-country with the campaign, hitting all the northern battleground states.
On Election Day 2004, I was in the Kerry motorcade, sharing a car with The Boston Globe’s Patrick Healy and some Kerry staffers. Like me, Healy (who now covers politics for The New York Times) is a gay BC High grad, but we didn’t bond over that on that day. Instead, Healy, like the many other reporters in our retinue, shared with us the incredibly good news the exit polls had for Kerry and the Democrats—Kerry was going to win, big, not only in the election’s battlegrounds, but also in red states like Virginia and Colorado.
When the motorcade pulled into Otis Air Force Base, where Kerry’s plane had landed, so he could go to Beacon Hill in Boston vote, we were greeted by Kerry’s advisor, the legendary Kennedy speechwriter Bob Shrum, who had started calling the senator “Mr. President.”
This was obviously premature. The results on Election Night revealed a much more disappointing result, with most of the battlegrounds, with the exception of the blue wall states, going red. Bush had even won the popular vote—something he hadn’t done in 2000. There was a moment where everyone thought Kerry could win Ohio, and thus the Electoral College and the presidency, but obviously, this didn’t come to pass.
I sat in a minivan in front of Kerry and Theresa Heinz’s massive Louisberg Square brownstone that night, peeing into a Snapple bottle (Secret Service would not let me go inside), as “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” by Tears for Fears, played on WROR.
Ain’t it the truth, I thought, as it became clear Kerry was going to lose. He conceded the next day, on a cold but sunny morning, at Faneuil Hall.
What the fuck, America? At that point, we all knew for sure that Bush, Cheney & Co. had lied and cooked up evidence in launching the Iraq War, turned Afghanistan into a complete clusterfuck, embarrassed our country and lessened it in the eyes of our allies and foes alike, and shown the president to be a bumbling idiot, who had no idea what he was doing, a complete pawn of those around him.
Yet, Americans not only reelected him, they gave him a majority of the popular vote. Over a respected, centrist senator, who was a wartime hero. Why? Because Bush’s campaign and its allies portrayed Kerry as an rich, effete, liberal snob who lied about his military service, changed positions like the wind powering his windsurfing board, and betrayed his fellow soldiers in Vietnam.
The Bush campaign actually turned Kerry’s greatest strength into his biggest weakness. It didn’t matter that what they were saying wasn’t true, or was taken out of context—people didn’t know Kerry well enough, even after a year and a half of campaigning, to dismiss the dire and negative things they heard about him.
And Bush used gay marriage referendums, and the fear that the homosexuals were going to ruin America, marriage, and the patriarchy, to drive up conservative turnout, bringing more Bush-friendly voters to the polls. Americans, like most people, can be afraid of the unfamiliar—whether it be a new presidential candidate, a same-sex couple, or a big policy change. So, in times of crisis, they vote against it.
Perfectly, for Bush, America was in crisis—two wars that he started! Is that vertical integration? No wartime president had ever lost before. Bush was definitely a wartime president. Remember that aircraft carrier landing? And unfortunately for America, Kerry did not break that streak. The wartime president was returned to office, once again.
And the second Bush term was an unmitigated disaster, featuring Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession, the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The economy tanked. New Orleans sank. We were trillions in debt.
But there was a silver lining to all this. America hadn’t experienced a Republican realignment. Bush left office massively unpopular. Major buyer’s remorse set in, and America elected a Democratic Congress in 2006, and made Obama president, with a trifecta and a Senate supermajority, in 2008. He won red Colorado and Virginia, which are now reliably blue states.
Only four years after a majorly disappointing loss, we were in a whole new, more hopeful, world.
**
All that is not so unlike what happened in the election on Tuesday.
It didn’t feel like 2016 on Tuesday. 2016 was a shock. I remember hearing a guy yell FUCKKK! so loudly the moment they called the election for Trump that they could probably hear it in Connecticut.
On the other hand, it’s easy to understand what happened in 2024. And unless you were drinking fantasy juice (as I was and always do regarding the Democrats’ chances), it was probably pretty easy to see it coming, too.
A lot of the reasons Trump won in 2024 are similar to why W. won in 2004.
For starters, in a more truncated version of what happened to Kerry, America didn’t have enough time to get to know Kamala Harris properly. That is entirely Joe Biden’s fault. Because of this, voters believed she really might be the Kooky Kamala of 2020, who wanted to give every trans girl a Barbie Dreamhouse, and let undocumented immigrants sexually subjugate police officers, before firing the officers, without cause. To free up money to give welfare to shoplifters, and fentanyl to women who are choosing to de-center men in their lives.
Faced with prospect of that, Americans really did prefer Trump. Because the crisis they’re experiencing now is economic, and Trump has, through a combination of luck and lies, convinced them he is a good economic steward. People think the neo-’80s are gonna be on their way with Trump back in charge, and they honestly might be right, since the GOP is inevitably going to slash regulations and taxes, Reagan-style.
Will shoulderpads be back, too? Kamala was wearing them. Yes, I did notice, girl!
Additionally, in neither election were Democrats perceived as the right fit for the moment. In 2000, Bush’s insincere, tough-dude schtick won out over Kerry’s muddy nuance.
By 2024, Americans were tired of the Democrats, as people in other countries are also tired of their ruling parties and turning them out of office. The pandemic sucked balls, and with the combination of closed schools, mask mandates, social distancing, and quarantining, liberal scolds were at their sanctimonious worst during Covid.
What about all the people who lost their jobs, got sidetracked in their careers, developed mental health and substance abuse problems, grew to hate their spouses and families, and became convinced they could launch singing careers at 40 with welfare money because of Democratic pandemic policies? Were they not casualties of Covid, too? Were these casualties perhaps even more long-lasting and pervasive and thus, worse?
Who gives a fuck what the experts say! Data cannot be the be-all, end-all. There’s also a human side to things. Democrats used to understand this. They used to know it, instinctively.
Democrats sucked times a million during the pandemic. It was a constant struggle for me to not go rogue and say this.
But, I didn’t. And you know why? Because online progressive and woke keyboard warriors turned the internet and media into a guillotine during this era, threatening cancellation over any deviance from progressive/academic/bureaucratic orthodoxy, and taking the worthy #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements and turning them up to 11, unwilling to consider man’s imperfection, or nuance, in doling out their endless punishments.
These punishments included public shamings before the entire internet, doxing, loss of jobs and careers, and accusations accepted as truth without challenge or investigation, and a profound sense of anxiety and paranoia settled over America because of all of it. People felt afraid to say things. They worried for their reputations and jobs and livelihoods. For their families.
I’m obviously not going to defend the online right, or say that it’s somehow less bad than the online left. But, the thing is, most of the online right delights in its subversiveness, or even admits its cruelty and nihilism, while the online left deign to proclaim themselves forces of good, righteously bringing justice and equality to the world.
Which is just so fucking infuriating. So many of them are clearly fucked in the head and on power trips, and you can practically smell it on them through your screen. And Americans pick up on all this. They’re not dumb in this way. And they are fucking sick of it.
And on this score, I say good for them. I am fucking sick of it, too. The Democrats didn’t create this vibe, but they certainly don’t challenge it, either. And they definitely use the whole identity thing to their benefit whenever they can.
It’s because of all the racism, sexism, patriarchy, genders, trans talk—which Trump cooked up—that the American people are thirsting for a bad boy who says Fuck it, I’m going to be inappropriate as fuck and love it and laugh, and I’m gonna also lie through my teeth, because everyone is going to be having such a good time bobbing and swaying to the MAGA music with me, they’re not gonna care AT. ALL. We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time. Just be careful not to trip over the boxes of classified intelligence information when you go to pee.
The GOP is awful on civil rights for people that aren’t like them. The trans community deserves much better than the treatment they’ve gotten. But changing minds takes a lot of time—just think how long the gay marriage conversation lasted before a majority of Americans accepted it—and the Democrats aren’t going to get anywhere calling anyone who even slightly diverges from their orthodoxies a bad person.
In 2004, Bush fearmongered, to his benefit. In 2024, The Democrats are fearmongers, to their detriment. They have every smart and engaged American running for the Xanax every 10 minutes with their manic, apocalyptic fundraising emails. Every election can’t be the most important election of our lifetimes. Donald Trump is a malevolent idiot with a carnie convention of MAGA acolytes surrounding him, but is he really scarier or more bad than Liz and Dick Cheney?
I thought it was so cringe that Kamala was campaigning with her. I thought it was very likely to turn off many Democratic and Arab voters. And it looks like it did.
I understand the Harris campaign was attempting a “popular front” campaign, where all the parties join forces to keep the fascists out. They just successfully did this in France. It failed here, because America only has two parties. Democrats were the party in power, so they got thrown out, like the Conservatives did in the U.K.
This probably would have happened anyway, no matter the campaign Kamala ran. Did she lose votes because of racism or sexism? Definitely. But it was moreso being Biden’s heir that caused her to lose. And all the celebrities. Enough with the celebrities, Democrats. Sheesh! Marie Antoinette vibes.
Did voters like the awful things Trump was saying? Most of them, no. Some of them, maybe. But not a majority. I sincerely believe most of them vote for Trump in spite of these things, not because of them. They feel like they have a sense of when he’s serious and when he’s playing around, which maybe they do, but he also says heinous shit and then actually does it, so.
Other than saying she couldn’t think of anything she’d do different than Biden (her one big WTF?! moment for me), and not going harder to make some distinctions, and change perceptions, on inflation, immigration, and the trans issue, Kamala’s campaign was pretty good, whether she went on Joe Rogan or not. Biden robbed her of the opportunity to really show herself to voters, and Trump filled in the picture with warped versions of 2020 Kamala.
I grew to really like Kamala and her family during the election. I think she’s really beautiful—she has such a cute smile, where her eyes twinkle—and she’s had an incredibly impressive career, especially considering her background. She’s accomplished a lot, and she’s only 60. Maybe she’ll run for president again, but probably not. Democrats aren’t as fond of losers as Republicans are. And she lost pretty decisively.
No matter what, though, she’ll be fine. I say take some incredible vacations, have someone ghostwrite a book, and then take some big job where you do nothing and get a fat fucking check.
If she is going to run for president again, she needs to practice her lines more. That line about if someone breaks into my house, they’re getting shot? It sounded so insincere. People picked up on it. I think they liked Kamala, overall, but they saw through a lot of her politician bullshit, and it hurt her enough to depress Democratic turnout.
As for Tim Walz, he reminded me of every high school teacher that did not adequately prepare me for the AP exams because they were yapping (inaccurately) about random shit in class, day after day, and telling inappropriate, braggy tales about things they did in the ‘70s. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I wasn’t like, bonus points for Kamala because of this.
**
The Democrats have basically been in power for 12 of the last 16 years, and they had a pretty good run. They elected the first Black president, the first woman Speaker of the House, passed the Affordable Care Act, made gay marriage legal, ended Bush’s wars, killed Osama bin Laden, reinvested in American infrastructure and manufacturing, and took big steps to protect the country from the climate crisis.
American politics goes in cycles, and now it’s time for the Republicans to fuck things up again. They’ll spend a lot of money in the form of tax cuts and cut a lot of regulations, some of which will be stupid regulations, but most of which protect Americans at the expense of American corporations. Which Republicans don’t like, no matter what they say they believe, or who votes for them.
There are also likely to be huge disasters that are Trump-specific. Can he outdo Charlottesville or January 6th? Probably. You just know he has big things planned for season two!
The good news is, just as Bush 2004 brought us Obama 2008 and a newly ascendant Democratic Party, so too can Trump 2024 bring us something good in 2028.
The Democrats need a new Bill Clinton-type figure, to pull the whole Elvis routine, sexually harass some people, and scarf down some McDonald’s, and in turn, telegraph an Everyman appeal to America’s heartland.
And this new leader needs to have some “Sistah Souljah” moments with Democratic interest groups, like trans activists and other woke warriors. The American people need to know Democrats get them and aren’t gonna push through any more changes they know are insane or they are not ready for. I won’t list them here, but you know what they are. Take a break from the social issues and focus on jobs and workers and economic fairness.
Democrats need to stop being cucks, and they also need to bring more Latino leaders and perspectives into the party. Trump may have won more Black and Latino working-class men, but they’re not automatically going to be loyal to the Republicans after Trump. Trump’s a special case, because he’s a cult figure. No one else in the Republican Party right now has that, and I don’t think MAGA World should be optimistic about JD Vance’s 2028 chances.
In 2004, Bush won the same percentage of the Latino vote that Trump did this time. Didn’t last then; doubt it will last now.
If Democrats focus on economic issues, and pick a nominee like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, they could very well be returning to power with a trifecta in 2028. Four years is not that long.
You won’t hear me arguing that the Democrats should be politically savvy and not nominate another woman for president for a long while. I think that’s bullshit. The Democrats should nominate their best candidate, male or female, and if the voters can’t bring themselves to vote for a lady, they should get a shitty Republican in office every single time and suffer until they can stomach the idea of a woman as president.
That said, I think there’s a good chance a gay Democrat, Pete Buttigieg, gets elected before a woman of either party does. The power of dick and balls is strong.
The next four years are probably gonna be ugly, but you never know. Trump is really old. A lot of what he actually wants to do is either impossible or tremendously unpopular. Things might be muted, which isn’t quite Obama 2.0, but I can definitely live with it. MAGA Lite? Same obnoxiousness, slightly less awful results?
And maybe other good things will happen, culturally. We might fight to a truce in the culture wars, and put a stop to labeling and canceling people. We might grow so weary of Trump’s immaturity and self-interest that we think twice before electing another sociopath or old white man. We might make some money, although there’s a good chance Trump will fuck the economy to shit—in which case the silver lining would be, we’d most likely decisively reject Trumpism and MAGA as a result.
If, the day after Election Day 2004, I had known the whole story of 2008 in advance, it would have turned my frown upside down. I know there will be a new dawn in America, and it might come pretty soon. So, buckle up, but don’t get too coconuts.
We’ve been down bad before, we’ve picked some pretty bad boyfriends, but we can pick ourselves up again, too. And we will.
