What went wrong? So many people in Jamaica Plain—and across Boston, the state and the whole country are wondering aloud the past few weeks after Republican former president, Donald Trump won the election for president on Nov. 5.
A full 93 percent of voters in JP’s three wards—10, 11 and 19—voted for his and J.D. Vance’s opponents Democrats Kamala Harris for president and Tim Walz for vice-president, according to the Boston Globe.
Those wards, which also include parts of Mission Hill, Roxbury and Roslindale, respectively, saw a huge turnout, too, the Globe reported. Hillary Clinton got 92 percent in JP wards against Trump in 2016.
As of this writing, with most of the votes counted nationally, Trump got 50.1 percent of the vote, and Harris got 48.3—a difference of a mere 1.8 percent—not a big gap between the candidates or the American people’s choices.
Trump did not win the national popular vote in a “landslide,” despite all the drama around the outcome and the fact that he won all seven swing states. He won those by narrow margins. It was not a “commanding,” “decisive” or “overwhelming” victory for Trump, as some have called it in the festival of post-election hyperbole.
Nor was it “the biggest political victory in 129 years” as Trump was shown saying from a podium on Face the Nation on Nov. 17. Neither anchor Margaret Brennan nor anyone else corrected that major falsehood for viewers. Typical.
The presidential election 40 years ago in 1984 saw an actual landslide: Ronald Reagan got 58.8 percent of the popular vote to 40.6 for Walter Mondale, who won Minnesota and Washington D.C. only.
Pundits across the national media spectrum—not to mention friends and families across the table from one another—are offering lots of different reasons for Trump’s narrow win; many of them claim to know the real or most impactful reason for the outcome.
Commentators are looking at and citing what they don’t bother to say are somewhat unreliable exit polls to state dramatically that certain voting groups, conditions or issues were clearly the reason and suggesting we should pay more attention to them.
Here are just 20 of the many suggested reasons Harris lost that I’ve heard or read and noted: low turnout; young men voting for Trump; the economy; the “zeitgeist,” women not caring about reproductive rights as much as expected; women caring more about ballot questions than candidates; Trump acting powerful; Harris messing up on some issues; Harris is a woman, she’s black, mixed ancestry; inflation; men; family income differences; Trump made pledges; elitists; the working class; people voting in “self-interest;” the U.S. has “turned right;” the press prefers Republicans; the Republicans and Trump directed most of their talk to only two issues, economy and immigration, for years; white women “swooning” over Trump; Democrats’ “failure to listen” to people with these issues for almost four years; etc., etc.
OK, there’s a difference of 1.8 percent in the final voting results. The math says that, theoretically, even if only the above 20 factors influenced the outcome, each one affected about .09 (9 hundredths) percent of voters—not very significant at all, even if some issues had more impact and others less so.
Imagine speaking to a room full of high school students 20 years ago. Describe this future presidential election this way based mostly on basic numbers and qualities of the campaigns:
One party nominee, a former Republican president, basically campaigns for the nearly four years he’s not in office. He holds 901 rallies around the country and emails everyone on his supporters list at least once a day. He posts his thoughts and opinions to social media almost every day at least once. He’s a convicted felon. He does lots of media interviews and lectures around the country quoted on TV.
The Democratic nominee is the woman vice president, when a woman has never been elected president before. She steps in as the candidate for an ailing incumbent president only about 100 days before the election. She does a very good, energetic job of campaigning, wins the single debate with her opponent, raises lots of money, and organizes lots of volunteers. People often say they don’t know her very weel.
Polls show the two to be close, within the margin of error, right before the vote.
Who will win? I think we know what the students’ prediction would be.
I had an epiphany about quantities of time and communication in campaigns several days after the election. President Biden was shown on TV greeting reporters in the media briefing room in the White House. He said it was the first or second time (confirmed as the first time the next day) he had been in that room during his entire administration.
I yelled, “What?!” at Biden’s face on my Life’s Good TV. I distinctly remembered seeing Clinton and Obama and Trump in there lots of times.
How could a president ignore (or be allowed by staff or the Democratic Party or the vice president to ignore) speaking to the press in the building every day. That’s where presidents go to announce or explain things, including successes in policy, even policy and legislation proposals. They take questions there, too, of course.
How was the rest of his public outreach, I wondered. Suddenly I realized I had taken it for granted Biden and the Democrats were communicating with the press and public a lot. I was wrong.
The online magazine Axios answered my questions in a July 2024 article I found. Biden, the ex-officio leader of the Democratic Party: “has engaged in fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of the last seven presidents at this point in their terms, according to an analysis from presidential scholar Martha Joynt Kumar,” it said.
Clinton and Obama “Addressed the Nation” for an hour every Saturday morning for dozens of weeks at a time, Obama for 44 continuous weeks at one point. Weekends tend to be slow news days, and media picked up topics they introduced and covered them, getting lots of information out to the public with their names attached.
Biden was busy crafting policy and managing government well, no doubt. But in this information age, political leaders and parties have to communicate constantly with the public in a variety of ways if they want to win elections. They can’t rely on commercial media to do all the communication they need. And politicians have to do it year-round, election season or not.
A phone-bank volunteer who made lots of calls for Harris before the election said he thought she would lose partly because a lot of people said they felt like they didn’t know Harris and Democrats as well as Trump and the Republicans. Hm. Reminds me of the adage that begins, “The devil you know…”
“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man,” First President of the United States George Washington once said.
Well, that’s old-school, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be. Character needs to be brought out of hiding as an important aspect of determining desirable qualities in a president or any other office holder. It needs to be talked about seriously and openly in the future.
What are characteristics voters value or should value in a leader? How do they rate the candidates on them? What would polls show? We can be as objective about “character” as we can issues and groups. How our country fares depends on the ethics and behavior of its elected officials, Also, issues and groups can come and go during an official’s term in office. Character is less apt to change.
Candidates’ stands on issues, along with their appeal to identity groups, get all the attention in politics these days. The importance of good leadership qualities and informative communications with the public need to be recognized if the country wants to elect a truly good, talented leader in 2028 and on. Until then, we’ll have to fight and right as best we can this kakistocracy—”government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state”—we’re stuck with for now.