2024 Election: It Was Not the Economy but Something Far More Profound
by John Horvat II November 15, 2024 2024-election-it-was-not-the-economy
2024 Election: It Was Not the Economy but Something Far More ProfoundThe dust has settled on the November election, making it easier to see what happened.
Not everyone realizes just how much the elections changed the American political scene. The Democrats will try to minimize the damage with blame sessions, soul-searching and finger-pointing as they look for scapegoats. However, the loss cannot be reduced to persons or even specific policies. The election represented a historic shift.
It Was Not the Economy
The first conclusion is that the defeat was not about the economy. Americans are used to thinking about elections in pocketbook terms. The typical response to any electoral loss is the familiar refrain: It’s the economy, stupid!
However, this election is different. While the election had economic dimensions, it was not about the economy. The major issues revolved around the left’s incendiary agenda. Voters rejected wokism, the socialist economic policies that provoked inflation, mass illegal immigration, transgenderism and the disconnect of the Democratic Party with what is happening in society.
A Great Discontent: Enough Is Enough
The election was about the great discontent with the direction given to America. This discontent was aggravated by the resentment typical Americans feel about a program that is forced upon them. This was not so much a vote for President-elect Donald Trump as a protest against what his opposition represented.
An astute French politician, Hubert Védrine, called the results “a visceral, popular groundswell in the broadest sense, of people who want to put a stop to an American progressivism and globalism that has lasted for sixty years.” This socialist former Minister of Foreign Affairs remarked that the victory was a revolt. Its message was, “Progressivism: It’s enough! Enough is enough!”
The Washington Post’s Fareed Zakaria said one major cause for the defeat was “the dominance of identity politics on the left, which made Democrats push for all kinds of diversity, equity and inclusion politics that largely came out of the urban, academic bubble but alienated many mainstream voters.”
In other words, the election jeopardized the work of sixty years. People feel progressives are pushing them too far, too fast. They are sick of the arrogant attitude of so many liberals who belittle those who disagree with them.
Make It Stop, Put the Brakes on the Leftist Agenda
Minnesota novelist Ann Bauer wrote an expressive op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 7, 2024) explaining why she voted against the Democrats. Hers was not a vote for Mr. Trump but a protest against the “fanaticism of the left.”
“We voted to check the momentum of these movements—to halt a progressive disease. We voted against the idea that going further is always better. In our hearts, many of us were striking back against the hectoring superiority, the people who told us that we were too stupid to understand, or too racist, too sexist, too self-hating, too similar to Nazis.”
Her assessment expresses well the condescending attitude of so many who refuse to listen to what is happening in real-life situations. The situation is intolerable; voters in the real world want out of the woke nightmare. People are saying, “Make it stop.”
The Catholic Vote
Similarly, the way the left treated religion was also a critical factor in this election. Especially important was the Catholic vote. Many think it was essential in turning the tide against the Democrats.
The Catholic vote typically mirrors the overall American vote. However, this year, Catholics voted for the Republican candidate by an average margin of eighteen percent. Grove City College Prof. Paul Kengor credits this shift to the fact that “the nation had never seen a presidential ticket as extreme as Harris and Walz on moral-cultural issues.”
He also notes that the Democratic candidate displayed indifference and hostility toward religious themes. The Trump campaign embraced Catholic imagery and themes. The president-elect even invoked Saint Michael the Archangel on his feast day.
The election results sent a message that religion is important to Americans. Those who ignore this influence pay the consequences.
Disaster of Biblical Proportions
Thus, the election was not just a loss but a drubbing. It represents the rejection of the sixty-year program of progressivism. It revealed the impatience and resentment of many Americans who are tired of being canceled, ridiculed and ignored.
Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis measured the extent of the defeat, commenting, “This is a historic disaster of Biblical proportions. The Democratic Party, as it is, is dead. This is a historic realignment.”
A Reuters election analysis reported that the election showed Democrats that “their values—left-leaning, socially liberal—were now firmly a minority among Americans.”
Doug Sosnik, another Democratic strategist, observed, “The 2024 election marks the biggest shift to the right in our country since Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980.”
Everything but the Narrative
The voters have spoken by taking a sharp right turn. They are upset by the left’s disdainful message. They are exhausted by the speed of the left’s chaotic march toward Socialism, transgenderism and identity politics. The voters perceive a process of self-destruction that must be stopped.
All these concerns will shape the post-November political landscape. The left will need to evaluate how to respond to the reality check of the defeat.
In the aftermath of the bloodbath, the left is in crisis. It blames its leadership, message and strategies—not its ideas. Many leftists are doubling down on their failed policies and adopting even more patronizing attitudes toward the voters who they think failed to understand the real issues. The radicals feel they have waited too long for their revolution and mistakenly see a radicalized leftism as their path to victory.
Other leftists seem willing to change everything—except the socialist narrative of class struggle and oppression. It is non-negotiable for all shades of the left because this narrative defines them.
A Change of Course
Indeed, to address voter concerns, the left would have to stop being the left. It would need to abandon its rejected agenda, which it has been ramming through society for over sixty years. Any retreat toward the center risks demoralizing its radical core.
This need to advance and retreat simultaneously puts the left in a difficult position. Indeed, the National Catholic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters recommends that the Democrats change its message toward the center “to win back working-class voters,” or they “will need to start country shopping.”
Thus, something very profound happened in America during this election. It was not the economy but the shift of an exhausted population. It does not want Socialism but a return to order.
