I have officially been on news vacation and unlike the drooling morons of the pundit class, I figured I would at least wait until all the votes were, y’know, counted and whatnot before trying to tell the world What It All Meant. (Seriously. How can you say what it means before you know the final outcome? I hope they all got nice raises.)

But it’s finally time, so here, now, in all its glory, a not-so-short review of Election 2024, or what I’ve jokingly been calling “Make America Remember Again.”

1. Ignore anyone who starts with the premise that voters are right: We know that Richard Nixon was a treasonous, poisonous asshole. The voters were wrong to elect him. That’s the story of the 1968 election and anyone else telling you otherwise is trying to sell you a book or the concept of a plan to elect Ronald Reagan. 2016 was a rejection of expertise meaning anything; 2024 was a rejection of a reality that the vast majority of voters should be able to remember. Seems like an L for voters.

2. Ignore the number narrative: Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes, 51% of the vote and had a popular vote margin of +4.5% and it was considered a highly contested election in which neither party could claim much of any momentum. Donald Trump won 312 electoral votes with a vote share that’s under 50% and a popular vote margin that’s around 1.5% and somehow has won the mandate of heaven to smite his enemies. K.

3. Ignore anyone who tells you that you can fight back against a ghost: I’m not a huge horror movie guy but for my money, ghosts and spirits are a million times worse and scarier than monsters. Sure, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees have survived being shot, stabbed, burned, electrocuted, run over, frozen, buried, etc etc. etc. But you can at least hit them back and keep running! What the hell are you supposed to do about a ghost? Now, what this has to do with the 2024 election is that Donald Trump is the monster who lived long enough to have a sequel. That’s terrifying. What is considerably scarier are the unseen forces that made any number of Americans believe the most outrageous nonsense leading up to this election. It’s an article of faith among voters — not just GOP voters, but voters — that Joe Biden is a drooling vegetable on death’s door. But the 78-year-old Big Mac enthusiast who hasn’t seemed able to go up or down stairs in a decade is not? K. And how exactly did vaccine “skepticism” happen here? Is it possible the economy is doing fine but the ghosts have suggested otherwise? Hmm. Seems like a lot of bad juju, and if this were a horror movie, I’d wonder if America was built atop an ancient Indian burial ground …oh … fuuuuuuck. 

4. Ignore the media: Everyone else did in 2024! This is bad for the media but probably worse for the rest of the country because there is no longer even half-truths, there’s just vibes. Is the economy bad? I mean, maybe? Don’t love the vibes? But it’s never been good for the lower class? And if you’re asking me if it’s worse than in 2020 the answer is so obviously a hard, shouted “Nooooooooooope.” I get why “Biden old” is an unshakable article of faith — I mean, whether or not he’s more mentally fit than Trump, dude’s old — but I’m less sure why the economy vibes are so poor despite real gains even down to the what I would consider the working class. If “economy bad” is simply “Well eggs cost more today than they did in 2019” then yes, I guess economy bad. Quote-unquote. Is there — was there ever? — a plan to make eggs cheaper? Obviously, hilariously no. If eggs are more expensive in 2028 does that mean economy bad? Quote-unquote? I guess we’ll see … LOL obviously I’m kidding, that won’t be on the radar. But to make an actual point here: The Democrats desperately need to figure out some ways to get the message across without the media because they don’t matter anymore, and through the haze of online media that’s mostly either pretend apolitical so actually extremely pro-status quo (Facebook) to fash-pipeline (YouTube, the “manosphere”) to pure uncut fascism (Twitter, all other fake news sites). I don’t have a good answer, to be quite honest. But they have to stop pretending that people will hear or care what their policy actually is before they hear what a bunch of right-wing assholes say it is. Once that tone is set, even the “serious” media is usually leading with that take. Again, can’t fight a ghost.

5. Ignore the people made uncomfortable by the idea of the arc of the universe bending toward justice: Donald Trump ran a racist campaign based on being white and somehow it’s the Democrats that are doing “identity politics.” K. 

6. Ignore all the pundit narrative, and that goes for all pundits and would-be pundits: Even me, though I had the foresight to wait for votes to be counted, which seems like literally the bare minimum. But it’s remarkable how every pundit who harped on a certain small-bore issue before the election has come back around to note that they were TOTALLY right after the election. “It’s the trans!!!!!!1!!!!’ say the anti-trans pundits. “It’s the economy!!!!!11!!!” say the economists. “It’s Gaza!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!” say the very online leftists. “It’s the border!!!!11!!!!!!” say idiots. “It’s neoliberalism” says Bernie Sanders, which at least has the benefit of being somewhat true but also kinda misses the biggest point…

7. Ignore any reason unless it’s “everything”: At best, you can do the “blame pie” thing and try to assert what were the biggest reasons for what happened, because it’s never a single item on a chart. Should Harris have gone harder about Gaza? Morally yes; politically … was it a needle mover? I kinda doubt it. Should she have thrown trans people to the wolves? Morally no, politically also no. Is it the economy? Yes, but again, what is “the economy” exactly? Should she have been “tougher” on the border? What does “tougher” mean exactly when you’re asked to be tougher on a “crisis” that may not actually exist? And with that being said … 

8. Ignore those who would tell you it was pre-ordained: In retrospect it does seem like Harris never had a great chance to win given Biden’s poisonous priors. There likely never was One Weird Trick that she could have campaigned on that would have pushed her over the finish line. And yet, it will not be said nearly enough how racist and misogynist this country is, and we’ll never know exactly how much that came into play, other than they were obviously big reasons. But again, we were asking voters to literally remember the year 2020 — four years ago, not 40 — and they apparently couldn’t. K.

9. Ignore those who would tell you she ran a bad campaign: This sounds, I think, counter to everything else written here, but it really isn’t. Now that Harris lost, there are a lot of people invested in blaming her so they, like rats, can escape the sinking ship and infest the next campaign. In reality, I think she’s way down the list of people who made things go sideways. She did better in swing states than other places. That means what she was doing worked fine, it just wasn’t enough. She was running against a guy who swayed silently on stage for 35 minutes and called it a campaign stop. Perhaps campaigns don’t matter all that much; I am extremely willing to explore that studio space and would argue the Democrats should, too. But she did what she was trying to do and unlike 2016, there aren’t obvious and glaring splotches on the resume. And like 2016, it came down to a handful of states with a few hundred thousand voters who probably have political beliefs so irrational and nonsensical that they’d melt your brain if you talked to them about it.

10. Ignore those who don’t think billionaires didn’t help swing this election: This is one of the biggest reasons the election went the way it did. Elon Musk spent $44 billion just so he could get this outcome (and to shit on his child). Harris may have raised $1B but you know what that isn’t? $44 billion. Trump didn’t have to bother spending time fundraising because billionaires filled in all his gaps and also built an entire fictional universe to immerse his voters in. This isn’t quite The Business Plot but it’s the most active thumb-on-the-scale of robber barons being robber barons since … honestly, not in my lifetime. 

11. Ignore everyone who wants to meet Trump or those billionaires halfway: You have got to be fucking kidding me. Kapos as far as the eye can see. And it’s only gonna get worse. Don’t tell James Carville but billionaires fucked the Democrats right in the unmentionables this year. You know what’s a good line? The party that’s against the billionaires. Could we try that a little? Do most Americans love their boss? They do not. Do most Americans like high unemployment and lower wages? They don’t! Work with that when Trump incinerates economic gains (and he will). Do most Americans have a lot of money in the stock market? They sure as hell don’t. So stop talking that up and calling it a “good economy”! Do most Americans have big savings accounts or nest eggs to fall back on? No and no. So maybe stop pandering to the professional class? Aww boo hoo Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like you? GOOD.

12. Ignore anyone who can’t say “At least the Black Nazi didn’t win and make history.” This is still worth celebrating.

13. Ignore anyone who says more centrism is the only way forward: If centrism can’t beat a rancid asshole like Donald Trump, then it is high past time to blame centrism. I said before that I don’t think Gaza was a needle mover. But would her breaking hard with Biden over it have helped the vibes? Maybe. And would that have been the morally correct thing to do? Definitely. The same with having a full-throated defense of transgender Americans. It doesn’t move the needle on its own. But what is the point of equivocating when people who aren’t going to vote for you already say you’d stealing from veterans and storm victims to fund top surgeries? I think the left’s obsession with Cheney campaign stops is slightly embarrassing, but truly, does Cheney family support really make any Democrats outside the Beltway excited or energized? Stop looking for a middle that no longer exists, and lean into the stuff that people might care about. The GOP has been going after Social Security for 80 years now and they can’t kill it because people love it. Why the fuck not offer to expand it? The child care and elder care stuff Harris offered was very good and there should have been more of that and it should have been louder and more insistent. And it still should be, as the GOP guts everything in sight so your bosses’ bosses’ boss can get another tax cut. And speaking of that …

14. Ignore anyone who says democracy isn’t important or popular: The Democrats talked a good game on restoring democracy but they didn’t actually, you know, do it. Not to again go back to “it’s vibes all the way down” but if you want people to be aware that you’re fighting for democracy, you need to do it constantly and loudly and not be all that worried about precedents and norms and feelings. If you think January 6 was a stain on this country, then by God, act like it! It’s fine to throw all the little fish in jail for scraping their muddy boots on the Senate rug, but if you’re not going after the big fish or making a real stink about it, then Americans are ultimately gonna think it’s not a big deal. People did not like Trump getting indicted or convicted! But then they also saw everyone slow-walk the case or drop it and they correctly saw that the actual takeaway was “Eh, guess it isn’t a big deal.” Americans are dumb but they’re not stupid; they know the justice system is rigged but you have to offer them some sort of alternative to convert those (again, correct!) feelings into action.

15. Ignore anyone who thinks it’s over: The most scarring election of my life was 2004 when America cheerfully voted W back in by a margin just as thin as what Trump won by. It felt incredibly hopeless at the time. And yet, by the end of 2005, W was a toxic property, as he let New Orleans drown during Katrina, decided to spend his political capital on a plan to privatize Social Security that literally everyone hated, and Iraq continued to go worse and worse. It was legitimately less than a year post-election when America was like “Oh god not THIS fuckin’ guy.” Even with a bowing and scraping media and billionaire support, Trump is going to have a shorter leash than you think. When he decides it’s more important to go after his perceived enemies — and it’s a “when” not an “if” — and grocery prices don’t go down and houses don’t get cheaper and interest rates don’t fall, you know, lots of voters aren’t gonna be thrilled. It doesn’t mean he, like W before him, can’t do all sorts of damage to the system. It’s already bad and will only get worse and the cleanup is gonna be elephant-habitat-at-the-zoo bad. But I lived through 2006 and 2018 and people getting extremely sick of a second-term president’s shit is a thing that can happen really fast.

16. Lastly, ignore anyone who isn’t saying “Retire, bitch”: You can make an extremely convincing argument that in the end, the Democrats lost this election because Joe Biden is 81 years old. Which tells me it’s time for every last septuagenarian and up with a death-grip on the levers of power to vacate the premises. Pelosi, Schumer, et. al. — time to go. Sorry, not sorry. And should the opportunity arise to win back the presidency in 2028, every Supreme Court judge over 60 should retire immediately and be replaced with some go-getting 30-somethings. If that sounds ageist, it is, but guess what? The American people are sending you a message and maybe it’s time to listen.