Thursday, November 7, 2024

The Morning: The Democrats’ mirage

Plus, Benjamin Netanyahu, smog in Pakistan and cheese storage.
The Morning

November 7, 2024

Good morning. We're covering the day after the election — as well as Benjamin Netanyahu, smog in Pakistan and cheese storage.

A line of voters stretching from inside to outside a building.
Voting in Las Vegas. Bridget Bennett for The New York Times

Trump's majority

For much of the past year, Democrats comforted themselves with recent election results. Yes, the 2024 polls looked tight, but when it really mattered — when people went to the polls to vote — Democrats won again and again. In 2022, they kept Senate control and nearly won the House, defying the usual midterm curse for the president's party.

This pattern led many Democrats to hope that Donald Trump and his MAGA allies were so extreme that they had created an electoral majority in opposition to them. That hope helped explain why President Biden based his initial campaign message around Trump's threat to democracy and why Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist late in her campaign. It also explained why she and her advisers ran such a cautious campaign, one that didn't break with Biden in major ways or offer a clear rationale for a Harris presidency.

But the Democratic belief in an anti-Trump majority always had a flaw.

In midterm and special elections — the elections that gave Democrats confidence — voter turnout is much lower than in a presidential election. People who vote in off-year elections are more politically engaged. They tend to be older, more educated and more affluent, and feel more trust in the country's institutions.

The presidential electorate, like the overall population, includes more people who feel alienated and cynical. They were less persuaded by Harris's message that Trump was a radical who would upend the country's establishment. They may appreciate Trump's radicalism.

A chart showing red arrows for each state. The length of the arrow corresponds with the number of points each state shifted Republican in the 2024 presidential election compared with the 2020 presidential election.
As of 4 a.m. Eastern. | By The New York Times

Polls repeatedly showed that the Democrats' emphasis on democracy wasn't persuading swing voters. (In post-election interviews, voters said they worried about paying the rent, not about an endangered country.) Many voters also weren't deterred by the Republicans' unpopular stance on abortion, another subject that often fails to move votes in a general election.

Most Americans still don't have a favorable view of Trump, which helps explain why this election was "no landslide," as my colleague Nate Cohn put it. But there was never an enduring anti-Trump majority among the presidential electorate. After all, he nearly won re-election four years ago, despite the chaos of the Covid pandemic.

The Democrats' electoral success since then — all of it in lower-turnout elections — distracted the party from developing a coherent message aimed at the swing voters of 2024. This year's election was never going to be easy for Democrats, given the anti-incumbent energy in much of the world. But the party made it harder by putting too optimistic a spin on the election results of the past few years.

As Trump prepares to govern again, Democrats are left to figure out how they can appeal, as they once did, to frustrated voters who don't want to hear promises of stability and paeans to the political establishment. Those frustrated Americans helped make up the electoral majority this week.

How Trump won

Where Trump won

  • Florida: Trump won Miami-Dade County, which has many Latino voters. It is the first time a Republican presidential candidate has done so since 1988.
  • Texas: Support for Trump in the border counties of South Texas helped him win the state by 14 percentage points, based on the latest count. He won by only six points in 2020. Starr County went to a Republican for the first time since 1896.
  • New York: The city has moved right each time Trump has run — by 26 percentage points overall since 2016. The shift was pronounced in parts of the Bronx, Queens and southern Brooklyn.
  • Michigan: In Dearborn, Mich., a majority-Arab American city, frustration with the war in Gaza helped Trump win with 42 percent of the vote. Harris received 36 percent, while Jill Stein of the Green Party received 18 percent.

The day after

Kamala Harris waves to the crowd while standing near a lectern.
Kamala Harris Erin Schaff/The New York Times
  • "While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign," Harris said in a speech at Howard University, her alma mater. "Sometimes the fight takes a while." See her speech.
  • Harris called Trump to concede the race and congratulate him. Biden spoke with both candidates and invited Trump to meet him at the White House.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders congratulated Trump, as did Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and other U.S. business executives.
  • Stocks rose, and both the dollar and Bitcoin strengthened. Expectations of an increase in inflation also rose.

House results

Senate results

  • While Republicans will control the Senate, Democrats are still winning competitive Senate races. They won races in Michigan and Wisconsin, and they appear to be ahead in Arizona.
  • The Senate race in Nevada remains uncertain. In Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick, a Republican, leads Senator Bob Casey, the Democrat. See the full results here.

More election results

A chart showing abortion laws in different states and how they have changed or stayed the same.
*Note: In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state's Constitution. | By The New York Times

Democrats' response

Trump's next administration

THE LATEST NEWS

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, wearing a suit and standing between two pillars.
Olaf Scholz Eric Lee/The New York Times

Opinions

Democrats lost because they dismissed inflation and immigration and because they have become a party of pontification and pomposity, Bret Stephens argues.

Trump's and Harris's campaigns pitted men against women. Men won, Maureen Dowd writes.

Here's a column by David Brooks on the Democrats' failure.

MORNING READS

Edward Hopper's
Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper/Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Test your attention: Look at this painting — Edward Hopper's "Manhattan Bridge Loop" — for 10 minutes, uninterrupted.

'It' pants: For fashion enthusiasts, wearing these pants is akin to carrying a flashy designer handbag.

Wildlife: To understand how vampire bats get their energy, scientists put them on a treadmill.

Lives Lived: Geoff Capes, who won the World's Strongest Man competition twice, could pull 12-ton trucks uphill, flip cars and tear phone books in half. He died at 75.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce defended his brother, Jason, who slammed a heckler's phone onto the ground last weekend.

M.L.B.: The Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Mookie Betts will move back to the infield for next season, the team's general manager said.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Three wedges of cheese are photographed in moody lighting.
Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times

You may be storing cheese wrong. Times Cooking has compiled a guide on how to keep and serve your cheese, and when to toss it. Here's an excerpt:

Experts across the field agree that cheese paper is ideal for wrapping everything except fresh cheeses like ricotta, feta and mozzarella (which should stay in their original packaging with their brine). And yes, for cheeses cut in pieces that you buy wrapped in plastic, it's a good idea to rewrap if you'd like them to last longer.

More on culture

  • "May we have one million tissues please?" Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo became tearful while speaking with The Times about their movie adaptation of "Wicked."
  • Late-night hosts processed Trump's win. "Trump returning to the White House is a huge historic comeback for someone who literally never went away," Jimmy Fallon said.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Macaroni noodles in a cream sauce with broccoli rabe and breadcrumbs in a baking dish.
Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Bake Alfredo pasta with broccoli rabe and lemon.

Read a fantasy novel. These are our editor's picks.

Travel with this compact hair dryer.

GAMES

Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was jellybean.

And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. —David

Correction: Yesterday's newsletter misidentified the location of Trump's victory speech. It was in West Palm Beach, Fla., not at his resort, Mar-a-Lago.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.

The Morning Newsletter Logo

Editor: David Leonhardt

Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner

News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti

Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson

News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu

News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar

Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch

Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.

You received this email because you signed up for the Morning newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account.

To stop receiving The Morning, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request.

Subscribe to The Times

Connect with us on:

facebookxinstagramwhatsapp

Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices

LiveIntent LogoAdChoices Logo

The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

No comments:

Page List

Blog Archive

Search This Blog

There's Only ONE AI Company That Matters

It's not Nvidia, AMD, IBM, or any new startup. It's not even an artificial intelligence company... yet it holds the ke...