I've taken the position that a USA electorate capable of handing #Trump a 300+ electoral vote victory — in 2024, after seeing clearly enough what he is — is too deeply flawed for #KamalaHarris to have been able to turn the situation around in a few months, no matter what campaign strategy she might have used. I have NOT drawn any inference that #fascism is inevitable or that resistance is futile; only that it takes much longer to build trust and inspire the public with a positive vision that can compete successfully with fascism — especially after the Democratic Party has spent literally decades teaching the electorate that no matter who they vote for, their lives will keep getting harder and the lion's share of the nation's wealth will keep going to billionaires.

But now I'm seeing arguments from a number of quarters that a more economically progressive campaign could have won this election for #Kamala after all. This is typically linked with criticism of Kamala for having supposedly campaigned as a Republican (she did no such thing). I'd like to set out in more detail why I'm still skeptical of this perspective, and why I think this electoral result, although it does not warrant nihilism or despair, reflects so poorly on the character of the electorate — including those who didn't vote.

First of all, we should recall how surprising this result was. Although the election was widely held to be close, on the basis of state-by-state "horserace" polls, there were a number of indicators that pointed in the direction of a solid Democratic victory or even a Democratic landslide. Gallup reported record-breaking Democratic voter enthusiasm numbers, surpassing even those of the 2008 Obama campaign. Harris 2024 also surpassed Obama 2008 not only in fundraising and spending, but also in percentage of the electorate personally contacted by the campaign. By all reports, those who expected a Harris victory included Donald Trump. In the days before the election, rather than gloating in anticipation of victory, he was planning another effort to claim that the election had been stolen from him, in the style of 2020.

But aside from statistical data, there was another reason to expect a Harris victory. The Trump of 2024 was by far the most deeply flawed candidate in the history of general elections for President in the USA, emphatically including even 2016 and 2020 Trump. He was far more cognitively impaired than Biden, and his disinhibition had put his full ugliness on display — the ugliness both of his personal character and of his fascist political orientation. Not only were most Democrats appalled, but so were many people of other political viewpoints, from progressives like myself who had voted Green in 2016 and 2020, to conservative Republicans like Liz Cheney. That was why Harris appeared together with Cheney — NOT because either of them believed (or pretended) they were close ideologically, but so Kamala could make the argument "He's so awful that even our usual ideological opponents cannot accept him." We all thought Trump was so polarizing that anyone not actively supporting him would be motivated to move heaven and earth to stop him.

But did that happen? No. Instead, Trump drew virtually the same turnout as in 2020, while Democratic turnout fell millions of votes short. Those "enthusiasm" numbers from Gallup turned out to be meaningless. What does that say about the electorate?

It says that a solid majority of the electorate are depraved enough that they can tolerate any amount of personal and political evil if they don't think it will affect them personally — and stupid enough that they can believe it won't. This applies not only to Trump's actual supporters, but to the vast majority of non-voters as well. I'm not speaking of PRINCIPLED non-voters, however misguided. I simply don't think they could have been numerous enough to affect the result. As usual, apathy will have been by far the most common motive of non-voters. And apathy with Trump on the ballot reflects frightening degrees of narcissistic egoism and parochial shortsightedness. The Biden administration, like every Democratic administration for decades, had been disappointing for the masses from a material standpoint. They thought Harris would be more of the same. And to millions, "What's in it for me?" was all that mattered. The factors that stirred others to the heroic "enthusiasm" detected by Gallup meant nothing to them.

Would promises of #MedicareForAll, student debt nullification, etc., from Kamala Harris, have changed this result? I seriously doubt it. To the Trumpezoids and the apathetic, she would have had so little credibility that her promises would have been meaningless to them. She should probably have tried it anyway — and could have done so while still accepting the support of disaffected Republicans. But more likely, at this point the apathetic will only be reached when they get to taste the bitterness of fascism for themselves.