checkpoint, jan 6 2025

[simrob]

Feels worth writing something today.

The prior five presidential elections have seen dramatic swings in the number of people voting for Democrats. 59 million for Kerry, 69 million for Obama, almost 66 million for both Obama's reelection and for Clinton, 81 million for Biden, and 75 million for Harris. In the same elections, 62 million people voted for Bush, 60 million for McCain, 61 million for Romney, 62 million for Trump, 74 million for Trump, 77 million for Trump. (Not quite a majority of voters, in the end. Effectively half.)

I am completely uninterested in backseat driving whether Harris should have run a different campaign. There was a strategy, it was executed. It is my opinion that the strategy was executed reasonably well. A major part of that strategy was to appeal to people like Liz Cheney and those she might convince — Republicans shocked and scandalized by the blatant corruption at home and abroad, straightforward attempts to shake down allies for political gain as exemplified by the attempted arms-for-claiming-that-biden-is-corrupt deal with Ukraine that led to the first impeachment, and unambiguous attempts to subvert bedrock parts of the institutions and traditions that make our country meaningfully a democracy as exemplified by the fake elector slates, pressure campaign on Pence, and the violence of January 6 2021 that led to the second impeachment.

To a rounding error, the scandalized republicans don't exist. The number of people that are interested in the anti-abortion, anti-trans, anti-immigrant, anti-tax, anti-welfare milieu that makes up the modern right — folks like Liz Cheney, in other words — and who care about the rule of law, about fair political play, about existing in a nation of laws — they might as well be a rounding error. They could probably fill a pretty good stadium, and they will never, ever, be able to swing an election. Harris and her campaign did an absolutely stellar job of trying to reach those people. The choice laid out was between belief in the rule of law and the preservation of our system of government on one hand, and vengeance against immigrants and, I guess, the price of eggs? The rule of law argument convinced, effectively, nobody. Individuals, sure. But for all it mattered for the election: no one. That's my one clear takeaway from the peaceful transfer of power that happened today. I don't know what to do, I have no positive suggestions, but I will move forward under the well-tested assumption that nobody on the right is persuadable by an argument that having rules that generally apply to everyone is good, and that folks ought not to be above the law.