1/ At long last, can we all stop pretending that Alito, Thomas, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are legitimate jurists? They are politicians who were effectively “appointed” to the Court by the Federalist Society, which has turned the Supreme Court into an unaccountable

Great idea! Let's have an actual conversation about it on a podcast or Substack Live. What do you think, @EricLevitz @mattyglesias? (cc @AJentleson)

Democrats had the misfortune of being the party currently in power. But they—and more importantly, all of us in civil society—are also on the hook for failing to make the stakes clear enough to turn out the same anti-MAGA surge voters who put Biden over the top in 2020.

Political commentators keep confusing shifts in the two parties’ electoral fortunes with changes in voters’ basic values or priorities. A collapse in support for Democrats does not mean that most Americans, especially in Blue America, are suddenly eager to live in an illiberal

Now, let’s step back and look at the context of the last 20 years or so. Americans are fed up with a system that doesn’t work for them, and constantly in the mood to throw the bums out. But with only two parties to realistically choose from, all we get is nonstop whiplash.

6. Republicans fared poorly where Trump made his greatest “gains.” Although the Blue states “swung right” by 7 points, Trump increased his share of eligible voters in those states by only 3/10 of a percentage point. (Harris’s share dropped by 5 points!)

5. Very few Biden voters switched to Trump. Only 4% of returning Biden voters cast ballots for Trump in 2024—roughly the same share of returning Trump voters for Harris, or about 5 million voters combined. In other words, vote-switching was basically a wash in terms of the final

4. External factors (inflation, “wrong track” numbers, etc.) heavily favored Trump. It’s likely that nearly any other Republican nominee without Trump’s baggage would have won a more decisive victory, as was also the case in 2016.

Now, here’s how we know that Trump/MAGA didn’t get more popular: 1. Trump’s share of eligible voters was the same as it was four years ago. 2. His victory was historically narrow, and historically low for a change election. 3. His favorability is underwater despite the usual

The demographic groups that moved most away from Dems (blue collar workers, young men, etc.) were also the least likely to have heard about a range of things Trump might do (e.g. ban abortion, ignore the Constitution, put our national security at risk).

What separated Harris voters from Trump/third-party/non voters was not an attraction to the MAGA Agenda. Rather, it was whether or not voters BELIEVED the MAGA Agenda would actually come to fruition. @anatosaurus calls this the “credulity chasm.”

In just the 20 most Democratic urban counties in Blue states, Harris trailed Biden’s vote total by 2.9 million—more than her entire popular vote loss nationwide—while Trump BARELY improved his vote total (150,000 votes out of 25.6 million registered voters).

This time, the public alarm bells about the dangers of a second Trump administration just weren’t ringing loud or wide enough to wake up those mostly-tuned-out voters. 70 percent of Harris’s losses came in the Bluest areas, where Trump/MAGA’s threats to daily life would seem the

These surge voters were the critical “anti-MAGA, but not necessarily pro-Democrat” bloc Harris needed to turn out again in order to win. They are less engaged/more pissed at the system—but don’t want to live in a fascist hellscape. When those stakes are clear, they show up.

Those missing anti-MAGA votes were pretty much the ballgame. Biden won in 2020 thanks to a surge of new and less-frequent voters who hadn’t shown up in 2016, and who voted much more Democratic than 2016 voters. https://t.co/vlb9zWcs4t

VoteCast also asked whether voters cast ballots “for” the candidate they chose or “against” the other candidate. The results show that about 15 million fewer votes were cast “against” Trump in 2024 than in 2020. That’s a lot of missing anti-MAGA votes!

First, here’s what we know about how and why Harris lost ground. Based on VoteCast data, we can estimate ~19 million people who voted for Biden four years ago stayed home. (40% of those voting in 2024 had voted for Biden in 2020, and 40% had voted for Trump. From there, it’s

A thread on how Trump “won” the popular vote. I put “won” in quotes because it wasn’t his win, but Harris’s loss. The results were not a “swing right” embracing Trump/MAGA, but a vote of no confidence in Democrats (and in our system as a whole). https://t.co/FpfYTxBClw

The best Weekend Reading charts from 2024 about the source of our national sickness – the pluto-theocratic takeover of the judicial system from the top down – and our best hope to recover our civic health – a resurgent union movement. https://t.co/EBF7ZmQeiT

This is my year-end appeal: Take seriously what Abraham Lincoln said at his first inauguration:

https://t.co/ZbEeT09sQa