The vibes were off

And, moving forward, the Dems need to change their vibe

“Elections come down to vibes.”

— Gen-Z leftist, David Hogg

This will be hard for Democrats to hear

I had never voted for Donald Trump until yesterday. I remember the visceral sense of displeasure I felt back in 2022 when Trump announced his reelection campaign. Despite the moral qualms—qualms I know many others felt—a part of me sensed even then that I’d wind up voting for him in 2024. Not out of blind allegiance, but as a reluctant step in a frustrating political landscape that seems increasingly out of touch with reality.

In fact, I’m part of a growing group of Americans who didn’t vote in 2020 but turned out in 2024—a demographic that broke for Trump by an 8% margin, or 53/45%. For me, and for many of us, the decision came down to how each candidate showed up (or didn’t).

Kamala had every chance to court my vote—it was hers for the taking. But she shied away from long-form, unscripted conversations that might have shown us her real self. Podcasts, for instance—an ideal platform to connect, let her guard down, let us get to know her beyond the PR packaging. Instead, the Kamala Harris we got to see was akin to a ChatGPT-written essay: smooth to the point of suspicion, overly polished, and entirely risk-averse. And not unlike ChatGPT, her answers to some question vary based on the identity of the person asking the question.

As Kamala zigged, Trump zagged. He went on podcast after podcast, showing up raw, unapologetically himself. I, along with 72 million others (and counting), resonated with his humanity—not because he was flawless, not because of his questionable choice of words, but because he was authentic. I identified with his impulsiveness, his stream-of-consciousness weaving, his inclination to say out-of-pocket things that he may or may not mean, and his doggedness to forge on despite the mounting adversity.

What the left has utterly failed to grasp is that Trump’s impurities are a bug, not a feature. And that we (again, 71 million and counting) voted for Trump despite his character flaws, not because of them.

When you’re a Trump voter, it doesn’t take long to be feverishly hit with all the -ists and -isms—racist, sexist, misogynist, fascist, take your pick. But the knee-jerk labeling and constant moral judgments do more than alienate. They galvanize, driving sentiment underground where it simmers, which is one reason why polling can (and did) miss the mark on the Trump vote—the stronger the frustration and stigma, the more his supporters go silent publicly, while the momentum quietly builds.

There’s a certain defiance that comes with voting for Trump out of frustration at being gaslit, put into a box, labeled as something you’re not, told over and over what you believe by people who never even bothered to ask what you believe. Like a dog mimicking its owner, when Trump speaks unfiltered, his supporters feel that same urge to make damn sure they’re heard—this time, via the ballot box.

If you held the preconceived notions peddled to you by the media about who Trump voters are, his victory probably comes as a shock. It shouldn’t. Many assume Trump supporters are inherently flawed or even dangerous individuals, that their character is somehow malevolent just because they’re outspoken. That’s a misjudgment. Trump voters are everyday Americans with beliefs that, if given a fair hearing, aren’t particularly radical or unreasonable. They’ve been pigeonholed into a caricature—the “bad guy” role—which oversimplifies who they are and why they voted the way they did.

If the left would refrain from huffing Twitter fumes they may realize that Trump voters aren’t some distant “other”—they’re friends, neighbors, cousins, and spouses. They’re of the same ilk, but have been written off as a monolithic “enemy” rather than understood as individuals with legitimate concerns.

How was this lesson not learned after 2016? Seriously, how?

The Democrat Party is broken

The Democrat Party, once known for challenging the establishment, has devolved into a party of go-along, get-along groupthink. They’ve drifted from their roots, now championing causes they once opposed: pro-war, pro-censorship, pro-lawfare, pro-establishment—pro-everything they used to stand against.

Meanwhile, they assumed they could gaslight the American public into believing Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack” one day, only to pivot the next, preparing to anoint a new candidate who’s never won a single primary vote. The party can’t seem to resist a hoax; it’s as if they’ve been in a decade-long trance since Trump stepped onto the political stage, rallying around a cottage industry of paranoia (some would call it TDS).

The legacy media outlets enable it. I tuned into MSNBC last night and found the panel talking, in essence, about how perfect the Harris campaign was. They’re deluded. 

And the Democrats have become bad strategists, running campaigns on a flimsy platform of moral superiority, woke-ist orthodoxy. Maybe they were too wrapped up in lawfare to understand the optics. 

I mean for fuck’s sake, the *Girl Boss* “I’m speaking,” campaign sent a man out to speak for Kamala on election night when she was expected to address her supporters. And where the hell was Hillary this whole time to support her cause?

They had every chance to tone down the rhetoric when attempts were made on Trump’s life—to level with Americans and strike a tone of being the grown up in the room. Instead they toned up the rhetoric because Trump puts them in a trance and that’s all they know how to do. Again, bad strategy. Emotionally driven strategy, even.

They’ve lost all sense of compromise, turning their policy positions into moral absolutes. Moral absolutes mean that, for example, there would have been no compromise on abortion, and that the Harris administration would have forced catholic hospitals to perform abortions. For those who don’t understand religion (of which there are many on the left), that’s untenable. Perhaps she could have courted the Catholic vote had she attended the Al Davis Dinner—she was absent yet again.

The Democrats have seemingly convinced themselves that strategies of old still work. They don’t, 2020 was the exception—a time when everyone was emotionally charged and willing to vote on those emotions. Politics are a game of compromise, and the Democrats ran on a platform of zero compromise.

Perhaps above all else, the American people are exhausted with the gaslighting. I know I am.

But don’t expect change. Oh, no. Give it 48 hours (probably less) and the narrative will shift from Trump is bad to the country is bad. “Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign but lost to a country of bigots,” they’ll say. Or they’ll say the public is virtuous and good, but the poor little plebes got hoodwinked by the misinformation boogeyman.

Wrong. No, she didn’t lose because she’s a woman, she didn’t lose because she’s black or Indian or both (?); she didn’t lose because of Joe Biden or because of Donald Trump—she didn’t even lose because her policy proposals unpromising.

She lost because she was an inauthentic, wishy-washy, uncompelling candidate, and anointing her atop the ticket without consulting a single voter was a colossal miscalculation by the Democrats.

The 2024 election outcome—a red wave, through and through—was a referendum, a wholesale rejection of feigned moral superiority, of wokeism orthodoxy. A vindication of common sense, and the Democratic Party’s lack of it. And if this was a vibes election, Kamala Harris (along with the Democrats) is a bad vibe.