The 2024 Election: A Blameless Postmortem

Applying an SRE mindset to how the dems struck out

Photo by Yunsik Noh on Unsplash

A blameless postmortem is an approach to reflecting on an incident that occurred without pointing fingers and saying “darn you Joe Biden!” With the hope that we achieve a better understanding of what could have gone better.

I’m no political pundit but I’ve voted democrat all my adult life, and this election, more than any other I’ve participated in, I would characterize as a total strikeout.

Let’s get to the postmortem, starting with:

A Timeline

Dates are in Year-Month-Day, Days are days until the election. (Source)

• 2024–03–12 Biden and Trump effectively win the primaries (238 days)
• 2024–05–30 Trump convicted on all 34 counts in NY trial (159 days)
• 2024–06–27 Biden and Trump debate, Biden performs terribly (131 days)
• 2024–07–01 US Supreme Court Delays sentencing for Trump v. United States (127 days)
• 2024–07–13 Donald Trump is shot in the ear at a rally in PA (115 days)
• 2024–07–15 JD Vance confirmed as Republican VP nominee (113 days)
• 2024–07–21 Biden drops out, Kamala announces candidacy, emergency endorsements abound (107 days)
• 2024–08–24 Trump surrenders in Georgia, mugshot taken (73 days)
• 2024–09–10 Trump and Harris debate, Harris performs much better than Biden and Trump (56 days)
• 2024–09–26 America PAC, run by Elon Musk, takes over swing state campaigning (40 days)
• 2024–10–10 Musk increases a petition award to $1 million (26 days)
• 2024–11–05 Donald Trump pulls ahead, winning NC (Election day)
• 2024–11–06 Donald Trump wins GA and PA, winning the election (Day after Election)

There are many more events from this election, but I tried to pick the ones that stood out to me the most. I’ll also highlight some things.

What Went Well

Souce: The Economist polling aggregate

The democrats held their normal strongholds, in liberally controlled cities/states, and managed to have pretty similar support (we’ll get to where things went wrong) in their core demographics.

The Democrats pivoted, awkwardly, off of the incumbent who was polling poorly to a candidate that seemingly pulled ahead/ was neck and neck with polling. The Democrats raised an overwhelming amount of money from donors and positioned themselves as the “we’re not Trump” candidacy.

Lastly, the Democrats did their best to smooth issues of ascendancy, as Kamala’s swearing in was largely viewed as a step up from Biden’s candidacy; while it was awkward and late in the race, and dodged a true primary, it seemed a good alternative, and polls backed it up.

Ok… where to begin with —

What Went Wrong

The Democrats could not have set up a bigger loss. I think a bulleted list will help me trim it down

• By failing to let us (the voter) get to know (and select) the candidate over a longer period of time, we were handed an option that was “better than Biden”, but not one we felt beholden to
• The historical precedent for dropping out in a race (see the timeline) is abysmal; LBJ and Truman both dropped out around the 200 day mark and the candidates that followed them both lost. With a ~100 day timeline, chances were beyond hopeless
• As Biden’s VP, Kamala represented “more of the same”; for voters unsatisfied with the status quo, she was an easy pass
• The Democrats campaigned on the “she is not Trump” platform. What this strategy did was shine the spotlight more on Trump than on Kamala.
• There were upsets across every demographic, but it seems the biggest shift was with Latino men, indicating a real weakness in the democrat’s big tent strategy.
• Failure to recognize the effect of young men and their idols (e.g., Musk and Joe Rogan) on the election, as well as the effect of podcasting in general

Where We Got Lucky

• The country so far, is not fighting a “stop the steal” civil war 😮‍💨
• As of this writing, Portland (near where I live) is not rioting (though we’ll see how this goes 🤞)
• While ballot boxes were burned, no one appears to have been physically harmed over the election 🗳️🔥

Now I’m no member of the DNC, and I can’t see the future, but if I had to come up with a set of DPAs (Durable, Preventative Actions) for such a landslide defeat, it would be the following:

DPAs for Next Election

• The Democrats need to stop being so enemy centered. Being the party of “not the Republicans/Trump” is a losing strategy.
• Failing to capture working class voters, especially Latinos, means something (or many things) are not resonating with the platform. This is a party that needs to rebrand and rebuild itself.
• Take the time and put out the effort not to ask “why is America so racist/sexist/misogynist” and rather “what is so compelling about the Republican/Trump message, and so not compelling about the Democratic one?”
• Instead of simply being a big tent party, should we be a party that narrows in on the positive aspects of being a liberal? Can we shake off the mantle of identities for the mantle of principles?
• Build the next generation of good candidates, listening to what matters to the people, not what matters to the party/platform. We need to find the next transformational candidate to revitalize this party’s bid.

Postmortem Summary

We’re at another inflection point for this party. It should be a message that many, many things are wrong with the state of the Democratic party and how it decided to conduct this election. It might have gone worse with Biden, but it was still a very poor showing.

I want good public schools. I want women to be treated equal to men. And I want equality of people before the law, regardless of wealth or race.

I believe in these things, but what I know more than anything, is that believing is not enough. If you want to change the outcome of America and what it means to be American, you have to capture the vote.

You have to win.

Thanks for reading!