What everyone missed about Trump voters in the 2024 US presidential election
Democrats are lashing out at Trump voters, branding millions of Americans “stupid”, even as others warn they still haven’t learned the lesson of the election.
Donald Trump’s stunning election win over Kamala Harris has set off a tidal wave of recriminations and soul-searching among Democrats, as many express outrage and confusion while others warn the party has lost its way.
Mr Trump pulled off the biggest political comeback in history on Tuesday, delivering a crushing red wave defeat to the Vice President and defying pre-election polls that had predicted a nailbiting finish.
In the end, it wasn’t even close.
The 45th and soon-to-be 47th President is on track to win every single swing state and potentially also the national popular vote, the first time for a Republican since George W. Bush in 2004.
Republicans have retaken control of the Senate and may retain the House in a total clean sweep, driven in no small part by record support from traditionally Democrat-voting groups including African Americans, Hispanics and young people.
Still some Democrats reacted with fury.
“Never underestimate the power of large groups of stupid people,” Playboy’s White House correspondent Brian Karem wrote on X.
“He was the worst POTUS in history. Impeached twice. Convicted felon. Tried to stage a coup. Sold state secrets. But hey … at least he isn’t an intelligent black woman.”
Popular left-wing influencer Rex Chapman replied with a message “from a friend” who said they were “shocked, stunned depressed, disappointed, worried, terrified”.
“One of the saddest days of my life,” they wrote.
“What a sad commentary on who we are as a country and as a people. Democracy died today. The great American experiment, government of the people by the people and for the people, is over. I feel especially bad for today’s children and grandchildren. And for the freedom loving people of the world. I don’t believe the world will ever be the same.”
Another X user from Arizona, describing herself as a “filthy mouthed wife and proud mom and grandma”, expressed her disgust in a viral post with more than seven million views.
“Black men voting against a black woman. Unbelievable,” she wrote.
“Hispanics voting to round up and deport other Hispanics. Insane. White women voting to take rights away from their daughters and granddaughters. Seriously, what the actual f**k America? My god.”
She went on to slam “white men” as “garbage s**t” but said “that was expected”. “We all knew that they were MAGA,” she wrote. “It’s others joining the cult that surprised me.”
Many Democrat commentators, however, have begun to look inward.
“I voted for her. I think he’s a bad guy,” wrote entrepreneur Sean Johnson.
“But if you lose the Senate, House, electoral college AND popular vote, and you think the lesson is half the country is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and stupid … wrong lesson. And the same thing will likely happen in 2028.”
Speaking on The New York Times podcast on Wednesday, the newspaper’s national politics reporter Astead Herndon slammed Democrats as “racist” for assuming voting blocs like the black community would always remain loyal.
“Why did they believe that?” he asked.
“That evidence has been clear about the drop-off for a long time. We’ve had 2016, we’ve had 2020, we’ve actually had a lot of evidence to say that the demographic destiny undertone is one that is a faulty premise. The fact they are holding onto the Obama era is a racist assumption. I think it’s lower-case racist — I would say there was a failure of imagination that it couldn’t be true. We saw that representation did not motivate people of colour. It wasn’t enough.”
Lisa Lerer, the Times’ national political correspondent, agreed that “there is a sense of yes, we saw this drumbeat coming, that more people were identifying as Republicans, that Democrats had moved towards the more conservative position on issues like immigration”.
Chief political analyst Nate Cohn said the Democrats had “lost sight of why they were winning voters like this in the first place”.
“One reason I think worth mentioning is the economy and helping working people against the establishment and corporations,” he said.
“It was the Democrats who used to be the party that was advocating change, that was against the establishment, that could channel the emotions of a disaffected young person. Donald Trump is that candidate so they should in no way be surprised.”
On election night, CNN commentator and Republican strategist Scott Jennings, a former George W. Bush White House official, left the panel sitting in stunned silence as he outlined why he believed Mr Trump’s victory was the “revenge of the working class”.
“This is a mandate,” Mr Jennings said.
“He’s won the national popular vote for the first time for a Republican since 2004. This is a big deal. This isn’t backing into the office. This is a mandate to do what you said you were going to do – get the economy working again for regular working-class Americans, fix immigration, try to get crime under control, try to reduce the chaos in the world.”
He said the result was “the revenge of the regular-old working-class American, the anonymous American who has been crushed, insulted, condescended to”.
“They’re not garbage, they’re not Nazis,” he said.
“They’re just regular people who get up and go to work every day and are trying to make a better life for their kids. And they feel like they have been told to just shut up when they have complained about the things that are hurting them in their own lives.”
He also warned that the shock result was “something of an indictment of the political information complex”.
“We’ve been sitting around here the last couple of weeks and the story that was portrayed was not true,” he said.
“We were told Puerto Rico was going to change the election. Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley voters, women lying to their husbands. Before that it was Tim Walz and the camo hats. Night after night after night, we were told all these things and gimmicks were going to somehow Harris over the line, and we were just ignoring the fundamentals — inflation, people feeling like they were barely able to tread water at best.”
Mr Jennings said political commentators “we have to figure out how to understand, talk to and listen to the half of the country that rose up tonight and said ‘we’ve had enough’”.
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, meanwhile, said the vote was a “total ringing endorsement Republicans and Donald Trump and an indictment against the Democrats”.
“A lot of people are asking how Trump got more votes than he got last time — because people like myself, independents or moderates, the Democrats gave us no choice,” the popular media personality said in a video on X.
“That was the worst campaign, and their pure arrogance and their moral superiority have driven people away. If you say you’re voting for Trump suddenly you’re a Nazi, you’re Hitler, you’re garbage. Enough. Millions and millions and millions of people voted for Trump. You’re alienating all these middle ground people by acting like you’re better than us, smarter than us, and frankly insulting our intelligence.”
Mr Portnoy said Ms Harris ran “one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen” that was based on “fearmongering” and did not address the real issues voters cared about.
“Trump’s the threat to democracy? That was the entire Democratic campaign,” he said.
“It wasn’t about policy. Everyone knew we wanted change. We’re not happy with the borders, the Middle East, the economy, inflation. Kamala consistently said she was no different than Joe Biden, wouldn’t do anything different. Her pitch to the people was Trump is Hitler, Trump is bad, he’s a dictator. We’re not stupid.”
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