Legends of the Fall of 2024
One of the best movies ever — I mean ever — is “Legends of the Fall” from 1994. Happy 30th to the legend itself. In a magnificently heartbreaking scene, Alfred tries to process unthinkable grief next to his archrival brother.
I followed all the rules… man’s and God’s. And you — you followed none of them.
And they all loved you more.
This was Vice President Harris speaking to, yes indeed, President-elect Trump portrayed by arguably peak Brad Pitt. The Donald no doubt would support this hypothetical casting, a god playing a god.
You gotta watch the movie if you haven’t. Alfred was Kamala. Poised, disciplined, intelligent, textbook. Pragmatically willing to play the game and put in the work. Says what he thinks he’s supposed to say.
Brad says what he wants to say, off the cuff, heart on sleeve. Equal parts charismatic and impetuous, the two traits playing off each other in a captivating dance to who knows where. Raging, charming, downright mean, selfish and narcissistic, oblivious or dismissive of consequences, loving and loyal to his.
I’m an Alfred guy. My C.E.O. called himself a “radical incrementalist” the other day, and I want to sign up for that. The following is an Alfred perspective on why the Alfred candidate lost. There has been so much Monday-morning quarterbacking after the election. These are mostly other people’s ideas in my words.
Incumb-ing Ain’t Easy
Incumbents around the world got rocked this year left and right, whether their party is on the left or right. Democrats actually did relatively well, or not as badly, compared to governing parties in other developed countries. I think it’s important to keep this context in mind because the tendency is to overanalyze and overweight conjectures based on a win or loss.
Harris got 74 million votes. It’s not a crazy thought experiment to ask whether she would have won simply as a challenger without the headwinds swirling across the globe. That said…
Backdoor Ain’t Open
People in general and Americans in particular do not like being told what to do, even if all they really want is the illusion of free will. Try to spot where the will of the people prevailed in this editorialized sequence of events:
Harris ran for president in 2020 and actually didn’t even make it to 2020. She dropped out before earning a single delegate.
Biden announced he would select a woman as his vice president five months before anointing Harris. The optics would have been better to say you’re deciding on the best person for the No. 2 job in the most powerful country on earth — who turned out to be female. Harris may not have been picked because she’s a woman, but she almost certainly wouldn’t have been picked if she were a man.
Her term as vice president ranged between lackluster and bad, even in the eyes of many Democrats.
The Democratic party’s handling of Biden’s deterioration ranged between denial and absolute dishonesty with American citizens.
Biden finally was forced out of the race essentially by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This was only indirectly listening to the concerned public. He selfishly and/or delusionally clung to power, not unlike what Ruth Bader Ginsburg did in the Supreme Court (an inconvenient detail easily omitted in the culture wars that can be brought up only by comedians). Biden withdrew in the “best interest” of the country, a realization that coincided with the exact moment he lost political backing. One hundred and seven days before the election.
There was no primary to determine who should represent half of the country. The party elite declared Voilà, here’s Kamala! She’s here to defend democracy.
Nobody likes the feeling of being had, least of all Americans. At no point did common folk choose Harris. The Princeton Offense beamed with pride on this proposed backdoor cut to the presidency of the United States.
Ain’t No Net Wide Enough
The Harris campaign fought hard and conceded with grace. But they got lost in tactics, seduced by inconclusive polls and didn’t make the right bets with that huge stockpile of cash.
It was a gamble to assume abortion plus a candidate who simply wasn’t Trump would be enough to carry the winning margin. In hindsight this net was too narrow or porous in the seven states. Probably those it caught were already voting for Harris.
Maybe I missed some segmented messaging not living in a battleground state, but I was dying to see Harris apply her intellectual rigor against Trump’s deficiency in it and take the fight to him on the economy, his presumed strength. He seems to get a free pass as a businessman who loves to make a deal, as if macroeconomics were that simple.
In a survey by The Wall Street Journal, which publishes lots of conservative editorials, economists said Trump’s policies would lead to higher inflation, interest rates and deficits than Harris’s. Economists aren’t always right, but I’m still waiting on a causal explanation of how going buck wild on tariffs and tax cuts will lower inflation.
The answer is N/A because of the gaps between campaign rhetoric, what actually gets done and lag-adjusted impact. There was a lot said and shouted by everybody this frenetic autumn that will be relegated to the legend of 2024.