Michael Whitaker
Appearances
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Back in 2012, after then-Governor Romney lost decisively to President Obama, people on both sides of the aisle believed that Democrats had created an unbeatable coalition of working-class voters, various minority groups, and college-educated whites.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
A party autopsy suggested that to win over new voters, the Republican Party would need to double down on fiscal conservatism, but moderate its stances on social issues, especially immigration.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Oh, exactly. Donald Trump came onto the scene in 2015 and flipped that advice on its head. Trump has dominated headlines since he came down that golden escalator in 2015. He's arguably been the main character of American politics for the last decade. But at the time, almost no one in the commentary thought he had a snowball's chance in hell.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Exactly. Trump's hardline stance on immigration, brash and confrontational style, and break with traditional orthodoxy on trade and foreign policy have drawn widespread criticism from the left and the right, but also have proved incredibly popular with large parts of the American electorate.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Trump made significant gains with working class voters and tilted the Republican Party in a more populist direction, breaking the Democrats' Midwestern blue wall in the process. His ability to market himself to low propensity voters through popular podcasts, most notably his appearance on Joe Rogan, also won him a lot of support with young voters, especially young men.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
And Trump made significant gains with Black and Hispanic voters as well, who Democratic strategists have counted on as key pillars of their party. While some wrote off his victory in 2016 as a fluke, many prominent voices on the left are now saying that the Democrats need to go back to the drawing board.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Well, it does take two at the tango. And arguably, the Democrats have been redefined by Trump almost as much as the Republicans have been, if not more so. They've been fiercely opposed to Trump from the beginning and spent much of the last few election cycles attacking him as uniquely unfit to be president. In many ways, President Biden was Donald Trump's opposite.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
That was arguably his main selling point. Biden spent his entire life in government. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 when he was only 29 years old, and he served in Congress until Obama tapped him as his running mate in 2008. In 2020, Biden ran as a moderate and initially promised to be a transitional candidate. Biden came into office with a relatively high approval rating.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
His early days were pitched to the American people as a return to normal. But the economic effects of prolonged COVID lockdowns and record deficit spending quickly caught up with the new commander-in-chief and would plague him for the rest of his term.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
I have three words, inflation, inflation, inflation. The Trump administration, for context, only saw an average year-over-year inflation rate of about 1.9%. During the Biden administration, the annual rate of inflation more than doubled to an average of 5.2%, and the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has declined by nearly 20% since Biden took office.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
But the economy was only Trump's second-strongest issue at the polls. Nearly 90% of voters who said that immigration was their top concern polled the lever for him. Many of Trump's immigration policies, including the Remain in Mexico policy, were reversed by the Biden administration, and Border Patrol estimates that there have been roughly 10 million border crossings since Biden took office.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
When voters went to the polls, they favored Trump over Harris on immigration by nine points.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Yes, that was a very unusual move. President Biden was the oldest man ever elected president, and many people were concerned that he might not be fit to serve a second term. Even during his first term, there was a great deal of speculation about his cognitive abilities. Viral videos circulated on social media of the president drifting off aimlessly and wandering around.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
But whether it was his age, a weak economy, or just a desire for change, there were rumblings within the Democratic base about a desire for a different candidate well before Biden announced he was running for re-election. However, Biden faced little to no opposition during the 2024 primaries. A few minor candidates, like Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, attempted to sound the alarm.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Meanwhile, the most serious Democratic challenger, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., eventually defected from the party entirely after the DNC kept him off the ballot and refused to allow for any primary debates. He launched an independent campaign in October of 2023 and would go on to endorse Trump in August of 2024, which was itself a stunning political realignment.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
After clearing the primaries of no real opposition, support for Biden's campaign cratered in the wake of his first debate with Trump in June.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
The president appeared to be confused and tired, and concerns about his mental acuity were echoed in the mainstream press after years of largely being ignored. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appears to have led an internal coup within the Democratic Party to force Biden out, out of concern that he might lead the party to a down-ballot wipeout.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Well, that's true, and maybe Democrats would have done better if they had stuck with Biden instead of swapping him out at the last minute. Or maybe they would have done even worse. It's hard to picture that alternate timeline, but it's possible.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Initially, there appears to have been some desire for a contested convention at the DNC, which may have produced a stronger candidate, or may have deepened fissures between rival factions ahead of a contentious election. But Biden endorsed Harris shortly after dropping out, and the rest of the party quickly bent the knee. Harris was coronated at the DNC despite never winning a single primary.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
She ran to the left of Biden in 2020 and dropped out before any ballots were cast. Harris had difficulty defining herself. She couldn't embrace the unpopular incumbent president, but she couldn't repudiate him as an active member of his administration.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
She also faced criticism for her reluctance to give long-form interviews to the press and for the lack of clarification of her stances on many issues, including immigration, fracking, I could go on. She was also criticized as a DEI hire who was selected on account of her race and sex, something Biden himself affirmed, albeit in a more positive tone.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Now that the dust has settled, many Democrats have harshly criticized Harris for a failed campaign, which received $1.5 billion in donations, yet still racked up more than $20 million in debt.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Yes, abortion has become a signature issue for many Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Democrats overperformed during the 2022 midterms, especially with single women.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Polling by Pew Research suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and pro-abortion initiatives have passed in Republican strongholds like Kansas and Ohio in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision. However, only 14% of voters said abortion was their top issue, even though they broke for Harris 3-1.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
It wasn't nearly as decisive as Democrats might have hoped for. Ironically, putting pro-abortion measures on state ballots in battleground states like Arizona and Florida might have hurt Democrats. Trump ran to the center on the issue, saying abortion should be left to the states.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
By making abortion a separate issue, some voters in these key states were able to vote against restrictions on abortion while also voting for Trump.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Oh, absolutely. Four separate felony cases, multiple civil lawsuits, and an effort by several states to kick him off the ballot just to rattle off the greatest hits. But instead of acting as a decisive issue, the cases turned out to be a political Rorschach test of sorts.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Trump's opponents argued that he was guilty of the array of charges brought against him, falsifying business records, sexual assault, inciting an insurrection, and that those charges ought to have been legally and morally disqualifying. Trump supporters, on the other hand, believed that the cases against Trump were politically motivated.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
They pointed to the novel legal reasoning underlying many of the prosecutors' arguments, past anti-Trump statements made by the prosecutors and the judges, and similar actions by other politicians that went without any kind of legal penalty.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Among other things, they cited past attempts by Democrats to challenge election results, and Biden's own alleged mishandling of classified documents while he was vice president. Biden was also investigated by the feds, but his case was ultimately dropped. For Democrats, the narrative that Trump was a Hilarion threat to the Republic was a central pillar of their campaign.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
While for Republicans, Trump's legal issues are proof that the political establishment was willing to weaponize the government against their opponents. That turned Trump into something of a martyr and somehow an even more polarizing figure than he was in past cycles.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Oh, yeah, that did happen. It says something about the last year that two near-death experiences fell out of the news cycle so quickly. But President Trump was almost killed on two separate occasions. Once in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman nicked him in the ear, killed one of his supporters and hospitalized two others.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
And once in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the would-be killer was apprehended outside one of the president's golf courses. The assassination attempt did rally some prominent supporters to Trump's side, most notably Elon Musk, who became a vocal donor and fundraiser for the Trump campaign and is now set to play a prominent role in cutting the federal budget.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
Yeah, it wasn't that long ago that Elon was a donor for Democrats. Right. But that's all ancient history now. History is just old news.
Morning Wire
Election Earthquake: How Donald Trump Dominated 2024 | 12.29.24
That is an excellent question, certainly one the Democratic Party is going to be asking itself for a long time. But it's worth remembering that not too long ago, the Republicans were the ones in the political doghouse.