2024 Election Postmortem

The Michael Shermer Show # 485

In this special solo episode, Michael Shermer reflects on the 2024 election.

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[DjSapsan]

No way you ok with russia taking part of Ukraine. Did you forget about Hitler taking Austria and Czechoslovakia lands? The same way putin will not stop, and giving him land for free is a straight way to WW 3

[yinYangMountain]

Dr. Shermer,

In my university-level philosophy studies I learned about what’s called The Tenth Man Method and Pre-mortem thinking. The ideas are these:

1. Get someone to argue against your position/theory. (You cover something similar in the Baloney Detection Kit.)

2. Before a/a task/event, ask yourself “What explains why this went wrong?” I.e., don’t ask what to do ‘if’ it goes wrong, assume it has already gone wrong.

From what I was seeing on the news and social media, almost nobody did this.

The main question is to ask: What explains why “I” got my predictions so wrong? If someone does not face this question and, instead, points to another source, error correction is very difficult.

yYM

[Underdog-bn]

Thank you for your insightful analysis.

[soupbonep]

But Michael, you didn't address Trump throwing the peaceful transition of power out the window.

[kipcarson]

I prefer H.L. Mencken's quote "Democracy is the theory that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it good and hard."

Seriously, the answer is to strengthen protections against government. If more people were worried about a future Trump becoming a dictator they should have weakened the executive before he even took power. The fact that they made no movement in that direction at all says a lot about their real beliefs and desires.

I probably will leave the country eventually, but for now I'm hanging on. Like democracy being the best of bad systems, so might be America...

[indricotherium]

Some nice sidesteps there, Michael e.g. wealth and income distribution; Project 2025, tax breaks for corporations. Surely the biggest reason for Harris's loss was the failure to include in the offer anything immediately tangible to make low and middle income households better off day to day. They aspire to eat and pay bills. Aspiring to buy homes and start businesses comes later to some but far from all.

[martinlugus]

I haven't seen anything so thoughtful, intelligent and calming on the internet in a long time. A new subscriber.

[petitio_principii]

People on the comments seem to be big on the "Trump is the one good Christian man protecting children from left-wing perverts" meme. Nevermind reality.

[FunnyStrange]

That was as hard to watch as it was disappointing. I’m particularly surprised by the lopsidedness of Shermer’s criticism. Contrast this with someone like Sam Harris, who is equally vociferous in denouncing ideological capture on the left and right alike. I learned mostly about Shermer’s personal political leaning and little else.

He also evinced a heaping helping of hindsight bias (his brief caveats notwithstanding). A more neutral, skeptical analysis would emphasize that we really don’t know why this election — a complex, multidimensional sui generis phenomenon — turned out exactly the way it did. The purported red shift was actually a relatively small percentage of total voters, and even they are far from monolithic. Throw in the distortion filter of the electoral college, and veridical intuitions about voter sentiment are even harder to come by.

Like every modern presidential election, this was a de facto binary choice. Many of us saw it as a referendum on democracy and the rule of law which pitted a normal, albeit flawed, candidate against a demagogic autocrat who likes to “joke” about ending the constitution. Based on participation data, it was a mere ⅓ of the enfranchised who decided for everyone that it’s ok to roll the dice on the American experiment by choosing the latter.

Democracies exist on a strong-weak continuum, with every real-world instantiation possessing both self-correcting and self-undermining features. Trump has already weakened ours by exploiting loopholes to shatter democratic norms, neuter checks and balances, and subvert the peaceful transfer of power. He will do exactly the same thing on a grander scale this time around. That’s who he is. It seems to me a category error to compare the threat of an aspiring strongman dictator with the excesses of the left.

Is the “customer” always right? Does an under-educated, fickle, short-sighted, celebrity-worshiping public really have a bead on what’s best for America? We are about to find out.

[toadvine]

Issac Asimov and Carl Sagan would not approve of their portraits in the background of this steaming pile either, gawd.

[thomasmitchell]

The problem with your application of Mill's argument is that neither party represents either of the aspirations in it. They have both abdicated their responsibility for governance to the "free" market. They are left with aquabbling over what little power and influence government can still exercise to suit their own narrow ends.

[aroemaliuged]

As long as the Centre left don’t criticize the far left we will get trump

[peznino]

Michael, I appreciate your work but I simply cannot understand how sanguine you are here. "How bad can it be?" is your refrain. Well, my answer is. Way worse than you are implying.

[flioink]

In a world based on logic Trump will not be a hard opponent to defeat.
But it isn't our world.

[wadenovin]

Please clarify how Trump was "supremely superior candidate" when his campaign resorted to flagrant lies, vicious personal attacks, and yes racist and sexist remarks. That says something about America then, and not something so nice.

[cbrichey]

I saw you with Richard Dawkins and was intrigued by your take on Kamala Harris, which I agree with. However, where I completely disagree is with your apparent support of Trump’s foreign policy. The U.S. guaranteed Ukraine’s security, and by not upholding that, we’ve damaged our trustworthiness on the world stage. Millions have suffered, and cities in Ukraine have been destroyed. Trump’s policies on China, North Korea, and Russia are also highly questionable. I expected a more balanced analysis from you. I’ve always appreciated your books and podcasts, but if you agree with Trump, I believe it would be best to state it clearly. Thanks.

[CurtOntheRadio]

RFK picked as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Sure, business as usual. Just ruffling a few feathers.

[Cotictimmy]

This episode surprised me (I shouldn't have). I'm a Shermer fan but haven't seen his podcasts for a while. I had the idea that Michael was very anti-Trump and would therefore be agonizing over the Trump victory. I'm more 'skeptical' about whether Kamala would have done herself much good by going on Rogan. She clearly been briefed or decided for herself that she didn't want to discuss her policy positions or explain the ones she'd previously taken. Who knows, I'm prepared to concede that Michael may be right - he's certainly a LOT smarter than I am. Best Wishes to you Michael.

[MrSidney]

Probably the most sober take on Kamala's loss I have listened to. And I have listened to a lot of takes.

[ttkddry]

Let's have a look at how both candidates managed their budget...