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For Symbolic Capital(ism), I just published a piece pulling together lots of empirical data to answer questions like: Did Trump win because of racism? Did Trump win because of sexism? Did Trump win because "elites" bought the election? Did Trump win because of third-party "spoilers"? Did Trump win because of weak turnout? Did Trump win because Harris chose the wrong running mate? As the essay details at length, the answer to all of these questions is "no." It's easy to see how people would be drawn to these questions, but none of these hypotheses do a good job of explaining what actually happened in 2024 (or the previous Trump cycles, for that matter).

9:57 AM · Nov 12, 2024

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Musa al-Gharbi

@Musa_alGharbi

Nov 12

Let's start with race: Democrats saw gains with white people this cycle. Harris did about as well with whites as Democrats typically do. She saw improvement with whites across gender lines relative to 2020: musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard- So why did she lose? Well, that would be

What about gender? This is two female nominees Trump has bested, but he lost to Joe Biden. A clear sexism story, open and shut case, right? Here, again, the voting data beg to differ: musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard- Gender polarization in the electorate was down since 2016. Harris'

In terms of age, it wasn't "the olds" that shifted towards Trump while the young people held their ground against "fascism." That's basically the opposite of what happened: musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard- The GOP has seen consistent losses with seniors, there was very little difference

Trump is a billionaire. He was backed by the world's second richest man. The real story must be that elites bought the election, right? Well... actually the elites were lined up overwhelmingly behind the Democrats. And their preferred candidate lost: musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard-

What about third party "spoilers" like

@DrJillStein

@CornelWest

? Well, for one, the whole "spoiler" narrative is really presumptuous. The reason people vote third party is because their priorities and concerns aren't being addressed by the major parties, who are not, by the

What about the VP pick? Could Shapiro have won the race where Walz failed? Unlikely. VP picks tend not to matter much outside their home state. Sometimes not even within their home state (see what happened in Minnesota this cycle). But even if Shapiro flipped Pennsylvania, Harris

What about turnout? There is a fantasy many progressives have that America is full of people who really embrace all of their policies, they just need to be persuaded to the ballot box. The reality is basically the opposite of that: musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard- In recent cycles,

If none of these popular narratives explain what happened in 2024, how would *I* explain it? First, I would urge folks to notice that many of the trends explored here didn't happen suddenly, they've been going on for a while. So I'd encourage people to get out of the mental

Taking a longer view -- looking not just at the patterns from this cycle, but the trendlines over time -- I think there are basically two important stories for understanding political and cultural trends over the past several years: musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard- 1. Growing alienation

I started reading, but the smug tone and the way you immediately caricature anyone who might disagree with you are immediately off-putting. When you start off sneering, why wouldn't the reader assume that sneering is actually the whole point of your post?

The annoyance/ frustration is because I've spent the better part of a decade writing different versions of this exact same post, but folks refuse to digest it. 2016 election (for

@ConversationUS

): musaalgharbi.com/2016/11/28/pro 2018 election (for

@spectator

1.9K

Economic Man ("Muskago Delenda Est")

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Hi! please find the unroll here: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1856395 See you soon.

Thread by @Musa_alGharbi on Thread Reader App

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Hola, the unroll you asked for: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1856395 Have a good day.

Thread by @Musa_alGharbi on Thread Reader App

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703

nero

@n3ro

This is a great read! Thanks for sharing!

177

Rebecca Shiner

@ShinerRebecca

This column is my favorite post-election analysis so far because it makes the most sense of the data thus far. Thanks for that!

259

Willie Nelson Mandela (pronouns = Z/H.I.M.)

@postmodernadab

this thread in one pic

Rozemarijn

@Rozemarijn97

23h

There was too much to vote on this election cycle. I find Trump repulsive, but we are sick of the hard left so we did not want Kamala, who only recently moved to the center. We ended up writing in Nikki Haley, just sharing to illustrate that for many of us there were no good opt.

The Coalition of Isms lost badly! Who needs data?

1. Working people were hit hard by inflation 2. The lawfare and assassination attempts against Trump made him a martyr 3. Kamala was a terrible candidate It’s not rocket science….

This is a sound analysis, thank you. A more parsimonious take would be that this "win" was a resounding loss due to Democrats' hyper-rational and profit-driven approach to campaigning & governing. The two parties have now become almost indistinguishable. I fear for our children.

is so mad that less Black women supported Harris during her genocide than supported Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton that she will be unavailable to join white women for the pussy hat march against Trump - if that’s happening.

@Oprah

could return the $1 Million she

This is the best book sales pitch I have read since Andrey Mir. Thanks for writing.

239

333ofHearts

@333ofhearts

And not listed, my TOP reason why trump won. trump’s, Republican politicians and the rights use of all right/alt-right media including social media (13) for the past decade to spew conspiracy theories & lies that was not countered

CharlesWT

@CharlesWT_TX

18h

"The thread offers a detailed analysis of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It discusses popular narratives about why Kamala Harris lost and debunks them with data and historical context. Below is a detailed summary..."

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Please provide a detailed summary of the information and conduct an analysis to extract key...

ChatGPT-4o-Latest: The thread by **Musa al-Gharbi**, titled *"Why Did Kamala Harris Lose the 2024 Election?"*, offers a detailed analysis of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It discusses various p

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