It’s another timelapse drawing video! See me change my mind about the final figure’s pose! See me make a last minute decision to add in a kicker panel! See me go through dozens of possible colors which felt to me like it took forever but in the video goes by in like a second!
(Honestly, I’m still uncertain if the colors I chose – especially that brown-orange color for the characters – are right. But at some point I have to just hit publish and hope for the best. Which is not a promise that I won’t change the colors again a week from now).
It’s a shame we can’t do elections over. I mean, I’d like a do-over for the obvious reason, but also for science. Because after an election the air is thick with competing claims for why the election came out as it came out, and there’s no clear-cut, irrefutable way to test the claims and prove what the truth is.
Lacking any clear-cut truth, most people just go ahead and say that the election proves that the Democrats have to endorse whatever policy stance they prefer or they’ll never win an election again. (Here’s a cartoon I did about this tendency).
I understand the impulse. I think the Biden administration has been horrifically bad on Gaza. Now that Harris has lost, it would be very convenient for me if everyone agreed that Harris lost because of the Biden administration’s terrible policies on Gaza.
But “convenient for me” isn’t the same as “true.” (Which is a very unfortunate way to set up a universe, and as soon as I locate the management I will make a complaint).
When I started writing this cartoon, I wondered if there were actually eight different “here’s why the Democrats lost” arguments I could fill up this cartoon with. But when I sat down to list the ones I’d heard, there were way more than enough. (I’ve personally heard or read someone making every argument made in this cartoon).
Trump’s victory over Harris wasn’t large. (Although as usual, it partly depends on what measure we choose). Which means that probably there are a lot of things which, had they gone a little different, could conceivably have led to a different outcome. Put another way, a lot of explanations for the outcome can be true at the same time.
Personally, I think the explanation in panel one – that 2024 was simply a terrible year to be an incumbent party worldwide, and the US wasn’t an exception to this trend – is the most credible and probably the most important. I don’t know that it was impossible for Harris to win, but – unless the US is for some reason an exception to the world’s trend – she probably had powerful headwinds going against her campaign.
But do I know that for certain? No. It makes sense to me, but then again, I really expected Harris to win, so what do I know?
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has nine panels, plus a small “kicker” panel under the bottom of the cartoon. In each panel, a woman with black hair held in a ponytail, is being spoken to by a new character.
PANEL 1
An older man wearing a necktie is explaining as Ponytail listens.
MAN: It’s not the Democrats’ fault – incumbent parties worldwide got a shellacking this year.
PANEL 2
A long haired woman leans into the panel, shaking a fist angrily.
WOMAN: It’s because the Democrats denied how working class people are suffering from inflation!
PANEL 3
A woman with short black hair and glasses pushed on top of her head appears, holding up a graph to illustrate her point.
WOMAN: The economy was great! We lost because the GOP lied about crime and the economy and the media let them!
PANEL 4
A panicked older woman with white hair in a bun is holding Ponytail by the shoulders and shaking her.
WOMAN: Our ground game was so superior! The voting machines must have been rigged!
PANEL 5
An intense looking man comes in, holding a tablet in the air.
MAN: Ground game means nothing now! What matters is winning the online information war, and the Dems had nothing!
PANEL 6
A young man with messy black hair waves his hands in the air as he speaks angrily.
MAN: The Democrats spat in the bases’ faces by supporting genocide in Gaza! Of course the base stayed home!
PANEL 7
Lord Voldemort, the evil antagonist of the Harry Potter books, comes in glaring. Ponytail turns her back on him.
VOLDEMORT: It’s the fault of the transsssesss… It’s always trans’ fault… hisss!
PONYTAIL: Oh, #&*!@ off!
PANEL 8
Four more people come in, on every side of Ponytail, all barking theories at her. She looks around in confusion.
PERSON: Should’ve stuck with Biden
PERSON: Sexist racist voters
PERSON: The Cheneys
PERSON: Bitter young men
PERSON: Biden stayed in too long
PANEL 9
A bearded, grinning man wearing a necktie leans into the panel to talk to Ponytail. Ponytail facepalms.
MAN: And now that we know why we lost, we can make sure it doesn’t happen next time!
KICKER PANEL UNDER THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP
The bearded man from panel 9 holds out a hand to Ponytail, palm up. Ponytail glares at him.
MAN: The first step is give us more money.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is an outdated cartoonists’ term for little details that don’t matter but might amuse someone (or at least amused the cartoonist).
PANEL 1 – Ponytail has a tattoo on her arm saying “you are here.”
PANEL 3 – The back of the woman’s shirt says “My baking skills make the pope cry.”
PANEL 4 – The man appears to be Charlie Brown at age 60 or so. He’s got a tattoo of Snoopy napping on a doghouse on his arm.
The man’s tablet has small print on it which says “Scientist says that you, yes, you, are swell and smell nice. Congrats!”
PANEL 7 – The bottom of Voldemort’s wand has a screaming face on it. Some poor captured soul, or is Lord Voldemort a secret whittler?
This is why political science isn´t really a science in the true sense (and I say that as somebody who has no regrets about doing a postgraduate degree in PoliSci). You can´t do controlled experiments. Not ones that really matter, anyway.
The Democrats lost because of the comment section on Alas. Everyone knows that.
I personally think it’s because the 0.01% decided and after that there was no way the outcome was going to be any different. I’ve thought this since the Biden/Trump debate. Biden didn’t do a great job, but Trump was outright demented. There’s no way the media came away with “Biden lost” for any reason other than that they were told (directly or indirectly) to do so. Sorry if that’s too conspiracy theorist.
Joking aside it´s clear to me that the Dems lost because of misogynistic male rage. Although I realise it is impractical, and it´s not the only reform the US needs, disenfranchising male voters would be a really positive step. If only women had voted, Kamala would be President right now.
@Avvaaa: I would add racist white rage as well since if only white women voted Donnie would still have won.
If you can stand a related one, the Democrats have done a lot of signaling that they don’t care about ordinary people: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1861568.html#cutid1
I’m mystified by the number of people who didn’t vote. My tentative theories are that they’d heard so many times that “this is the most important election of out lifetime” that they stopped believing it at all. And there’s more overlap between Trump policies and Biden policies than I’d like to believe.
As for misogyny, I saw women in a focus group saying they didn’t believe a woman president would be strong enough to stand up to foreign leaders. I don’t know how much of that affected the election.
It’s an excellent cartoon.
Thank you!
There was an interesting article in the Times yesterday arguing that more turnout wouldn’t have helped Harris. The Democrats who voted were the most committed Democratic voters; the ones who didn’t turn out, were disaffected and more likely than other Democrats to vote for Trump.
@Dianne: Well yes that is there too. But if we had to eliminate only one variable, I´d say the gender one is the clearest. If only women voted, the margin for Harris would have been stronger than if only POC voted. Sadly.
This mystifies me. Have they never heard of Angela Merkel? Theresa May? Margaret Thatcher even? Whatever the problems with these leaders of G7 countries were (and there were many), being unable to stand up to foreign leaders was not one of them. Trump, OTOH, rolled right over when Putin told him too. What the hell happened in Helsinki indeed?
I’m also confused by the economic claims. Real wages are up. Inflation is down. There’s not a recession. How is this bad economic news? I look foward, in a twisted way, to seeing how the bros explain how much better the economy is once the hyperinflation hits. Well, if it does. Maybe the rich will realize how bad tariffs would be even for them and not let Trump implement them.
Also if only people in DC voted, we’d never have had a Republican president. The problem is voters that live in states. I’m only slightly kidding. If you want to know who is a better employer, look at how DC votes. Republicans are crappy at actually governing and make terrible employers.
“Have they never heard of Angela Merkel? Theresa May? Margaret Thatcher even? ”
Probably not, no.
(I´m not sure I would hold up Theresa May as a female leader to be admired, though, to be honest).
To be admired, no. Capable of standing up to world leaders better than Trump? Yes. Not that that’s exactly a high bar.
Heya, Barry! I’m so sorry if this isn’t the place for it, but I sort of vaguely remember you doing a cartoon on leftists who seem to exist only to criticize other leftists?
You know the type. the ones who are always like “speaking as a Democrat, the Democrats are too woke, and they don’t believe in free speech, and Kamala isn’t really black anyway, and I’m saying all of this as someone on your side.”
Anyway, I can’t find that cartoon – does it ring a bell? Have I hallucinated a whole ass cartoon? :-)
Hmm. Are you thinking of this cartoon?
YES! THANK YOU! It’s been driving me crazy.
Though I think I was also combining it on my head with your written argument about why it’s basically olay to call people anti-feminist if all they do is attack feminism but they’re ostensibly feminist.
Dianne:
They have not.
Grace
I think ignorance and well financed wedge issues fucked us over, again.
The Democrats lost because the most Democratic Party and progressive voters would rather lose an election than risk being called either racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
My “Make America Kittens Again” chrome extension replaced this comic with a picture of kittens! Ha!
You can’t normalize genocide & then moralize about everything else.
Gaslighting the base over Biden’s cognitive decline eroded trust.
The Cheney endorsements wasn’t the flex they thought it was.
Was truly shocked about the stipulations to do a Rogan interview. If you have something worthwhile to say to close the deal, a long form interview sounds great.
Great toon. Definitely worth sharing.
Thanks, Lance.
Annqueue, LOL!
Randy, I think it was multiple things, and that was one of them.
This makes no sense at all.
I think superdestroyer has a point.
I’ll unpack. We start with the idea that America is racist and sexist and it’s urgent to prove that we aren’t racist and sexist. So a black woman who I don’t think was awful but was also not especially impressive, was put in as vice president.
What with one thing and another, she was the only plausible choice when Biden was under a lot of pressure to step down.
I think of Donald Trump as an emergency. I need Donald Trump (or J. D. Vance) to not be president a lot more than I need a woman president.
Dianne, you left out Golda Meir.
Interesting that all the ideas presented are either “The Democrats did ‘x’ wrong” or “The voters did something wrong.” Has anyone considered an idea that what happened was that the Republicans did something right?
Clearly, they did something right, if by “right” you mean more people voted for them.
As you probably know, most polls found that the number one or two concern of undecided voters was inflation.
Ron, let me ask you something. Trump has said that he will be increasing tariffs an additional ten percent on China, and 25 percent on Mexico and Canada.
Assuming he succeeds in getting those tariffs (he claims he can do it by executive order), what do you think the likely effect on inflation will be?
New to your work; found this via memeorandum. Love it!
Reasons to not be cheerful: all of the above, plus the broader wave of GOP victories that cast a mandate-ish tint on Trump’s narrow victory. And the steady rise of right wing media misrepresenting reality, countered barely at all by the scandalously undersupported progressive messages that Dems foolishly counted on conservative-owned (i.e. nearly all) mainstream media to “correct” while guiding news consumers toward better conclusions. Notice I did not say “readers” (since who reads anymore, unfortunately). Dems need to invest in reaching potential voters where they are, not where one might wish them to be. Cartoons at least stand a better chance of arresting busy information consumers’ busy glance. When selecting an item on which to spend a curious moment, I, a voracious reader, chose the cartoon option — in large part because I had other things to attend to and thought I would obtain a brief boost from something quick and visual (alas, only to now spend time writing a TLDR something few will ever see). Hey, it’s not time wasted if it scratches that itch and maybe prompts someone who “matters” to promote good ideas more effectively. To that end, what would it take to transform these cartoons into mini-videos for those who find reading too much trouble? PS: how do I make this shareable?
I thought that 25% tariffs on Mexico were off after the phone conversation where she told him to fuck off and he followed with a public pronouncement that Mexico had committed to securing our southern border. Did I get that wrong?
It’s entirely possible I missed something. But looking at news stories from the last 24 hours, they don’t say anything about that.
Thank you. :#) And neat that I’ve had a cartoon on memeorandum, I had no idea.
Someone with the interest and the video editing skills to make that happen. I’d certainly be interested in trying it out, I’ve been regretting having no tiktok presence (assuming tiktok survives, that is).
I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking. You can share this the way you’d share any page on a website: by copying the URL for this post; then you can share it by posting the URL on social media or into emails.
This is a good reflection of the news I’ve read about their phone call about tariffs, the border, and drugs.
From that article:
There are a lot of other reports that reflect this dynamic.
That’s interesting. Trump doesn’t actually say, in that report, that he’s giving up on the Mexico tariffs – but he’s certainly creating a way out for himself, where he can not do the tariffs but claim that’s not because he’s bowing to reality but because he never wanted tariffs per se he just wanted concessions on immigration/drugs.
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I think maybe it’s like Murder On The Orient Express: every faction played a part in killing the Harris Campaign.
One argument against the incumbent point: Claudia Sheinbaum was elected President of Mexico, in spite of being the handpicked successor of an incumbent party, and being Jewish and a woman to boot
I don’t think the existence of exceptions to a clear general trend, disproves that the trend exists.
Interestingly, Mexicans seem to have been less unhappy with their economy than most populations, going into the election.
And thank you everyone who decided that Biden wasn’t pure enough for you and stayed home: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/incoming-trump-team-is-asking-white-house-national-security-council-civil-servants-about-their-loyalty
Incompetent NSC means that we will start having more terrorist attacks. Probably at least one on the 9/11 level.
I apologize for my last comment. Trump’s election is the fault of Trump voters and no one else (well, Putin, but you know what I mean). Sorry for the misaimed snark. Just not looking forward to the loyalty oath interview.
No worries, Dianne. We’re all frustrated with the current situation. (Or I am, anyway.)
Frustrated, horrified, frightened, dismayed, disgusted, appalled….