When psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross sought a way to understand the grief process, she famously came up with five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
In the days since the Election Disaster of 2024, what’s emerged for me is a sense of hindsight. It’s not the “what if” phase of Kubler-Ross’ bargaining phase.
It’s more the wondering if certain events helped Trump win, were surmountable obstacles to his victory or didn’t matter as much as we thought they did.
I’ll give my ideas, but they certainly aren’t sure answers. Better political minds than mine, including yours, might have different thoughts about them.
But like the other stages of grief, we’re not going to get past this until we understand what happened and when it did.
So here are some things that happened – in no particular order – between November 7, 2020 – the day Joe Biden was declared the winner of that election – and November 3, 2024. There are probably others – if you think of some, I’m eager to see them.
1. THE HARRIS-TRUMP DEBATE
Kamala Harris wiped the floor with Trump in the CBS debate on September 10.
Don’t take my word for it. Polls conducted after the debate showed 60% or more of those watching believed Harris won that debate. She just seemed in control and, well, presidential – compared to his ranting about non-existent dog eating and telling us, after nine years, he had “concepts” of a plan to fix health care.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that after the debate, Harris and her supporters were absolutely convinced she couldn’t lose. How could anyone vote for that hot orange mess?
But polls show that most voters had made up their mind about who to vote for by Labor Day. That means the debate meant very little.
2. THE BIDEN-TRUMP DEBATE
How long into that debate did you watch until the sense of horror set in?
I think Biden has been a fantastic President – one of the two or three best of the 13 in my lifetime. Engineering the world’s strongest economic recovery from COVID, supporting Ukraine’s fight for survival, and just being decent and respectful.
But when he showed up at the CNN debate on June 27, he looked like an old man. He reminded many of us of our parents who suffered from dementia – the gaping mouth that indicates a blankness. On the other side, Trump was uncharacteristically restrained, letting Biden damage himself.
When that happened, some people wondered if there was some kind of coverup. Something similar to when Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, after which his wife and doctor virtually ran the country.
Was Biden president or was the country being run by his unelected advisers? And, if Biden wasn’t in charge, why weren’t the American people told?
3. BIDEN’S WITHDRAWAL
After the debate, actor George Clooney wrote a New York Times op-ed piece saying Biden couldn’t win re-election because of the way he’s aging. It was a tough piece from a Democratic Party stalwart and it shocked the faithful.
(An aside: Democrats should thank Clooney for being honest and having the party’s best interests at heart. I have no doubt today that Biden had no chance against Trump and that another nominee was the party’s only hope. That it didn’t work out is not Clooney’s fault.)
The withdrawal process was painful for all. But as even some of the non-Trump Republicans said, it showed that the Democrats weren’t a cult of personality and doing a responsible party needed to do.
It took a month for Biden to see he couldn’t hold on. So he bowed out as gracefully – grace should be a part of his name – as he could.
Before he pulled out, there was speculation about what process Democrats would use to pick a replacement if he did. Biden eliminated that, fast – within an hour of his withdrawal statement, he endorsed his Vice President as his successor.
So here’s the question: Should Kamala Harris have become the nominee without any chance for those who voted for Biden in the primaries to have a say?
I don’t know that there was a better process in late July. But maybe voters in November questioned why it came down the way it did.
4. AFGHANISTAN
The first thing that started to cut into Biden’s approval was the way the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.
The withdrawal was mandated by an agreement Trump signed with the Taliban providing for the removal of U.S. forces by May 1, 2021. When Biden took office, he agreed to honor the deal but to keep forces in the country until the end of September.
The Taliban wasn’t having it. Like the Vietnamese nearly a half-century earlier, they launched an offensive in July to take the country once and for all. The Afghan government collapsed like a cheap suit.
The withdrawal was chaotic. A suicide bomber killed 11 Marines trying to protect the Kabul airport and 170 civilians. Many of the people who had helped Americans during 20 years in the country were left behind. So was perhaps billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer-funded military equipment.
It looked terrible. It was a black eye for the United States. Trump, who hamstrung Biden with the withdrawal agreement, joined the chorus of criticism.
The embarrassment might not have been forgotten three years later.
5. COVID
What people seemed to forget was the nightmare of the pandemic.
When more than a million people died in this country. When no one could leave their homes. When schools and businesses operated remotely. When social activities ground to a halt.
Trump mishandled – I would say criminally – COVID. Biden had to bring the country back from under its shroud. He aggressively pushed the rapidly developed vaccine (Trump likes to claim credit, but, really, did he have a choice?) and had to contend with antivax and antimasking campaigns.
COVID is still around, but it isn’t as scary as it was four years ago. It seems not to have been a factor at all in this election – and maybe that was a mistake by the Democrats not to mention how much less danger there is today.
6. HURRICANE LIES
Two very strange hurricanes beset the southeastern U.S. this fall. They didn’t approach from the usual direction, westward across the Atlantic. They moved east, through the Gulf of Mexico.
So North Carolina and Georgia got belted – not along the shore, but through the Appalachians – and in no way were they equipped for that.
That’s understandable, and maybe – with climate change worsening – Kansas and Colorado should think about hurricane prep in the future.
But the impact was worsened by the lying from Republicans. Trump said the Biden administration and FEMA weren’t helping the area recover because it supported him. The party’s greater idiots argued that Democrats contrived to direct the storm the way it went.
Whether people accepted the lies and voted against Harris, costing her some key electoral votes, is something to think about.
7. ELON MUSK
He’s richer than God, even after his Twitter/X debacle.
Elon Musk is worth billions of dollars. And, in recent years, he seems to have become a little unhinged – complaining about birth rates, about “wokeness,” estranging himself from his transgender daughter.
A perfect match for Trump.
Was the money he spent and the effort he put into promoting Trump a big factor in the election?
All I know is I won’t look at Teslas the same way again.
8. ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Speaking of nutcases, meet Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.
The son of a revered liberal icon and the nephew of two others started becoming a thing when he campaigned against vaccines. He’s a former environmental advocate also seems to have some weird encounters with animals – look up “Central Park bear dump” and “brainworm.”
Kennedy started the year running against Biden for the Democratic nomination. Then he switched to a third-party run and, when that looked like it might peter out, chose to endorse Trump – the antithesis of everything the Kennedy family has stood for politically since JFK.
By removing his name from most state ballots, he no longer stood as an alternative to Trump for people who wanted to reject both parties. So the only choice they had if they didn’t want either was not to vote – many of them may have taken that option.
And once RFK Jr. endorsed Trump, enough of his small band of voters might have put him “over the top” – an appropriate term to use regarding RFK Jr.
9. STAR POWER
Trump had Kid Rock and Dean Cain. Harris had just about everyone else of acclaim.
From the sports world: Lebron James and Steph Curry. From the screen: Juiia Roberts, Viola Davis and Harrison Ford. From music: The Boss, Queen Bey, Tay Tay and JLo.
As a result, Harris drew phenomenal crowds. Trump’s crowds diminished after hearing him speak for hours at a time.
This all translated to Harris supporters and even some neutral observers to the idea that her campaign had momentum heading to the end.
But it might be possible that the celebrity endorsements had the opposite effect. Maybe they told people that these elitists in Hollywood and New York were looking to protect the status quo – and they voted the other way.
10. THE MSG RALLY
Conventional wisdom predicted the Madison Square Garden rally nine days before the election would be the final nail in Trump’s coffin.
Especially after self-proclaimed comedian Tony Hinchcliff called Puerto Rico “an island of garbage.”
There were “jokes” about Black people, Jews and Muslims.
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said afterward that the Puerto Rico comment might turn out to be the costliest joke in history.
Nope.
11. IMMIGRATION
We are about to find out how serious people are about fixing immigration.
For years, Republicans and their allies in right-wing media have persisted in painting this menace of millions of people crossing the southern border illegally. For them, only draconian solutions exist: mass deportation and a wall.
Democrats believe such solutions are cruel – and unnecessarily insult Hispanic Americans who are already in this country.
Except that Hispanic Americans – particularly those who live close to the border, appear to have increased their support for Trump – despite the fact that he engineered the death of a bipartisan compromise bill for immigration reform. A bill that seemed like a sensible way to get this issue removed from the nation’s agenda.
Again, nope. If immigration was a key issue in this election, it favored Trump.
12. INFLATION
This seems to be the issue that might have had the most impact.
It’s strange how inflation works in politics. When prices go up faster, it scares people – especially those of us who live on a fixed income. I get that.
But what I don’t expect – but apparently others do – is that, when the inflation is controlled by the Fed raising interest rates, the prices that went up will go back to where they were.
The price of a dozen eggs was 98 cents in 2000. In 2024, it’s $3. If eggs went back down to $1.50, which was what it was when the most recent inflation wave started, they will still be 50% higher than 20 years earlier.
In other words, price rises don’t go away. For anything. New cars once cost $400. Now they cost 100 times that. And that seems to scar Americans.
Inflation was inevitable after Trump’s mishandling of COVID, which caused supply disruptions throughout the world. That Biden and Harris get blamed for it, despite a remarkable effort to tame it, is ironic – and unfortunate.
13. GAZA
There seem to be two things Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu have in common: They don’t want a two-state to resolve 76 years of conflict between Israel and Palestine – and they do want Donald Trump to be President of the United States.
The current crisis started 13 months ago when Hamas terrorists kidnapped and killed scores of Israeli civilians in a brazen attack. The Israeli military responded with almost total war, killing scores of Palestinian civilians. The Gaza Strip is a sad, bloody, destroyed mess.
Biden – and his vice president – were stuck. It’s long-standing American policy to defend Israel. But when Netanyahu overstepped the line into brutality, it was hard for the U.S. to pressure him otherwise. And neither side seemed to want any form of cease-fire.
All this magically benefitted Trump, who also doesn’t think a two-state solution is in his best interest. All this weakened Harris among conservative Jewish voters and among Arab-Americans.
Not sure it cost her the election. But it didn’t help.
14. BUTLER
When I see that 80% of American voters made up their mind about the election before Labor Day, I have to think about the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania.
That happened on July 13. The gunman’s bullet or a fragment of it grazed Trump’s ear, causing him to bleed. Secret Service agents knocked him to the ground but, when the shooting stopped, got him back up. He walked away.
Did the fact that he walked away demonstrate some sort of manliness that appealed to voters. Did the shooting garner sympathy for Trump?
The fact that the Secret Service – a part of the Biden administration – appears to have bungled the incident didn’t help. Even if Harris and Biden had no control over it.
Because, perhaps, in some voters’ eyes, they did.
15. CONVICTION AND PROSECUTION
Donald Trump is the first convicted felon ever elected President of the United States.
Let that sentence burnish in your eyes for a moment.
He was convicted by a jury of his peers of all – ALL – 34 counts of fraud regarding his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016.
That’s not to mention federal court indictments for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling classified documents, and a Fulton County, Georgia, indictment to interfering in the 2020 vote count. Prosecutorial mistakes, a Trump-appointed judge doing his bidding and the fact justice grinds slowly no matter what the crime have kept those matters from being adjudicated.
There are thousands of men and women in prisons across the country who wish people view their criminal history the way they view Trump’s.
But maybe, if you’re a celebrity, they let you do it. Or at least voters might feel that way.
Because the convictions and indictments rolled off their backs. Hell, his lament that he’s being persecuted might have actually helped him.
It’s disgusting. And it’s something to think about.
16. HER
Finally – and I’m sorry this took so long – there’s one factor to consider that seems as though it’s grossly unfair. It’s the topic of animated discussion in my household.
For consideration: The United States is not ready for a female President.
I don’t believe that. Or I didn’t believe that.
We’re supposed to be a society that functions on merit, not biology. My daughter and I watched “The West Wing” with the idea that, if she wanted, she could be President (Actually, what she wanted was to write a TV show like “The West Wing,” which is great, too).
My wife says we’re not ready to accept the idea of a woman President. Not that there shouldn’t be one – she knows there are lots of qualified women.
It’s that we – men and women – can’t handle the idea.
Then throw in the fact that not only is Kamala Harris a woman, she’s also Black and of South Asian heritage.
Somehow, a Black man slipped into the White House in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Depression. A lot of people never got over that. To my wife, another person of color in the Oval Office would have broken what exists of their brains.
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So I spent my day writing this magnum opus about why. Why did Tuesday happen? How did Tuesday happen?
I’d love to hear your ideas about this. Is it any one of the questions, multiple questions or all of the above?
The question thing is going to be the stage of grief that lingers. But until we get past it, we can’t get over it – and we can’t begin to do what it takes to get Trump out of our lives.
SUBJECTISM 