The 2020 Election Analysis in one convenient post.
5 parts...maybe a 10 minute or so read. Total. That's a coffee break. Do people still get those?
After the political smoke cleared; Joe Biden, in 2020, seemed to have pulled off an impressive political turnaround from 2016.1
The failure of the GOP to figure out a means of either satiating the Libertarian Right or reducing their popular vote draw diminished their hopes of majoritarianism in the age of Trump.2
And ability of the Libertarian Party to affect the outcome of presidential elections exploded in 2016 and 2020.3
Presidential battles are essentially about either appealing to populism or likeability.4 If you need a TL:DR of the 2016 election, it’s this: Democratic-leaning Independent voters found Hillary so unlikeable, they voted Libertarian.5
Coming into the final 90 or so days of the 2024 election, the Democrats have a strong populist message with Kamala’s likeability being as mere bonus against the very weird Trump/Vance ticket.
The 2020 Autopsy Part I
There used to be an old medical school joke: “Always decline to give your friends a complete physical, but offer to do the them free of charge for your enemies.”
The 2020 Autopsy Part II
On December 31, 1965, Milton Friedman wrote “We are all Keynesians now” in a piece for Time magazine.
The 2020 Autopsy Part III
In July 2020, I wrote an article on Third Party Voting and its potential impact on the 2020 election. I opined that absent a 2% Third party vote, Trump had the electoral advantage. I was wrong, 1.79% proved to be enough to erase Trump’s edge.
The 2020 Autopsy Part IV
Krazy Karla, an old girlfriend, once told me “There’s a power in being hated”.
