Joe Biden Won. But Trumpism Didn’t Lose.

Considering what the Trump team is up to right now I hate to interrupt with some bad news, but I’m seeing a fair amount of wishful thinking about Joe Biden’s victory that really needs to be corrected before it congeals into lefty conventional wisdom. It’s true that once all the votes are counted, Biden will have a nice popular vote win, and it’s also true that he’ll most likely win over 300 electoral votes.

But in terms of the states everyone was watching this was not a big victory. The key states, as in 2016, were the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And in those states, Biden’s aggregate winning margin was 1.4 percent of the total vote. In 2016, Trump won by 0.6 percent of the vote. That’s a switch of two percentage points.

No matter how you spin it, that’s just not very much. In a closely divided country, it was enough to give Biden a victory, and in that sense it’s a lot. And Democrats did make gains in a few specific demographics. But in terms of how overall attitudes have changed, it’s only a tiny turnaround. After four years of watching Trump in action; suffering through a pandemic; and not having the hated Hillary Clinton on the ballot, hardly anyone changed their minds. Add to that a tiny increase in the popular vote; no pickups in state legislatures; a loss of half a dozen House seats; worrisome losses among Latinos; and (so far) only a single pickup in the Senate, and it’s just not possible to say that the Democratic Party demonstrated any sort of increased appeal to the broad electorate.

Think about that: After four years of Donald Trump, only a tiny percentage of the American public switched their votes to the Democratic Party.

At the moment, the evidence is too thin to draw any conclusions about why this is. And given the complete uselessness of the exit polls, it might well be months or years before we can really say what happened. One way or another, though, we shouldn’t fool ourselves: there’s no real evidence that the country showed any increased love for either the Democratic Party or the liberal agenda writ large. We need to figure out why that is.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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