Did Democrats lose the 2024 election, or did Donald J. Trump win it?

A year-and-a-quarter has passed since Donald J. Trump won the Presidential election. Many Democrats blame President Joe Biden for his mental decline and refusal to step down sooner. They blame Kamala Harris for failing to inspire Democrats to turn out. They blame Biden and Harris for causing Latinos and Black males to vote for Trump over the leaky southern border. They blame the transgender sports issue. They blame Biden-caused inflation. Democrats almost always blame themselves when they lose.

But Democrats didn’t lose the 2024 election. Trump won because he understood the mood of white Christian males and used their grievances and fears to rally their support. White Christian males voted for Trump because they feared the loss of their historical political dominance. The basis for my thesis comes from Steven Levitshky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book, Tyranny of the Minority.

Let’s first look at the history of white male resentment:

“Whereas a large majority of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans said things had changed for the better since the 1950s, 57 percent of whites and 72 percent of white evangelical Christians said things had changed for the worse.”

“The leveling of long-standing social hierarchies generated a sense of unfairness among many whites.”

“…Obama was a political moderate.” Seeing him constantly on TV was too much for whites.

“Research by political scientist Michael Tesler shows that his [Obama’s] election had a powerful radicalizing effect on Americans’ political attitudes.”

“Obama’s presidency made the transition to multiracial democracy plain for all Americans to see” (p. 113).

“The ‘white Christians’ who came to dominate the Republican Party in the early twenty-first century were a religiously diverse group of Americans united by a desire to ‘make white Christianity culturally dominant again’”

“White Christian nationalism helped fuel the Tea Party movement which emerged in February 2009—barely a month after Obama took office.”

By April 15, 2009 the Tea Party mushroomed into a mass movement. With nearly half a million members, and some forty-five million supporters.

“The Tea Party was a classic reactionary movement, constituted disproportionately by older, white, and evangelical Christian Americans who were determined to ‘take their country back.’”

Surveys show Tea Party members to be overwhelmingly anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and resistant to ethnic and cultural diversity.’”

”Tea Partiers perceived themselves to be ‘losing their country to groups they fail to recognize as ‘real’ American” (p. 114).

“Trump’s campaign signaled to white voters that he intended to ‘maintain the racial hierarchy’” (p. 117).

“[Trump’s] unique willingness to say and do things that other Republicans rejected as bigoted, racist, or cruel allowed him to dominate the market for white grievance votes.”

”Trump didn’t highjack the Republican Party. He understood it” (pp. 117-118).

Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson pushed the Great Replacement Theory:

“Carlson told viewers that the Democrats were trying to: “Change the racial mix of the country. That’s the reason. To reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here and dramatically increase the proportions of Americans newly arrived from the Third World… It’s horrifying…. In political terms, this policy is called the “great replacement”, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries” (pp. 118-119).

Demographics are fueling these fears, based on the nonpartisan website GovFacts.org:

According to Census Bureau projections, the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. In that year, the non-Hispanic white population is projected to comprise 49.7% of the total population. The remainder will include Hispanic Americans (24.6%), Black Americans (13.1%), Asian Americans (7.9%), and multiracial populations (3.8%).

“This transformation, driven by immigration, changing birth rates, and an aging population, presents economic opportunities and social challenges.”

This shift requires understanding the numbers, assessing the social and economic realities, and developing policies that ensure prosperity for all Americans.”

The reality is that a large number of white Christian males see the demographics. They voted for President Trump as a result. They sense that “The U.S. population is expected to continue growing, crossing 400 million by 2058, with minority populations driving this growth entirely.”

In the 2024 presidential election, white Christian males preferred a white, racist candidate more than they favored the continuation of our representative democracy. It’s not that the Democrats lost in 2024, but maintaining white male dominance won. Some are having second thoughts.

“We stand at a crossroads: either America will be a multiracial democracy or it will not be a democracy at all” (Tyranny of the Minority p. 225).