The Day After
The Day After
Trumps Gains Among Dems in NY & NJ Were Not About Trump.
Last night, Americans voted for a man who has pledged to be a dictator on Day One. A man who promised vengeance. A man who swoons over autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Mohammad Bin Salman. A sexist, an adjudicated sexual assailant. A convicted felon. A man who is out for revenge. A fascist.
Trump appears on track to lock up every swing state and the popular vote.
America has spoken. This is who we want. This is who we are.
This is no time for complacency. The United States will recover from Trump eventually — though recovering from Trumpism will take a generation or more. Republicans have discovered the playbook that works for them and even if Trump gets hit by a bus tomorrow, they will keep using it. The toxicity is here to stay.
But there are still Democratic states that can serve as the laboratory for democracy, where decency can prevail. And two of those states are in the northeast — one where Trump has a tower and one where he spends his summers.
Don’t shoot the messenger for already looking towards the next race but there are major elections happening 362 short days from now in New Jersey and New York City and, a year later, in New York State. I raise this because Trump’s relatively strong numbers in both New Jersey and New York City were shocking to people who have not been paying attention. They were not so surprising to some of us who have lived and worked in both places for most of our lives.
First, let’s start with New York. Trump got nearly one-third of the vote in New York City, with especially huge gains in The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. The Bronx, a largely Black and Latino borough, saw him receive 35% more votes yesterday than he did in 2020. Queens, the most diverse large county in the nation, saw him gain over 16% since 2020. He gained in Brooklyn by 8% and in Manhattan by 20%.
Let me say this as a Manhattan liberal who has lived in New York City for over two decades and who grew up in The Bronx back when it was literally burning: Trump’s gains do not shock me in the least. The subways are a mess. The mental health crisis seems to be growing worse, with unhoused people not only clogging up the streets but menacing children as they walk to school. I get it — these people are ill and many have addiction problems. They desperately need help. But I also have a twelve-year-old son, who has to avoid mentally ill people lunging at him on his walk to school and who is afraid to ride the subway because he fears getting pushed on to the tracks. Statistically, we are told, this won’t happen. But there is not one time that I don’t think about it whenever I stand on a subway platform — and I grew up riding the subway every day in the 1980s, when things were empirically much worse.
Our mayor, when he is not getting indicted for doing favors for foreign governments, thinks that he is helping New Yorkers by closing down Zero Bond and partying like he’s at the Saturday Night Live after-after party every night. I truly cannot think of one item that he and our Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul have done to make our lives better. I’m sure that they can list plenty of things, but they can’t communicate effectively out of a paper bag, so I have no idea what those things might be. Truly, not one thing comes to mind — and I read the New York Times and the NY Post every single day.
Now, you would be correct in thinking that the media does an awful job of covering local and state governments. But if you are a talented communicator, especially as the governor or the mayor of the nation’s largest city, you can break through that noise. Yet, here we are.
Then there is New Jersey, where Kamala Harris won by about 5 points. Democrats have not seen such a shellacking since 1988, when George Bush won the state. In Hispanic-rich Passaic County, Trump is actually on track to win. A local state senator, an accomplished and long-serving Latina legislator who is running for Congress to replace the recently deceased Rep. Bill Pascrell, barely eked out a victory. I promise you, this is not because she is not liked, known and respected.
Today, New Jersey Democratic insiders express shock about all this. Really? In January 2021, six months before Democratic Governor Phil Murphy was running for re-election, I commissioned four focus groups of primary Democratic voters. We asked their views on Murphy and they all agreed that he was a nice guy and had done a good job on COVID.
But then we started digging deeper, just asking them to tell us more about Murphy. And then the frustration about him and the Democratic leadership in general began to break through. African American voters were angry about liberals who wanted to defund the police. “Defund them in Princeton or Millburn,” said one Black man from an urban area, referencing two affluent, white towns. “But don’t you take them out of my neighborhood. Our kids are the ones getting shot.”
Latino voters were even more frustrated about Murphy. “This guy thinks he can come here and tell me that people crossing the border are getting free college tuition and I’m supposed to be grateful?” one asked. “My family has been here for five generations and I’m supposed to thank him for giving free stuff to people who cut in line? Talk to me about how you’re going to help my business or pave my road.”
For the record, Murphy was not giving undocumented immigrants “free stuff.” He put in place humane policies towards people who came here, paid taxes and wanted to build a constructive life for themselves. But since he also could not communicate out of a paper bag, “free giveaways to illegals” is what stuck.
I remember turning to a prominent party leader after these groups and saying that I thought Murphy was in deep trouble if this is how the Democratic base was thinking about him. No one took this seriously. Poll after poll showed him up by at least ten points. On election night, even after the polls closed, one of his aides texted a prominent national reporter and told him that the governor would win by double digits. Murphy ended up eking out his re-election by three points — in a state with a nearly 1 million Democratic voter registration advantage. (Note to campaign operatives: There’s spin and there’s outright lying and once you bullshit a reporter, especially one of this magnitude, your credibility is gone for good. Word gets around pretty quickly.)
So what did Murphy do after winning re-election? Did he double down on trying to communicate his accomplishments to voters who clearly expressed their anger by almost denying him a second term? No. Instead, Murphy spent six months trying to shove his unqualified wife down the throats of New Jersey Democrats to replace indicted Senator Bob Menendez. He did this with the full concurrence of almost every single party leader in New Jersey. The Democratic base went nuts and Tammy Murphy was eventually forced to drop out of the senate race in favor of Rep. Andy Kim, who went on to win the primary and the general election. But the sheer arrogance of the move is what voters still remember, especially because, in a fit of pique, Murphy refused to appoint Kim early to the senate once Menendez resigned after his conviction in August. Appointing Kim would have given New Jersey more seniority in the senate and helped its residents. Instead, Murphy gave the senate seat temporarily to his gubernatorial chief of staff, an operative who captained the sinking of the SS Tammy Murphy. Voters’ preferences be damned.
Then, for good measure, the Democratic legislature pushed through laws to decrease transparency that one senator privately called a “shit sandwich.” (Mind you, the senator voted for it — because party leaders insisted on it, much like they insisted that he support Tammy Murphy’s doomed senate bid, which he privately also called something worse than a “shit sandwich”). Bills the legislature passed to help address voters’ concerns about affordability did not get nearly the same attention this year as the governor’s attempted gift to his wife of a senate seat.
This is what voters in New York and New Jersey have been forced to contend with for the last several years. Did hundreds of thousands of them suddenly decide that they had made a mistake voting against Donald Trump in 2020, especially when he is more unhinged and vengeful than ever? No. But Hochul and Adams were not on the ballot in New York and neither was Murphy and most of his enablers in New Jersey. In states where Democrats knew their presidential candidate would win, they decided to send their Democratic state and local officials a message.
If 2021 was the canary in the coal mine for New Jersey Democrats, 2024 is a five-alarm fire. Murphy is term-limited and a new Democrat will run in his place in 2025. Adams is under indictment and it remains to be seen whether he makes the mayoral ballot again next November. Hochul is up in 2026.
But unless these party leaders start communicating their accomplishments as well as they communicate their self-serving behavior, we are looking at the very real possibility that their voters will continue giving them the back of the hand.
It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans controlled the governor’s mansions in Albany and Trenton and a Republican lived in Gracie Mansion in New York City. Democrats would do well to start listening to their voters, before their voters start listening to someone else.
Odds and Ends:
I purposely decided not to do an analysis on what last night’s election means nationally going forward for the Democratic Party for several reasons:
I hate hot takes before I have the time to analyze the data. I was able to do this newsletter about New York and New Jersey because a) I know them both like the back of my hand and b) this is less a story about what happened nationally than about what happened in the Big Apple and the Garden State and why. It’s a warning to Democrats there.
There is much to be said about what this portends for the United States — and just as much about what this portends for the rest of the world. None of it is good at the moment. Yet, I truly believe that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.
In the meantime, I leave you with this, which a friend sent me today. I hope it inspires you too.
