The 2024 presidential election has been analyzed, scrutinized, criticized and anatomized arguably more than any presidential election in recent memory.
As such, the public forum held Nov. 18 at the Fullerton Public Library, featuring analysis from Cal State Fullerton and Fullerton College political science professors, was well attended by a community looking for answers.
The forum was aptly titled “What Just Happened? Making Sense of the 2024 Elections.”
The panel of experts included Cal State Fullerton political science professors Scott Spitzer, Matthew Jarvis and Robert Robinson, and Fullerton College political science professor Jodi Balma.
Multiple topics were discussed during the forum, which included a Q&A session with attendees.
Here are some highlights:
Vibrant democracy
Spitzer, who served as moderator for the forum, said the assertion that “Democracy is alive and well,” normally an accepted premise in U.S. elections, was worth mentioning for this election, given the rhetoric and accusations making headlines over the past four years and leading right up to Election Day.
“Yes, there was an election, and nobody knew who was going to win beforehand,” Spitzer said. “Somebody won the election, and there was no controversy over the process. So, it seems like for sure, American democracy is functioning. The question is, what does it get us?”
It’s the economy
By now, most people are familiar with the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid,” which was famously coined in 1992 by James Carville, political adviser to Bill Clinton.
Carville’s comment was brought up almost immediately during the forum when Spitzer asked his colleagues to comment on the victory for Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the election,” Spitzer said. “I heard there are new analyses that our gross domestic product is higher than ever, and it grew, even when adjusting for inflation, by a huge amount over the last three years, that more Americans are wealthier now than they were four years ago, that the lowest income quintiles were lifted as more people got out of poverty over the last four years.”
If the economy is doing so well, why would the incumbent lose, Spitzer asked rhetorically?
Just because the indicators might appear positive, vast segments of the population aren’t feeling it, the panelists noted.
For one, the cost of housing has skyrocketed, they said.
A shopping cart full of groceries that used to cost $100 now costs $130 or more.
“I would come back to it’s what people perceive as the economy,” Jarvis said. “So that’s where I would say it’s prices and the economy, and inflation really comes back and bites.”
Gender bias?
It was pointed out that Trump has run for president three times, twice against female candidates and once against a male candidate.
He won against Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris but lost to Joe Biden.
“I think it’s a fair question but difficult to answer,” Jarvis said. “Because people don’t generally admit to holding beliefs like that. Well, some do, but even if they believe it, it might not be driving their vote. They might say, ‘I don’t usually vote for women, but I will this time,’ or whatever. My answer is that it mattered but I don’t know how much. I don’t think it would have made a difference in the ultimate outcome, but I can’t be really sure. I’m positive there wasn’t a zero effect.”
Fitness factor
Throughout the campaign, Harris made the argument that if Trump got elected, democracy would surely collapse and the U.S. would become an authoritarian nation.
Think back to Jan. 6, she said.
But voters didn’t buy it, the panelists said.
Jan. 6 was a long time ago and really didn’t have an impact on Americans’ day-to-day lives.
“I just think there was a sense that voters, whatever the Democrats tried to push on that, they didn’t buy it,” Robinson said. “To them, it sounded like just a campaign tactic, politics, and honestly, (voters) might say something along the lines of, well, democracy did not end between 2016 and 2020. I’m not going to believe this the second time. Now, you might say, well, the situations are different in terms of guardrails and who’s there, and I think that’s a good conversation to have.”
The podcast election
Rather than gleaning information from mainstream news sources, voters turned to influencers and podcasters for election-related news, many analysts have said.
For the first time, Call Me Daddy, NELK Boys and The Joe Rogan Experience were the preferred sources of information.
Spitzer said the trend will continue.
“And all of the legacy media are losing,” Spitzer said. “It’s really hard in that kind of an environment to communicate solid information, factual information, about the state of the economy, about what’s going to happen when Trump gets into office, what he has said he’s going to do in terms of the rule of law and things like that. People are not getting that information clearly because they’re identifying in their own little asylum.”
Said Balma, “I get my news from KQED. That’s a news organization, not Joe Rogan.”
This post was originally published on here
