I will do a couple election takes: 1. The Biden team understood its electorate better than anybody and, with the support of allies, executed a very good campaign strategy.

2. Before the election, I said that Trump won in ‘16 despite his persona rather than because of it. I was wrong about this. ‘16 wasn’t a fluke. I think @Redistrict nailed it the other day when he said that the Trump persona is a political double edged sword....

2. (Cont’d). On the one hand, it drives massive GOP turnout (political plus). On the other side, it alienates a certain number of moderate suburbanites from Trump himself (political minus) and drives sky high Dem turnout (political minus). The result outcome seems to be that ..

the Trump persona is more of a help to downballot “normal” Rs than it is to Trump himself, where it’s a net minus.

3. Another thing I was wrong about: I assumed fundamentals favored Dems in this election. In hindsight they clearly didn’t. The economy remained a big plus for Trump and Rs despite everything. @jbarro made a great point that CARES Act, which was good and badly needed ...

3. (Cont’d) actually improved many people’s finances from the pre-COVID baseline. In light of the fundamentals, a solid Biden win is even more impressive.

4. I (and many others) argued since 2016 that the Dem path back was continuing to improve with “Panera voters,” achieving high turnout with voters of Color, especially Black voters, and making marginal improvements with white non-college. This was clearly right.

This is the Dem coalition now. While we should want every vote that we can get from every group, the left-populist dream of a panracial working class coalition is not on the table right now. And indeed, suburban Panera voters are in fact more progressive on both social and econ

issues than many white non college voters.

5. Relatedly, neither white non college voters nor most non-voters are closet leftists.

6. One more. The “base or persuasion” question is dead. It’s base AND persuasion. We did it this time, and we wouldn’t have won without it. biden team correctly identified both its base and the universe of persuadable voters (whether R crossover or non voters)

If they hasn’t recognized who “the base” is and who it isn’t correctly, and had misidentified who is persuadable, it wouldn’t have worked. But they did and it did.