By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Dr. Megan Ming Francis. Courtesy of the University of Washington and Town Hall Seattle.
Long before the 2024 presidential election took place, scholars at the University of Washington (UW) knew that post-election processing would be necessary, regardless of the outcome. So, on Jan. 15, the UW’s Office of Public Lectures held “Autopsy of an Election: What We Lost, What We Won, and How to Fight for the Future,” a talk led by Dr. Megan Ming Francis. Francis currently serves at the UW as the Delsman associate professor of political science and an associate professor of law, societies, and justice.
“Many of us move to the question of what’s required before we understand what has happened,” Francis, also a specialist in American politics and the author of the book Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State, said.
In breaking down how we got from there to here, she said, it’s important first to get a clear understanding of the facts, without bias. Many voters were shocked, Francis said—Democratic hopeful Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, appeared to be doing well. In the public vote, they prevailed.
But much like the 2016 election, President-elect Donald Trump won the Electoral College in a landslide, taking all the swing states. As Francis explained, in any election, the public can count on a certain number of states to vote “red” (Republican), and a certain number to vote “blue” (Democrat). The win ultimately rests in the hands of the swing states and the swing voters—which is why politicians spend so much time trying to win them over during the campaign season.
One of the reasons Francis said Trump swept the swing states was the loss of grassroots infrastructure. Since the prior election, funding for organizations like Fair Fight Georgia had dried up. Those organizations disappeared, Francis said, and no one seemed to notice.
She also pointed out that, because former President Joe Biden dropped out of the race so late in the game, Harris had barely 100 days to get her campaign together. This was a nearly impossible task, but Harris and Walz still garnered more campaign money than Trump did.
Yet this—money—pointed to another factor in Trump’s win, Francis said. Money doesn’t mean what it used to mean. The U.S. has reached a “record level of money in federal campaigns,” Francis said, but the party with the most did not win.
Francis also said that, in contrast to the Republican Party, the Democratic Party has not done an autopsy on itself.
When former President Barack Obama won his second term, Francis said, the Republicans were astonished—and, in response, they conducted “the most comprehensive postelection review ever made.” This meant that they came back stronger and more united, while the Democratic Party has lost track of who it is and whom it represents, Francis said, including the working class, whom Francis sees the Democratic Party as having lost.
Francis also told listeners the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march with the workers in the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, just before he was assassinated. King knew, as Francis quoted, that the question is not “‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ The question is, ‘If I do not stop, what will happen to him (or her)?’”
Francis said that Americans no longer believe that the Democratic Party is fighting for them. Instead, according to interviews among voters, Americans say that “the [Democratic] Party is full of condescending elites and that the game is rigged.”
In contrast, Trump’s and the Republican Party’s message has attracted the working class, she said.
Trump’s version of Republicanism, “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, is not, in Francis’ words, “a fluke.”
The Republican Party “is not your parents’ Republican party”—it’s the MAGA Republican Party. This is who the country has become,” Francis said. “It doesn’t mean this is how the country has to stay.”
She said that one of the main ways to win voters back was to not be so rigid about what she called “purity politics”—in other words, not insisting on what amounts to subjective ideological perfection.
“The work of democracy is ours,” Francis said.
Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.