Bummed out by the election results, liberals are turning off the news and tuning out politics. This will only help Trump in his mass deportations and other actions liberals claim to deplore.
Theory of the Non-Voter
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Non-voters are the biggest (potential) voting bloc in American politics. In midterm, state and local elections, more eligible voters choose not to exercise their franchise than to do so.
Pundits and political sociologists ignore non-voters. Nobody polls them. Nobody asks them why they don’t vote. Nobody asks them what issues they care about. Nobody asks them what it would take to get them to vote, or who they would vote for if they did. Whether this lack of interest in non-voters is due to a lack of imagination or contempt based on the belief that they are lazy and apathetic, the result is that we don’t know much about the political leanings and motivations (or lack thereof) of the majority of our fellow citizens. There are tens of millions of them. They are an untapped resource and, until recently, there has been little attempt to reach out to them.
Democratic Party strategists largely assume that there is little point dedicating precious campaign resources to an attempt to lure non-voters to the polls. From Bill Clinton in 1992 to Kamala Harris in 2024, the party has been primarily focused on trying to appeal to swing voters and moderate Republicans, even though there don’t seem to be very many of them.
Donald Trump’s first win disproved the hypothesis that you can’t get the third or more of eligible citizens who normally sit out presidential elections to come to the polls. 15% of the people who cast a ballot in November 2016 were first-time voters, up from 9% in 2012. True, Donald Trump’s coalition included people who vote Republican no matter what as well as traditional conservatives. But the key to his takeover of the GOP was his ability to motivate people who previously weren’t even registered to vote.
The 2016 election also highlighted the political impact of non-voting. Non-voters skewed Democratic, accounting for 55% as opposed to 41% for Republicans. Hillary Clinton lost because she wasn’t able to motivate enough of her own party’s supporters.
The cliché of the non-voter is that they are politically disengaged. If that is true, it falls short of painting the full picture. 3.5% of those who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries sat out the general election; they were more than enough to cost Clinton the race. But primary voters are far more engaged than general election voters. They didn’t forget to vote for Hillary. They made an active choice to be passive because they disliked both major-party candidates.
Non-voters were even more powerful this year. An astonishing 19 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 considered the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and picked the couch.
She lost by 2.3 million votes.
These 19 million people were registered to vote. We know that they know how to vote; they did it four years ago in the middle of a pandemic. And we know that they voted Democratic! More states have early voting and mail-in ballots, so it was easier to vote in 2024. Logically, a more appealing Democrat than Kamala Harris might have received their support.
A full picture of American public opinion would include numerous thorough studies and surveys of people who sometimes vote and sit out elections at other times (this year’s Trump campaign reached out to these “irregular” and “low propensity” voters), those who never vote but are registered to vote, and those who are not registered. But the biggest factor here is obviously the defining characteristic of U.S. electoral politics: the two-party system. Democracies with two-party systems tend to have lower voter turnout than parliamentary democracies where multiple parties representing a wide range of ideological orientations are viable and active participants. The increasing percentage of Americans who self-identify as “independent” means that it is constantly less likely that a voter will agree with one of the two candidates of two polarized parties.
In a two-party system like ours, a voter who doesn’t much care for either candidate has three choices. They can suck it up and choose “the lesser evil,” vote for a third-party candidate who almost certainly doesn’t stand a chance, or sit out the election.
A significant subset of the first category is the negative message voter, who casts a ballot for the challenger in order to indicate their displeasure with the incumbent. With only two parties to choose from, these voters flail back-and-forth. Since a vote is a vote and doesn’t come with a footnote attached to it, neither the parties nor the news media ever receives the message. As more voters realize the futility of rage and spite voting, there is a general trend toward not voting at all.
Because they are oblivious to the left-leaning voters they are failing to motivate, Democrats have more to worry about in the short term. In the long run, however, the realization that non-voters are making an active choice not to bother with the political system is a major warning that the whole system may not be viable for much longer.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)
TMI Show Ep 43: “Trump vs. Fiscal Hawks”
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Trump 2.0 is still a month away and he’s causing chaos in Washington. After negotiating a budget deal with the Democrats, DOGE master Elon Musk (either acting alone or with Donald Trump’s backing) spazz-tweeted the deal away, spooking frightened House Republicans into reneging. Then, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s head on the chopping block, Republicans attempted to cut a new deal but Democrats refused to renegotiate. In the end, deficit hawk Republicans voted with Democrats to turn down the Trump deal because it would have abolished the debt limit for at least two years. Another government shutdown looms, mainly because there are two Republican Parties.
The TMI Show’s Ted Rall and Robby West (filling in for Manila Chan) are joined by Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis to unravel the madness.
TMI Show Ep 41: “Where Do the Democrats Go From Here?”
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Defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris says it’s time for Democrats to roll up their sleeves and start the resistance to Donald Trump. But the party appears to be in disarray, totally dispirited and unable to find a way forward. How should Democrats prepare for the 2026 midterm elections and an open race for 2028? More than 10 million progressive voters stayed home, which allowed Trump to win; can the party do something to bring them back? Is there a way to reconcile symbolic political correctness and identity politics on the left with the party’s pro-censorship and militarily aggressive foreign policy, which appears to be more on the right?
The TMI Show’s Ted Rall discusses the future of the Democratic Party with Manila Chan.
TMI Show Ep 38: “Citizenship for All?”
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The United States is among the 32 countries, mostly in the Americas, that have birthright citizenship. If you are born here, you get a US passport. Conservatives have long complained that the 14th Amendment provides a loophole for so-called “anchor babies,” of whom there are at least 4 million born to illegal immigrants. But those numbers are dropping annually. Jus soli, or the right of the soil, is in the crosshairs of the incoming second Trump Administration, with the president-elect threatening to eliminate it by executive order. Without it, however, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people could be forced back into the shadows, refusing to call the police or the fire department for fear of deportation, and become stateless. In France, there are second and even third-generation stateless people who couldn’t go back “home” even if they wanted to.
The TMI Show’s Ted Rall debates the issue with guest co-host Robby West, filling in for Manila Chan.
TMI Show Ep 37: “Trump 45 vs. Trump 47”
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Donald J. Trump is about to become the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve one term, lose a reelection bid and then run a third time successfully for a second term. What has Trump and his team learned from his first term? How will he govern differently? This time he has added progressives like Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to his team, drawing from the left of the Democratic Party in a way that he didn’t do the first time around; how will they impact his policies? As a lame duck with no possibility of running for reelection, his only real concern for the future is for passing the torch of the MAGA movement, potentially to JD Vance. Is Trump now more free to do what he wants, and if so, what does he want?
TMI Show co-hosts Ted Rall and Robby West (filling in for Manila Chan) are joined by Angie Wong for an inside view into the new administration by an old president.
Aloha to the Vichy Democrats
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Is it me, or is it a little strange for Joe Biden, and the Democrats, who repeatedly characterized Donald Trump as a bona fide fascist, to cooperate with his transition to power? Shouldn’t they be resisting? Maybe even trying to reverse the election results?
P.S. With the holidays soon to be upon us, remember: you could buy the Original Line Art for this cartoon! Either for a friend or yourself. Price is $400, includes shipping within US and a personal hand-signed dedication by yours truly. Contact me here: here.
To the Spoiled Go the Victors
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Whatever you think about Donald Trump’s cabinet picks for his second administration, whether or not you think they are qualified, very clearly he and his transition team are having a wild time choosing them and dropping them on a shocked establishment…maybe a little too wild.
P.S. With the holidays soon to be upon us, remember: you could buy the Original Line Art for this cartoon! Either for a friend or yourself. Price is $400, includes shipping within US and a personal hand-signed dedication by yours truly. Contact me here: here.
No Flat Taxes. More Progressive Taxes!
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As we have seen previously when a Republican has won a presidential election, the progressive individual income tax—in which the more you earn, the higher of a percentage of your earnings are subject to taxation—has once again become a target for dilution or elimination. We have long heard about schemes like the “flat tax,” where tax brackets are abolished in favor of a universal percentage rate. During the closing days of his second presidential campaign, Donald Trump went further, calling for eliminating the income tax entirely.
“When we were a smart country, in the 1890s…this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said. “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying. They’re paying tax, and they don’t have the money to pay the tax.”
We should probably start by noting that Trump’s proposal is based on historical fiction. The individual income tax brings in half of federal tax revenues, which is a lot of money. “It’s an absurd idea for many reasons, the biggest being that it is mathematically impossible to replace the income tax with tariffs,” Erica York, senior economist at the conservative Tax Foundation, told CNN. “Imports are a much smaller tax base than taxable income, and there’s no way to squeeze enough revenue from taxing imports to fully replace taxing income.” Tariffs currently bring in about 2% of federal income.
The 1890s weren’t too bad…for a few years. They called it the Gilded Age—until the Panic of 1893, which triggered a severe depression, staggeringly high unemployment and massive social unrest. The resulting decline in tax collections forced the imposition of—wait for it—an income tax that was overturned about a year later by the Supreme Court. In fact, income taxes came and went throughout the 19th century. As for the U.S. being “relatively the richest it ever was,” that’s debatable, but also a ridiculously low bar. The miserable economy of the first century and a half of American history was punctuated by bank failures, stock market crashes, widespread unemployment and depressions so severe that money stopped circulating at times and people had to make do with barter. Between the Panic of 1819, the Panic of 1837, the Panic of 1873 (which led to the Long Depression) and the Depression of 1882-1885, Americans were either losing everything or accumulating wealth that was about to be lost. We were a sh—hole country.
The modern income tax as we know it came to be with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, which clarified Congressional fiscal prerogatives. It is hard to imagine, without this massive new source of income into the federal treasury, that the United States would have successfully fought in World War I, much less developed into the global superpower that it is today. While the boom-and-bust cycle of American capitalism has devastated countless lives and businesses, in the 20th century the federal government collected sufficient funds to create a rudimentary social safety net, something people of the 19th century could only have dreamed of. That was almost entirely due to the income tax.
Progressive income taxes have the dual advantage of being fair and practical; the richer you are, the higher percentage of your income you can afford to pay. A person who earns $200,000 a year and pays 50% of that in taxes still keeps more money in the end than someone who earns $100,000 a year and pays 40% in taxes. The government taxes rich people because, as the bank robber Willie Sutton was falsely said to have said, that’s where the money is.
If we want to draw lessons from history about the relationship between taxation and economic prosperity, perhaps it would be more relevant to consider the point at which the U.S. tax code achieved peak progressiveness.
In theory, this would be the early 1960s, with a top marginal rate of 91% charged to the highest income individual taxpayers in the top 1/100 of 1%. There has been a general downward trend against progressivism since then; currently taxpayers who earn more than $609,000 a year have a 37% marginal rate. But taxes are complicated. As the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez wrote in 2007, “the numerous deductions and exemptions mean that the tax rates listed in the tax tables might be a poor measure of the actual tax burden faced by each income group. In addition, some forms of income, such as capital gains, have traditionally faced lower tax rates; this benefits disproportionately high-income taxpayers.”
The effective tax rate—the actual percentage of your income that you actually end up paying—is what we need to look at when considering whether the current tax system is sufficiently progressive. That data is clear: while the effective tax rate for the average earner has remained at about 14% since World War II, it has fallen from about 50% to about 25% today. Rich people are, more than ever before, where the money is—income disparity is at a record high—but the federal government is taxing them half as much as they used to.
A word about the flat tax, which will likely come up for discussion as even right-wing Republicans in Congress quickly come to realize that Trump’s idea is a nonstarter: the only thing to recommend is its simplicity. No more complicated deductions, no more saving your receipts. It’s simple. It’s also insane: someone who earns $20,000 a year can’t afford to pay taxes at all.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to simplify a tax code so complicated that Americans pay billions of dollars a year to experts to calculate, prepare and file their taxes. But there’s nothing complicated about slapping the biggest burden on the wealthiest Americans who, after all, enjoy the best of everything that America has to offer. If you get to sit in the box seats in the arena and eat the best food and hobnob with the top players, you should pay the highest price.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)
And Give Up All This?
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One of the assumptions of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential bid was that voters didn’t want radical change of any kind. She promised an incremental approach designed to gradually improve things without altering what she assumed were beloved American institutions like the courts. In reality, life for most Americans is pretty bleak and they don’t have much investment in those longstanding traditions.
