The NY Times has published a story today making the case that Democrats could have won the 2024 presidential election if they had just turned out at levels seen in 2020. Notice how the opening paragraphs frame this. [emphasis added]

Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald J. Trump, according to a New York Times analysis of preliminary election data.

The numbers help fill in the picture of Mr. Trump’s commanding victory, showing it may not represent the resounding endorsement of his agenda that the final Electoral College vote suggests. Mr. Trump won the White House not only because he turned out his supporters and persuaded skeptics, but also because many Democrats sat this election out, presumably turned off by both candidates.

That last sentence takes are really strange turn midway through. It starts by saying Trump turned out his supporters and by the usual logic of the English language you expect the next clause is going to be about how Harris did not turn out her voters. But instead of just saying so, the author claims that Democrats were "turned off by both candidates." 

Say what, now?

Democratic voters were never going to vote for Trump. In fact, the whole pitch by the Democratic Party this election was that everyone should be turned off by Trump. That's not a problem for Democrats, it was their central message. So the issue here is that Democrats were turned off by Kamala Harris. Just say it. That's what the evidence seems to demonstrate:

Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.

The drop-off spanned demographics and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats — including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.

This is followed by some hemming and hawing about what went wrong, with some claiming Harris had too little time to make her case and others saying she was up against headwinds that have toppled leaders around the world. But whatever excuses are offered, it remains undeniable that Harris did not inspire much enthusiasm.

The warning bells are ringing for Democrats well beyond the battlegrounds. Ms. Harris won fewer votes than Mr. Biden in 36 of 47 states...

In predominantly urban counties nationwide where most votes had been counted, Ms. Harris received two million fewer votes than Mr. Biden had four years earlier.

My own take here is that people's decision to vote happens on a continuum that can be broken into 3 categories. Those categories are Vote Democrat on the left, vote Republican on the right and don't vote in the middle. As people move right or left they move through that center camp. A few voters go from right to left or vice versa but in many cases, people just decide they don't feel inspired by their party and they stay home. That's clearly what happened this year as a commenter pointed out.

Just look at the popular vote totals: Trump, 74.2 million in 2020, 74.8M in 2024, up 600K, roughly the population of Wyoming; Biden 81M in 2020, Harris 71M in 2024, a difference of 10M, roughly the population of Michigan or North Carolina. It's not that Trump got that much more popular but that Democrats found a way to LOSE 12 percent of their voters in four years. That's takes some doing.

The Democrats had a tough 3 1/2 years starting with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then inflation and finally the worst crisis at the border in our lifetimes. Add those up and you get a lot of discouraged Democrats. Some of them swung their votes to the GOP and Trump pulled a lot of new voters out of the woodwork but ultimately the problem is that a lot of people just weren't inspired by team blue. You can blame messaging but ultimately part of it is the candidate herself who spent her entire campaign hiding from the voters as much as possible. It's hard to win an election with a candidate who can't talk.