How the US Election Reveals a Critical Insight for Vegans
The unexpected lessons from 2024’s election that could shape vegan advocacy
When you read my Substack articles, you’re getting a window into my evolving thoughts—some freshly formed, others rooted in years of experience. I don’t claim to have all the answers (even if it seems that way at times), and I invite you to engage with my ideas as just that: thoughts worth considering.
The dust has settled on the 2024 US election, and many are scratching their heads wondering what the hell happened. Many in the vegan community are equally bewildered, completely thrown by how wrong they called it. It seems that many people felt Kamala Harris had it in the bag, and that the Trump campaign had little to no chance of succeeding. To be faced with such an all out victory from Trump must have been quite the slap across the face.
In case you weren’t aware, Trump didn’t just win, like for example on a technicality or by some strange rule, he won by a landslide. He won the popular vote, meaning he got the most votes overall, and he was able to win over states and demographics that had historically voted for the Democrats. How did his team achieve this, and what can the vegan and animal rights movement learn from it?
I’m not a political expert, and I’m not from the US. I haven’t spent any meaningful amount of time in the US. I’m not a democrat, or a republican, I’m certainly not MAGA, and I don’t fully understand all the inner workings of the politics. This article is me sharing my thoughts based on my perception of what happened. But I actually believe that public perception might be just as important, if not more so, than expert opinion. Especially considering many experts failed in this year’s election, predicting the result incorrectly.
Take presidential historian Allan Lichtman, best known for predicting the results of the last 9 of 10 elections correctly. This year, he got it wrong. This is a man who dedicates his life to studying all of this, and he failed. Clearly, the ‘lesser informed’ public perception has an important part to play in all of this. And here’s what part I think it played.
Moralising
You may not have heard of the term “moralising”, but I’m betting if you’re a vegan, like me, you’ve done it quite a lot. The Oxford Dictionary defines moralising as “to tell other people what is right and wrong especially in order to emphasise that your opinions are correct”. In the latest US election, I would say that a core of the Democrat’s campaign, including their media and their voters, was in fact moralising to the public.
The rhetoric they used largely focused on…