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"The fog of war" is an expression that describes uncertainty about your adversary's capabilities and intentions while in the middle of battle. But it's also an appropriate way to describe our knowledge and understanding of history while living through it.

Everyone in the media seems to want this election to be about the issue they care most about, or to find a way to answer “why Trump won” or “what happened to the Democratic party” in a few sentences. I think that kind of quick summation is impossible. Elections are always decided by a confluence of several factors, some more important than others, and today I’m trying to lay out those factors I suspect were most relevant. That’s the goal: not to give a single, definitive answer, but a holistic and overarching one.

A lot of people, including Democratic strategists, have tried to explain to voters why they shouldn’t feel this way. They've pointed to low unemployment, inflation dissipating, and GDP growth — traditional metrics for measuring economic success — as proof that Bidenomics was working. But these macro numbers didn’t soothe the reality of what was happening at the granular level. Very few Democrats, and very few pundits, seem to have grasped this.

it turned out that Trump's 2020 performance (even in a loss) was the beginning of a new trend, not a fluke. While Democrats were focused on winning back white working-class voters, they actually lost support among their traditionally more multiethnic base.

even more important, many advocates argue, is how the two reforms together can change how candidates and elected officials of all stripes approach their jobs, by adjusting the incentive structure they operate under. Increasingly, many states and districts are solidly red or blue, meaning the general election is uncompetitive, and the key race takes place in the primary. That’s a problem, because the primary electorate is by and large smaller, more partisan and more extreme than the general electorate. Right now, with politicians worrying more about the primary than the general, they’re more focused on playing to their base than on reaching beyond it and solving problems, critics argue.

By allowing multiple candidates to advance, Final Four/Five shifts the crucial election from the primary to the general. And RCV means the votes of Democrats in red districts and Republicans in blue ones still matter, even if their top choice remains unlikely to win. Together, it means candidates are rewarded for paying attention to the entire general electorate, not just a small slice of staunch supporters. As a result, it encourages candidates — and elected officials, once in office — toward moderation and problem-solving, and away from extremism.