Annie Lowrey comments on the economic problems of the working class:
The COVID-era boosts to SNAP, UI, CTC, and child care went away. Medicaid unwound. Food costs spiraled. Interest rates doubled. Measures of material hardship worsened. And Democrats pointed to headline figures showing a boom.
I know I'm beating a dead horse, but I continue to have problems with this narrative. SNAP benefits went way up and were permanent. Expanded UI went away, but that's because everyone went back to work. Food costs went up, but not by more than wages and not at all for the past year. That leaves interest rates, which did indeed rise, and CTC and Medicaid benefits, which did indeed unwind.
That said, if any of these things were serious they really would show up as worsening measures of material hardship. But which ones? Lowrey is right that headline averages can be deceiving, so let's look solely at measures of the poor and working class. Here are expenditures:
This is not the BEA measure of spending, which includes stuff like imputed rent and healthcare paid by insurance. It's the one from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which measures money out the door. As you can see, every income level did about the same, with the working class doing a hair better than anyone else. But is this because they were depleting their savings? Nope:
During the pandemic itself workers got help from stimulus checks, which they spent down. But over the past five years working class incomes have gone up more than working class spending ($1,700 vs. $700), so even after the stimulus benefits were used up saving has held at its normal historical level. Now here's working class unemployment:
Working class folks all had jobs and weren't losing them. Here's poverty:
The poverty rate never rose above its 2019 level, not during the pandemic or after it.
Here's another check on things. If money were tight, the first thing you'd cut back on is entertainment. Did that happen?
There's a small dip in 2022, probably just noise. In any case, it only lasted a year. By 2023 everything was back to normal.
Now, I understand that maybe I'm just stuck here in my upper middle class bubble, refusing to acknowledge all the pain out there. And yes, there are some government benefits that inevitably unwound over the past couple of years.
It's also true that some people did worse than others, and it doesn't take many of them to move the vote a few percentage points toward Trump. That's a possibility.
But it's grasping at straws. There are individual things that have been problems (auto insurance, for example), but no matter how hard I look I can't find any evidence of serious overall hardship among the working class. It really seems like we have to look elsewhere if we want an explanation of what happened.
Facts dont really play a role in the narrative these days. They are interesting, but not as interesting as vibes based reporting/story creation. Facts often get in the way of a good story and a good narrative is what attracts eyeballs.
Alas, but yeah.
The big split between 'how they themselves feel' and 'they feel the larger economy' has never been wider.
The culture war B.S. exagerated or amplified the anger over the economic issues. Illegal immigrants getting free gender reassignment surgery among other things. In the grand scheme of things the number of Illegal immigrants getting transgender medical care is extremely negligible. But people looking for someone to blame usually blame the wrong things/people.
Yup. "It's the relentless disinformation that has taken over our media landscape, stupid!"
Biden could have cured cancer, and even the NY Times would have 7 front page stories a day about how Biden destroyed the medical industry. Sooner or later our party of quiet technocrats will realize that doing good stuff is not what wins elections.
The illusion of things being bad seems more influential than the reality. I was listening to NPR and caught the end of a person who sounded suspiciously like Stephen Miller rag on Bidens soon called horrible foreign policies. I don't know who it was but the set up for Trump to take credit for everything has already started. NPR is far from the liberal entity the right portrays it as. It often gives conservatives time to spout right wing propaganda and disinformation with little to no pushback.
greed that you are beating a dead horse and should stop because I've come to Jabberwocking to avoid this silly debate and this should be the last post on it. You can also tell the right-wing trolls like MF to go do their mental masturbation at Free Republic or on X and leave the real world alone. You can't debate the topics with people that cynical, that deluisional or that stupid.
To compare the current economic situation to 1980 when the inflation rate reached a whopping 18 percent and interest rates 21 percent is just ridiculous. And the fact that the Trump campaign's response to this apparent inflation problem is to propose 400 percent tariffs, shows this really wasn't a serious problem, especially when things were improving by this year. Certainly an improving economic situation in 1984 helped Reagan's re-election even though unemployment and inflation were much worse at the time. I gues a Misery Index of 6.2 just isn't what it used to be.
And the Annie Lowery's of the world can go take a flying leap. When Trump uses the same charts and graphs to show how great things are and when said GOP voters and Fox News also change their minds with a Republican in the White House and say how great things are, please explain said turnaround other than just raw partisanship.
Having a week to ponder everything, I am now of the opinion the Harris/Walz campaign, far from being a perfect victim of circumstance, wasn't in the end a very well-run camapign. One can make the argument at October Harris was positioned to win narrowly but a month filled with anti-trans and anti-immigrant ads non-stop on TV and the internet without much of a response was a as bad as Mike Dukakis' lack of response to his attacks in '88. The Trump-is-a-Fascist counter-charge obviously didn't move anyone already against Trump. And instead of trying to distance herself from Biden and flubbing an answer about it, she should have defended the Administration's popular policies much stronger than she did. Yes, I'm sure they were scared off by Biden's poll numbers but was there anyone in campaign who wondered was the President himself unpopular personnally or just his policies? Not asking this questions is malpractice.
We can also add in not moving on immigration until 2024 and slow-walking aide to Ukraine where it became an issue of attack against the Administration with a public skeptical of such aid to begin with.
However, it's been pointed out in charts and graphs that for the past 40 years working class people (especially white ones) have not gotten ahead, at least not real terms economic compared to the well-to-do which makes one receptive to cultural greviences out of frustration and, when one considers all the bad things that have happened to the country since Sept. 11, 2001, the desire of people to live under strongman rule only becomes greater. That's as Rick Pearlstein points out, is the essence of Fascism.
Bottom line, only misrule by the Trumpist clique that actually hurts a broad majority of the public is the only way to truly break apart MAGA.
+1000 on the slap shot at MoFo!
BLOCK BUTTON!!!!! We need a BLOCK BUTTON.
That was before the pandemic, though.
Nice try supporting Trump's campaign message.
+1, more if it wouldn't look weird.
The word fascism bounces off people, even serious people but the word itself is nebulous. Most people aren't serious about such things, they only know Hitler and the Nazis were fascist and so that's the definition for most people. Clearly the Vulgarian isn't that outright, so no matter how many times it's defined and demonstrated, it falls on deaf ears and minds unwilling to be convinced.
both fascism and communism are words with little to no meaning for many of the gens xyz+.
People also tend to think they're the same thing.
Boomers don't have a good idea of what it means either.
I do not have any recollection of the 1968/1972/1976 campaigns, but Reagan, both Bushes, & Romney were all tarred with fascism/nazi labels. Perhaps crying wolf over every single candidate isn't having the intended effect?
It is like SNL painting every Republican as a moron. It is as predictable as it is boring.
It's called parody. And it's nothing compared to how the right has demonized the Democrats, transgender people, immigrants, among others. Be honest, if someone votes for a pathological liar and against their own interests how would you describe them?
Sorry, I meant SNL paints every Republican candidate/president as a moron.
"Be honest, if someone votes for a pathological liar and against their own interests how would you describe them?"
I do not understand this concept of thinking that someone knows someone else's interests.
I'm a union member and see many of my fellow union members support a man with a history of being anti union. I know their interests because mine are the same. Besides what Republican policy actually benefits the working class? The policy of wanting to dismantle or severely cut back SSI Medicare and Medicaid?
Many people in the working class believe that wages will go up if we remove all the illegal immigrants. This is not just an issue in the US, it also has been the issue behind Brexit and the rise of anti-immigrant parties in Italy, Germany, Sweden, France and probably other places. Look at Poland. They have taken Ukrainian refugees, but do not want immigrants from the Middle East.
"Many people in the working class believe that wages will go up if we remove all the illegal immigrants." But why? Do they honestly think that getting rid of low wage immigrant workers means employers will replace them with high wage native workers? I don't see that happening. The one thing that improves wages is a union. Trump and the Republicans have always been anti union.
+1
It appears they do believe that.
I don't think the Republican party is going to deport anywhere near the number of people they claim. I think it will have zero impact for the working class.
Immigration issues exist in France and Germany. Two countries that have noticeably more union representation than the US. (As a side note Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler are all unionized in Europe, but have fought against US unions. Same with the Japanese car manufacturers, maybe there is a reason...)
Economically I think Trump is going to be a disaster for the working class. I also thought Harris was going to win.
+1
Do Ukrainian refugees work for higher wages than Middle Eastern refugees in the same jobs? Otherwise, it’s unclear why Polish people believe Ukrainian refugees won’t cause wages to fall but middle eastern ones will. The easier argument to make is just that Polish people - like people of every race everywhere - are racist and accept Ukrainians more readily because They Look More Like We Do.
My husband is a recently retired Teamster. He was bewildered by the national union not endorsing Harris. But he said a good number of the white guys he worked with showed their true colors pretty much every day--very misogynistic and racist and lapping up disinformation with relish, mocking "the libs." The media hands bigots an excuse every time: say it's the economy.
Same where I work. It's very disappointing.
That’s perfectly fine. When their union is decimated either by right-to-work laws or other government action favoring employers over laborers, they can feed their families on resentment and nostalgia. As my grandmother always said, you can hang together or you can hang separately, and the union workers appear to have chosen to hang separately. Hope it was worth it to them.
I too have seen my fellow members behave in this uncivilized manner. Same as it ever was.
"Sorry, I meant SNL paints every Republican candidate/president as a moron." My comment still stands. No idea why you felt the need to make a distinction. They've called Biden and most Dems worse. Besides, as far as I know the only moron in the Republican party isn't even a real conservative. I've watched SNL and I dont think they portray every Republican as a moron. Again it's parody, an exageration of behavior.
The thing is, though, that the christian right IS fascist. And they are the most visible piece of the GOP machine. Anyone courting them and elevating their voice is saying fascism is ok as long as the trains run on time and everyone believes what I believe.
I agree that Annie Lowery can take a flying leap. Same for the many other Monday morning quarterbacks who now are finding all these problems with Kamala and the Dems on why they blew the election. It's hogwash.
Did Kamala run a perfect campaign? Of course not. No one ever does. Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, Biden. Every campaign faces a crisis or two, commits a few boners. Some win, some lose. In comparison to past Dems, I think Kamala was about as good as you get. Data showing she performed best in the battleground states supports that.
Should she have had better answers on her past statements about fracking and trans issues. Yep. Could she have focused more on base turnout than on the capturing the middle? Yep. In hindsight, it looks that way. (I think she, like Hillary, had polling data that showed her on track to win. Faulty data makes running a campaign hard.)
Everybody is pretending they know what Dems should have done to win the election. In retrospect, it looks easy. Should have done this, shouldn't have done that. A lot of the post-game analysis is stupid and none of it matters anymore.
Knowing what we know now (which is not how the game is played real-time), maybe the winning move for Dems was for Joe Biden to step down in spring or summer of 2023, after inflation had peaked, and let Kamala Harris finish his term and run as the incumbent. She could take credit for inflation coming down and the border problem improving. If she'd had a year and a half of actual experience in the Oval Office and had a good record to show for it, that may have alleviated many of the doubts some had about her.
Instead, she had to run to succeed her unpopular predecessor and that's a helluva tough situation. She was expected to be the "change candidate" while coming out of the administration herself (like Hillary did in '16). Trump was the de facto incumbent who had his presidency interrupted four years earlier by a once in a century pandemic that he couldn't be blamed for. That's how the dynamic played. America almost always prefers the incumbent, even when he's "the devil you know."
It's also true that some people did worse than others, and it doesn't take many of them to move the vote a few percentage points toward Trump. That's a possibility.
Not just a possibility. But highly likely. Only about one in fifteen or sixteen voters on net shifted from Biden (20) to Trump (24). Also, it stands to reason that non college educated workers took it on the chin more than college educated workers. Well, the former have become the heart of Trump's base. They're also less likely to possess reliable factual information about the economy.
Also, where is it written that price increases only disturb voters when they're not made up by wage increases? People aren't always perfectly rational, nor do they always possess economics degrees.
Finally, wages ≠ savings or benefits. A fair number of workers who are probably "whole" —income-wise— compared to 2020 when wage increases are taken into consideration, nonetheless have seen their cash reserves drop, because of the end of all those nice checks they got during lockdowns. Another large segment got healthcare taken away because of the end of covid-era coverage expansion programs.
Mind you I think lower SES workers were stupid to opt for Trump. The economy now is great—a lot better than it's likely to be after eighteen months of Trumponomics. But when it stupid a new thing in American politics?
Anyway, stupid or not, I believe the above is mostly what explains the modest shift in voter sentiment that has given us the current clusterfuck.
Just wanted to clarify: I agree with Kevin (if I understand him correctly) that most Trump voters (and most Harris voters) didn't decide which candidate to support based on economics. It's a bit of a truism, sure, but probably pretty valid, that the majority of today's voters are motivated primarily by cultural phenomena. This is why the electorate is so bifurcated by education levels.
But the obvious element I think that needs pointing out is that the vast majority of Trump's voters voted for him four years ago (and the vast majority of Harris's voters voted for Biden four years ago).
In other words, Trump was indeed powered to victory by—he received the vast majority of his votes from—loyal MAGA base voters who are mostly motivated by cultural grievances, and who voted for him over Joe Biden, too.
But Trump got an additional 3.5% of the electorate this cycle. And it is this increase, I reckon—mostly made up of persuadable voters or former Biden voters—that is the portion that was mostly driven by economic concerns. And it is this additional group of voters that for Trump was the difference between losing in 2020 and winning in 2024.
tldr: Trump's victory was enabled by (1) his vast MAGA base, mostly driven by cultural grievances, and (2) persuadable voters cheesed off by nine dollar Happy Meals and pricey auto insurance. The first group is obviously larger. But the second group was the difference maker.
But your narrative ignores the people who did better than average.
You consider only 2 groups, but forget about group 3 - persuadable voters who have benefited from the economic situation.
Given that group 3 appears to be larger than group 2, its not likely that this explains much about the election. You appear to say that we should assume that non-college educated workers took it on the chin and this explains their move towards trump....but given the data we have, that doesnt seem to track.
Anecdata warning....but i know many people who voted for Trump, admit that they are doing great but know in their gut that everyone else is struggling, they know the economy is awful even though they might be living better than ever. In conversation, they were voting for Trump to get the American economy back on track...right after vacationing in Europe and buying a new $100,000 SUV. Head scratcher.
You consider only 2 groups, but forget about group 3 - persuadable voters who have benefited from the economic situation.
I doubt most persuadable voters perceive* they're doing better compared to, say, 2019, which I why I suspect Trump got most of them.**
Reasoning? They're lower on the education scale than liberals. And that tends to correlate with lower income. And inflation hits lower income people harder. Persuadable voters are basically those who are similar to a lot of MAGA voters in terms of SES but for whatever reason aren't as culturally conservative (it could be they're simply not interested in politics).
*It's not clear to me—maybe I need to read his post again—whether Kevin thinks most working class people are doing fine (I agree with him on that) or whether he thinks most working class people believe they're doing fine. These are two different phenomena.
I think in many instances working class folks have experienced some (mostly moderate) downward pressure on living standards: I don't beieve the picture is quite as rosy as Kevin thinks, for reasons I've explained above. But I also don't deny that this dynamic has been magnified by poor MSM reporting. So, perhaps it's a mixture of some degree of genuine economic anxiety plus a healthy dollop of unfounded pessimism driven by journalists.
But whatever the precise blend between reality and perception, economic anxiety largely driven by higher prices contributed to a shift in persuadable voters toward the GOP.
**But sure, Biden would have gotten some persuadables, too. And certainly not all persuadables were primarily focused on the economy. You're going to find something of everything in an electorate of 150 million souls!
I don't know that it's lower on the education scale, you can have gone to college and still not be considered a profit generating asset by your employer.
The world is changing and the money players have decided who the winners and losers are going to be. Young people are frozen out of the housing market for reasons that have nothing to do with Biden or Dems.
There's a lot of anger out there and the Democrats were the target in 2024. Someone else will be by 2026 when nothing has changed. When it's all still going to shit and we've deported a large chuck of the workforce, who will the blame be targeted at next?
Historically, religions. Also historically, the educated. Hard to say at this point where the finger will point next in the US.
In conversation, they were voting for Trump to get the American economy back on track...right after vacationing in Europe and buying a new $100,000 SUV. Head scratcher.
To me it doesn't sound like a head-scratcher. It sounds like they're loyal Trump voters. Tragically, they account for something like 45% of the electorate. And yes, many Trump voters will make up all kinds of reasons for voting as they do.
This is my theory for why Trump won as well. As much as I want to blame bigotry and racism, and that is in fact the motivation of a huge portion of his base, the deciding votes were persuadable, low-information voters that voted on PERCEPTIONS of the economy and immigration.
Their perceptions are of course incorrect. And surely Republicans offer no solutions for their perceived ailments, so it was a doubly wrong vote. But it doesn't change the fact that their ignorance has vaulted Trump to power again.
But why are their perceptions incorrect ? Ok, I'll grant that price increases
in 2022 that lingered into 2023 helped form that perception even though in the past year and a half there has been very little price change in most things people see all the time (like food and gas) and that these weigh more heavily in people's minds than the wage increases they got that actually outpaced the prices.
Also, 2020 was a very weird year. It was the year of the pandemic (of course so was 2021) and for some reason everyone ignored it and went back to 2019 as their base year for Trump's ecomomy. Still, there is something else going on here. The discrepency between what polls say about how people feel about their own circumstances and how they feel about "the economy" is huge, much larger than we've seen in the past and this "vibe" cannot be explained just by the price of eggs. I think Micahel Tomasky (and to a lesser extent Kevin when he focuses on Fox News) is on to something:
https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox .
If you're explaining, you're losing. No campaign has ever been won by charts and graphs. The best ads are those that confirm what people already think. Morning in America worked because people believed it before it aired. If people think things are terrible, you should have been addressing this before the campaign. Once it starts it's too late.
Republicans grasp this intuitively. They all spent the last two years campaigning on things that they voted against. Democrats govern well, but are terrible at showing people the actual benefits of their policies. Obamacare was very unpopular for years. It took Republicans trying to repeal it before people finally understood how much they benefited from it. That's political malpractice on the part of D's.
Oh, yes, 'political malpractice' by ascribing activity the Democratic Party didn't do.
You right but I that begs the question why people believed it? Because things had improved and it wasn't just a feeling. The data backed that up, especially when unemployment was at 12 percent in 1982 as well.
An interesting aside, 283 Marines died in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beruit in 1983, a heck of a lot more than in the Afghanistan withdrawal. I tell you what, if Gen. Austin Cord didn't overthrow the Bishop government in Grenada right at the same time...interesting to speculate how the loss of those Marines would have affected Reagan's poll ratings going forward. Unfortunately for Biden, there was no little small island to invade short after Afghanistan.
My larger point is this, compared to 2020-22, there stats show things improving whether it was inflation, crime or illegal immigration. It's up to the Administration, of which Harris is a part, to defend that record and show how bad things were from March 2020 to January 6, 2021. They did not do this, at least not effectively and that's why they lost, because they let the media drive them from their own record. So what could they have said or promised if that was the case? Nothing really.
First, look in the mirror.
This mode is your problem. It is an autistic mode of communication that is self-evidently losing you ground in cycle after cycle on presidential.
"False consciousness" narraritives are virtually always failures, one can observe as well
Second problem a naive level of macro analysis on macro statistics rather than a comparative one as the greater mass of human beings are not benchmarking on absolutes but relatives (leaving further aside the naive statistics)
- similar to your ongoing erroneous understanding of inflation
In the end the "You dimwits do not understand how good you had it under us and are dupes" is not a path to winning
Another bigoted and completely false comment.
But 'you dimwits do not understand this topic like I do!' is an evergreen winning post?
I love the projection. golfclap
It's easy: purely and simply, it's "Double-X Hex", with it's ally "Black Boogeyman!"
It is extremely unfortunate that DX and BB had to elevate such a profoundly empty suit into the Most Important Job in the Solar System, but that's the way it plays with Black Swan Events. They only happen at the worst possible time.
This was the perfect time for a con man like Trump. He isn't that bright, but he is fairly cunning.
I'm just going to continually leave this statistic here every time you post about how people are doing just fine and you don't understand the narrative:
https://www.marc.org/news/economy/housing-unaffordability-all-time-high-across-country
"Over 50% of renters in the United States are now considered cost-burdened, according to a new report from Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University (JCHS)."
https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/middle-class-new-homeowners-cost-burdened-house-poor-rcna163853
"Almost 30% of middle-class homeowners bought homes with monthly payments costing more than 30% of their income in 2022."
But sure, other than being more severely housing cost burdened than every before, the working class is doing just fine!
Sure, that's why they chose the party that (checks notes) plans to make the housing supply even more expensive!
That's not what they think, though. They think they'll make it all better because vibes.
Read that second article a few times..... can't figure out how many people are included in this number.
There's no way to tell how many homeowners saw their housing costs fall over the last few years.
If housing costs are important for the voting population, this article doesn't give enough info to make any kind of determination about much of anything.
Shelter costs are included in the inflation statistics. So...... it's not as if anyone is ignoring this cost.
New homeowners are a very small percentage of the population. Because of the massive slowdown in home sales over the last few years, it's an even smaller percentage than usual. Those cost-burdened new homeowners are completely dwarfed by current homeowners who have 4% mortgages, and who have seen their mortgage payments drop as a percentage of their income because of inflation.
How many home owners became addicted to cash out refis? It was all the rage back in the 2002-2008 run up. In theory (but less so in practice) the idea of consolidating your 24% credit card interest into a 4% home refi is a cost saving measure. At 8.5% it is noticeably harder to do.
Where I live rent has skyrocketed. Lots of work from home transplants have moved here. For someone from California the housing here is dirt cheap, but for the working class here the ramifications have been noticeable. Even the non coupled teachers are feeling it.
New homeowners are a very small percentage of the population.
The net shift to Trump (about 3% of the population) is also a very small percentage of the population. And to that we might add the percentage of Americans who are temporarily priced out of the market because of higher rates.
If housing costs are a key factor, they should have an impact for more than just the narrow slice of new home buyers.
Its likely not an important factor if we have to exclude all the people who experienced the factor in a different way.
Also, Trump picked up just over 1 million more votes. This is closer to 0.5% to 1% of the US adult population.
Yes, but if you'd care to look at any statistics whatsoever, you'd see that in 2021 almost 20% of homeowners (not just new homebuyers!) are cost-burdened.
https://www.habitat.org/costofhome/2023-state-nations-housing-report-lack-affordable-housing
50% of renters, 20% of homeowners... that's a huge chunk of the population. But sure, I'm just making shit up about how impactful housing cost burden is.
the "people" don't know what they got until it's gone. and gone it will be after a couple of years trump dystopia
Jasper made this point above in one of his self-replies, but I think it bears repeating.
Two things can be true at the same time: (A) working class people's living standards on the whole have held up during the Biden era, and (B) working class people *feel* like the world has gotten very expensive and are angry about that.
I've made this point before, and others have, too, but I don't think I've seen Kevin engage with it: people think their raises are a result of their hard work and strong performance, and when they get a raise, they expect their living standards to improve. If their raise is actually just keeping up with inflation, they will be disappointed. "Jeez, things have gotten so expensive under Biden - if I hadn't earned that big raise, I'd be totally screwed! I was planning to start eating out more once I got a raise but I can barely afford nicer groceries!"
This is an extremely normal human reaction. You can prove that it's incorrect with a chart, but that doesn't mean that's not how people feel.
Kevin, do you simply reject this? Do you really think people receive a 10% raise and think "yes, this makes sense, CPI was 9% this past year so my real income is going up 1% which is reasonable for my increase in productivity"? Because I think most people who get a 10% raise think "Finally! I am getting treated the way I deserve! I'm going to Disney Wor - wait, eggs cost WHAT NOW?"
If their raise is actually just keeping up with inflation, they will be disappointed.
Yes. This is a fundamental point. Lack of erosion in real wages (wage increases kept pace with inflation) isn't the same as an increase in real wages (the increases exceeded inflation)
It would be interesting to find out how real wage growth looks if we compare Trump's term and Biden's. Trump's presidency was a disaster for America governance in a lot of ways, but he did have the common sense to try and run the economy hot. So, a gap on this score in Trump's favor may have contributed to the sentiment in the perceptions of some voters that "times were better" under Trump.
Weirdly, I chanced upon this in my "For You" Twitter feed. The nickel version is: real wage/income growth has been historically low during Biden's presidency and significantly below that of the Trump years:
https://x.com/BasilHalperin/status/1856396146530484447
Now, the fact that we have seen some growth in income—coupled with lots of other good economic data (stock market, low unemployment, inflation dropping over last 18 months, strong GDP numbers, strong productivity numbers)—means there's a strong case that the Biden economy has been great overall. And now that the inflation burst is behind us, we should be able to count on stronger income/wage growth moving forward (if Trump hadn't been elected, that is: it looks to me like the Tariff King is going to fuck up the economy).
It's just that the Biden economy has been a bit underwhelming on one particular data point—real wage and income growth—that a lot of low info voters feel acutely. When you combine this with the end of pandemic era programs (especially healthcare) I expect it explains the bulk of the persuadable vote shift.
Re the Halperin link chart: Good presentation as far as it goes, but there is wide agreement that there are large compositional effects over the charted period — Covid-related layoffs and reductions in hours worked disproportionately affected lower-income workers (retail, hospitality). As I frequently say, disaggregated data by quantiles would be informative.
Good point.
Additionally, the large stimulus checks of 2020 & 2021 typically show up as income in the official stats and these were large enough to move the needle on various income growth statistics that use these years as begin or end dates. This is usually left out of discussion of the various income stat discussions.
Thumbs up.
Excellent point. I'm trying not to be disgusted with these people and this helps.
(Though honestly I AM disgusted. Hearing a lot of "chicken was $1 more than in 2016 so I had to vote against the black lady" kind of interviews, which strike me as BS)
Kevin's dead on, but don't forget to mash up punditry since the election, including his. We all know that Dems neglected the real needs of the working class in favor of open borders and defunding the police. We all know that if only Biden offered loan forgiveness young students would stick with him.
But wait, you say, didn't Harris run as an ex-prosecutor. Didn't the platform and Biden's record argue for a host of economic support plans, while Trump just wants to cut taxes on the rich and raise tariffs? Didn't Biden already offer loan forgiveness and a border proposal that the GOP shot down, with help from Trump's court appointees? Oh, and aren't such cultural issues as gun control and a path to citzen-ship actually popular?
Well, ok (hear Kristoff's wheels turning in mid-column last Sunday), but they still insulted voters. But wait again, didn't Harris reach out almost painfully, while Trump was the one insulting everyone at the level of schoolyard taunts? Yeah, but if Fox News can't convince mainstream pundits, who can it convince?
+1
Almost all of the post mordems are severely underestimating the influence of social media and the conservative media. Add in Russia troll farms and juvenile podcasts and it's really easy to see how folks were negatively influenced by the Biden Administrations achievements.
My only hope is that Trump's next two years are so disastrous that these factors cannot white wash reality. It's very sad to root for your fellow Americans to suffer but I'm not entirely sure what else can turn this red tide.
Almost all of the post mordems are severely underestimating the influence of social media and the conservative media.
Maybe. But that shit's been around quite a while now, and it didn't prevent Democrats from having excellent cycles in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
Trump inherited a great situation from Obama. He tried killing the golden goose, but couldn't. What he did do, e.g. tax cuts for the rich, gave the economy a sugar high, but the effect on deficits wouldn't really show up for awhile. The pandemic finally got him. Biden fixed a lot of things Trump broke. Finally getting an infrastructure bill out, etc. And as Kevin mention, all the things Trump ran on are already fixed, e.g. immigration, inflation, etc. He's again handed a country that is back on it's feet--and he's going to try to break it again. To claim his policies are working, they'll just go back to the time when he announced his run to take credit for Biden's work.
I do wonder how much of a bump Trump got just from going on Rogan and being made to seem normal. I can't help but think there are 125K+ listeners in MI, WI, and PA who were persuaded by this.
Not that I think Rogan is normal, I think he's deeply weird and dangerously influential for concerning reasons, but many low info people THINK he's normal. Or at least normal-ish.
I wonder also if we'll ever know if the reason Harris didn't go on Rogan was more Rogan than Harris (given that he endorsed Trump...). Going on there and coming out sounding/looking like a regular, non-threatening elected official might've made the difference for her. And given how Rogan likes to do almost nothing but softball interviews/conversations (or so I hear/read, I've never listened myself), I just keep wondering about whether Trump going on and Harris not is what made enough of a difference among the millions of weekly listeners, thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of whom were surely uncommitted/low-info/pick-your-descriptor voters.
The upper middle class bubble comes from the idea that people are out there budgeting so that they can compare their changes in income with their changes in spending and decide they are better off. Real people notice jumps in prices more than they notice the increases in their paychecks. That is particularly true because what they notice are the items that jumped the most. And if they see that as the measure of inflation then their paychecks did not increase nearly enough.
Through most of the column I thought the point was that Democratic policies were fine for working class people. Which is reasonable. But drawing the conclusion that the election was not about anger about inflation seems silly.
You'd be the worst candidate for office, ever, and an even worse campaign advisor.
Listen to Jon and Ezra: https://youtu.be/vkXJiEzWxFs?si=yTgtatUrqWegjNsE
It just dawned on me that there is a fairly obvious possibility that I haven't heard mentioned: Maybe a lot of people quickly became accustomed to the COVID payments, and now that those payments have ended (about when inflation kicked in), people notice that they have less available money. Could it be this simple?
I've been looking more at the experiences of volunteers who knocked on doors than at the conflicting analyses of pollsters, and what stood out is (1) a surprising number of people, including women, thought a woman wasn't up to the job, a black one at that, and (2) despite Harris and the Dems running away from open borders, defund the police, transgender operations and woke, liberals in general are associated with them and Dems (particularly female) with liberals. We know Gaza was bad for Harris among Arabs, but I suspect it also reduced youth and liberal turnout more than is said. In other words this was a backlash election from both sides. The economy? With the US doing better than anyone else, I doubt it. The reason it became a prominent point is because pollsters kept asking about it.
The center basically collapsed. I agree.
Leftish pundits are always talking about how Court, electoral and other reforms are needed to protect democracy (among other things), but reform is not going to happen until the problem of how someone as obviously incompetent and malevolent as Trump could ever be considered suitable to be President. The answer is not inflation or any supposed mistakes of the Harris campaign. Trump didn't win in 2016 because of inflation - have the reasons for that win (and almost winning in 2020) somehow disappeared?
The only explanation for this problem is that masses of lower-income whites vote for continuation (or restoration) of White Christian Supremacy (and associated forms of bigotry such as misogyny). And the fact that Harris is female and non-white is probably sufficient by itself to account for her not beating Trump this time.
The fact that bigotry is so important should not be surprising since splitting the lower-income vote on this basis has been a major strategy of Republicans since Goldwater, and they have had the support of the right-wing media, as well as a lot of compliance on the part of the MSM.
The mystery is not why Trump remains competitive but why the media and punditry are so determined to ignore or deny the role of bigotry.
Why do so many people say in polls or interviews that inflation is the most important issue? Because (a) this is what Trump tells them is important; and (b) they are not given the real choice. The choice of preserving White Christian Supremacy is not offered in polls, or addressed in interviews. And people will not give the true answer directly anyway - it is not socially acceptable to admit to racism, in particular. Getting true opinions based on bigotry is difficult, but that is not a justification for pretending that the issue does not exist.
Once the idea that inflation is important gets established in both the right-wing and "liberal" media, this is the answer that people will give instead of admitting to bigotry, and what others who may not be bigoted will accept as the general reason for the vote.
One dimensional man grasping at straws.
When it comes to why Harris couldn't get a couple of million more votes this time there may be many dimensions. But the real question facing the nation is how Trump could get as many as 75 million votes. There is only one general answer to that. How many votes would Trump get without MAGAs? MAGAs are not motivated by inflation.
Ethnic nationalism/nationalist supremacy motivates and unites subjects regardless of their class consciousness.
Dig deeper and it's not so clear cut.
https://jzmazlish.substack.com/p/yes-inflation-made-the-median-voter?r=naug&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
How can you say "The working class has done fine during the Biden era"?
How many commanding heights of the economy had their control and direction placed in the hands of their workers?
None, that's how many.
When has that ever happened in the history of the world? Arguably not even in 1917 nor 1949.
It was always the media. The media either said the economy was bad, and people believed it, or they made it out to be a both-sides argument, in which case people only heard the 'bad' messaging. We live in a country where the media has been taken over by right-leaning oligarchs.