I think it's going to someone out of left field. The Democrats have a deep bench, but many will be hamstrung by the 2020-era excesses in the same way so many politicians of the 2010s were haunted by Iraq.
Most of the white college grads I know are kinda wimps, but basically delightful star wars nerds after that.
Meanwhile there's a whole OTHER political constituency that rolls around acting like an even more cariacatured version of the mean frat from Revenge of the Nerds, and seems to think I'm a cryptomarxist pedo executing a secret globalist plan to replace testosterone with IV soy drip.
So, where are the assholes correlated? And I'm not saying it's with the Republican party per se -- maybe just that... most people are assholes?
Oh, not in MY life. They're all super chill here. Got plenty of Trump voters in the community I hang with, smoke meat, and compare our hypothetic visions of apolcalpyse. There's even a couple who just try to talk my ear off about how Tom Hanks is a pedo, but I divert that into fun stuff instead.
Just saying, when I look OUT THERE (or, dear God, on Twitter if I'm feeling masochistic), that neither party seems to have a monopoly, nor even an oversampling, of assholes. And beliving one does strikes me as sort of propogandized thinking.
And by all means, carry on with nerd-on-nerd crime.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel was the pedo, not Tom Hanks. And a very weepy pedo at that.
I'm sorry, but when I saw Kimmel tear up I wanted to vomit. The DNC is the party of white collar professionals right now while the working class flocks to the GOP. At least the latter needs to be grounded, to some extent, just due to the constraints of having to balance a budget.
Sorry for being contentious, but I feel like CRT In particular can’t just be blamed on rich, educated white people. There were plenty of academics of all stripes pushing this kind of rhetoric online; in the news; and at universities. We’re obviously a part of the problem, but I don’t know many white people who were just organically like “we need to pay black people reparations,” and “white people constantly commit micro aggressions,” without having been yelled at online or in person by a not white person. Like I said, white people deserve a lot of the blame because we make up the largest population of people with degrees, but we need to blame Black academics and activists, too, for pushing rhetoric that went against the interests of their own communities.
I mean that there is a gulf now, a "diploma divide", between the working class and college educated cohorts in this country. Are there minority academics who peddled nonsense like CRT? Of course, but demographically speaking blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately working class and so the face of CRT is largely a white one.
Again, there are a lot more of us white liberals, and we do share a lot of the blame, but organizations like Black Lives Matter drove a lot of public opinion on certain issues, and they were a Black led movement (even in my 99% white state of NH has a chapter primarily overseen by people who are not white). I also think popular academics like Coates, Kendi deserve a lot of credit for disseminating these ideas, as well. Did white degree holders take it and run with it? Yes, but there are many not white people at the helms of these movements who should not be able to hide behind the moniker: “it was all educated white peoples’ faults. There are plenty of educated degree holders of all races in the United States, and as we’ve seen, singling out groups for blame and shame has not made anything better.
Bernie Sanders nailed it when pointed out that abandoning the middle class led to the middle class abandoning the Dems.
Do the math. There are tens of millions middle class voters, and a couple thousand PhDs in intersectional victimhood. Whose vote do they want?
I'm surprised that Freddie didn't make it clearer, since he is an old-school class based lefty not an identity obsessed one. It's a crucial distinction that the Dems must embrace, especially nationally.
You missed one. You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on the dumb voters who just can’t handle a black woman as president. Psaki just went there on NBC. No plans for any honest self-reflection this cycle either, I suppose. What a disaster. I can’t wait to read more of your scathing analysis in the coming days, Freddie.
They won't do a damn thing. They've had at least since 2016 to pull their heads outta their asses...and instead just keep cramming it up there further and further.
Did not Sam Kriss teach the Revolutionary Working Masses that Team D keep engaging in a battle of wits with a fetal pig with a bad combover, and the self-proclaimed Smart People keep on losing, because they insist on pretending that they are starring in a really bad spy novel?
Since 2012, actually, when Obama won his second term and the Democratic Party had four years to groom a competitive successor. But the fix was in for the Clinton dynasty.
Good lord. I mean I know America is supposed to be the country where anyone can do anything, but the level of entitlement of these Beltway talking heads is off the chart. You're not a damn journalist Jen, you don't get to lateral transfer to legacy media just because you know how to B.S. at a podium. Sheesh.
All of this makes me painfully aware that I don't have any conservative/right-leaning friends, and I'm going to have to hear variations of this from my social circle for weeks. It's exhausting and frightening to speak up when you're the only one who feels a certain way.
WRONG. Woke has nearly everything to do with it. Wokeness was at the heart of the policies that led ultimately to high inflation, among many other bad outcomes. The Dem party can start healing and reinventing by starting with rooting out wokeness. Better yet, start a 3rd party that's truly diverse (i.e. not just skin color) and better representative of the entire country (but that's never gonna happen).
I'm willing to believe hostility to "wokeness" was a major motivating factor, but I'm struggling to link it to macroeconomic outcomes like inflation. Even dumb spending on DEI departments/policies/etc doesn't seem like it adds up enough to contribute to the price of groceries. And arguably much of that spending was fungible monies part of total budgets anyway, meaning it would have been spent regardless and thus not specifically an inflation driver.
I agree. Most people will take cheap groceries at the cost of vulnerable people's lives. And they're probably not wrong to do so. You're gonna ask people to care about dying kids on the other side of the world over your own family? Give me a fuckin break.
No she didn't. She offered to limit the price at which groceries could be sold, which always results in the groceries not being available to buy at all (i.e. no cheap groceries). Actual cheap groceries can only be produced by either increasing the supply or reducing the demand.
Or we could break up monopolies, change ag policies which favor processed foods, and adjust the tax codes to take the profit out of price gouging.
There is, in fact, and oversupply in the Western world, and food waste accounts for 30-40% of all production? Food is dumped on an industrial level, rather than lowering prices.
The sources of inflation are not in any way, shape, or form a mystery. We know exactly what happened and why. Specifically:
When COVID happened, the US made the decision to spend very generously to support the economy during the lockdowns. It was known going into it that this would cause inflation, but it was believed that it would also lead to a strong, rapid recovery, with minimal impact on employment.
And this was 100% correct. The US made the very conscious (and in my view, objectively correct) decision to cause a limited amount of inflation to limit the other damage COVID would do, and the US ended up with a brief spike in inflation and a strong recovery, both in absolute terms and when compared to other large western countries. The US economy is, objectively, strong right now.
In some ways one of the real damaging results of this election is that the next time we find ourselves in a similar state, elected leaders are going to be very reluctant to enact optimal polices, given how harshly voters reacted, because apparently voters would prefer high unemployment to a brief spike in inflation.
Your hyperbole is showing. And you’re missing the fact that we didn’t need a second round of stimulus - the economy was already overcooked before passing the “inflation reduction act” (still one of the best names ever for a bill, btw).
Other than that I mostly agree with you. But the IRA is filled with wokeness, and was not necessary at the time since the economy was already recovering.
I'm a solar industry vet, so the parts I'm specifically familiar with revolve around needing to use union labor and/or working with low-income housing developers in order to access certain funds. Some might say that govt subsidies for renewable energy is woke in and of itself, but I’m not suggesting that.
If you’re privy to ChatGPT or using other AI LLMs, here’s a prompt you can use to learn more: please analyze the Inflation Reduction Act and call out any policies, directives, or requirements that might be considered "woke" or promoting "wokeness"
Even if we grant your assertion that the IRA is "filled with wokeness"...do you have even the slightest sliver of an argument or evidence why $1 spent on a "woke cause" will cause more inflation spent on an "unwoke cause"?
(Also, the IRA was not filled with wokeness, and requirements that funds need to be spent on union labour are just not woke by any reasonable definition. I don't support such riders, but they're just not woke. Not everything you dislike or which is objectively bad is "woke". Words have meanings!)
Cody - this is nonsense. COVID was just another opportunity to syphon hordes of cash into the pockets of multinational conglomerates. Price gouging by these same greedy fucks fueled inflation.
The 'strong' recovery was strong for the 1%. For normal people, they were frozen from the housing market, the rental market, and were having problems feeding their families. The Fed raised interest rates because COVID gave too many normal folks security - and they were talking shit like quitting their jobs, exiting the rat race, living frugally, saving money. A common complaint from policy makers in 2020 was that people had acquired too much in savings!
This is why the Dems keep losing. I am in a weird position where I work with really wealthy people, and really poor people at the same time. Anecdotally, on the lower income end, it was (surprisingly) not inflation because they think that would have happened either way. It was (1) woke, (2) involvement in foreign wars, and (3) immigration (even among Hispanics).
When you can't feed your kids, nothing else matters.
Everyone in this thread complains about inflation. Inflation is when the government passes the ineptly named "Inflation Reduction Act" which was a big give-away to corporate donors. The government just printed off that money. The printing and distribution of money is inflation of the currency.
Imagine: If The President gave you a million dollars. You could buy a nice house with that money. If The President gave every US citizen a million dollars, you couldn't buy a hamburger with that money.
I can't tell if you're intentionally misunderstanding or not, but: people wanted prices to deflate, not continue to inflate. They don't care what the rate of inflation is, they care what the prices are.
It's a high price to pay...except, no, it's really not. I just hope that's the actual resolution this time, rather than another 2016-2020 redux of doubling down even harder on Ivy Tower bullshit and working the nonexistent refs on Twitter. They'll surely call the game in favour of the Resistance any day now!
Not getting my hopes up though. Already had a bunch of absences from work today due to #trauma. That sort of failure to face reality is gonna go on for awhile. (I mean, as much as SF is reality-based to begin with.) I bet none of them will even move to Canada like they're threatening to.
Maybe as a bonus we'll finally get national voter ID requirements or something. I don't want to be excessively cynical, but if those minorities aren't "keeping up their end of the bargain" by voting D, well...
We should just get free, mandatory government ID out to all voting-eligible Americans. It'd circumvent the voter ID laws on the books in red states, and people might get to use the IDs for other practical everyday matters, as a bonus.
The Democrats certainly can blame losing the popular votes and all 7 swing states on Biden for getting out of the race too late.
If Biden had dropped out before the primaries, the Democrats would have had the distinct possibility of a stronger nominee which would not have lost the popular votes or all 7 swing states.
And with that excuse, the Democrats will not look at why they actually lost.
I agree they could have, but would they have? I think probably not. More than likely, the machine would have put its thumb on the scales (again) and ensured their "chosen one" got the nod, just like they did with Clinton and again with Biden (who barely eeked out a victory).
If the Dems actually let the people choose who they want to represent them, it likely means someone who's a bit of an outsider, which means that many in the existing establishment would be out.
Carter was too focused on being 'A Man of Peace.' This became a source of leverage against him. When you know he won't attack, you are free to do all manner of bad stuff. Iran is still doing bad stuff almost 50 years after taking the US embassy and US hostages. After 444 days of captivity, all the hostages were returned the day before RR took office.
Trump is also without 'Institutional Support.' This is why the institutions tried to take him down last time, and when he announced his candidacy for 2024. But unlike the past, the institutional press has spent their capital, which was trust. Now that the people no longer trust them, we turn to alternative media which undermines the institutions.
I think they almost certainly would have. The Democrats have a fairly deep bench of potential winners, including some excellent communicators and those with appeal in purple or red states.
Mostly governors, with maybe Klobuchar nipping into #5.
But atop that list would be Buttigieg. He's a Reagan-level extraordinarily gifted communicator, and would make a formidable nominee. Given his primary performance in 2020, and how that campaign was ended, I think he would have won the 2024 primary.
But more importantly, we will never know, we can never be sure.
Two people who I really liked in 2020 who were forced to step aside by the Dem machine, and now appear to be part of it. If they could have somehow distanced themselves (I don’t think they could have), they may have had a chance. But an uphill battle for sure. Not sure there are many others on that bench…and those who are better act Iike they’re part of a new team if they want any chance in the future.
Buttigieg turned out to be a real dud. Named as Secretary for Transportation in the Biden Admin, Pete took 6 months off for baby-leave when the country's transportation system was going to hell. Problems in the west coast when the Cali legislature banned trucks more than 10 years old caused backups at the ports. There were too few trucks legal to operate in California and move out the containers. Pete did nothing. When the train derailed in East Palestine Ohio, Pete was nowhere. He could have shown up made a bunch of false promises, reinvigorated hope, and shined.
I find it a fascinating question, but I don't think we can answer it.
1) The DNC has been highly variable. It was ineffective in 2008, a non-entity in 2012, a killer in 2016, disunited and bypassed in 2020. Which version would show up in 2024 I genuinely have no idea.
2) Harris' checkboxes got her nowhere in the 2020 primary. They nominated an elderly white man. Since then, the fanaticism for checkboxing has ebbed somewhat, but for those so disposed, candidates other than Harris have checkboxes too.
3) The Veep phenomenon is fickle. It's more true that the Republicans routinely picked the previous #2 contender for decades until Trump over Santorum. Coming in 2nd correlates with being Veep. The Democrats consistently nominate their VPs since Humphrey, but they don't win (Biden being the exception, but also not the nominee at first opportunity)
Yep and they had a chance with RFK but he’s out and even better joined the other team. I voted for RFK because he was on the ballot in my state. At least it felt like something.
This always comes back to "Who, though?" IMHO the version of Harris who took over after Biden stepped aside was at least a more compelling figure than her dismal 2020 primary version, and I'd wager fear of Trump + uncertainty + incumbent VP status would have likely led to her winning the primary because of the paucity of compelling alternatives.
IMHO the weakness here is kind of embedded in history. The Democrat Brain Trust should have considered the next 4-5 election cycles and its future candidates back in 2008, convinced Obama that he was more valuable to the party in 2012/2016, gotten Hillary out of their system in 2008 and then had pipeline of fresh talent going forward. Holding the spot for Hillary was the fatal mistake that's stymied the competing candidates, compounded by the apparent necessity of Biden in 2020 and fait accompli Harris on 2024.
I guess the good news is that it's a wide open field in 2028 for Democrats and maybe some interesting people will bubble up by then.
Of course that would have entailed effectively admitting they'd fucked up by nominating a literal mummy of the party structure, and after all, they had to nominate him to block Bernie because Bernie might have threatened the sinecures of the party's apparatchiks, the thing which actually must be protected at all costs (including Trump inevitably retaking power).
Self-reflection from Democrat apparatchiks? Never going to happen.
The worst part of this is that we get Trump/Vance in the White House AND more fuel for the obnoxious scolds who make everything and everyone outside of politics miserable because they can't win the game as it lays even with the solution staring them plain in the face.
"... people like me are so critical of the Democrats in large part because they have proven themselves incapable of producing a durable winning coalition."
What's wrong with the Democrats is listening to the demands of progressives and leftists on immigration, gender, crime, etc., instead of actually catering to the median voter. (Kamala convinced nobody she had actually moved to the center, because she is not a gifted politician.)
(I can’t say anything about economics because Trump is a big government and social programs guy with disastrous economic ideals. Hard times for we neoliberals.)
"Progs and leftists" (lord, these terms) were not disappointed in Obama before he took office at all. Obama presented the surface impression of bringing a sea change to the Presidencyduring his campaign--and then went on to govern the way that Harris probably would have, as a protege of the Democratic Party political establishment.
Clinton might have lost in 1992 if it hadn't been for Ross Perot. And we're talking about two political generations ago--a completely different scene. Drawing on the past for lessons makes sense in politics, but they have to be the right lessons. Precedent is not anything to be enslaved to. But Democrat Presidential candidates persist in running like Michael Dukakis, getting driven around in a tank with his head poking out of the top hatch and a helmet on his head.
One of Donald Trump's main strengths is that he's obviously his own man. Which is what a sizeable number of Obama voters wanted Obama to be, only to find that they might just as well have elected Hillary Clinton. But what was any disappointed Obama voter to do in 2012--vote for Mitt Romney? Because that's the only choice.
Without ranked-choice voting, the election campaign system in this country is fatally flawed.
At present, the only way to really shake up either party is to do it like Trump, as a self-funded candidate with a long record of mass media exposure and name recognition who's willing to alienate and upend every rival in the primaries and remake the party in his own image, while also adhering to the priorities of the wealthy interest groups who comprise the institutional structure of the party. (Trump would not have even obtained the GOP nomination if he had antagonized the fossil fuel industry, for example. Or AIPAC. Or if he hadn't reversed his earlier pro-choice leanings on abortion to suit the right-wing evangelical Christians, who comprise a wealthy and powerful interest group as well as a populist base for the GOP.) Trump is an "insurgent" candidate who just happens to coincidentally support the long-standing wish list of many wealthy Republican backers. I'm most concerned about the moves the ignoramus is going to make with undoing regulations like the Clean Water Act. But I'm concerned across the board, really. A President in power gets to discard every promise they've made while running for office, from their rhetorical feints about opposing aggressive overseas military intervention, to imposing tariffs, to health care...
The heart of Perot's appeal was as a populist--he ran on opposing NAFTA, reforming tax policy, cleaning up the lobbying revolving door, criticism of the Persian Gulf war and the military industrial complex. (I was just reading the three 1992 Presidential debates a few weeks ago.) It got Perot a lot of votes. Clinton would never have been allowed to say any of that by his handlers.
"Right" and "left" are terribly misleading labels, especially in American politics. And when Americans who buy into their own uniquely American cockamamie interpretation frames try to apply the labels to other countries, it gets even screwier.
There is no "median voter Theory." Politics is not about any theory. It isn't science, it's a craft. Especially in an electoral democracy. "Triangulation" in a political campaign is merely a tactic. Sometimes it's well-advised, sometimes it isn't. I'd argue that it's never well-advised when followed by the book, like Harris seeking the endorsement of Republicans that Trump said good riddance to, who also happen to be some of the most loathed people in American politics. That's just plain clumsy. It's impossible to tell whether it's sincere or insincere, and even harder to know which is worse. It's definitely an example of some Bob Shrum type wonk doing "median voter Theory", though.
I agree. My preferences are to the left of the "mainstream" Democratic party, but the median voter is way right. I want a Democratic party that can explain itself to rightward voters in a way that moves them left. What we've got are leadership Democrats who drive centrish voters further right.
Fetterman (someone mentioned him up-thread) is a maybe on that score. Buttigieg is a 100/100. Who else do you think rates on that criterion?
Whitmer and Shapiro are reasonably successful/popular governors.
Fetterman probably doesn’t have the health for it. Buttigieg probably ought to hold a more senior position before being the candidate. (Imagine if Biden had made him VP.)
In general, finding Dems with a history of winning in competitive states is a good bet.
Moral of the story is embrace Matt Yglesias Thought and popularism to win more consistently. (Yglesias is of course a left-neoliberal who likes markets and a strong welfare state.)
Agree with all of that. I've yet to be convinced about Whitmer or Shapiro - not writing them off, just yet to be convinced.
(God, I wish Buttigieg had been the VP choice.)
Are you and I the only folks here who are both Yglesias and FdB subscribers? I wish they didn't see each other (Freddie more than Yglesias, too be fair) as the enemy. Freddie's politics - or maybe moral vision would be more accurate - is where my heart lies, but Yglesias Thought is how to get there.
I'm also one of those few, but I increasingly feel uncomfortable mentioning that fact on either blog, which is a shame because I genuinely think there's a valuable synthesis rather than this yawning divide of (mostly-one-sided) beef. I know whose column today brought me more clarity and solace, at any rate...an expected outcome, if still a bit disappointing. Was expecting a closer race in either direction rather than a blowout. Guess I'll have to raise my respect for Nate Silver a little more.
I’m a right-neoliberal/state-capacity libertarian these days so I wholeheartedly disagree with Freddie on basically everything but education, mental health, and skewering progressives.
At one point I recall Freddie admitting perhaps the best leftist outcome possible was for social democracy to flourish and I think he was right about that. But he is a cradle Marxist holding strong to his faith. Pragmatically I think it’s clear leftists should embrace Yglesias Thought until such time they win those battles and then ratchet left.
Suggesting that Marxism is strictly faith-based is a bit disingenuous to what the philosophy and political science of it actually is, unless of course you consider natural sciences and neoliberalism faith-based as well.
Marxism can be considered philosophy and political theory, sure.
But what it is not is economics or political science, in that it is not based on rigorous theory or empirical analysis of reality.
Marx was wrong and science is about moving on to more correct understandings. That was known to be true soon after Marx died, when the Labor Theory of Value (far from unique to Marx) was disproven. It's only become more obvious in more recent times.
I'm also a subscriber of both. And I suppose like you, I want to live on Freddie's vision of the future, but suspect we need more of Yglesias's strategy to achieve it.
Although I feel like I agreed more with Yglesias a year or two ago than I do today. In particular I think he may be falling prey to the very thing he decries in others in his views on trans policies...
I've lost track of whether this is Matt's comment section or Freddie's, but I'm curious what you mean. I can't remember anything MY has posted about that subject.
I want to like Fetterman, but after hearing him on Joe Rogan, I can't support him. Fetterman has cognitive issues. I really like his ideas, but Fetterman doesn't understand the words spoken to him. Even though they are spoken to a tablet which converts them to text which he can read ... as his lingering disability is involved in interpreting the spoken word.
You are correct that lefties who can't stomach voting for Kamala are ultimately conducting a self-defeating exercise, where their only hope is things get so bad from GOP dominance that a glorious revolution comes about to install a leftist government.
Harris swung hard to the right on immigration and almost everything else. And she had her ass handed to her. Rounding up Mexicans isn’t going to save this feckless empire from the sociopaths who own it.
Notice how you’re swapping out “wrong with Democrats” for “wrong with Kamala’s campaign”?
The former is more general than the latter.
Harris could not say how she would be different from Biden, a very progressive president. Harris could not separate herself from her past progressive statements and actions.
She was burdened by what progressive Democrats had been.
Cheney is not what made a lick of difference either way here, but it does make a certain kind of person on the right and left really mad.
Israel support is a red herring by the way. That’s not a major focus for most voters and Trump is going to support bombing Hamas et al a lot more.
I agree that the Biden admin was largely run by Biden advisors and staffers, as the man is very old.
But, of course, the Very Progressive advisors and staffers are a very large reason why the Biden admin was Very Progressive.
You're free to disagree with that, but you're hilariously wrong on both economic and social issues in the eyes of people in the center and further right. You know, the kind of people who swing elections. (It is true on certain issues the admin tried to backpedal, like illegal immigration.)
If you think the Biden admin is run by "warmongering psychos," well, I don't even know what to say to that. "Stoked a war with Russia." Ahahahaha. Wow.
I can easily prove genocide had no bearing on the election. There was no and is no genocide in Gaza. Easy peasy.
We can know for sure that Muslim voters in MI did not come close to deciding this election. Moreover, we have data on what voters listed as their concerns and Gaza is not high on that list. And Trump will not be good for Gaza. Plenty of people at least talked about switching their vote because Biden was viewed as insufficiently supportive of Israel. So without good data, I'll say it was a wash.
The Dems as they presently exist are not a center-left party, let alone a center-right party. Wokeness may or may not be on the wane longterm. We already have massive redistribution policies bankrupting us that Trump supports.
I'm a right-neoliberal/state-capacity libertarian. I love free markets and limited government. Trump and Vance do not represent my interests on economic policy. I can only celebrate if the Dems take a turn for the sane and hope the GOP quickly gives up Trumpism once he's gone.
You call running around with the Cheney freaks "listening to the demands of progressives and leftists"???
Just like in 2016, everyone will say "next time the dems need to do xyz to win" where xyz just happen to be the things they already believe. What luck!
Way of the world. People tend to think the things they favor are popular and winning (or would be, if people just gave them a chance). I'm no exception.
I’m a rightwinger who voted for the prog Dem who lost to a whacko rightwinger and you think I’m wrong that Kamala did a poor job of appealing to the center?
Dems just had their worst defeat in a generation to the orange clown man and you think shifting more to the center won’t be necessary to win? (Well that and having a candidate good at campaigning.)
I mean to be fair, the voters do kind of suck. They've elected Trump twice now, you know. Not a good thing.
But right, not an excuse for the Democratic Party that has now managed to lose to this guy twice. Truly humiliating work right there. Hopefully they can find a candidate with a real message that actually appeals to non-college educated voters. Something authentic and real that cares about providing them jobs and security while still respecting them. That would work.
I did not vote in the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections because I hated Trump. I was a never Trumper.
After three and a half years of an awful Biden presidency I still was not going to vote for Trump.
The day Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in a case that was pure abuse of the justice system I donated to the Trump campaign and decided to vote for him. This case proved to me that it was Democrats that are the real threat to democracy.
any contempt for voters in a landslide victory makes you anti-democracy. you need a better take than "70 million people suck because I disagree with them".
I agree with this. But you should really give Brecht credit here, since you paraphrased what he said about the East German people back in the early 1950s.
It honestly seems like the harder the mainstream media went against Trump and for Harris, the better Trump did with voters. I don’t like it and I don’t want to believe it was that simple either, but… it sure looks like Kamala went on the View and Trump went on Rogan and a bunch of comedy podcasts. CNN and all the major news channels relentlessly trashed Trump, catastrophizing and hysterical, while a bunch of internet personalities had him (and his surrogates) on to hang out and shoot the shit. I agree with everything you’re saying about the Democrats lacking substance and having nothing to offer, but it appears that this could equally be explained as a rejection of corporate media narratives. I don’t know.
I think the decision of the media to abandon the pretense of objectivity has been disastrous for its credibility. I understand the argument - when you say "Some people say the earth is round, but some people say it's flat" you are giving excessive credibility to the flat earthers, but:
(1) The people reporting in the media are on average very far left of the median American. Even if they try to call balls and strikes accurately in the news coverage, they are going to produce a product that the average American finds biased and unreliable.
(2) The old compromise - "We'll try to report just the facts in the news, and we'll tell you what we think and why on the opinion page" - helped correct for that bias. Reporters tried to find what both sides said and to tell their readers that without telling what they thought. It didn't always work, but it maintained credibility better than the current system.
So we got things like the McDonald's kerfuffle, where frankly, there is a sliver of evidence suggesting that Harris invented her McDonald's employment and a sliver of evidence suggesting she didn't, and everything after that goes back to your prior beliefs about how trustworthy she is and how likely someone in her position would be to lie.
And instead of reporting it as "It's really hard to prove where someone worked in 1983, and here's the evidence on both sides," most mainstream outlets reported the story as "Donald Trump claims, without evidence, that Harris never worked at McDonalds."
That particular story was trivial, but that effect is constant, and I think it's a big reason that a larger and larger share of the public just does not care about what the media has to say.
I thought democracy and abortion was a good and honest platform to run on. Then again, I’m not a swing voter.
I blame the loss on voters disliking inflation. Sometimes, your side loses because people want to vote the bums out. But I just don’t understand why the other side wanted the worst, most sinister bully to lead them.
So, yeah, I blame the voters. Republican primary voters especially. Fuck em. I realize there’s no profit in politics in blaming voters, but I have no theory of how to win and this isn’t a strategy. I hope some Democrat comes along and figures it out.
You joke, but there’s a long intellectual history of liberals saying inflation isn’t that bad in some quantities.
No politician ever took it seriously in the Democratic Party, thankfully. But I think it’s time to put that theory to rest forever. Fuck inflation. Not because it’s so terrible but because it affects absolutely everyone. President-killer.
I wasn't joking. Why wouldn't voters want their purchasing power eroded so the MIC can chase empire? How selfish of the voters!
Anyway, if a Team D candidate were to win the presidency because of voters protesting the inflationary policies of the Team R incumbent, you'd be singing a very different tune.
I have a different view of inflation: it was an inevitable correction to factors like years of zero-percent loans, the vagaries of global fossil fuel production and pricing (so often polticized) and the massive disruption of the global shipping supply chains that resulted from the lock-down overreaction to the covid pandemic. And one more factor, as well--Keynesian recession remedies like tax holidays (the principal component of the Obama "stimulus") and increases in public investment* are only sound economics when the money is eventually paid back with--oh, I cannot utter it--a TAX INCREASE--once the downturn is past, and the economy is in a boom cycle.** It's like this: either income tax rates go up by a couple of per cent on the disposable income class--roughly the top 20%--or everyone eventually gets hit with 5%-10% inflation, and the national debt balloons. Everyone got thousands of dollars from the Federal treasury in 2020 and 2021 as a "tax rebate", for idling themselves--how can anyone imagine that the money doesn't have to be repaid at some point later on? Come on! This is basic.
(*after years on end of a near zero-interest Federal funds rate from the Fed, why did the Democrats wait until the inflation era of Biden to pursue a major public investment program?)
(**a note to Austrian School dogmatic ideologues: von Mises agreed with Keynes on this point. The two had their differences, but they weren't in a cage match to the death.)
Oh, that's been part of it. A disruption in the oil&gas bidness. But inflation effects are typically delayed. This particular bout of inflation has also largely abated, which is much preferable to having it turn into a chronic malaise. The people I notice as being all wrought up over inflation nowadays don't know what the real thing looks like. We had the real thing in the 1970s. If someone could have cured it and brought core inflation back down to 3% annual within two years--which is what has happened--they would have been carried through the streets in a sedan chair. The annual core inflation rate in the Reagan years so beloved by right-wing nostalgists was around 4%. https://stocksbio.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/US_inflation_rate_Since_1980.png
The fact that the Democrats didn't know how to message that is an indication of a wider condition of their own haplessness. The fact that Republicans were able to make so much political hay with a relatively brief spike is an indication of their cynical ability to work naive American voters.
That said: if we don't get a fairly large increase on the top 20%--the disposable income class--inflation is going to go through the roof. But if the current character of our political establishments is any guide, the GOP will stamp its feet in wooden-headed opposition to any tax increases of any kind--one of those neatly tailored dogmatic slogans that's so heedless of practical reality--and inflation will eventually soar. The rubes will pat themselves on the back that they'll get some $100 tax cut, and four years later inflation will spike and the debt will become unsustainable. And Federal entitlement growth will be blamed, and there will be massive age-based demagoguery against the Baby Boomers, possibly by Donald Trump himself (b. 1946, the leading edge of the Boomers.) The younger generations (TrumpYouth!) will be demagogued into being aggrieved, mean, cold, and vengeful. And they won't even realize that they're cutting their own throats for a cohort of multimillionaire greedhead private sector grifters with more money than they know how to spend.
Inflation is only caused by printing money, adding money to the money supply.
If the government prints off one million dollars and gives it to you, that million can buy a pretty nice house. If the government prints off a million dollars for everyone, that million can't buy a hamburger.
This is what happened. The government printed off trillions of dollars and gave it to the political donors in the form of buying goods and services we don't need ... like wind and solar. You may think these good, but the wind only works 17% of the time. Solar only works about 20% of the time. For the rest of the time, the fossil fuel plants are still running, still burning fuel to cover for when the wind/solar fail. Which is why we have filled our lands with the cheapest electricity source available, but our power bills have never been higher. Solar and Wind are funded with great government subsidies.
I'll leave you with a great quote from Warren Buffet:
"Democracy" is a hollow slogan, all while the D's are responsible for censorship campaigns, genocide in Gaza, and the war in Ukraine. All of which Harris & Co pledged to continue. What is this "democracy" of which you speak?
The Dems are up to their eyeballs int he censorship-industrial complex, cutting off the peoples access to information, counter-narrative views and facts, without with "democracy" cannot function. The D's do everything in their power to prevent third-party candidates from getting on the ballot, and have extended lawfare to their Republican opponents. As for the method of choosing leaders, who the hell chose Kamala Harris? The last time she was in a competitive primary election, Tulsi Gabbard eviscerated Kamala's chances in about 90 seconds. Where was the primary to select the replacement for Joe Biden? He was clearly mentally incompetent years ago - and the Dems prevented any democratic means of replacing him. Nah, you've got to come up with something better than "democracy" on which to campaign. Real, concrete, material gains for working people, support for women's rights (not just reproductive rights, but the right to single-sex spaces, sports, etc - in other words, NOT gender-woo), and an end to the endless wars would be good places to start.
If you want to make democracy part of your platform, you should act like you actually value democracy. Instead of trying to silence dissenters, persuade them. Try to actually understand and reach voters rather than shaming them, demonizing the opposition, and pretending that the voters who disagree with you are really immoral racists who don't deserve to win.
You can't win with a "preserve democracy" platform if you transparently don't like democracy.
I had a 3000 level political science class back in the 1980s, "Introduction to Political Theory" and we had very engaged grad student teaching it who was super critical of rational choice/rational actor theories. She would have torn up the syllabus and just taught the outcome of this election to prove her points about rational actor/choice theory.
Voters react to inflation like a reactive dog. Being mad at inflation now and comparing it to the pre-pandemic economy and rewarding Trump? That's pure emotion. It's not the byproduct of even a high school level understanding of economics, let alone a realistic look at whether policy proposals (to the extent that Trump's ramblings and his sycophants crazy theories represent policies) on the economy actually will reduce inflation.
Nobody who voted for Trump on the issue of inflation was doing anything more than engaging in magical thinking and emotional response.
Thank you. Inflation is a LAGGING INDICATOR. And what it most reflects is deficit spending ('cause deficit spending gives the govt permission to print valueless money.)
Deficit spending rose by $8.4 trillion during Trump’s time in office—the third-biggest deficit increase of any president. Deficit spending rose by $4.3 trillion in Biden's first three years & five months in office. Both numbers are awful, but Biden’s number is significantly less awful.
I really don't understand how any Trump voter thinks Trump is gonna curb inflation. Could some Trump voter explain it to me? Semi-serious request. 😀
You're looking for rational answers from people who are voting based on emotion and magical thinking. The economy "felt good" in 2016-19, Trump was President, ergo, Trump will make the economy feel good again. It's tragically that simple and that ignorant.
My darkest fear is that we're living in a world of such complexity, both in how it works and the level of active management required to keep it working, that democracy is making the problem worse. The average voter is being asked to make decisions on things they simply don't understand and they're making those decisions based on propaganda and emotion.
I used to get really riled up in college when we'd read writers from the early age of democracy who were critical of it. The conventional, contemporary take was that they were just defending aristocratic privilege or using it to suppress ethnic minorities. But as I've gotten older, I think some of these people were onto something about the risks of letting the mob set policy.
I think for a longish period of time, literacy and a basic education was minimally sufficient for the kinds of decisions surrounding Democratic participation. The world and the policies involved were simpler. But we may be at a point where the complexities of the world and the policies necessary to its management are exceeding the average person's education and literacy.
This is all fairly haunting because it suggests we may need to change the rules on how democracy works.
Yes, this is why it's so haunting. I want to believe completely in democracy but I think its limitations are becoming evident, especially given the electorate's willingness to possibly vote in fascism.
We need some kind of guard rails, and its possible we may need something similar to Germany's Bundesverfassungsgericht, or Federal Constitutional Court, and its powers to ban parties and impeach politicians outside of the politically biased legislative body. Trump wouldn't have been able to run in Germany.
This would let you keep democratic choice largely intact, but filter out the most problematic parties, candidates and officials to prevent democratic choice from being suborned by demagogues and other anti-democratic choices.
Ironic that you cite Germany—given that the German government fell apart yesterday. (The story didn't get very much media attention here in the States.)
People can't understand everything in the world. However, "punish the people in charge when things are bad" is a tool that everyone can apply.
Harris's response to inflation was ads saying inflation is low. Was it? I guess? I don't know. I have no way of measuring that.
Inflation was less in the US that in other countries. That would've been a good message. I remember H Ross Perot and his charts. Maybe Tim Walz could've done that.
You really have "no way of measuring that"? And you think telling people who go to the grocery store a couple of times a week, that inflation is higher in other countries, would somehow be a winning message? Please drop any plans you may have of becoming a political consultant.
About 10% of the people think abortion up to 9 months is good, a few think post birth abortions are acceptable too.
About 15% of the people think no abortions should be allowed ever.
The other 70-ish % think its OK for abortions during the first trimester, but not after.
Ruth Bader-Ginsburg said herself that Roe-v-Wade was a flawed finding, and wouldn't stand. Low and behold it didn't. But congress-critters on both sides like the ability to shake the money tree the abortion question gave them. So now, each state gets to decide, which is the best result. Because if you're in an abortion state like California, and you're voting on abortion laws that only apply to other people in other states, you're practicing colonialism.
The Democratic Party is clearly in shambles - any election against Trump should have been a blowout. That said, I also feel kind of bad for Trump voters, especially those from the middle or working classes. This election could be a real FAFO moment for them. I don't think Trump is the end of democracy, new Hitler, etc, but he could very well usher in a grueling economic recession. Despite his rhetoric against foreign wars, he's volatile enough to start a war that will be fought primarily by his supporters' children.
Plenty of sociopaths are not that bright. In Harris' case, she never needed to be. Being Willie Brown's mistress was enough to get her into sinecures, which she leveraged into being able to run in elections that she basically could not lose.
I'm pretty sure the guy whose career was negotiating with all manner of foreign leaders, building resort complexes all around the world, isn't as you state: "weak, stupid and easily manipulated."
When faced with the problem of Kim Jung Un shooting missiles over Japan and testing Nuclear Weapons. Trump went to North Korea, sat down, spoke with Kim, and solved the problem. I'm pretty sure the giggling-pantsuit could never do this in a million years ... she wasn't brave enough to sit with Joe Rogan for heaven sake. That interview would have had 100 million views, and could have bought her the election. It was pure cowardice to turn down that golden opportunity.
Trump sat down with Putin and said "You've a beautiful city here, I love the golden domes. It'd be a shame if something happened to them." Putin didn't invade any of his neighbors during Trump's administration. Putin bombed cities in Syria and Trump responded with a missile attack to a Russian base in Syria killing over 130 of Putin's private army The Wagner Group.
Trump has sat down with Putin and negotiated to Yes (beauty pageants) and negotiated to no (resort complexes). So if anything, Trump is a pretty capable negotiator and not anyone's fool.
Kamal stated in an interview when it was brought up as to why she'd never visited the border, she replied "And I've never been to Europe." ... think about that, that is the person you want to elect to be leader of the free world?
All I need do is look at the results. To give one example, Trump twice attacked Syria on the basis of pathetic lies, twice cucked out of leaving Syria. Call him "Putin puppet!" and he will fold.
100% to this. Yes, every other western democracy had a lot of backlash voting. and maybe that’s it. But dems should be asking themselves why we couldn’t get over the hump against that guy, *especially* among the working class. that is supposedly who we value and stand for.
I’m all in on backlash voting myself. I’m not sure what Democrats could have proposed and remained Democrats and still won, except maybe border stuff, but that’s kind of an illusion anyway (Pennsylvania isn’t affected much by illegal immigration). They represent the current world order, and everyone is grumpy about it.
My thought was that the places where people were being resettled were urban centers in states that went blue, but I could easily be wrong about this. I might do some research. Nonetheless, I also believe that a lot of the concerns about the border were vibes based and not Because of personal interactions.
I don't know how much immigration mattered. (I think a lot, but not sure how to convince others.) But if New York City was worried about immigration, so was Pennsylvania.
did you vote for Simmons
Freddy who should be the next D candidate? Please, just 1-2 names. Really curious where you fall on this?
Paid consultants to the party make so much money and apparently they had 0 of the ideas above!
Bet you Fetterman runs.
Should've run this time.
I just can't see it happening if he's still having language processing issues, though he certainly seems to be setting himself up for it.
Check out his recent interviews. Seems much improved.
I think it's going to someone out of left field. The Democrats have a deep bench, but many will be hamstrung by the 2020-era excesses in the same way so many politicians of the 2010s were haunted by Iraq.
At the end of the day college educated white assholes are a minority of the country. Imagine that.
Why are they assholes? I mean what is even the point of adding that.
Not all white college grads are assholes. The ones that join the Democratic party though? Highly correlated.
Most of the white college grads I know are kinda wimps, but basically delightful star wars nerds after that.
Meanwhile there's a whole OTHER political constituency that rolls around acting like an even more cariacatured version of the mean frat from Revenge of the Nerds, and seems to think I'm a cryptomarxist pedo executing a secret globalist plan to replace testosterone with IV soy drip.
So, where are the assholes correlated? And I'm not saying it's with the Republican party per se -- maybe just that... most people are assholes?
If most of the people in your life sre assholes...well, that speaks for itself, doesn't it?
Also, I'm a geek and j have to restrain myself from punching then in the face when I see star wars nerds.
Oh, not in MY life. They're all super chill here. Got plenty of Trump voters in the community I hang with, smoke meat, and compare our hypothetic visions of apolcalpyse. There's even a couple who just try to talk my ear off about how Tom Hanks is a pedo, but I divert that into fun stuff instead.
Just saying, when I look OUT THERE (or, dear God, on Twitter if I'm feeling masochistic), that neither party seems to have a monopoly, nor even an oversampling, of assholes. And beliving one does strikes me as sort of propogandized thinking.
And by all means, carry on with nerd-on-nerd crime.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel was the pedo, not Tom Hanks. And a very weepy pedo at that.
I'm sorry, but when I saw Kimmel tear up I wanted to vomit. The DNC is the party of white collar professionals right now while the working class flocks to the GOP. At least the latter needs to be grounded, to some extent, just due to the constraints of having to balance a budget.
Sorry for being contentious, but I feel like CRT In particular can’t just be blamed on rich, educated white people. There were plenty of academics of all stripes pushing this kind of rhetoric online; in the news; and at universities. We’re obviously a part of the problem, but I don’t know many white people who were just organically like “we need to pay black people reparations,” and “white people constantly commit micro aggressions,” without having been yelled at online or in person by a not white person. Like I said, white people deserve a lot of the blame because we make up the largest population of people with degrees, but we need to blame Black academics and activists, too, for pushing rhetoric that went against the interests of their own communities.
I mean that there is a gulf now, a "diploma divide", between the working class and college educated cohorts in this country. Are there minority academics who peddled nonsense like CRT? Of course, but demographically speaking blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately working class and so the face of CRT is largely a white one.
Again, there are a lot more of us white liberals, and we do share a lot of the blame, but organizations like Black Lives Matter drove a lot of public opinion on certain issues, and they were a Black led movement (even in my 99% white state of NH has a chapter primarily overseen by people who are not white). I also think popular academics like Coates, Kendi deserve a lot of credit for disseminating these ideas, as well. Did white degree holders take it and run with it? Yes, but there are many not white people at the helms of these movements who should not be able to hide behind the moniker: “it was all educated white peoples’ faults. There are plenty of educated degree holders of all races in the United States, and as we’ve seen, singling out groups for blame and shame has not made anything better.
Bernie Sanders nailed it when pointed out that abandoning the middle class led to the middle class abandoning the Dems.
Do the math. There are tens of millions middle class voters, and a couple thousand PhDs in intersectional victimhood. Whose vote do they want?
I'm surprised that Freddie didn't make it clearer, since he is an old-school class based lefty not an identity obsessed one. It's a crucial distinction that the Dems must embrace, especially nationally.
You missed one. You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on the dumb voters who just can’t handle a black woman as president. Psaki just went there on NBC. No plans for any honest self-reflection this cycle either, I suppose. What a disaster. I can’t wait to read more of your scathing analysis in the coming days, Freddie.
They won't do a damn thing. They've had at least since 2016 to pull their heads outta their asses...and instead just keep cramming it up there further and further.
Did not Sam Kriss teach the Revolutionary Working Masses that Team D keep engaging in a battle of wits with a fetal pig with a bad combover, and the self-proclaimed Smart People keep on losing, because they insist on pretending that they are starring in a really bad spy novel?
Since 2012, actually, when Obama won his second term and the Democratic Party had four years to groom a competitive successor. But the fix was in for the Clinton dynasty.
How is Psaki a thing?
Good lord. I mean I know America is supposed to be the country where anyone can do anything, but the level of entitlement of these Beltway talking heads is off the chart. You're not a damn journalist Jen, you don't get to lateral transfer to legacy media just because you know how to B.S. at a podium. Sheesh.
`You can’t blame losing...'
Clearly you don't have enough faith in liberal cope. Have you see the Slate articles and comments?
The general theme seems to be Harris ran a `genuinely perfect' campaign and it's all the fault of the sexist, racist, ignorant voters!
Then we will own it! And move forward, along with Black, Latino, Muslim, and female Americans
All of this makes me painfully aware that I don't have any conservative/right-leaning friends, and I'm going to have to hear variations of this from my social circle for weeks. It's exhausting and frightening to speak up when you're the only one who feels a certain way.
Just make consoling, mumbling sounds. (I consider my friends all conservative/right-leaning - BECAUSE they voted for Harris :) )
Freddie called how this would go better than my election Twitter follows
This election was a referendum on the Democratic Party. Full stop. And the People don’t like that party.
Referendum on egg prices. People don’t like them high.
Exactly. If the Republicans were the incumbents they would be getting voted out just the same. It’s happening all over the world.
So was 2016. They only amplified their losing message. They will do the same this time too.
Woke is done. The Dems bled away too much of the Hispanic voters. The centrists in that party will seize power and purge the far left wing.
Probably true but woke has nothing to do with it. It’s all inflation. The American consumer cares about nothing else.
WRONG. Woke has nearly everything to do with it. Wokeness was at the heart of the policies that led ultimately to high inflation, among many other bad outcomes. The Dem party can start healing and reinventing by starting with rooting out wokeness. Better yet, start a 3rd party that's truly diverse (i.e. not just skin color) and better representative of the entire country (but that's never gonna happen).
I'm willing to believe hostility to "wokeness" was a major motivating factor, but I'm struggling to link it to macroeconomic outcomes like inflation. Even dumb spending on DEI departments/policies/etc doesn't seem like it adds up enough to contribute to the price of groceries. And arguably much of that spending was fungible monies part of total budgets anyway, meaning it would have been spent regardless and thus not specifically an inflation driver.
Wokeness leads to inflation. Do you hear yourself?
Did you read the “Inflation Reduction Act”?
I agree. Most people will take cheap groceries at the cost of vulnerable people's lives. And they're probably not wrong to do so. You're gonna ask people to care about dying kids on the other side of the world over your own family? Give me a fuckin break.
No, they didn't. Harris actually offered cheap groceries as a consolation prize to dead babies in Gaza... people didn't buy it.
No she didn't. She offered to limit the price at which groceries could be sold, which always results in the groceries not being available to buy at all (i.e. no cheap groceries). Actual cheap groceries can only be produced by either increasing the supply or reducing the demand.
Or we could break up monopolies, change ag policies which favor processed foods, and adjust the tax codes to take the profit out of price gouging.
There is, in fact, and oversupply in the Western world, and food waste accounts for 30-40% of all production? Food is dumped on an industrial level, rather than lowering prices.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/milk-oversupply-has-us-farmers-in-the-midwest-dumping-it-in-the-sewer
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/march/food-loss-why-food-stays-on-the-farm-or-off-the-market/
https://reason.com/podcast/2017/07/25/stossel-departments/
(You do know that the way American's do things is not the way everyone does them, yeah?)
The sources of inflation are not in any way, shape, or form a mystery. We know exactly what happened and why. Specifically:
When COVID happened, the US made the decision to spend very generously to support the economy during the lockdowns. It was known going into it that this would cause inflation, but it was believed that it would also lead to a strong, rapid recovery, with minimal impact on employment.
And this was 100% correct. The US made the very conscious (and in my view, objectively correct) decision to cause a limited amount of inflation to limit the other damage COVID would do, and the US ended up with a brief spike in inflation and a strong recovery, both in absolute terms and when compared to other large western countries. The US economy is, objectively, strong right now.
In some ways one of the real damaging results of this election is that the next time we find ourselves in a similar state, elected leaders are going to be very reluctant to enact optimal polices, given how harshly voters reacted, because apparently voters would prefer high unemployment to a brief spike in inflation.
Your hyperbole is showing. And you’re missing the fact that we didn’t need a second round of stimulus - the economy was already overcooked before passing the “inflation reduction act” (still one of the best names ever for a bill, btw).
Other than that I mostly agree with you. But the IRA is filled with wokeness, and was not necessary at the time since the economy was already recovering.
How was the IRA filled with wokeness? I'm honestly asking.
I'm a solar industry vet, so the parts I'm specifically familiar with revolve around needing to use union labor and/or working with low-income housing developers in order to access certain funds. Some might say that govt subsidies for renewable energy is woke in and of itself, but I’m not suggesting that.
If you’re privy to ChatGPT or using other AI LLMs, here’s a prompt you can use to learn more: please analyze the Inflation Reduction Act and call out any policies, directives, or requirements that might be considered "woke" or promoting "wokeness"
Even if we grant your assertion that the IRA is "filled with wokeness"...do you have even the slightest sliver of an argument or evidence why $1 spent on a "woke cause" will cause more inflation spent on an "unwoke cause"?
(Also, the IRA was not filled with wokeness, and requirements that funds need to be spent on union labour are just not woke by any reasonable definition. I don't support such riders, but they're just not woke. Not everything you dislike or which is objectively bad is "woke". Words have meanings!)
Cody - this is nonsense. COVID was just another opportunity to syphon hordes of cash into the pockets of multinational conglomerates. Price gouging by these same greedy fucks fueled inflation.
The 'strong' recovery was strong for the 1%. For normal people, they were frozen from the housing market, the rental market, and were having problems feeding their families. The Fed raised interest rates because COVID gave too many normal folks security - and they were talking shit like quitting their jobs, exiting the rat race, living frugally, saving money. A common complaint from policy makers in 2020 was that people had acquired too much in savings!
Swing voters cared about inflation. But voters are people and people are complex animals. They can hold more than one motivation at a time.
Let's not forget that after inflation there was illegal immigration and crime, and there wokeness has real impacts.
Humans are complex? I find them maddeningly simple.
This is why the Dems keep losing. I am in a weird position where I work with really wealthy people, and really poor people at the same time. Anecdotally, on the lower income end, it was (surprisingly) not inflation because they think that would have happened either way. It was (1) woke, (2) involvement in foreign wars, and (3) immigration (even among Hispanics).
Fascinating.
I wonder how much of (2) and (3) was owed to Harris's flagrant flip-flopping and gaslighting with regards to those policy areas.
When you can't feed your kids, nothing else matters.
Everyone in this thread complains about inflation. Inflation is when the government passes the ineptly named "Inflation Reduction Act" which was a big give-away to corporate donors. The government just printed off that money. The printing and distribution of money is inflation of the currency.
Imagine: If The President gave you a million dollars. You could buy a nice house with that money. If The President gave every US citizen a million dollars, you couldn't buy a hamburger with that money.
Inflation went down quite a bit after the passage of the IRA. You should look at actual stats
No, the rate of inflation went down. What people actually wanted was for prices to go back down to what they were before the pandemic.
That's what inflation is, the rate of change of prices. It objectively has gone down quite a bit in the past couple years.
I can't tell if you're intentionally misunderstanding or not, but: people wanted prices to deflate, not continue to inflate. They don't care what the rate of inflation is, they care what the prices are.
It's a high price to pay...except, no, it's really not. I just hope that's the actual resolution this time, rather than another 2016-2020 redux of doubling down even harder on Ivy Tower bullshit and working the nonexistent refs on Twitter. They'll surely call the game in favour of the Resistance any day now!
Not getting my hopes up though. Already had a bunch of absences from work today due to #trauma. That sort of failure to face reality is gonna go on for awhile. (I mean, as much as SF is reality-based to begin with.) I bet none of them will even move to Canada like they're threatening to.
Maybe as a bonus we'll finally get national voter ID requirements or something. I don't want to be excessively cynical, but if those minorities aren't "keeping up their end of the bargain" by voting D, well...
"national voter ID requirements"
That and paper ballots is what I'm hoping for.
We should just get free, mandatory government ID out to all voting-eligible Americans. It'd circumvent the voter ID laws on the books in red states, and people might get to use the IDs for other practical everyday matters, as a bonus.
The Democrats certainly can blame losing the popular votes and all 7 swing states on Biden for getting out of the race too late.
If Biden had dropped out before the primaries, the Democrats would have had the distinct possibility of a stronger nominee which would not have lost the popular votes or all 7 swing states.
And with that excuse, the Democrats will not look at why they actually lost.
I agree they could have, but would they have? I think probably not. More than likely, the machine would have put its thumb on the scales (again) and ensured their "chosen one" got the nod, just like they did with Clinton and again with Biden (who barely eeked out a victory).
If the Dems actually let the people choose who they want to represent them, it likely means someone who's a bit of an outsider, which means that many in the existing establishment would be out.
The election of Carter is most instructive.
In several possible ways. In what aspect are you thinking of?
The man entered office without institutional support in the post-watergate chaos, and was quickly neutered, then gotten rid of.
I can understand that you would be particularly sensitive around the topic of neutering.
Damn straight. Nobody talks about catching stray humans and chopping their balls off for no reason.
Carter was too focused on being 'A Man of Peace.' This became a source of leverage against him. When you know he won't attack, you are free to do all manner of bad stuff. Iran is still doing bad stuff almost 50 years after taking the US embassy and US hostages. After 444 days of captivity, all the hostages were returned the day before RR took office.
Trump is also without 'Institutional Support.' This is why the institutions tried to take him down last time, and when he announced his candidacy for 2024. But unlike the past, the institutional press has spent their capital, which was trust. Now that the people no longer trust them, we turn to alternative media which undermines the institutions.
As if Iran was just being evil, Just Because.
Trump also was unable to accomplish much from 2016-2020, in large part because of his lack of institutional support.
I think they almost certainly would have. The Democrats have a fairly deep bench of potential winners, including some excellent communicators and those with appeal in purple or red states.
But we will never know, we will never be sure.
Can you share who you think might be in the top 5 of the “deep bench”?
Mostly governors, with maybe Klobuchar nipping into #5.
But atop that list would be Buttigieg. He's a Reagan-level extraordinarily gifted communicator, and would make a formidable nominee. Given his primary performance in 2020, and how that campaign was ended, I think he would have won the 2024 primary.
But more importantly, we will never know, we can never be sure.
Two people who I really liked in 2020 who were forced to step aside by the Dem machine, and now appear to be part of it. If they could have somehow distanced themselves (I don’t think they could have), they may have had a chance. But an uphill battle for sure. Not sure there are many others on that bench…and those who are better act Iike they’re part of a new team if they want any chance in the future.
Buttigieg turned out to be a real dud. Named as Secretary for Transportation in the Biden Admin, Pete took 6 months off for baby-leave when the country's transportation system was going to hell. Problems in the west coast when the Cali legislature banned trucks more than 10 years old caused backups at the ports. There were too few trucks legal to operate in California and move out the containers. Pete did nothing. When the train derailed in East Palestine Ohio, Pete was nowhere. He could have shown up made a bunch of false promises, reinvigorated hope, and shined.
The guy was invisible when he was needed.
I think they almost certainly would NOT have.
1) All evidence points to the DNC choosing who they want to choose, and not who D voters want. See 2016 and 2020 for details.
2) Modern Dems are fanatical checkbox creatures, and Harris checks all those boxes.
3) There's a long (and utterly stupid) tradition of Veeps just outright being handed the Prez nomination, although this is true for both parties.
I find it a fascinating question, but I don't think we can answer it.
1) The DNC has been highly variable. It was ineffective in 2008, a non-entity in 2012, a killer in 2016, disunited and bypassed in 2020. Which version would show up in 2024 I genuinely have no idea.
2) Harris' checkboxes got her nowhere in the 2020 primary. They nominated an elderly white man. Since then, the fanaticism for checkboxing has ebbed somewhat, but for those so disposed, candidates other than Harris have checkboxes too.
3) The Veep phenomenon is fickle. It's more true that the Republicans routinely picked the previous #2 contender for decades until Trump over Santorum. Coming in 2nd correlates with being Veep. The Democrats consistently nominate their VPs since Humphrey, but they don't win (Biden being the exception, but also not the nominee at first opportunity)
Yep and they had a chance with RFK but he’s out and even better joined the other team. I voted for RFK because he was on the ballot in my state. At least it felt like something.
This always comes back to "Who, though?" IMHO the version of Harris who took over after Biden stepped aside was at least a more compelling figure than her dismal 2020 primary version, and I'd wager fear of Trump + uncertainty + incumbent VP status would have likely led to her winning the primary because of the paucity of compelling alternatives.
IMHO the weakness here is kind of embedded in history. The Democrat Brain Trust should have considered the next 4-5 election cycles and its future candidates back in 2008, convinced Obama that he was more valuable to the party in 2012/2016, gotten Hillary out of their system in 2008 and then had pipeline of fresh talent going forward. Holding the spot for Hillary was the fatal mistake that's stymied the competing candidates, compounded by the apparent necessity of Biden in 2020 and fait accompli Harris on 2024.
I guess the good news is that it's a wide open field in 2028 for Democrats and maybe some interesting people will bubble up by then.
Of course that would have entailed effectively admitting they'd fucked up by nominating a literal mummy of the party structure, and after all, they had to nominate him to block Bernie because Bernie might have threatened the sinecures of the party's apparatchiks, the thing which actually must be protected at all costs (including Trump inevitably retaking power).
Self-reflection from Democrat apparatchiks? Never going to happen.
The worst part of this is that we get Trump/Vance in the White House AND more fuel for the obnoxious scolds who make everything and everyone outside of politics miserable because they can't win the game as it lays even with the solution staring them plain in the face.
"... people like me are so critical of the Democrats in large part because they have proven themselves incapable of producing a durable winning coalition."
What's wrong with the Democrats is listening to the demands of progressives and leftists on immigration, gender, crime, etc., instead of actually catering to the median voter. (Kamala convinced nobody she had actually moved to the center, because she is not a gifted politician.)
(I can’t say anything about economics because Trump is a big government and social programs guy with disastrous economic ideals. Hard times for we neoliberals.)
Remember Freddie’s post hating on Bill? That guy won twice.
Remember how disappointed progs and leftists were with Obama? That guy won twice.
Remember how Biden ran to the right of the rest of his primary? He won too.
It’s not hard.
The Cheneys hate Trump. Has nothing to do with a Dem shift.
Incumbency had its advantages.
"Progs and leftists" (lord, these terms) were not disappointed in Obama before he took office at all. Obama presented the surface impression of bringing a sea change to the Presidencyduring his campaign--and then went on to govern the way that Harris probably would have, as a protege of the Democratic Party political establishment.
Clinton might have lost in 1992 if it hadn't been for Ross Perot. And we're talking about two political generations ago--a completely different scene. Drawing on the past for lessons makes sense in politics, but they have to be the right lessons. Precedent is not anything to be enslaved to. But Democrat Presidential candidates persist in running like Michael Dukakis, getting driven around in a tank with his head poking out of the top hatch and a helmet on his head.
One of Donald Trump's main strengths is that he's obviously his own man. Which is what a sizeable number of Obama voters wanted Obama to be, only to find that they might just as well have elected Hillary Clinton. But what was any disappointed Obama voter to do in 2012--vote for Mitt Romney? Because that's the only choice.
Without ranked-choice voting, the election campaign system in this country is fatally flawed.
At present, the only way to really shake up either party is to do it like Trump, as a self-funded candidate with a long record of mass media exposure and name recognition who's willing to alienate and upend every rival in the primaries and remake the party in his own image, while also adhering to the priorities of the wealthy interest groups who comprise the institutional structure of the party. (Trump would not have even obtained the GOP nomination if he had antagonized the fossil fuel industry, for example. Or AIPAC. Or if he hadn't reversed his earlier pro-choice leanings on abortion to suit the right-wing evangelical Christians, who comprise a wealthy and powerful interest group as well as a populist base for the GOP.) Trump is an "insurgent" candidate who just happens to coincidentally support the long-standing wish list of many wealthy Republican backers. I'm most concerned about the moves the ignoramus is going to make with undoing regulations like the Clean Water Act. But I'm concerned across the board, really. A President in power gets to discard every promise they've made while running for office, from their rhetorical feints about opposing aggressive overseas military intervention, to imposing tariffs, to health care...
Didn’t Ross Perot run to Clinton’s right?
There’s a lesson in there for progs and leftists. Maybe one day median voter theory will be understood by the party of college grads.
The heart of Perot's appeal was as a populist--he ran on opposing NAFTA, reforming tax policy, cleaning up the lobbying revolving door, criticism of the Persian Gulf war and the military industrial complex. (I was just reading the three 1992 Presidential debates a few weeks ago.) It got Perot a lot of votes. Clinton would never have been allowed to say any of that by his handlers.
"Right" and "left" are terribly misleading labels, especially in American politics. And when Americans who buy into their own uniquely American cockamamie interpretation frames try to apply the labels to other countries, it gets even screwier.
There is no "median voter Theory." Politics is not about any theory. It isn't science, it's a craft. Especially in an electoral democracy. "Triangulation" in a political campaign is merely a tactic. Sometimes it's well-advised, sometimes it isn't. I'd argue that it's never well-advised when followed by the book, like Harris seeking the endorsement of Republicans that Trump said good riddance to, who also happen to be some of the most loathed people in American politics. That's just plain clumsy. It's impossible to tell whether it's sincere or insincere, and even harder to know which is worse. It's definitely an example of some Bob Shrum type wonk doing "median voter Theory", though.
Your inability to understand the relevance of the median voter theory does not bode well for your preferred candidates to win.
“Allowed to say that by any of his handlers.”
I see you adhere to the conspiratorial view of American politics.
I agree. My preferences are to the left of the "mainstream" Democratic party, but the median voter is way right. I want a Democratic party that can explain itself to rightward voters in a way that moves them left. What we've got are leadership Democrats who drive centrish voters further right.
Fetterman (someone mentioned him up-thread) is a maybe on that score. Buttigieg is a 100/100. Who else do you think rates on that criterion?
Whitmer and Shapiro are reasonably successful/popular governors.
Fetterman probably doesn’t have the health for it. Buttigieg probably ought to hold a more senior position before being the candidate. (Imagine if Biden had made him VP.)
In general, finding Dems with a history of winning in competitive states is a good bet.
Moral of the story is embrace Matt Yglesias Thought and popularism to win more consistently. (Yglesias is of course a left-neoliberal who likes markets and a strong welfare state.)
Agree with all of that. I've yet to be convinced about Whitmer or Shapiro - not writing them off, just yet to be convinced.
(God, I wish Buttigieg had been the VP choice.)
Are you and I the only folks here who are both Yglesias and FdB subscribers? I wish they didn't see each other (Freddie more than Yglesias, too be fair) as the enemy. Freddie's politics - or maybe moral vision would be more accurate - is where my heart lies, but Yglesias Thought is how to get there.
I'm also one of those few, but I increasingly feel uncomfortable mentioning that fact on either blog, which is a shame because I genuinely think there's a valuable synthesis rather than this yawning divide of (mostly-one-sided) beef. I know whose column today brought me more clarity and solace, at any rate...an expected outcome, if still a bit disappointing. Was expecting a closer race in either direction rather than a blowout. Guess I'll have to raise my respect for Nate Silver a little more.
I’m a right-neoliberal/state-capacity libertarian these days so I wholeheartedly disagree with Freddie on basically everything but education, mental health, and skewering progressives.
At one point I recall Freddie admitting perhaps the best leftist outcome possible was for social democracy to flourish and I think he was right about that. But he is a cradle Marxist holding strong to his faith. Pragmatically I think it’s clear leftists should embrace Yglesias Thought until such time they win those battles and then ratchet left.
Suggesting that Marxism is strictly faith-based is a bit disingenuous to what the philosophy and political science of it actually is, unless of course you consider natural sciences and neoliberalism faith-based as well.
Marxism can be considered philosophy and political theory, sure.
But what it is not is economics or political science, in that it is not based on rigorous theory or empirical analysis of reality.
Marx was wrong and science is about moving on to more correct understandings. That was known to be true soon after Marx died, when the Labor Theory of Value (far from unique to Marx) was disproven. It's only become more obvious in more recent times.
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Marxism.html#:~:text=But%20Marx%20failed%20as%20well,exploiting%20workers%20(see%20profits).
So I very much consider it as an ideology more akin to a faith-based religion, and not a legitimate school of economic thought.
I'm a dual subscriber too. There are several of us here.
I'm also a subscriber of both. And I suppose like you, I want to live on Freddie's vision of the future, but suspect we need more of Yglesias's strategy to achieve it.
Although I feel like I agreed more with Yglesias a year or two ago than I do today. In particular I think he may be falling prey to the very thing he decries in others in his views on trans policies...
I've lost track of whether this is Matt's comment section or Freddie's, but I'm curious what you mean. I can't remember anything MY has posted about that subject.
You need egg prices to be high when the opposition party is in office and low when you’re in office
I want to like Fetterman, but after hearing him on Joe Rogan, I can't support him. Fetterman has cognitive issues. I really like his ideas, but Fetterman doesn't understand the words spoken to him. Even though they are spoken to a tablet which converts them to text which he can read ... as his lingering disability is involved in interpreting the spoken word.
Except none of the "far left" Team D nostrums end the stupid wars, nor change the way the pie gets sliced.
You are correct that lefties who can't stomach voting for Kamala are ultimately conducting a self-defeating exercise, where their only hope is things get so bad from GOP dominance that a glorious revolution comes about to install a leftist government.
If only there were an alternative to Woke Neocons....
There is. Embrace Matt Yglesias Thought and make Democrats win elections consistently again.
Harris swung hard to the right on immigration and almost everything else. And she had her ass handed to her. Rounding up Mexicans isn’t going to save this feckless empire from the sociopaths who own it.
Nobody believed her
She wasn’t remotely convincing
Especially after Biden won as a moderate and governed as a prog
Notice how you’re swapping out “wrong with Democrats” for “wrong with Kamala’s campaign”?
The former is more general than the latter.
Harris could not say how she would be different from Biden, a very progressive president. Harris could not separate herself from her past progressive statements and actions.
She was burdened by what progressive Democrats had been.
Cheney is not what made a lick of difference either way here, but it does make a certain kind of person on the right and left really mad.
Israel support is a red herring by the way. That’s not a major focus for most voters and Trump is going to support bombing Hamas et al a lot more.
I agree that the Biden admin was largely run by Biden advisors and staffers, as the man is very old.
But, of course, the Very Progressive advisors and staffers are a very large reason why the Biden admin was Very Progressive.
You're free to disagree with that, but you're hilariously wrong on both economic and social issues in the eyes of people in the center and further right. You know, the kind of people who swing elections. (It is true on certain issues the admin tried to backpedal, like illegal immigration.)
If you think the Biden admin is run by "warmongering psychos," well, I don't even know what to say to that. "Stoked a war with Russia." Ahahahaha. Wow.
I can easily prove genocide had no bearing on the election. There was no and is no genocide in Gaza. Easy peasy.
We can know for sure that Muslim voters in MI did not come close to deciding this election. Moreover, we have data on what voters listed as their concerns and Gaza is not high on that list. And Trump will not be good for Gaza. Plenty of people at least talked about switching their vote because Biden was viewed as insufficiently supportive of Israel. So without good data, I'll say it was a wash.
The Dems as they presently exist are not a center-left party, let alone a center-right party. Wokeness may or may not be on the wane longterm. We already have massive redistribution policies bankrupting us that Trump supports.
I'm a right-neoliberal/state-capacity libertarian. I love free markets and limited government. Trump and Vance do not represent my interests on economic policy. I can only celebrate if the Dems take a turn for the sane and hope the GOP quickly gives up Trumpism once he's gone.
No one believes a thing she moved right on though.
She glanced in a rightward direction. She did not swing hard to the right.
You call running around with the Cheney freaks "listening to the demands of progressives and leftists"???
Just like in 2016, everyone will say "next time the dems need to do xyz to win" where xyz just happen to be the things they already believe. What luck!
Way of the world. People tend to think the things they favor are popular and winning (or would be, if people just gave them a chance). I'm no exception.
Median voter theory is true.
I don’t “tend to think” she just fucking lost the popular vote and every goddamn swing state to a corrupt clown, and Dems lost the trifecta.
I’m a rightwinger who voted for the prog Dem who lost to a whacko rightwinger and you think I’m wrong that Kamala did a poor job of appealing to the center?
Dems just had their worst defeat in a generation to the orange clown man and you think shifting more to the center won’t be necessary to win? (Well that and having a candidate good at campaigning.)
That’s crazy.
Just watch them blame the voters. Democrat commentary I've seen so far seems to be about the need to dissolve the people and elect another.
They're the Principal Skinner meme come to life.
I mean to be fair, the voters do kind of suck. They've elected Trump twice now, you know. Not a good thing.
But right, not an excuse for the Democratic Party that has now managed to lose to this guy twice. Truly humiliating work right there. Hopefully they can find a candidate with a real message that actually appeals to non-college educated voters. Something authentic and real that cares about providing them jobs and security while still respecting them. That would work.
I did not vote in the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections because I hated Trump. I was a never Trumper.
After three and a half years of an awful Biden presidency I still was not going to vote for Trump.
The day Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in a case that was pure abuse of the justice system I donated to the Trump campaign and decided to vote for him. This case proved to me that it was Democrats that are the real threat to democracy.
If you write them off as racist, you don't need to actually listen to them.
any contempt for voters in a landslide victory makes you anti-democracy. you need a better take than "70 million people suck because I disagree with them".
that's borderline narcissistic.
Exactly.
The proper response is "I failed to deliver my message to them."
The proper response is "my message sucked."
I agree with this. But you should really give Brecht credit here, since you paraphrased what he said about the East German people back in the early 1950s.
Yes, the point was to reference that, which I assumed was very clear.
They're importing another people.
The two assassination attempts against Trump helped him so, so much.
It honestly seems like the harder the mainstream media went against Trump and for Harris, the better Trump did with voters. I don’t like it and I don’t want to believe it was that simple either, but… it sure looks like Kamala went on the View and Trump went on Rogan and a bunch of comedy podcasts. CNN and all the major news channels relentlessly trashed Trump, catastrophizing and hysterical, while a bunch of internet personalities had him (and his surrogates) on to hang out and shoot the shit. I agree with everything you’re saying about the Democrats lacking substance and having nothing to offer, but it appears that this could equally be explained as a rejection of corporate media narratives. I don’t know.
At some point the media-allies to the Democrats need to realize that calling Trump voters morons hardens the support for Trump.
10 years we've been at this. TEN YEARS. If the strategy of calling them garbage or whatever worked, it would've worked before.
I think the decision of the media to abandon the pretense of objectivity has been disastrous for its credibility. I understand the argument - when you say "Some people say the earth is round, but some people say it's flat" you are giving excessive credibility to the flat earthers, but:
(1) The people reporting in the media are on average very far left of the median American. Even if they try to call balls and strikes accurately in the news coverage, they are going to produce a product that the average American finds biased and unreliable.
(2) The old compromise - "We'll try to report just the facts in the news, and we'll tell you what we think and why on the opinion page" - helped correct for that bias. Reporters tried to find what both sides said and to tell their readers that without telling what they thought. It didn't always work, but it maintained credibility better than the current system.
So we got things like the McDonald's kerfuffle, where frankly, there is a sliver of evidence suggesting that Harris invented her McDonald's employment and a sliver of evidence suggesting she didn't, and everything after that goes back to your prior beliefs about how trustworthy she is and how likely someone in her position would be to lie.
And instead of reporting it as "It's really hard to prove where someone worked in 1983, and here's the evidence on both sides," most mainstream outlets reported the story as "Donald Trump claims, without evidence, that Harris never worked at McDonalds."
That particular story was trivial, but that effect is constant, and I think it's a big reason that a larger and larger share of the public just does not care about what the media has to say.
I thought democracy and abortion was a good and honest platform to run on. Then again, I’m not a swing voter.
I blame the loss on voters disliking inflation. Sometimes, your side loses because people want to vote the bums out. But I just don’t understand why the other side wanted the worst, most sinister bully to lead them.
So, yeah, I blame the voters. Republican primary voters especially. Fuck em. I realize there’s no profit in politics in blaming voters, but I have no theory of how to win and this isn’t a strategy. I hope some Democrat comes along and figures it out.
And for what it’s worth. I rather liked Harris. More than Hillary and more than Biden.
Gee, why would voters not crave inflation?
You joke, but there’s a long intellectual history of liberals saying inflation isn’t that bad in some quantities.
No politician ever took it seriously in the Democratic Party, thankfully. But I think it’s time to put that theory to rest forever. Fuck inflation. Not because it’s so terrible but because it affects absolutely everyone. President-killer.
I wasn't joking. Why wouldn't voters want their purchasing power eroded so the MIC can chase empire? How selfish of the voters!
Anyway, if a Team D candidate were to win the presidency because of voters protesting the inflationary policies of the Team R incumbent, you'd be singing a very different tune.
I have a different view of inflation: it was an inevitable correction to factors like years of zero-percent loans, the vagaries of global fossil fuel production and pricing (so often polticized) and the massive disruption of the global shipping supply chains that resulted from the lock-down overreaction to the covid pandemic. And one more factor, as well--Keynesian recession remedies like tax holidays (the principal component of the Obama "stimulus") and increases in public investment* are only sound economics when the money is eventually paid back with--oh, I cannot utter it--a TAX INCREASE--once the downturn is past, and the economy is in a boom cycle.** It's like this: either income tax rates go up by a couple of per cent on the disposable income class--roughly the top 20%--or everyone eventually gets hit with 5%-10% inflation, and the national debt balloons. Everyone got thousands of dollars from the Federal treasury in 2020 and 2021 as a "tax rebate", for idling themselves--how can anyone imagine that the money doesn't have to be repaid at some point later on? Come on! This is basic.
(*after years on end of a near zero-interest Federal funds rate from the Fed, why did the Democrats wait until the inflation era of Biden to pursue a major public investment program?)
(**a note to Austrian School dogmatic ideologues: von Mises agreed with Keynes on this point. The two had their differences, but they weren't in a cage match to the death.)
The fact that inflation spiked immediately afte rthe war in Ukraine had nothing to do with anything?
Oh, that's been part of it. A disruption in the oil&gas bidness. But inflation effects are typically delayed. This particular bout of inflation has also largely abated, which is much preferable to having it turn into a chronic malaise. The people I notice as being all wrought up over inflation nowadays don't know what the real thing looks like. We had the real thing in the 1970s. If someone could have cured it and brought core inflation back down to 3% annual within two years--which is what has happened--they would have been carried through the streets in a sedan chair. The annual core inflation rate in the Reagan years so beloved by right-wing nostalgists was around 4%. https://stocksbio.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/US_inflation_rate_Since_1980.png
The fact that the Democrats didn't know how to message that is an indication of a wider condition of their own haplessness. The fact that Republicans were able to make so much political hay with a relatively brief spike is an indication of their cynical ability to work naive American voters.
That said: if we don't get a fairly large increase on the top 20%--the disposable income class--inflation is going to go through the roof. But if the current character of our political establishments is any guide, the GOP will stamp its feet in wooden-headed opposition to any tax increases of any kind--one of those neatly tailored dogmatic slogans that's so heedless of practical reality--and inflation will eventually soar. The rubes will pat themselves on the back that they'll get some $100 tax cut, and four years later inflation will spike and the debt will become unsustainable. And Federal entitlement growth will be blamed, and there will be massive age-based demagoguery against the Baby Boomers, possibly by Donald Trump himself (b. 1946, the leading edge of the Boomers.) The younger generations (TrumpYouth!) will be demagogued into being aggrieved, mean, cold, and vengeful. And they won't even realize that they're cutting their own throats for a cohort of multimillionaire greedhead private sector grifters with more money than they know how to spend.
Inflation is only caused by printing money, adding money to the money supply.
If the government prints off one million dollars and gives it to you, that million can buy a pretty nice house. If the government prints off a million dollars for everyone, that million can't buy a hamburger.
This is what happened. The government printed off trillions of dollars and gave it to the political donors in the form of buying goods and services we don't need ... like wind and solar. You may think these good, but the wind only works 17% of the time. Solar only works about 20% of the time. For the rest of the time, the fossil fuel plants are still running, still burning fuel to cover for when the wind/solar fail. Which is why we have filled our lands with the cheapest electricity source available, but our power bills have never been higher. Solar and Wind are funded with great government subsidies.
I'll leave you with a great quote from Warren Buffet:
“For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” –Warren Buffet cited by U.S. News/Nancy Pfotenhauer, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/even-warren-buffet-admits-wind-energy-is-a-bad-investment
"Democracy" is a hollow slogan, all while the D's are responsible for censorship campaigns, genocide in Gaza, and the war in Ukraine. All of which Harris & Co pledged to continue. What is this "democracy" of which you speak?
No, actually, it’s a mechanism for choosing leaders which the incoming president attempted to destroy.
The Dems are up to their eyeballs int he censorship-industrial complex, cutting off the peoples access to information, counter-narrative views and facts, without with "democracy" cannot function. The D's do everything in their power to prevent third-party candidates from getting on the ballot, and have extended lawfare to their Republican opponents. As for the method of choosing leaders, who the hell chose Kamala Harris? The last time she was in a competitive primary election, Tulsi Gabbard eviscerated Kamala's chances in about 90 seconds. Where was the primary to select the replacement for Joe Biden? He was clearly mentally incompetent years ago - and the Dems prevented any democratic means of replacing him. Nah, you've got to come up with something better than "democracy" on which to campaign. Real, concrete, material gains for working people, support for women's rights (not just reproductive rights, but the right to single-sex spaces, sports, etc - in other words, NOT gender-woo), and an end to the endless wars would be good places to start.
I liked "people who respect the results of an election" and wished it was done some more.
Trump - egg prices low
Democrats - egg prices high
I really think it’s that simple. What I don’t understand is why they choose to be so awful
The people that can't afford to buy eggs are working class. They're common.
The people that can afford to buy eggs? Much better class of people.
The people who relentlessly championed his nomination aren’t the people hit hardest by inflation. Many of them are just assholes.
The people who voted for him are probably the ones hit hardest by inflation.
Genuine question: what if you are wrong?
If you want to make democracy part of your platform, you should act like you actually value democracy. Instead of trying to silence dissenters, persuade them. Try to actually understand and reach voters rather than shaming them, demonizing the opposition, and pretending that the voters who disagree with you are really immoral racists who don't deserve to win.
You can't win with a "preserve democracy" platform if you transparently don't like democracy.
That’s why they say “our democracy” most of the time.
I had a 3000 level political science class back in the 1980s, "Introduction to Political Theory" and we had very engaged grad student teaching it who was super critical of rational choice/rational actor theories. She would have torn up the syllabus and just taught the outcome of this election to prove her points about rational actor/choice theory.
Voters react to inflation like a reactive dog. Being mad at inflation now and comparing it to the pre-pandemic economy and rewarding Trump? That's pure emotion. It's not the byproduct of even a high school level understanding of economics, let alone a realistic look at whether policy proposals (to the extent that Trump's ramblings and his sycophants crazy theories represent policies) on the economy actually will reduce inflation.
Nobody who voted for Trump on the issue of inflation was doing anything more than engaging in magical thinking and emotional response.
Thank you. Inflation is a LAGGING INDICATOR. And what it most reflects is deficit spending ('cause deficit spending gives the govt permission to print valueless money.)
Deficit spending rose by $8.4 trillion during Trump’s time in office—the third-biggest deficit increase of any president. Deficit spending rose by $4.3 trillion in Biden's first three years & five months in office. Both numbers are awful, but Biden’s number is significantly less awful.
I really don't understand how any Trump voter thinks Trump is gonna curb inflation. Could some Trump voter explain it to me? Semi-serious request. 😀
You're looking for rational answers from people who are voting based on emotion and magical thinking. The economy "felt good" in 2016-19, Trump was President, ergo, Trump will make the economy feel good again. It's tragically that simple and that ignorant.
My darkest fear is that we're living in a world of such complexity, both in how it works and the level of active management required to keep it working, that democracy is making the problem worse. The average voter is being asked to make decisions on things they simply don't understand and they're making those decisions based on propaganda and emotion.
I used to get really riled up in college when we'd read writers from the early age of democracy who were critical of it. The conventional, contemporary take was that they were just defending aristocratic privilege or using it to suppress ethnic minorities. But as I've gotten older, I think some of these people were onto something about the risks of letting the mob set policy.
I think for a longish period of time, literacy and a basic education was minimally sufficient for the kinds of decisions surrounding Democratic participation. The world and the policies involved were simpler. But we may be at a point where the complexities of the world and the policies necessary to its management are exceeding the average person's education and literacy.
This is all fairly haunting because it suggests we may need to change the rules on how democracy works.
>>democracy is making the problem worse<<
Be careful with thoughts like that: It's how dictatorships & oligarchies arise. Seriously.
Yes, this is why it's so haunting. I want to believe completely in democracy but I think its limitations are becoming evident, especially given the electorate's willingness to possibly vote in fascism.
We need some kind of guard rails, and its possible we may need something similar to Germany's Bundesverfassungsgericht, or Federal Constitutional Court, and its powers to ban parties and impeach politicians outside of the politically biased legislative body. Trump wouldn't have been able to run in Germany.
This would let you keep democratic choice largely intact, but filter out the most problematic parties, candidates and officials to prevent democratic choice from being suborned by demagogues and other anti-democratic choices.
Ironic that you cite Germany—given that the German government fell apart yesterday. (The story didn't get very much media attention here in the States.)
People can't understand everything in the world. However, "punish the people in charge when things are bad" is a tool that everyone can apply.
Harris's response to inflation was ads saying inflation is low. Was it? I guess? I don't know. I have no way of measuring that.
Inflation was less in the US that in other countries. That would've been a good message. I remember H Ross Perot and his charts. Maybe Tim Walz could've done that.
You really have "no way of measuring that"? And you think telling people who go to the grocery store a couple of times a week, that inflation is higher in other countries, would somehow be a winning message? Please drop any plans you may have of becoming a political consultant.
The abortion thing.
About 10% of the people think abortion up to 9 months is good, a few think post birth abortions are acceptable too.
About 15% of the people think no abortions should be allowed ever.
The other 70-ish % think its OK for abortions during the first trimester, but not after.
Ruth Bader-Ginsburg said herself that Roe-v-Wade was a flawed finding, and wouldn't stand. Low and behold it didn't. But congress-critters on both sides like the ability to shake the money tree the abortion question gave them. So now, each state gets to decide, which is the best result. Because if you're in an abortion state like California, and you're voting on abortion laws that only apply to other people in other states, you're practicing colonialism.
The Democratic Party is clearly in shambles - any election against Trump should have been a blowout. That said, I also feel kind of bad for Trump voters, especially those from the middle or working classes. This election could be a real FAFO moment for them. I don't think Trump is the end of democracy, new Hitler, etc, but he could very well usher in a grueling economic recession. Despite his rhetoric against foreign wars, he's volatile enough to start a war that will be fought primarily by his supporters' children.
Not so much that Trump is volatile, so much as he is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Harris is not volatile. She's just a sociopath like most politicians, and just as likely to start a war, eyes wide open.
Plenty of sociopaths are not that bright. In Harris' case, she never needed to be. Being Willie Brown's mistress was enough to get her into sinecures, which she leveraged into being able to run in elections that she basically could not lose.
So they voted for the even bigger moron, halfwit, incompetent. Sounds like 75 million of us are just as moronic.
They (correctly) perceive that at least he won't do as he is told; which, however poor a choice, is still better than the alternative.
I'm pretty sure the guy whose career was negotiating with all manner of foreign leaders, building resort complexes all around the world, isn't as you state: "weak, stupid and easily manipulated."
When faced with the problem of Kim Jung Un shooting missiles over Japan and testing Nuclear Weapons. Trump went to North Korea, sat down, spoke with Kim, and solved the problem. I'm pretty sure the giggling-pantsuit could never do this in a million years ... she wasn't brave enough to sit with Joe Rogan for heaven sake. That interview would have had 100 million views, and could have bought her the election. It was pure cowardice to turn down that golden opportunity.
Trump sat down with Putin and said "You've a beautiful city here, I love the golden domes. It'd be a shame if something happened to them." Putin didn't invade any of his neighbors during Trump's administration. Putin bombed cities in Syria and Trump responded with a missile attack to a Russian base in Syria killing over 130 of Putin's private army The Wagner Group.
Trump has sat down with Putin and negotiated to Yes (beauty pageants) and negotiated to no (resort complexes). So if anything, Trump is a pretty capable negotiator and not anyone's fool.
Kamal stated in an interview when it was brought up as to why she'd never visited the border, she replied "And I've never been to Europe." ... think about that, that is the person you want to elect to be leader of the free world?
All I need do is look at the results. To give one example, Trump twice attacked Syria on the basis of pathetic lies, twice cucked out of leaving Syria. Call him "Putin puppet!" and he will fold.
100% to this. Yes, every other western democracy had a lot of backlash voting. and maybe that’s it. But dems should be asking themselves why we couldn’t get over the hump against that guy, *especially* among the working class. that is supposedly who we value and stand for.
Or put another way, basically any of the other gop candidates would have won by an additional 3 points.
Egg prices too high.
I’m all in on backlash voting myself. I’m not sure what Democrats could have proposed and remained Democrats and still won, except maybe border stuff, but that’s kind of an illusion anyway (Pennsylvania isn’t affected much by illegal immigration). They represent the current world order, and everyone is grumpy about it.
My thought was that the places where people were being resettled were urban centers in states that went blue, but I could easily be wrong about this. I might do some research. Nonetheless, I also believe that a lot of the concerns about the border were vibes based and not Because of personal interactions.
Was that not from the governors of those states bussing and flying them to other states?
I don't know how much immigration mattered. (I think a lot, but not sure how to convince others.) But if New York City was worried about immigration, so was Pennsylvania.
This barely scratches the surface, but Biden didn't leave the party with a whole lot of options.