If you own assets the economy is great. The lower and middle class don't care that the stock market is at all time highs. Sure we beat inflation, but the reality is that homes are twice as...
Exemplary
Yes—inflation is real. But the Biden economy has been great in many ways. The U.S. economy, wrote The Economist in mid-October, is “the envy of the world.”
If you own assets the economy is great. The lower and middle class don't care that the stock market is at all time highs. Sure we beat inflation, but the reality is that homes are twice as expensive as they were five years ago, mortgage rates are above 7%, their grocery bill is still double, childcare is completely unaffordable, etc. People don't need fox news to tell them this. Telling voters "you are stupid the economy is actually great" isn't going to make them come out and vote for you.
The democrats need to completely change their messaging. What they are doing is not appealing to voters. The rhetoric in this article is part of the reason why they lost.
To me this sounds like an argument away form policy based messaging because it's too hard to compete against people who lie. Should democrats say "We'll cut housing costs by 50% by legalizing...
To me this sounds like an argument away form policy based messaging because it's too hard to compete against people who lie. Should democrats say "We'll cut housing costs by 50% by legalizing unregistered migrants and putting them to work" or "We'll renegotiate NAFTA so we get a good deal from Canada and Mexico so YOUR grocery bill goes down!"
One party lies and won’t fix anything. The other party simply doesn’t acknowledge the problems, which also won’t fix anything. How do you beat the liars? You acknowledge and fix the problems. The...
One party lies and won’t fix anything. The other party simply doesn’t acknowledge the problems, which also won’t fix anything. How do you beat the liars? You acknowledge and fix the problems. The next time (if there is one) the democrats hold power they need to stop fucking around and upset the balance of power in this country.
This implies the public is capable of recognizing when a problem is "fixed," and I'm not sure that's a given. Unemployment is at historic lows but when surveyed a huge portion of the electorate...
This implies the public is capable of recognizing when a problem is "fixed," and I'm not sure that's a given. Unemployment is at historic lows but when surveyed a huge portion of the electorate says unemployment is at historic highs. Inflation has moderated but prices remain high. The public wants to see prices come down but anyone who has taken a Economics 101 class knows that deflation has devastating consequences.
Any meaningful "fix" for economic problems will not reliably have a short-term payoff, especially not one that will be felt within a single presidential term. So often all an administration can do is try and persuade voters that their policies are helping or will be helping soon. Take for example the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Those have helped and will continue to help the economy tremendously but did nothing to help Democrats stay in power. And it's not like Biden could've done anymore with the Rs blocking just about everything, hell it's a miracle he got through what he did.
It seems to me like lying is the obvious solution. I hate it but the last ten years have proven it's a winning strategy.
There could be issues with saying unemployment or inflation is low. Unemployment might not count people who are working below their level of education or who are out of work and not looking. A...
There could be issues with saying unemployment or inflation is low. Unemployment might not count people who are working below their level of education or who are out of work and not looking. A large class of people stuck with parents apply here, like the genz men that voted Trump.
Inflation doesn’t seem to be appropriately weighted. Rent went up over 100% for many people on top of food prices nearly doubling. I think for many inflation may have only been around 10% but for others it could have been far far higher. So quoting the aggregate and demanding people calm down is ignorant.
When you’re campaigning you need to appeal to the voters that are desperate more than you need to appeal to the well off. “Inflation is 2%” is great news for the comfortable Americans that were always going to vote sensibly. It’s a kick in the face to poorer Americans who are paying Bay Area rents in some 3rd rate city.
The thing about “inflation” as used when people refer to prices is that much of that is companies blatantly profiteering/gouging while they can use inflation as the scapegoat. Price increases of...
The thing about “inflation” as used when people refer to prices is that much of that is companies blatantly profiteering/gouging while they can use inflation as the scapegoat. Price increases of that nature are naturally much more resistant to correction, because the companies aren’t feeling any heat/pressure (“it’s not us, it’s the economy!”) which results in continued high prices despite dropping inflation.
Looking at it that way, these profiteering companies could well have had a major hand in getting Trump elected since Biden (and transitively, Harris) were getting saddled with the blame when they probably shouldn’t have been.
Companies raising prices is the inflation. Ultimately, they were greedy before. Blaming the companies is looking in the wrong spot. They did not suddenly swell with avarice. The money wasted for...
Companies raising prices is the inflation. Ultimately, they were greedy before. Blaming the companies is looking in the wrong spot. They did not suddenly swell with avarice.
The money wasted for the ‘08 bank bailouts didn’t cause inflation because it went to the wealthy, who used it to bid up real estate and stock prices and gave us ZIRP startups to mooch from. The COVID stimulus went to regular people who spent it on daily necessities, thus shifting which corporations were best positioned to leech off the money printers.
Exactly. I don’t think you even need to have a solution you just need to seem genuinely empathetic to the people who are struggling. Trump does this in a way that Harris could never do. No one...
Exactly. I don’t think you even need to have a solution you just need to seem genuinely empathetic to the people who are struggling. Trump does this in a way that Harris could never do. No one wants to hear about how great things are when they are struggling.
People like to joke about Trump’s McDonals and Garbage truck schtick but I think a lot of working class folks really appreciated it.
Unemployment is definitely skewed. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics website: So it doesn't count people who have stopped looking, who are working below their education level as unemployed, but...
People are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey reference week. This includes all part-time and temporary work, as well as regular full-time, year-round employment.
People are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.
So it doesn't count people who have stopped looking, who are working below their education level as unemployed, but it does count people who have done anything at all in the gig economy as employed, no matter how little.
Harris did acknowledge the problem though? She had a clear housing policy to provide down payment assistance to first time homebuyers and wanted to restrict 'price gouging', and provide tax cuts...
Harris did acknowledge the problem though? She had a clear housing policy to provide down payment assistance to first time homebuyers and wanted to restrict 'price gouging', and provide tax cuts to lower and middle class families. As well as an expanded child tax credit to help families. All of these specifically address those issues.
Also in order to make any significant progress Democrats would need full control of the senate and house for a bit. As well as the presidency for at least 8 years as economic impacts are delayed and the effects are often felt the following term.
On an economic policy front I don’t see down payment assistance changing much. On a vibes front it doesn’t sell very well. I think for this population acknowledging the problem must come with some...
On an economic policy front I don’t see down payment assistance changing much. On a vibes front it doesn’t sell very well.
I think for this population acknowledging the problem must come with some finger pointing. I’m not quite sure I even understand why prices went up so much so quickly. I would personally like to have the feds investigate why, campaign on that, and then fix it.
A problem with policy-based messaging is that whether it happens or not is usually up to Congress and the public knows not to trust politicians’ promises, to the point that we often won’t even try...
A problem with policy-based messaging is that whether it happens or not is usually up to Congress and the public knows not to trust politicians’ promises, to the point that we often won’t even try to understand the details. One thing that does seem to work is red lines about what you won’t do (“no new taxes”). It’s easier to deliver on not doing anything.
This cynicism about promises means they’re often not taken literally, they’re just an indicator of what sort of things a politician will do. (For example, everyone believes Trump is anti-immigration and for many people, that’s enough. The specifics are doubtful.)
Yeah I don’t know how you compete against it. I really don’t think Harris stood a chance no matter what she said. People aren’t happy with the Biden administration. It doesn’t matter if the...
Yeah I don’t know how you compete against it. I really don’t think Harris stood a chance no matter what she said.
People aren’t happy with the Biden administration. It doesn’t matter if the reasons for being unhappy are legitimate or not. They aren’t going to be enthusiastic about voting for his VP.
I think running a candidate who was unaffiliated with Biden and letting them distance themself from his administration would have been a better move.
Dems also need a candidate who can publicly distance themself from the far left. Leftist policies and ideas are very unpopular among the majority of Americans. Trying to appease these people is a losing game, all you are doing is giving republicans ammo to attack you with.
It's nuanced. The Democrats pushed on abortion hard this election cycle, and while the majority of Americans do support abortion, the majority do not support it in the second or third trimester....
It's nuanced. The Democrats pushed on abortion hard this election cycle, and while the majority of Americans do support abortion, the majority do not support it in the second or third trimester. The support for abortion drops off a cliff after the first trimester. The topic of abortion should have been a slam dunk for the Democrats, but instead, the Republicans were able to 1) question whether people actually supported the Democrats with their handwaving of abortions after the first trimester, and 2) focus on topics that touch people's lives more often than abortion does (price of food).
Democrats did not want to commit to any messaging on third or even second trimester abortions because they didn't want to anger progressives, but now that they lost the election, we've just set back the pro-choice movement by at least half a decade, probably more.
Missouri ballot initiatives just legalized abortion, raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2024, and mandated sick leave. Trump also beat Kamala Harris by 18.4 percentage points while Mike Kehoe won...
Missouri ballot initiatives just legalized abortion, raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2024, and mandated sick leave.
Trump also beat Kamala Harris by 18.4 percentage points while Mike Kehoe won the governorship by 20.5 pp by campaigning on protecting Missouri by stopping illegal immigration. In a state that is over 600 MI from Mexico and has one of the lowest illegal immigrant populations proportionally and 14th least in absolute numbers.
I agree it’s hard but if the Democrats want to win in the future they’re gonna need to find a way to compete with it. Running the unpopular Biden administration’s VP is surely not the way.
I agree it’s hard but if the Democrats want to win in the future they’re gonna need to find a way to compete with it. Running the unpopular Biden administration’s VP is surely not the way.
It's difficult to assess whether Trump is an idiot or a genius pretending to be an idiot, but one thing he understands better than Democrats is that politics is theatre. He made an excellent...
Exemplary
It's difficult to assess whether Trump is an idiot or a genius pretending to be an idiot, but one thing he understands better than Democrats is that politics is theatre.
He made an excellent performance of personally intervening with individual companies to bring jobs back to the U.S. He had that whole dog-and-pony show with Carrier that had moved its manufacturing to Mexico, which didn't succeed. And he makes a very loud fuss over trade with NAFTA and China.
It gives the superficial appearance that he cared — and that speaks to the millions of Americans who have lost their job to offshoring, have a family member who has, or live in a town that has been impacted and hollowed out by offshoring.
People in white-collar professions are concerned about outsourcing. If you work in IT and you and your team gets sacked and replaced by a team in India or the Philippines being paid pennies, that's really humiliating.
The Democratic brand is garbage in wide swaths of the country, and this is the reason.
Now, relatively few people read the parties' platform statements, but I think that these documents are representative of each party's communication culture because they pass through many critical hands and eyes.
The Republican platform pdf is shorter than 30 pages ad sticks to several bullet points per category.
Good God. Look at the second page of each document. The republicans: "Dedicated to the forgotten men and women of America." The democrats put a native land acknowledgement. I would laugh if it...
Good God. Look at the second page of each document. The republicans: "Dedicated to the forgotten men and women of America."
The democrats put a native land acknowledgement.
I would laugh if it wasn't so sad. This is why they lost.
But how do you correct this? You have to acknowledge that everything happens for a reason, and maybe some of the reason here is incompetence, but I think that'd be a shallow explanation on it's...
But how do you correct this? You have to acknowledge that everything happens for a reason, and maybe some of the reason here is incompetence, but I think that'd be a shallow explanation on it's own.
I think what we're seeing here is that the Republican party is largely homogenous in it's intended audience, but the Democrat party is the party of coalition among different groups and cultures. Many of those cultures work from a place from disadvantage or minority representation, and require as a part of their representation that they receive specific attention for their specific concerns.
There are only so many bits of information we can process. A homogenous audience can receive a simple homogenous message, and that's effective. So why shouldn't the Democrat party cast a message that shelters all groups in it's coalition at once? I don't have a great answer to that, but I think it's worth considering that when "Black lives matter" became a message of solidarity, "All lives matter" became an opposition message. I think a valid interpretation of that is that disadvantaged groups require specific support, and and in order to direct specific support, they require specific messaging. All lives do matter, but saying that only reinforces the status quo.
I'm not sure I agree with that. What would be the homogenous republican majority? That said - I think we agree in principle here. That's sort of my point, actually, though in the comment that...
I think what we're seeing here is that the Republican party is largely homogenous in it's intended audience, but the Democrat party is the party of coalition among different groups and cultures.
I'm not sure I agree with that. What would be the homogenous republican majority? That said -
So why shouldn't the Democrat party cast a message that shelters all groups in it's coalition at once?
I think we agree in principle here. That's sort of my point, actually, though in the comment that sparked this chain I didn't expand on it. It's very hard to argue that a land use statement is a message successfully sheltering all elements of the democratic coalition, in my view.
Great catch! That's actually a very telling artifact. Each party's platform is written by their platform committee, made up of party leaders and members, policy folks, and representatives of the...
Great catch! That's actually a very telling artifact.
Each party's platform is written by their platform committee, made up of party leaders and members, policy folks, and representatives of the party's key stakeholders. So each document reveals each party's culture.
So for the 2nd page, which is probably the first and foremost thing that the parties' committees discuss and hash out, their respective cultural processes produced these two very different statements.
The Democratic committee settled on a token gesture. The Republican committee was laser-focused on Americans who feel forgotten and left behind.
Everything else about their campaigns play out from these perspectives.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. As you mentioned in your original post, whether or not anybody actually reads these things is not the point - they're indicative of the communications culture.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. As you mentioned in your original post, whether or not anybody actually reads these things is not the point - they're indicative of the communications culture.
Trump has been severely underestimated since 2015. His mentor was Roy Cohn the Republican political operative. He spent his entire career studying and experimenting with using publicity to get...
Trump has been severely underestimated since 2015. His mentor was Roy Cohn the Republican political operative. He spent his entire career studying and experimenting with using publicity to get what he wanted.
Coming back to this because I think you might appreciate the below interview - it’s an interview with a WWE promoter on the lessons he thinks Trump has taken from pro wrestling. I think about half...
It's difficult to assess whether Trump is an idiot or a genius pretending to be an idiot, but one thing he understands better than Democrats is that politics is theatre.
Coming back to this because I think you might appreciate the below interview - it’s an interview with a WWE promoter on the lessons he thinks Trump has taken from pro wrestling. I think about half of it is overblown, but it’s a take I haven’t seen before, at the very least.
Comment box Scope: personal analysis, experiences Tone: being real Opinion: entirely Sarcasm/humor: none Perception is reality. But it isn’t complicated. It’s also not just the media. People like...
Comment box
Scope: personal analysis, experiences
Tone: being real
Opinion: entirely
Sarcasm/humor: none
Perception is reality. But it isn’t complicated. It’s also not just the media. People like to identify with people they think “get” them. Voters didn’t need to listen to any of these media sources to feel “understood” by the candidate who just won the election. They merely heard him speak at a rally, in person or shown on television, or they read an online post of his, and their impression was made.
The media contributes to this, but it’s a pass-through medium as much as it is a prescriptive one.
Someone here said that voters, including educated voters, internally endorse candidates that make them feel supported—the candidates who appear to identify with their problems. Then, voters backfill that candidate’s policy positions and decide those positions are correct.
For example, you see this pattern with educated voters about Harris’ housing policy. They don’t know anything about housing or zoning—if they did, I would have been advocating with them already. But they always liked how she made them feel for some indiscernable mix of emotional validation reasons, so now they like her somewhat more specific policy outline.
I find that irrational, but I won’t criticize the electorate for it. It’s human nature. They aren’t stupid—this is a level of identification that subsumes and supersedes modern education. Feeling is a different part of your brain. It’s still part of you.
Policies themselves can sometimes be engaging to some voters. It isn’t all-or-nothing. But it’s a secondary part of the process.
I’m also subject to it. In Philadelphia’s mayoral election last year I became enamored with Rebecca Rhynhart because she once made a remark vaguely supportive of transportation funding (among other things, but that was the key one). That’s not even really a policy position, it’s an idea—a concept of a plan. More importantly, it seemed like she represented the kind of person I am (or saw myself as being). And I did vote for her, but in hindsight, looking at election coalition analysis maps, it was clear that I was at least partially caught up in a tribal demographic movement. I don’t regret my vote (she lost anyway), but it has made me think more carefully about the assumptions I make about my own critical thinking skills.
I’m not as smart or all-seeing as I think I am. You aren’t either. And the coalition we’re part of has to come to terms with the fact that it is, itself, subject to and implicitly supportive of the emotional swings it criticizes the opposition for perpetuating.
Stupid is a loaded word. But a lot of people are stupid. It’s shorthand for “some people do not have the ability to detect disinformation”. Actually, they have no interest in detecting it at all....
Stupid is a loaded word. But a lot of people are stupid. It’s shorthand for “some people do not have the ability to detect disinformation”. Actually, they have no interest in detecting it at all. They are going through their life with their hands over their ears and screaming LA LA LA LA when someone tries to tell them a reality that they don’t like. It appears that in the United States at least 70 million people have this problem.
Why would someone watch Fox News? They are not being forced to do that. They just want their preconceived opinions fed back to them over and over again. They want to be enraged and then they want to see their enemies struggle. What kind of person even starts watching that? Authoritarian followers (conservatives) who want to be in an in group that dominates an out group.
I think Noam Chomsky is a very problematic person but he’s right about manufactured consent. But people now choose which consent they want manufactured for them when they continue to watch Fox or use Facebook or Twitter.
I’ve spent some time talking to Trump voters. The conversation goes like this:
Me: Why did you vote for Trump?
Them: Because of what happened in the last four years
Me: what happened? Inflation? That’s global. Immigration? There was a bipartisan bill to address that but Trump killed it so he could run on how only he could fix it.
Them: mumbles something
Me: don’t you care that Trump attempted a coup?
Them: that was a weak attempt
Me: I’m not talking about just Jan 6. I’m talking about all the prep for it and the phone calls to red states to get them to commit election fraud. I’m talking about a years long attempt to subvert democracy by intentionally sowing doubt about fair elections
Them : complete boredom. They don’t bother arguing this because they just don’t fucking care.
Them later: It’s all bullshit anyway. The elites control everything, they won’t let him do anything bad.
Me: if it’s all bullshit and the presidency is fake, why not vote against the candidate who quotes hitler?
This article has what may be the most important lens for understanding what happened in 2024 to democracies globally. Here's an archive link which unfortunately doesn't include the chart showing...
This article has what may be the most important lens for understanding what happened in 2024 to democracies globally. Here's an archive link which unfortunately doesn't include the chart showing nearly every incumbent party everywhere getting an historic drubbing.
Ultimately voters don’t distinguish between unpleasant things that their leaders and governments have direct control over, and those that are international phenomena resulting from supply-side disruptions caused by a global pandemic or the warmongering of an ageing autocrat halfway across the world.
Voters don’t like high prices, so they punished the Democrats for being in charge when inflation hit. The cost of living was also the top issue in Britain’s July general election and has been front of mind in dozens of other countries for most of the last two years.
That different politicians, different parties, different policies and different rhetoric deployed in different countries have all met similar fortunes suggests that a large part of Tuesday’s American result was locked in regardless of the messenger or the message. The wide variety of places and people who swung towards Trump also suggests an outcome that was more inevitable than contingent.
By this measure, the U.S. Democratic Party outperformed most of the world's elected governments.
I'm concerned that the Democrats will take the wrong lessons from their defeat, and move right instead of taking a hard look at how economic conditions imperil their potential constituents. Another difficult to digest statistic - half of U.S. households have almost no wealth. Why show up, or keep supporting the same government, when the most basic needs keep going unmet?
I would add that Trump like many demogogues is building his popularity based on stoking and encouraging resentment. One example is the they them trans prisoner health care ad, which tells the...
I would add that Trump like many demogogues is building his popularity based on stoking and encouraging resentment.
One example is the they them trans prisoner health care ad, which tells the viewer not only that trans prisoners are getting health care that I disapprove of, but also that prisoners are getting government paid health care that I an honest hard working person would not be able to afford myself.
Here is a quote from Robert Paxton the anatomy of fascism:
Fascism rests not on philosophy but on popular feelings about master races , their unjust lot, and their rightful predominance
... In Darwinian struggle with other lesser people
Archive link Note: I changed the title to something less provocative and clickbaity. If anyone feels it needs further edits, let me know. (emphasis mine)
Note: I changed the title to something less provocative and clickbaity. If anyone feels it needs further edits, let me know.
These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?
The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.”
But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.
This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.
(emphasis mine)
Back to the campaign. I asked Gertz what I call my “Ulan Bator question.” If someone moved to America from Ulan Bator, Mongolia in the summer and watched only Fox News, what would that person learn about Kamala Harris? “You would know that she is a very stupid person,” Gertz said. “You’d know that she orchestrated a coup against Joe Biden. That she’s a crazed extremist. And that she very much does not care about you.”
Same Ulan Bator question about Trump? That he’s been “the target of a vicious witch-hunt for years and years,” that he is under constant assault; and most importantly, that he is “doing it all for you.”
If you own assets the economy is great. The lower and middle class don't care that the stock market is at all time highs. Sure we beat inflation, but the reality is that homes are twice as expensive as they were five years ago, mortgage rates are above 7%, their grocery bill is still double, childcare is completely unaffordable, etc. People don't need fox news to tell them this. Telling voters "you are stupid the economy is actually great" isn't going to make them come out and vote for you.
The democrats need to completely change their messaging. What they are doing is not appealing to voters. The rhetoric in this article is part of the reason why they lost.
To me this sounds like an argument away form policy based messaging because it's too hard to compete against people who lie. Should democrats say "We'll cut housing costs by 50% by legalizing unregistered migrants and putting them to work" or "We'll renegotiate NAFTA so we get a good deal from Canada and Mexico so YOUR grocery bill goes down!"
One party lies and won’t fix anything. The other party simply doesn’t acknowledge the problems, which also won’t fix anything. How do you beat the liars? You acknowledge and fix the problems. The next time (if there is one) the democrats hold power they need to stop fucking around and upset the balance of power in this country.
This implies the public is capable of recognizing when a problem is "fixed," and I'm not sure that's a given. Unemployment is at historic lows but when surveyed a huge portion of the electorate says unemployment is at historic highs. Inflation has moderated but prices remain high. The public wants to see prices come down but anyone who has taken a Economics 101 class knows that deflation has devastating consequences.
Any meaningful "fix" for economic problems will not reliably have a short-term payoff, especially not one that will be felt within a single presidential term. So often all an administration can do is try and persuade voters that their policies are helping or will be helping soon. Take for example the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Those have helped and will continue to help the economy tremendously but did nothing to help Democrats stay in power. And it's not like Biden could've done anymore with the Rs blocking just about everything, hell it's a miracle he got through what he did.
It seems to me like lying is the obvious solution. I hate it but the last ten years have proven it's a winning strategy.
There could be issues with saying unemployment or inflation is low. Unemployment might not count people who are working below their level of education or who are out of work and not looking. A large class of people stuck with parents apply here, like the genz men that voted Trump.
Inflation doesn’t seem to be appropriately weighted. Rent went up over 100% for many people on top of food prices nearly doubling. I think for many inflation may have only been around 10% but for others it could have been far far higher. So quoting the aggregate and demanding people calm down is ignorant.
When you’re campaigning you need to appeal to the voters that are desperate more than you need to appeal to the well off. “Inflation is 2%” is great news for the comfortable Americans that were always going to vote sensibly. It’s a kick in the face to poorer Americans who are paying Bay Area rents in some 3rd rate city.
The thing about “inflation” as used when people refer to prices is that much of that is companies blatantly profiteering/gouging while they can use inflation as the scapegoat. Price increases of that nature are naturally much more resistant to correction, because the companies aren’t feeling any heat/pressure (“it’s not us, it’s the economy!”) which results in continued high prices despite dropping inflation.
Looking at it that way, these profiteering companies could well have had a major hand in getting Trump elected since Biden (and transitively, Harris) were getting saddled with the blame when they probably shouldn’t have been.
Companies raising prices is the inflation. Ultimately, they were greedy before. Blaming the companies is looking in the wrong spot. They did not suddenly swell with avarice.
The money wasted for the ‘08 bank bailouts didn’t cause inflation because it went to the wealthy, who used it to bid up real estate and stock prices and gave us ZIRP startups to mooch from. The COVID stimulus went to regular people who spent it on daily necessities, thus shifting which corporations were best positioned to leech off the money printers.
You could make that sort of profiteering illegal (or perhaps it is illegal) and then prosecute for it.
Man, if only there had been a candidate who pledged to take on price gouging!
I think it should be illegal, at least for essentials like food.
Food (not restaurants), rent, medicine.
Exactly. I don’t think you even need to have a solution you just need to seem genuinely empathetic to the people who are struggling. Trump does this in a way that Harris could never do. No one wants to hear about how great things are when they are struggling.
People like to joke about Trump’s McDonals and Garbage truck schtick but I think a lot of working class folks really appreciated it.
Unemployment is definitely skewed. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics website:
So it doesn't count people who have stopped looking, who are working below their education level as unemployed, but it does count people who have done anything at all in the gig economy as employed, no matter how little.
Harris did acknowledge the problem though? She had a clear housing policy to provide down payment assistance to first time homebuyers and wanted to restrict 'price gouging', and provide tax cuts to lower and middle class families. As well as an expanded child tax credit to help families. All of these specifically address those issues.
Also in order to make any significant progress Democrats would need full control of the senate and house for a bit. As well as the presidency for at least 8 years as economic impacts are delayed and the effects are often felt the following term.
On an economic policy front I don’t see down payment assistance changing much. On a vibes front it doesn’t sell very well.
I think for this population acknowledging the problem must come with some finger pointing. I’m not quite sure I even understand why prices went up so much so quickly. I would personally like to have the feds investigate why, campaign on that, and then fix it.
A problem with policy-based messaging is that whether it happens or not is usually up to Congress and the public knows not to trust politicians’ promises, to the point that we often won’t even try to understand the details. One thing that does seem to work is red lines about what you won’t do (“no new taxes”). It’s easier to deliver on not doing anything.
This cynicism about promises means they’re often not taken literally, they’re just an indicator of what sort of things a politician will do. (For example, everyone believes Trump is anti-immigration and for many people, that’s enough. The specifics are doubtful.)
Yeah I don’t know how you compete against it. I really don’t think Harris stood a chance no matter what she said.
People aren’t happy with the Biden administration. It doesn’t matter if the reasons for being unhappy are legitimate or not. They aren’t going to be enthusiastic about voting for his VP.
I think running a candidate who was unaffiliated with Biden and letting them distance themself from his administration would have been a better move.
Dems also need a candidate who can publicly distance themself from the far left. Leftist policies and ideas are very unpopular among the majority of Americans. Trying to appease these people is a losing game, all you are doing is giving republicans ammo to attack you with.
The policies aren't, though. Just the vibes that Rs managed to associate with those policies.
It's nuanced. The Democrats pushed on abortion hard this election cycle, and while the majority of Americans do support abortion, the majority do not support it in the second or third trimester. The support for abortion drops off a cliff after the first trimester. The topic of abortion should have been a slam dunk for the Democrats, but instead, the Republicans were able to 1) question whether people actually supported the Democrats with their handwaving of abortions after the first trimester, and 2) focus on topics that touch people's lives more often than abortion does (price of food).
Democrats did not want to commit to any messaging on third or even second trimester abortions because they didn't want to anger progressives, but now that they lost the election, we've just set back the pro-choice movement by at least half a decade, probably more.
It doesn’t matter. If the “vibes” are unpopular then the policies are unpopular.
Missouri ballot initiatives just legalized abortion, raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2024, and mandated sick leave.
Trump also beat Kamala Harris by 18.4 percentage points while Mike Kehoe won the governorship by 20.5 pp by campaigning on protecting Missouri by stopping illegal immigration. In a state that is over 600 MI from Mexico and has one of the lowest illegal immigrant populations proportionally and 14th least in absolute numbers.
It’s also hard to compete with, “It’s totally ok to blame and hate whoever you want because everything that’s wrong is totally their fault.”
I agree it’s hard but if the Democrats want to win in the future they’re gonna need to find a way to compete with it. Running the unpopular Biden administration’s VP is surely not the way.
It's difficult to assess whether Trump is an idiot or a genius pretending to be an idiot, but one thing he understands better than Democrats is that politics is theatre.
He made an excellent performance of personally intervening with individual companies to bring jobs back to the U.S. He had that whole dog-and-pony show with Carrier that had moved its manufacturing to Mexico, which didn't succeed. And he makes a very loud fuss over trade with NAFTA and China.
It gives the superficial appearance that he cared — and that speaks to the millions of Americans who have lost their job to offshoring, have a family member who has, or live in a town that has been impacted and hollowed out by offshoring.
People in white-collar professions are concerned about outsourcing. If you work in IT and you and your team gets sacked and replaced by a team in India or the Philippines being paid pennies, that's really humiliating.
I mentioned in another comment that Democrats suck at storytelling.
Now, relatively few people read the parties' platform statements, but I think that these documents are representative of each party's communication culture because they pass through many critical hands and eyes.
The Republican platform pdf is shorter than 30 pages ad sticks to several bullet points per category.
Check out the Democratic platform pdf. It's 90 pages long and rambling.
You have strictly 1 minute for each document to figure out each party's economic platform. Go!
You've probably figured out what the Republicans' ideas for the economy are. But what are the Democrats'?
Some important people in the Democratic Party reviewed that PDF and said, yeah, this looks good.
Good God. Look at the second page of each document. The republicans: "Dedicated to the forgotten men and women of America."
The democrats put a native land acknowledgement.
I would laugh if it wasn't so sad. This is why they lost.
But how do you correct this? You have to acknowledge that everything happens for a reason, and maybe some of the reason here is incompetence, but I think that'd be a shallow explanation on it's own.
I think what we're seeing here is that the Republican party is largely homogenous in it's intended audience, but the Democrat party is the party of coalition among different groups and cultures. Many of those cultures work from a place from disadvantage or minority representation, and require as a part of their representation that they receive specific attention for their specific concerns.
There are only so many bits of information we can process. A homogenous audience can receive a simple homogenous message, and that's effective. So why shouldn't the Democrat party cast a message that shelters all groups in it's coalition at once? I don't have a great answer to that, but I think it's worth considering that when "Black lives matter" became a message of solidarity, "All lives matter" became an opposition message. I think a valid interpretation of that is that disadvantaged groups require specific support, and and in order to direct specific support, they require specific messaging. All lives do matter, but saying that only reinforces the status quo.
I'm not sure I agree with that. What would be the homogenous republican majority? That said -
I think we agree in principle here. That's sort of my point, actually, though in the comment that sparked this chain I didn't expand on it. It's very hard to argue that a land use statement is a message successfully sheltering all elements of the democratic coalition, in my view.
Great catch! That's actually a very telling artifact.
Each party's platform is written by their platform committee, made up of party leaders and members, policy folks, and representatives of the party's key stakeholders. So each document reveals each party's culture.
So for the 2nd page, which is probably the first and foremost thing that the parties' committees discuss and hash out, their respective cultural processes produced these two very different statements.
The Democratic committee settled on a token gesture. The Republican committee was laser-focused on Americans who feel forgotten and left behind.
Everything else about their campaigns play out from these perspectives.
Yeah, couldn't agree more. As you mentioned in your original post, whether or not anybody actually reads these things is not the point - they're indicative of the communications culture.
Trump has been severely underestimated since 2015. His mentor was Roy Cohn the Republican political operative. He spent his entire career studying and experimenting with using publicity to get what he wanted.
Coming back to this because I think you might appreciate the below interview - it’s an interview with a WWE promoter on the lessons he thinks Trump has taken from pro wrestling. I think about half of it is overblown, but it’s a take I haven’t seen before, at the very least.
Edit: it's from mcsweeneys, but it's not satire!
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/man-is-weak-and-when-he-makes-strength-his-profession-he-is-weaker-a-conversation-with-wrestling-promoter-sean-gorman-about-the-influence-of-the-wwe-on-trumps-every-move
I don't know what to do with a seemingly real article from McSweeney's. Do they do non satire?
Very rarely, but yeah - their interviews are typically not satire. Weird to see, right?
Huh, cool. That's the first time I've come across an interview! Thanks for the clarification and the link
Along the same lines, this article made sense to me. Trump is a heel
Comment box
Perception is reality. But it isn’t complicated. It’s also not just the media. People like to identify with people they think “get” them. Voters didn’t need to listen to any of these media sources to feel “understood” by the candidate who just won the election. They merely heard him speak at a rally, in person or shown on television, or they read an online post of his, and their impression was made.
The media contributes to this, but it’s a pass-through medium as much as it is a prescriptive one.
Someone here said that voters, including educated voters, internally endorse candidates that make them feel supported—the candidates who appear to identify with their problems. Then, voters backfill that candidate’s policy positions and decide those positions are correct.
For example, you see this pattern with educated voters about Harris’ housing policy. They don’t know anything about housing or zoning—if they did, I would have been advocating with them already. But they always liked how she made them feel for some indiscernable mix of emotional validation reasons, so now they like her somewhat more specific policy outline.
I find that irrational, but I won’t criticize the electorate for it. It’s human nature. They aren’t stupid—this is a level of identification that subsumes and supersedes modern education. Feeling is a different part of your brain. It’s still part of you.
Policies themselves can sometimes be engaging to some voters. It isn’t all-or-nothing. But it’s a secondary part of the process.
I’m also subject to it. In Philadelphia’s mayoral election last year I became enamored with Rebecca Rhynhart because she once made a remark vaguely supportive of transportation funding (among other things, but that was the key one). That’s not even really a policy position, it’s an idea—a concept of a plan. More importantly, it seemed like she represented the kind of person I am (or saw myself as being). And I did vote for her, but in hindsight, looking at election coalition analysis maps, it was clear that I was at least partially caught up in a tribal demographic movement. I don’t regret my vote (she lost anyway), but it has made me think more carefully about the assumptions I make about my own critical thinking skills.
I’m not as smart or all-seeing as I think I am. You aren’t either. And the coalition we’re part of has to come to terms with the fact that it is, itself, subject to and implicitly supportive of the emotional swings it criticizes the opposition for perpetuating.
Stupid is a loaded word. But a lot of people are stupid. It’s shorthand for “some people do not have the ability to detect disinformation”. Actually, they have no interest in detecting it at all. They are going through their life with their hands over their ears and screaming LA LA LA LA when someone tries to tell them a reality that they don’t like. It appears that in the United States at least 70 million people have this problem.
Why would someone watch Fox News? They are not being forced to do that. They just want their preconceived opinions fed back to them over and over again. They want to be enraged and then they want to see their enemies struggle. What kind of person even starts watching that? Authoritarian followers (conservatives) who want to be in an in group that dominates an out group.
I think Noam Chomsky is a very problematic person but he’s right about manufactured consent. But people now choose which consent they want manufactured for them when they continue to watch Fox or use Facebook or Twitter.
I’ve spent some time talking to Trump voters. The conversation goes like this:
Me: Why did you vote for Trump?
Them: Because of what happened in the last four years
Me: what happened? Inflation? That’s global. Immigration? There was a bipartisan bill to address that but Trump killed it so he could run on how only he could fix it.
Them: mumbles something
Me: don’t you care that Trump attempted a coup?
Them: that was a weak attempt
Me: I’m not talking about just Jan 6. I’m talking about all the prep for it and the phone calls to red states to get them to commit election fraud. I’m talking about a years long attempt to subvert democracy by intentionally sowing doubt about fair elections
Them : complete boredom. They don’t bother arguing this because they just don’t fucking care.
Them later: It’s all bullshit anyway. The elites control everything, they won’t let him do anything bad.
Me: if it’s all bullshit and the presidency is fake, why not vote against the candidate who quotes hitler?
This article has what may be the most important lens for understanding what happened in 2024 to democracies globally. Here's an archive link which unfortunately doesn't include the chart showing nearly every incumbent party everywhere getting an historic drubbing.
By this measure, the U.S. Democratic Party outperformed most of the world's elected governments.
I'm concerned that the Democrats will take the wrong lessons from their defeat, and move right instead of taking a hard look at how economic conditions imperil their potential constituents. Another difficult to digest statistic - half of U.S. households have almost no wealth. Why show up, or keep supporting the same government, when the most basic needs keep going unmet?
I would add that Trump like many demogogues is building his popularity based on stoking and encouraging resentment.
One example is the they them trans prisoner health care ad, which tells the viewer not only that trans prisoners are getting health care that I disapprove of, but also that prisoners are getting government paid health care that I an honest hard working person would not be able to afford myself.
Here is a quote from Robert Paxton the anatomy of fascism:
Archive link
Note: I changed the title to something less provocative and clickbaity. If anyone feels it needs further edits, let me know.
(emphasis mine)