You'll find people shouting that Taiwan's incumbent government won in 2024. What they won't mention is that Taiwan's post-covid inflation never even reached 4%, much less exceeded it for a prolonged period.
It was the one positive thing about the 2024 presidential election. The lesson to be learned was completely unambiguous and so obvious as to have been written in the goddamn stars. It could not have been clearer if it was delivered by fucking singing telegram.
I mean internal Dem obstructionism preventing more visible change until it was too late and a blatantly hostile media environment didn't help but yeah from a purely policy point of view the Biden recovery was aces
I’m not sure why people seem to want it to be more than inflation. It’s actually a very hopeful diagnosis! I means persuadable voters aren’t monsters to be pandered to, just frustrating nincompoops that we have a good chance of getting next time.
Bullshit. It was the moral decay of wyt America- and the ( hopefully) ugly dying gasps of the wyt patriarchy and the sad bad trads who enable it. But yeah wyt ‘men’ look for any other reason. This country has been organized forever to coddle wyt males. Polls from AIPAC corrupt corporate media. Nope!
Not black women. Sadly the majority of older wyt women are inured to their enabling of the patriarchy and in many ways more reprehensible than their men. The important thing is that black men were men, who want to be as selfish and cruel as wyt men.
It was the progressive stances she took during a four-week primary campaign five years ago—that's definitely what swayed voters who apparently cannot remember that Covid even happened.
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People weren’t mad about inflation, they were mad prices went up, and didn’t know or didn’t care that they were making more money because of democratic policies.
not really a complication, *perception* of economic conditions is what most people vote on anyway (across the spectrum)
it helps to remind us that people don't understand what inflation is, let alone that it was enabled by spending they largely endorsed, and the media won't help them understand
That’s kind of what I’m saying. The OP was saying democrats lost because of inflation, but it wasn’t actually inflation, it was false media narratives about the economy that played on people misperceptions.
guess that's true but those narratives aren't gonna change and if someone says 'inflation' we know what they mean
the good thing (cynically) is even though tariffs aren't likely to be formally inflationary, if people's spending power goes down we can probably call it inflation
after the election, i remembered I gave my email to matt's substack in 2020 and searched for his inflation takes circa 2021. he also wrote about the Biden WH leaking the IRA bill to him in advance to get his reaction...
among pundits he might be unique in culpability for the election result.
in december 2020 he gave a 70% chance year-over-year inflation in 2021 would never surpass 2%, it was 2.6% in march and 7% by december. not a word from him about this post-election.
I'm sorry that Your Thing had nothing to do with the election. I wish the election were decided based on which candidate would best manage our international alliances and provide support to Ukraine. It wasn't.
Nobody gives a fuck about foreign policy. At least I can accept that.
Yglesias is really going to try & pretend he didn't have Ron Klain on speed dial because the Biden team spent the entire first 2-3 years doing nearly exactly what he previously suggested.
This is why people hate him. Intentionally plays dumb for branding purposes. Millennial Micheal Kinsley mfer
While I feel like it's definitely true nobody gives a fuck about foreign policy there has to be ~something~ to the fact that Biden's approval went to complete shit during the Afghanistan withdrawal and stayed there ever since.
Coïncidences happen. It might have been the initial impetus to get Biden's numbers down, but Americans inevitably forgetting about Afghanistan a month later didn't get his numbers back up.
People don't care about foreign policy, they care about images and accounts from foreign countries (especially of visceral, horrific suffering & injustice); the two aren't actually the same.
It's easy and natural to say "that's horrible," it's hard to get people on board with specific actions
Honestly, I don't think it even went that deep. The imagery bothered a large portion of the American public, including those who supported withdrawal, because until then they didn't fully grasp that we'd lost. Badly. Apparently the only thing we hate more than stupid wars is losing wars.
It was not. Gaza had no meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. Foreign policy accounted for about ~5% of voters top concerns and was comparatively split between Harris and Trump
You forgot about the 2024 non-voters who were 2020 Biden voters. Their top issue was Gaza and they don't appear the polls your citing because they didn't vote. But if they did vote it would have swung the election. And they say that Gaza was their top issue.
With a 4 million-voter gap between 2020 and 2024. Assuming the rate of 2020 held, 2.2 million votes. Assuming the only exit poll on Gaza was correct, 26% of those would have been more likely to vote for Harris for a net of 638,000, most in non-swing states. She would have still lost the popular vote
This is assuming that (more likely) actually means (would) and there's little evidence from the entire body of exit polling (5% caring about foreign policy) that means they would have.
Inflayion was doen to 2.4% practically "ideal" Trump pronted 20% of money in 2020 anf then we re-opened the country creating demand gor goods and services that had been shutterred. Even if inflation is tge reason, the proximate cause is lack of critical thinking skills.
And racism.
Biden gave Trump 2.4% GDP growth and Trump in 100 days turned it into -.3% contraction of GDP and that's before tariffs, and the Federal govt spent $200 billion more than in the same qtr of the previous year.
Yeah I am far more sympathetic to MattY than most of the people on here, and it remains the case that, population is true, in that being moderate is worth a few points in elections.
But he's just wrong here, Kamala was the more moderate candidate, Trump won on low info brainwashed voters angry
I think where he fails is he's stuck in this populism almost political-mechanical framing where policies directly drive perceptions.
Being perceived as "moderate" is a proven winner. How that perception is constructed though can often have jack-all to do with your professed policy choices.
I think that vibes and the way policies impact people (high gas prices plus dem = gone too far on climate change) more so than policy positions per se.
This is right. He's working with [god knows who] to explicitly try to re-install a faction of people into prominent party slots and he just bleats out the same things regardless of whether they fit the situation or not.
I think his reasoning here is for less conspiratorial reasons, I think he's been radicalized a bit by PTSD from Kamala's loss and negative polarization from Stancil and company claiming that moderation doesn't matter at all. I think he's obviously gone too far with it but I don't like people getting
He’s been on panels with a whole string of these people, including Jason Furman, and others, who are chapped Biden shut out tech and finance ding dongs from his admin. They recast this as an ideological project.
I think charisma and leadership matter significantly more, and candidate quality far outweighs policy positions, which are extremely flexible for voters.
Yeah too many people are convinced that only 1 magical thing matters when it's really ALL of the Above that matters (especially inflation and a bizarre media obsession over immigration in the last election.)
about eggs who didn't know or believe his actual policies. Going forward, we could lose by going too far left wing (Kamala 2020 level) but we don't have any reason to go further right on stuff like immigration than Kamala 2024 level.
I mean people often lie in polls. So I would take it with a pinch of salt. I would say it's more of a fact that a white businessman is an object of cult in US while a black woman is a black woman and ofc knows nothing about economics.
And they voted for the guy who explicitly promised to increase prices. Maybe people were worried about inflation and had no understanding of economics, or maybe inflation is a pretext people use as a reason when really they want the government to go after brown people.
Otherwise why would there have been such a concerted effort by the entire media to make everyone believe that the 2023 economy was bad? They knew that would help Trump.
Comments
*Every incumbent government of a major nation that faced persistent inflation of 4% or higher & was up for reelection lost vote share.*
Ideology didn't matter. The UK's Tories suffered worse than the US' Democrats did. Dems at least gained in the House.
The Biden soft landing was about as perfect as you can do inside the confines of our system, so the problem in 2024 is just voters.
it's that *the strongest signal of why he won* is that black and hispanic voters who crossed over did so because of the economy
but yet again, the point is *for the decisive % who switched* ('not black women' is obvious btw) why did they switch?
and the primary answer is a economic conditions, no inflation and they stay put
selfish they may be, but they can be brought back
Also, disaffected dickwads who couldn't get over their butthurt and actually go vote.
THAT'S why Trump won.
https://youtu.be/XNMYBIbvvfc?si=zLF4kNqPGttNpLyG
they wanted (regardless of the disaster it would represent) deflation to pre-Biden levels, you can still see them hoping tariffs will do that
People weren’t mad about inflation, they were mad prices went up, and didn’t know or didn’t care that they were making more money because of democratic policies.
it helps to remind us that people don't understand what inflation is, let alone that it was enabled by spending they largely endorsed, and the media won't help them understand
the good thing (cynically) is even though tariffs aren't likely to be formally inflationary, if people's spending power goes down we can probably call it inflation
among pundits he might be unique in culpability for the election result.
https://bsky.app/profile/ryanlcooper.com/post/3lpmb3c7itg2j
Racist lies are what I heard from Republicans, and the Far Left was happy to help.
Nobody gives a fuck about foreign policy. At least I can accept that.
This is why people hate him. Intentionally plays dumb for branding purposes. Millennial Micheal Kinsley mfer
It's easy and natural to say "that's horrible," it's hard to get people on board with specific actions
Biden gave Trump 2.4% GDP growth and Trump in 100 days turned it into -.3% contraction of GDP and that's before tariffs, and the Federal govt spent $200 billion more than in the same qtr of the previous year.
But he's just wrong here, Kamala was the more moderate candidate, Trump won on low info brainwashed voters angry
Being perceived as "moderate" is a proven winner. How that perception is constructed though can often have jack-all to do with your professed policy choices.
Like my elderly mother thinks we are still having inflation until hamburger gets back down to 99 cents/lb where it was in I dunno…1980.
The fact that prices are no longer INCREASING doesn’t mean inflation is over for her.
No, wait, maybe I do. I've been