An alternate explanation as to why Harris underperformed Democratic Senate candidates: voters blamed the administration for high inflation but largely gave the rest of the federal government (i.e. Congress) a pass.
As to the fundamentals portion of the model miscalculating Trump's eventual margin in the popular vote, I suggest viewing Ezra Klein's recent appearance on "Pod Save America" where he told Democratic partisans to "shut the fuck up" about crime and the economy. Voter fury about the direction of the country was substantial and the Democrats telling ordinary citizens that they were imagining things was a terrible approach.
This is just an anecdote, but a few months ago I was eating dinner at a restaurant with some friends. The waitress was black and we were discussing politics so we asked her who she was voting for.
I must be telling the story wrong because no one is surprised that she answered "Trump". The straw that broke the camel's back? She has a 9 year old nephew and an 11 year old niece and they were being harassed by the homeless as they walked to school every day. She, her sister and her mother all called the cops only to be told that the police could do nothing.
Is this a crime? Does it get recorded somewhere and boost reported crime statistics? Of course not. But I suspect that experiences like this are a major component behind why city dwellers feel that life has gotten worse. And, as Ezra Klein noted, Trump saw much larger gains in urban areas than the suburbs or rural precincts.
Yea I’m in California and the new bill increasing crime persecution passed by a substantial majority. Crime may officially be low but that’s simply because people aren’t being prosecuted.
Also keep in mind that the NCVS and the UCR typically are pretty close to one another but they diverged in a major way starting in 2022, with the NCVS showing historic increases in reported crime victimization.
That's not consistent with a narrative of falling crime, it's consistent with a narrative where crime is going up but people don't bother calling the police.
But is it really that useful to prosecute people? Prison doesn’t help people, it’s costly and brutal, and bad for families. Government rehab and psych programs could at least help with crime…as well as community centers and outreach…in a long-term way
We’ve had waves of people walk into stores steal stuff and walk out repeatedly, keeping the threshold under $950 so it stays a misdemeanor, which is often still not prosecuted. California got to go the three strikes law to felony conversion in 2020 and overwhelmingly just voted it back in this year. What else do you do here.
It’s a problem that people are impatient and don’t think long-term about solutions but I guess you can try to build those solutions while combatting crime. Poverty is a real reason for crime too that’s a more long-term issue to work on
No one actually had this option, nor would it be an easy sell, but if they tested the programs some places and had considerably improved results they might be able to. I think it's worth it, obviously. I'm a mercy not punishment person
I seriously doubt we have the money or workforce for a bunch of decentralized, psych and rehab based programs, particularly in high cost Blue cities. I think there would need to be centralized programs, perhaps in custodial situations.
Well, I think it’s a long-term development idea, where you’d have to experiment and start with small case studies. Preventing criminals to begin with would help, combatting income inequality at least by being fierce on antitrust if not taxes and things would help the country so much with its turning so helplessly to the crazy. Urban planning and stuff. Yeah, it’s just hard when at least half but probably more of the time impatient “crack down on crime” politicians get easy wins we’ll see what happens; it’s a little scary to imagine Trump’s possible measures
I can’t find your Laken Riley comment for some reason. The stats I’ve heard on illegal immigrant crime is it’s lower than citizens for the same crimes. To me that makes sense. If you’re an illegal immigrant there’s way more incentive not to get caught. To me, if you’re upset about Laken Riley and you vote for Trump it makes zero sense, he’s an unrepentant rapist who has gotten away with it more than once. You should definitely get taken away from society for violent crimes but I don’t see the incentive in making prison such a hellhole that it only makes people worse. I don’t see people who commit crimes in general as irredeemable human beings
My question to you is what do you do with the specific individual that murdered Laken Riley. He's in police custody right now. What should society do to him?
So maybe the “crime contributed to a sense we were on the wrong track” doesn’t hold up as an argument for the election result since we voted to elect a candidate who is a criminal and is surrounded by other criminals. I think it might have been something else. Stick with inflation… that argument works better for you.
I think this is the right read. If you look at Canada where provincial elections happen on random schedules relative to the federal election, a lot of the premiers (governor equivalents) have been re-elected recently and/or remain popular, even as the Federal incumbent is down 15-20 points in the polls.
Basically I think it’s equivalent to how when things aren’t going well for a sports team midseason, they fire the head coach, not the sports science person. One throat to choke is enough.
If Trump is good at anything, he’s good at sales, the ruthless, do-anything-to-win, cult-leader kind. It’s hard, you have to fight ten times harder if you’re going against a party with as few scruples about misleading their voters as Republicans. Republicans do not want to help workers or poor people. They are always lying
I would say that the Democratic party over the last four years did pretty much nothing for the working class over the last four years and as a consequence Trump just won.
Trump literally blocks our highly conservative immigration compromise for his own election purposes and no one bitches about that, they all think he is their savior on immigration. It’s just bs man. We did our best given Trump and Republicans’ obstinate political games
What I heard though back then was they were trying to reduce the need for immigration by working in central and South America. I do think this issue wasn’t his highest priority and they let it go too long but it was so hard with Manchin and Sinema to get anything through and even though a lot of people don’t prioritize climate, that was the right thing for Biden to do
I’m for compassionate inclusive and functional immigration system myself. Of course I would be right? But anyway as an environmental advocate I really think the world needs less nationalism not more
I can’t read anything you said beyond “as a.” Something f-Ed up with my app or internet…I think Dems did a lot considering their limitations with Congress. The Inflation Reduction act created a lot of jobs but it was a miracle given the situation, we didn’t have both houses really either half of Biden’s presidency. We could’ve done more. But why blame democrats when Republicans were the glaring reason any legislation didn’t happen???
Well the jobs were good-paying ones with security. Reagan was the one who got the government out of what was good for workers vis a vis big business, and Democrats like Clinton and Obama listened but it wasn’t good in the long run for workers to not have unions, republicans would never vote for adequate wage increases or govt help with healthcare that would make people be able to pay higher prices. Inflation we’ve discussed. The top economists have over and over been amazed by how well we recovered, even if that isnt all because of Biden. Antitrust is a way to stimulate competition as you know so corporations are forced to lower prices to be competitive…it’s longer term tho. So we were mostly blamed for things that weren’t our fault and if high prices are bad tariffs are not the answer but no one heard that pretty obvious point
Why would you say that? My impression was that they passed the Inflation Reduction Act and ever since Inflation has been rapidly falling. They pass the CHIPS act and ever since manufacturing has been booming. Wages have advanced 4% over inflation this last year. The economy is roaring. That is not why Trump won. Guess again. Something to do with feelings.
>An alternate explanation as to why Harris underperformed Democratic Senate candidates: voters blamed the administration for high inflation but largely gave the rest of the federal government (i.e. Congress) a pass.<
There may be some of that. But a simpler explanation may simply be that Democratic Senate candidates were generally fighting like hell to win. But in some of those states the Harris campaign quite understandably made no effort to compete.
Gallego is a really talented politician, and put in the work. (Like, he went in-person to meet every single tribal council, including hiking down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. From what I've read, he's the only living politician in the state to have done that.)
I don't interpret the sentence "Harris outperformed Senate candidates" to mean only "states everyone is looking at" but rather, I thought it referred to all Senate races. And yes, Harris obviously campaigned hard in those three states (she just didn't campaign hard in the *majority* of states where Senate races were taking place).
So I agreed with half of what you wrote, but on reflection I do need to lodge an objection to the second half.
People were, to a large degree, imagining things! Yes they were genuinely experiencing inflation, but imagining that it was Biden’s fault. They imagined that real wages had declined when in fact they increased. They imagined that crime was going up (it was going down). They imagined that illegal immigrants were invading (crossings are down).
And at least part of the reason they imagined this is that Fox News and other media didn’t disabuse them of this notion, either for ideological or audience-driven reasons.
I don’t think you can blame Democrats for at least trying to tell people that their perception doesn’t match reality. You just also need to do other stuff.
#3 is absolutely not true. That’s why I said real wages. They were briefly lower in 2022 as inflation outpaced wage gains, since then wage gains have materially outpaced inflation.
Those things don’t bother me, except I worry if people don’t have enough to put food on the table, and have to work three jobs. My own first concern is to avoid the horrors we are currently headed toward climate-wise. I’m a long term person. But I also have needs that require a healthy functioning bureaucracy
Crossings were down after three and half years of sky high rates that were 100% Biden’s fault. He lifted all of Trump’s restrictions on his first day in office.
"all"? i think he was trying to be humane, which voters did want. to me, immigration is largely a boogeyman issue motivated by racism and the failure of Republicans to spend money to make the system functional
It was still fucked up how people saw the economy. I mean, it was the inflation but why couldn’t they have made some argument about how we did better than our peers at recovering and inflation was worldwide? Also that everyone blames the administration for inflation, but it would’ve happened under Trump and he wouldn’t have brought about as good a recovery as we have now? I guess you can’t go into these “details” because it feels defensive, it just seems wrong that everyone was voting on the basis of something that was bullshit
There were some academic studies that suggested that Biden's stimulus contributed to a good portion of the inflation.
Trump at least had an excuse for sending out stimulus checks: the country was still dealing with lockdowns and high unemployment was rampant as a result. By the time Biden got to office the lockdowns were largely a thing of the past. What was the justification for sending out additional stimulus when the economy was already in recovery?
US inflation was often much lower than other countries’, though. There is no way Biden was responsible for a “good portion” of inflation and it’s clearly silly that people blame the president/incumbent party for a global problem.
4 basis points is 0.04%. Do you mean 4 percentage points (as in, inflation would have been 4% not 8% without stimulus)? If so, not a chance it had that much impact.
I saw studies that said that was a factor, but cutting child poverty in half isn’t a bad result, and there would’ve been inflation anyway, and the main issues were the Covid supply chain problems and the exacerbation of the problem with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the gas prices issue. Also, price gouging due to monopolies; the Biden admin was doing good antitrust work but it’s a long slow process. Inflation is largely the Fed’s jurisdiction though and that was completely not realized by voters it feels like
Stimulating a recovering economy didn't help. There was always going to be some inflation as the world recovered from Covid but excess stimulus poured gas onto a fire.
Keep bringing them on … Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth. Giuliani would be a good Assistant AG or Supreme Court Justice … the tide will never turn and none of this will backfire… ever
No question about that. Acute signs of national decay and corruption. We are devolving. Disappointing that people don’t care, but it isn’t surprising. We get what we deserve.
I mostly liked this because of "blamed the administration for high inflation but largely gave the rest of the federal government (i.e. Congress) a pass." I think ordinary citizens were overreacting for sure. It wasn't that different than before even if you use stats to prove it was worse, I just think Republicans were great at fearmongering, not that hard a thing to be great at. I also don't think homelessness was really the administration's fault for the most part, nor was inflation (but I already argued that below).
Calling it transitory was one of the dumbest pr moves I’ve ever seen. Somehow they outdid themselves by bragging that inflation was lower recently, which shows just how grossly they misunderstood the average voter — great news, your 20% higher prices from 2-3 yrs will only go up another percent or two next year and you should thank us for that.
I think people are suggesting culturally and on economic levels Latinos voted Trump. I don’t want to just speculate and say something that’s a generalization about a race. Certainly religion is a factor but maybe they’re susceptible to some of the same temptations as white people and white women who voted against their own equal rights
frankly illegal immigrants work for lower wages and I’m against that. it’s inhumane and it creates conflict over these unskilled jobs. that is the fault of the people running all those operations. it’s fucked up that our economy is reliant on this slave-like labor. women get raped with impunity. if you learn about these like meat packing places it’s horrifying
I actually don’t think so, I think there’s a lot of racist fear eg replacement theory…only citizens can vote so this means they are anti legal immigration
In any case I’m for increased legal immigration, pathways to citizenship, all that. It would be expensive of course. Deportations also expensive and tearing up families etc
I can’t read the whole thing. Will get back later. I think there are lots of different reasons Latinos voted for Trump but still white people were the killers
An alternate explanation as to why Harris underperformed Democratic Senate candidates: voters blamed the administration for high inflation but largely gave the rest of the federal government (i.e. Congress) a pass.
As to the fundamentals portion of the model miscalculating Trump's eventual margin in the popular vote, I suggest viewing Ezra Klein's recent appearance on "Pod Save America" where he told Democratic partisans to "shut the fuck up" about crime and the economy. Voter fury about the direction of the country was substantial and the Democrats telling ordinary citizens that they were imagining things was a terrible approach.
This is just an anecdote, but a few months ago I was eating dinner at a restaurant with some friends. The waitress was black and we were discussing politics so we asked her who she was voting for.
I must be telling the story wrong because no one is surprised that she answered "Trump". The straw that broke the camel's back? She has a 9 year old nephew and an 11 year old niece and they were being harassed by the homeless as they walked to school every day. She, her sister and her mother all called the cops only to be told that the police could do nothing.
Is this a crime? Does it get recorded somewhere and boost reported crime statistics? Of course not. But I suspect that experiences like this are a major component behind why city dwellers feel that life has gotten worse. And, as Ezra Klein noted, Trump saw much larger gains in urban areas than the suburbs or rural precincts.
Yea I’m in California and the new bill increasing crime persecution passed by a substantial majority. Crime may officially be low but that’s simply because people aren’t being prosecuted.
Also keep in mind that the NCVS and the UCR typically are pretty close to one another but they diverged in a major way starting in 2022, with the NCVS showing historic increases in reported crime victimization.
That's not consistent with a narrative of falling crime, it's consistent with a narrative where crime is going up but people don't bother calling the police.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2023
Slight uptick in crime.
Same rough percentage of non-reported crime.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/08/violent-crime-data-2022-mystifying/
Oh really? I’ve seen one person bring this up a month ago, but they said the opposite and that the two match rn. I’ll check it out.
Here's an article on the NCVS for 2022 that points out the big increase in reported crimes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/08/violent-crime-data-2022-mystifying/
IIRC there was no drop off in 2023's NCVS.
Oh wow.
Interesting data on this in
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/ncvsnibrscpc22.pdf
But is it really that useful to prosecute people? Prison doesn’t help people, it’s costly and brutal, and bad for families. Government rehab and psych programs could at least help with crime…as well as community centers and outreach…in a long-term way
At least somebody who's in jail cannot find new victims.
They get worse in jail not better.
So what's the alternative? Leave them out on the streets where they can keep finding new victims?
We’ve had waves of people walk into stores steal stuff and walk out repeatedly, keeping the threshold under $950 so it stays a misdemeanor, which is often still not prosecuted. California got to go the three strikes law to felony conversion in 2020 and overwhelmingly just voted it back in this year. What else do you do here.
It’s a problem that people are impatient and don’t think long-term about solutions but I guess you can try to build those solutions while combatting crime. Poverty is a real reason for crime too that’s a more long-term issue to work on
The voters apparently disagree.
No one actually had this option, nor would it be an easy sell, but if they tested the programs some places and had considerably improved results they might be able to. I think it's worth it, obviously. I'm a mercy not punishment person
I seriously doubt we have the money or workforce for a bunch of decentralized, psych and rehab based programs, particularly in high cost Blue cities. I think there would need to be centralized programs, perhaps in custodial situations.
Well, I think it’s a long-term development idea, where you’d have to experiment and start with small case studies. Preventing criminals to begin with would help, combatting income inequality at least by being fierce on antitrust if not taxes and things would help the country so much with its turning so helplessly to the crazy. Urban planning and stuff. Yeah, it’s just hard when at least half but probably more of the time impatient “crack down on crime” politicians get easy wins we’ll see what happens; it’s a little scary to imagine Trump’s possible measures
lol, yeah “defund the prisons” is a great successor to Defund the Police! The Dems should totally run with this great idea!!
I can’t find your Laken Riley comment for some reason. The stats I’ve heard on illegal immigrant crime is it’s lower than citizens for the same crimes. To me that makes sense. If you’re an illegal immigrant there’s way more incentive not to get caught. To me, if you’re upset about Laken Riley and you vote for Trump it makes zero sense, he’s an unrepentant rapist who has gotten away with it more than once. You should definitely get taken away from society for violent crimes but I don’t see the incentive in making prison such a hellhole that it only makes people worse. I don’t see people who commit crimes in general as irredeemable human beings
My question to you is what do you do with the specific individual that murdered Laken Riley. He's in police custody right now. What should society do to him?
And what do you do with rapists like Donald Trump?
Apparently so - what a country - makes you proud!
Will of the voters and all that.
Elect him to the presidency?
She was a 7% er ..God Bless her ..Moving on
I don’t think that was Biden’s fault though, that was a local problem
Crime contributed to a sense that the country was on the wrong path and that was perceived by Democrats to be a problem for the incumbent.
This was especially true of Trump’s crimes (and Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, etc.)
And yet here we are with Trump back in office.
So maybe the “crime contributed to a sense we were on the wrong track” doesn’t hold up as an argument for the election result since we voted to elect a candidate who is a criminal and is surrounded by other criminals. I think it might have been something else. Stick with inflation… that argument works better for you.
Don't think you're doing it intentionally, but you're mischaracterizing Ezra Klein's words:
he said "shut the fuck up" to the people claiming inflation and crime weren't a big deal; not to the ones saying they were
Yeah, that's my meaning. Typed too fast.
I think this is the right read. If you look at Canada where provincial elections happen on random schedules relative to the federal election, a lot of the premiers (governor equivalents) have been re-elected recently and/or remain popular, even as the Federal incumbent is down 15-20 points in the polls.
Basically I think it’s equivalent to how when things aren’t going well for a sports team midseason, they fire the head coach, not the sports science person. One throat to choke is enough.
The leftist NDP squeaked in by a tiny margin in B.C. a few weeks ago. Their winning margin was down from the past election.
there were also a lot of Trump voters who simply voted for Trump and left the entire ballot blank
In 2020 the Rs said ballots like that for Biden were proof of fraud.
If Trump is good at anything, he’s good at sales, the ruthless, do-anything-to-win, cult-leader kind. It’s hard, you have to fight ten times harder if you’re going against a party with as few scruples about misleading their voters as Republicans. Republicans do not want to help workers or poor people. They are always lying
I would say that the Democratic party over the last four years did pretty much nothing for the working class over the last four years and as a consequence Trump just won.
Trump literally blocks our highly conservative immigration compromise for his own election purposes and no one bitches about that, they all think he is their savior on immigration. It’s just bs man. We did our best given Trump and Republicans’ obstinate political games
Biden let illegal immigration soar to insane levels in 2021, 2022 and 2023. That's all on him.
What I heard though back then was they were trying to reduce the need for immigration by working in central and South America. I do think this issue wasn’t his highest priority and they let it go too long but it was so hard with Manchin and Sinema to get anything through and even though a lot of people don’t prioritize climate, that was the right thing for Biden to do
One way you know you're looking at a solid, workable plan is that it does *not* start with "First, we fix Honduras."
Whatever they tried didn't work.
I’m for compassionate inclusive and functional immigration system myself. Of course I would be right? But anyway as an environmental advocate I really think the world needs less nationalism not more
I think most people have a positive view of legal immigration but have serious issues with open borders.
I can’t read anything you said beyond “as a.” Something f-Ed up with my app or internet…I think Dems did a lot considering their limitations with Congress. The Inflation Reduction act created a lot of jobs but it was a miracle given the situation, we didn’t have both houses really either half of Biden’s presidency. We could’ve done more. But why blame democrats when Republicans were the glaring reason any legislation didn’t happen???
The issue really wasn't jobs, the unemployment rate is low. The problem Is inflation.
Well the jobs were good-paying ones with security. Reagan was the one who got the government out of what was good for workers vis a vis big business, and Democrats like Clinton and Obama listened but it wasn’t good in the long run for workers to not have unions, republicans would never vote for adequate wage increases or govt help with healthcare that would make people be able to pay higher prices. Inflation we’ve discussed. The top economists have over and over been amazed by how well we recovered, even if that isnt all because of Biden. Antitrust is a way to stimulate competition as you know so corporations are forced to lower prices to be competitive…it’s longer term tho. So we were mostly blamed for things that weren’t our fault and if high prices are bad tariffs are not the answer but no one heard that pretty obvious point
Lina Khan is apparently an admirer of Matt Gaetz.
Black unemplyement hit a record low under Biden ..please try again
And yet it looks like Harris got fewer black voters re s than Biden.
Why would you say that? My impression was that they passed the Inflation Reduction Act and ever since Inflation has been rapidly falling. They pass the CHIPS act and ever since manufacturing has been booming. Wages have advanced 4% over inflation this last year. The economy is roaring. That is not why Trump won. Guess again. Something to do with feelings.
Maybe Google the effect that the economy had on the election. The consensus among talking heads was that it was not positive.
Indeed, talking heads talk to the hand. The four years of economic growth and best economy in the past few decades was dissed by the talking heads.
Great.
All that inflation was clearly imaginary.
Oh I see it now somehow, well anyway.
This was a response to Slaws comment about swing state candidates
>An alternate explanation as to why Harris underperformed Democratic Senate candidates: voters blamed the administration for high inflation but largely gave the rest of the federal government (i.e. Congress) a pass.<
There may be some of that. But a simpler explanation may simply be that Democratic Senate candidates were generally fighting like hell to win. But in some of those states the Harris campaign quite understandably made no effort to compete.
Yeah, but the states that everyone is looking at are MI, WI and PA. There's no way Harris gave those states a pass.
Also AZ.
Gallego is a really talented politician, and put in the work. (Like, he went in-person to meet every single tribal council, including hiking down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. From what I've read, he's the only living politician in the state to have done that.)
Kari Lake was a terrible candidate though. And the scuttlebutt was that Brown's campaign in NV was just incompetent.
I don't interpret the sentence "Harris outperformed Senate candidates" to mean only "states everyone is looking at" but rather, I thought it referred to all Senate races. And yes, Harris obviously campaigned hard in those three states (she just didn't campaign hard in the *majority* of states where Senate races were taking place).
So I agreed with half of what you wrote, but on reflection I do need to lodge an objection to the second half.
People were, to a large degree, imagining things! Yes they were genuinely experiencing inflation, but imagining that it was Biden’s fault. They imagined that real wages had declined when in fact they increased. They imagined that crime was going up (it was going down). They imagined that illegal immigrants were invading (crossings are down).
And at least part of the reason they imagined this is that Fox News and other media didn’t disabuse them of this notion, either for ideological or audience-driven reasons.
I don’t think you can blame Democrats for at least trying to tell people that their perception doesn’t match reality. You just also need to do other stuff.
You're entitled to your opinion but not your own alternative facts.
1. Crime is worse now than in 2019.
2. Illegal immigration under the Biden administration was much higher than Trump's first term.
3. Relative spending power decreased because while wages went up prices increased even faster.
Also this absolutely not does not show crime was higher in 2022 than 2019 - and it’s only gone down since 2022
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/
What was the homicide rate in 2019?
What is it today?
#3 is absolutely not true. That’s why I said real wages. They were briefly lower in 2022 as inflation outpaced wage gains, since then wage gains have materially outpaced inflation.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1znFb
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/16/when-wage-growth-is-likely-to-catch-up-to-inflation.html
1. not that much, and it's not high across a longer period of time
3. people spent their asses off anyway it appears, but perhaps it is more complex, and the solutions, like anti-trust, are not short-term
Those things don’t bother me, except I worry if people don’t have enough to put food on the table, and have to work three jobs. My own first concern is to avoid the horrors we are currently headed toward climate-wise. I’m a long term person. But I also have needs that require a healthy functioning bureaucracy
Everyone has their own individual priorities. The bulk of the electorate clearly rejected Biden.
Crossings were down after three and half years of sky high rates that were 100% Biden’s fault. He lifted all of Trump’s restrictions on his first day in office.
"all"? i think he was trying to be humane, which voters did want. to me, immigration is largely a boogeyman issue motivated by racism and the failure of Republicans to spend money to make the system functional
It was still fucked up how people saw the economy. I mean, it was the inflation but why couldn’t they have made some argument about how we did better than our peers at recovering and inflation was worldwide? Also that everyone blames the administration for inflation, but it would’ve happened under Trump and he wouldn’t have brought about as good a recovery as we have now? I guess you can’t go into these “details” because it feels defensive, it just seems wrong that everyone was voting on the basis of something that was bullshit
There were some academic studies that suggested that Biden's stimulus contributed to a good portion of the inflation.
Trump at least had an excuse for sending out stimulus checks: the country was still dealing with lockdowns and high unemployment was rampant as a result. By the time Biden got to office the lockdowns were largely a thing of the past. What was the justification for sending out additional stimulus when the economy was already in recovery?
US inflation was often much lower than other countries’, though. There is no way Biden was responsible for a “good portion” of inflation and it’s clearly silly that people blame the president/incumbent party for a global problem.
The study that I saw (cited in the WaPo) was something like four basis points attributable to stimulus.
And the point was that the US wasn't the only government that tried to juice the economy with stimulus and suffered from inflation as a result.
4 basis points is 0.04%. Do you mean 4 percentage points (as in, inflation would have been 4% not 8% without stimulus)? If so, not a chance it had that much impact.
Sorry, percentage points. Roughly half of the 8-9% annual inflation rate.
I am not an economist, but the people behind that paper definitely are.
I saw studies that said that was a factor, but cutting child poverty in half isn’t a bad result, and there would’ve been inflation anyway, and the main issues were the Covid supply chain problems and the exacerbation of the problem with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the gas prices issue. Also, price gouging due to monopolies; the Biden admin was doing good antitrust work but it’s a long slow process. Inflation is largely the Fed’s jurisdiction though and that was completely not realized by voters it feels like
Stimulating a recovering economy didn't help. There was always going to be some inflation as the world recovered from Covid but excess stimulus poured gas onto a fire.
The open border was a huge issue that was 100% Biden’s fault.
Keep bringing them on … Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth. Giuliani would be a good Assistant AG or Supreme Court Justice … the tide will never turn and none of this will backfire… ever
If you think that the average voter recognizes any of those name, much less cares who they are, you are completely deluded.
Bring them on, all of them! They can run on decriminalizing rape next time (only lame woke people care about stuff like that)
I fear you are doomed to be disappointed.
No question about that. Acute signs of national decay and corruption. We are devolving. Disappointing that people don’t care, but it isn’t surprising. We get what we deserve.
Or, Alternatively, the other side just won.
I mostly liked this because of "blamed the administration for high inflation but largely gave the rest of the federal government (i.e. Congress) a pass." I think ordinary citizens were overreacting for sure. It wasn't that different than before even if you use stats to prove it was worse, I just think Republicans were great at fearmongering, not that hard a thing to be great at. I also don't think homelessness was really the administration's fault for the most part, nor was inflation (but I already argued that below).
Calling it transitory was one of the dumbest pr moves I’ve ever seen. Somehow they outdid themselves by bragging that inflation was lower recently, which shows just how grossly they misunderstood the average voter — great news, your 20% higher prices from 2-3 yrs will only go up another percent or two next year and you should thank us for that.
I think people are suggesting culturally and on economic levels Latinos voted Trump. I don’t want to just speculate and say something that’s a generalization about a race. Certainly religion is a factor but maybe they’re susceptible to some of the same temptations as white people and white women who voted against their own equal rights
I guess. It’s not my fault people are easily swayed against immigrants. It was motivated by compassion and his own sense of what his voters wanted
In my personal experience the people that dislike illegal immigration the most are legal immigrants.
There are plenty of people who don't have a problem with legal immigration but who have valid objections to the illegal variety.
frankly illegal immigrants work for lower wages and I’m against that. it’s inhumane and it creates conflict over these unskilled jobs. that is the fault of the people running all those operations. it’s fucked up that our economy is reliant on this slave-like labor. women get raped with impunity. if you learn about these like meat packing places it’s horrifying
I actually don’t think so, I think there’s a lot of racist fear eg replacement theory…only citizens can vote so this means they are anti legal immigration
So why did so many Hispanics cross over and vote for Trump?
Cause they hate Black women ..
In any case I’m for increased legal immigration, pathways to citizenship, all that. It would be expensive of course. Deportations also expensive and tearing up families etc
I can’t read the whole thing. Will get back later. I think there are lots of different reasons Latinos voted for Trump but still white people were the killers
Well, what are those reasons?