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sacman701's avatar

What went wrong was that marginal voters were so angry about inflation that it would have taken a perfect storm for any Democrat to win, even against Trump. As others have noted, the Dem share of the vote slipped much less in the contested states than in the uncontested states, indicating that the Harris campaign was able to shift the baseline more than the Trump campaign was.

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ArcticStones's avatar

I hear you – but there is a vast gulf between the real economy and the "vibe economy". Here is a dramatic chart showing Republican voters suddenly feeling better about the economy, post-election, despite the reality not changing one iota.

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/13/consumer-sentiment-republican-democrat-switch

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Avedee Eikew's avatar

How many Republicans are going to be celebrating 2-3% inflation in January?

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sacman701's avatar

The GOP base is unreachable. The task is to reach the marginal, mostly low-info, low-engagement voters who sat out 2016, turned on Trump over the pandemic and/or the economy in 2020, and turned on us over inflation this year.

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Avedee Eikew's avatar

I don't disagree but Republicans lying about their dissatisfaction with 2-3% inflation is separate from that discussion. The hope/expectation for the voters you mention is they bolt if/when Trump blows up the economy with his fixations on Tarriffs and mass deportations and other unworkable inflationary policies. We'll have a better idea of what to run on for the "low-info low-engagement" voter by the end of 25.

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sacman701's avatar

I think the outreach needs to start now (warning people about the Trump agenda on any outlet that will hear us out, etc) as opposed to waiting for people to see for themselves.

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Lance Schulz's avatar

Yes, but, if people completely forgot how awful the Trump years were in just four years, will they remember this messaging four years from now? Not saying we shouldn't message, just wondering how effective it will be.

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Tom A's avatar

I think online liberals really overestimate the extent to which regular people found the Trump years (pre-COVID) awful.

He took the Obama economy and it kept humming, and when it looked like it might stall in 2019, he bullied the Fed into cutting rates, keeping things going until COVID hit.

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Lance Schulz's avatar

Not being a liberal myself I can’t really speak to that, but you may well be right. Still, his approval ratings were down in the 30s at the end of his term, so there must have been things people didn’t like.

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Tom A's avatar

People dont like Trump the man. But ultimately, all the clown show stuff didnt have much impact on the real economy. Tack on peoples concerns about immigration, and that more or less is it.

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ArcticStones's avatar

Do you consider the deficit-based tax cut and vast increase in the national debt under Trump to be part of "the real economy"?

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Avedee Eikew's avatar

By all means but we've been warning about him his agenda and his character for years. We'll have a better idea of what sticks in peoples minds when it's actually at risk of impacting their daily lives.

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ArcticStones's avatar

Shadow cabinet! Choose knowledgeable, highly-articulate people – and not necessarily just politicians.

Also: Messaging is extraordinarily difficult when there is a whole ecosystem (Fox etc) that isn’t even willing to let you voice your message to their audience!

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JanusIanitos's avatar

By mid-late spring we will inevitably see the media do an about-face and start heralding the "historically strong Trump economy."

I'm already pre-annoyed.

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Tom A's avatar

We arent getting through the next four years without a recession in all liklihood. So the sooner Trump takes ownership, the more blame he will get when that recession comes.

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ArcticStones's avatar

With Trump’s announced policies, a recession (or depression) is all but certain. But I really don’t think a recession would be in the works had Kamala Harris won and been given Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

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Tom A's avatar

I've learned not to try to predict how the economy will react to various policy proposals. I expect you are right, but who knows - we will have to wait and see.

Also, I think we are in the slowing portion of the economic cycle right now. Like even if Harris had had Dem majorities I dont know that we get through 2026 without at least a minor recession. Our worst case scenario is probably that we are even closer than it seems, and that basically Trump inherits a recession like Bush did, and by 2028 things are back to strong growth.

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Toiler On the Sea's avatar

Yep. I get pilloried on this regularly but I maintain this was a media-induced vibesession starting from earlier this year. I make a middle class salary and do most of the grocery-shopping for my family . . . .prices for me clearly fell over the past year. And like most Americans my income rose from pre-Covid times. This is seen in consumer spending-Americans are spending on vacations, dining out, entertainment more than they were in Trump's economy. If Americans were struggling so much from inflation a la 1977 you'd see it reflected in decreases in consumer spending, and that never happened even at post-Covid inflation's peak. Yes there were persistent price spikes for renters/those who took out big loans over the past two years, but that's far from a majority of the electorate.

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Tom A's avatar

It was a vibecession, but I dont know that it was entirely media caused. The reality is that prices did spike, dramatically, and while some good came down, alot of it didnt, and nothing that I know of has gone back down to 2019 levels - maybe gas in some places?

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Paleo's avatar

Didn't necessarily require a "perfect storm," but possibly an administration and campaign that tried to communicate effectively with the people directly on the issue.

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sacman701's avatar

That might have helped, but it would have had to start in 2021. Biden really only made a token effort at messaging throughout his term. Harris had just 3.5 months, which isn't nearly enough time to correct impressions formed over 3.5 years.

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ArcticStones's avatar

Precisely this! Because of the Biden Administration’s lack of effective messaging, the news media echoed three-and-a-half years of Republican shit-talking of the economy, thus creating a very negative "vibe economy".

Regardless of the positive reality, and positive measures for which Biden-Harris never received due credit, with regards to inflation and crime and the border, Kamala Harris was fighting a steep uphill messaging battle.

Take a look at the Axios chart to which I linked!

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sacman701's avatar

Re the chart, that happens every time. The right-wing media report only good news when the GOP is in charge and only bad news when Dems are in charge.

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Toiler On the Sea's avatar

Again, the Biden Administration was out with positive messaging on the economy, IJJA, IRA, CHIPs routinely. Everyone wants a Monday morning whipping boy but there's no magic bully pulpit elixir Biden could've unleashed if the media-who wanted Trump back bad for revenues-didn't want to cover it.

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Paleo's avatar

Stop blaming the media for Biden's empty pulpit.

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Absentee Boater's avatar

I think the problem with saying that inflation is down is that doesn’t mean that *prices* are going down - it just means they aren’t going up fast. People are still in sticker shock about what things cost these days, and they aren’t really placated by “Well, it’s not getting worse…”

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ArcticStones's avatar

True, lots of people improvement requires prices to come down, i.e. actual deflation. Many might also be ignoring that their own salary has grown at a higher rate than inflation. But somehow lots of Republican voters believe, that after Trump won, the economy is now magically better. (Look at the Axios chart!) Go figure!

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Tom A's avatar

You are vastly overestimating how much "I feel your pain" is a good message when you are in charge of causing the pain.

Sure we could have done more to blame various people who werent Democratic politicians, but then the question, as Trumps people put it is - if you could do something about it, why havent you.

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Paleo's avatar

That’s not the message I’m talking about. And who cares what they say. The folks who blame everything on the deep state?

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Mark's avatar

It strikes me as reductive in assuming that "anger about inflation" was the singular motivation for the Trump surge voters. If our only takeaway from November 5 is that Democrats caught a tough break that inflation didn't go down quickly enough, we can probably look forward to a lot more November 5ths.

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sacman701's avatar

I think Dems should do a lot of things differently, but if we have normal inflation from 2021 to 2024 and everything else is the same (including real income growth, as wages would be proportionately lower) I think Harris wins.

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Tom A's avatar

If we have normal inflation Biden probably doesnt leave the race if inflation is 2-3% in the post COVID period.

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PPTPW (NST4MSU)'s avatar

So what else were the motivations of the trump voters and those that stayed home?

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rayspace's avatar

Hmm...what was different about Harris than every other major party presidential nominee we've ever had? Just can't put my finger on it.

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sacman701's avatar

If you want to go there, you'll have to explain why a lot of those same voters (Latinos in particular) had no problem voting for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

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rayspace's avatar

Not the same electorates. 2024 voters have been subjected to 8 years of Trump and Trump's supporters misogyny and racism. It's been normalized in a way it hadn't been before, at least among the voting population.

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rayspace's avatar

What part is "nonsense"?

1. The electorates of 2012, 2016, and 2024 are exactly the same?

2. There is no effect from 9 years of Trumpism on the tone of our politics?

3. There were a lot of low-information voters who voted this time who didn't vote in other elections and may have motivations that differed from earlier electorates?

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Jonathan's avatar

simple; your entire post

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sacman701's avatar

Why do you think he's wrong?

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Jonathan's avatar

his previous post as interpreted by me(perhaps I misunderstood); is that racism and misogyny is the reason for Trump winning; I contend pocketbook issues always are the most important and that folks who were racist or misogynist voted for Trump in all 3 elections (including his landslide loss)didn't change the outcome in 2024 one bit

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Toiler On the Sea's avatar

Yep I think it amounts to cope. Countries with far worse inflation have managed to beat away the far right the past two years, and they had candidates without Trump's baggage.

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Tom A's avatar

It wasnt just inflation. Inflation was just the most visible factor.

BIden was elected on a promise to return things to normal. But they didnt. Prices were still up. The Afghanistan withdrawal was chaos. New wars started that threatened to embroil the US. Trump was still around. Crime spiked (including notably stuff like car thefts that affect normal people in the suburbs).

I would put it another way - if Trump had won in 2020, and each side had the exact same level of everything else (money, GOTV, ads, non-paid messaging, etc), we would be talking about something approaching an 2008 level blowout where Biden was easily elected to a second term with something like 54 senate seats and a safe House majority.

Because the chaos was basically built into the post-COVID recovery and whoever was in charge.

Sure we need to be aware that the GOP is now free of the fetters of being the establishment and thats a major danger for Dems as the now establishment party going forward. But thats not why we lost in 2024.

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Mark's avatar

Good points. This is the second time in the last half century that Democrats had really bad timing for their narrow win....with 1976 being the other time. And of course, if they'd won in 1988 and especially 2004, they'd really have had a bloodbath for the next few cycles.

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