As some who generally falls on the Bernie side of economics, that sure is a convincing chart that's causing me to update some of my views. Thanks for sharing
I'm glad to learn that people still exist who can be influenced by information! A fact that I failed to squeeze into the article is that I support a lot of what Biden did -- there's some overlap between Bernie, Biden, and me! But my argument in this article was about the political effect of those actions. And I'm sick to death of the "America is a hollowed-out wasteland" rhetoric -- it's not true, and I object to it whether it's coming from the right or the left.
But sure - try to convince everyone with a line chart that they are really all quite wealthy compared to 20 (or a few) years ago - the things above are all just an illusion.
The one thing that's gotten consistently more expensive over the past few hundred years is labor, and labor-intensive fields have seen big increases. Health care is labor intensive. College, too, but a lot of that is artificial make-work following decades of their customers being price-insensitive. (College textbooks have risen insanely in price, the only material good to have done so, which I just take as evidence of the giant racket.)
Case-Shiller is the value of all housing stock, so it's a little harder to categorize. Some portion is the land value, which is purely positional, and there's no such thing as increasing wages enough so that everyone can live in Manhattan.
Love you Jeff, but I kind of agree with KB. There’s also the problem of perception being reality, at least in part. Some wayward perception amongst the public when it comes to specific categories is understandable. But is your suggestion that the vast majority of the voting public is ENTIRELY WRONG about their economic standing and outlook? Because even if that were true (and I doubt it is), what difference would it make if this mass deception/misperception you posit is felt so solidly across the board?
The last thing I’d point out is a need to differentiate the issue with the message from the issue of the messenger. The reason that young people gave Dems the double freedom bird is because, yes, they are experiencing ACTUAL loneliness, uncertainty, lack of prospects, etc. But a HUGE part of the problem isn’t just that they are being told to ignore their lying eyes and ears (and wallets) - it’s that they are being told that message by solidly established to downright wealthy boomers who own (often multiple) homes, are reaping the benefits of a still solvent social security system, and who will be able to ride off into the sunset on actually funded 401(k)s and retirement savings…
As somebody who is fortunate enough to have JUST clawed me and my small, young family into the middle class, I feel both this uncertainty and the unadulterated rage that comes with millionaire tv pundits (and substack writers…kidding) telling me I should be grateful for what Dems have done for me. I can’t imagine how those feelings would be exponentially worse among a younger contingent, with an even bleaker outlook.
That’s my TED talk, please excuse any typos/unnecessary rambling. Write this from the pooper.
But you're wrong. There is a lot of research that when people earn more money through a salary increase they credit it as being due to them because they're doing such a great job. But when prices go up, they don't see how that might be related to increases in earnings broadly and the need to fund those. So even when people have more real dollars, many of them will see it as "slipping backwards" because they only see that eggs (or whatever) have a higher price.
Joe Biden ran on raising the minimum wage and then only moved to bail out your student debt and now the left is aghast at the divide non college grads.
I mean democrats don’t really understand why that divide exists as there are still pushes in a lot of states for expanding licensing. Upping barriers for small businesses. And making working for yourself a Herculean task.
All of which helps mandate a college degree since you first need to be rich to even think about any kind of personal business.
Yeah, don't forget government spending on things like EV subsidiaries and student loan forgiveness in the midst of an inflationary environment. Working class voters aren't super happy with those priorities.
Man, I don't know. There is no car you can buy cheaper right now than an electric car, thanks to those subsidies. I know at least 4 people that have bought electric just because it's a deal. My son got one for $400 per month, better than an Nissan Altima. Many "working class" people also benefited from loan forgiveness. It's just not enough, I feel, and so people swung the other way.
I wouldn’t consider people who can afford to buy a brand new car working class. Philosophical discussion there aside, the people most squeezed by inflation certainly won’t be the type to buy new.
The graph actually shows that the 2000s weren’t good for the median income earner - the 2008 recession sees income go below the level of 1999 for a few years. The axes are not great but it looks like the income in 1999 is achieved again only by 2010/11 and it’s about 2015 before income increases to the previous peak in 2007.
Then there’s a big rise - which actually might well be Trump and his tariffs. Not a single for neoliberalism.
The graph ends a bit early too, just preceding the recent inflation.
“saying ‘deficits don’t matter’ and playing footsie with Modern Monetary Theory, both things that would do for inflation what Burning Man does for herpes.”
Lucky for me I renewed my insurance policy against “damage to computer screen caused by spitting coffee against it after reading insanely hilarious sentence.”
(But seriously, how do Democrats improve their electability? I’m old enough to remember the wilderness years of 1980-1992, and what it took Bill Clinton and the DLC to win back the White House.)
It would definitely help for us to stop being freaks on cultural issues. On economics, the voters want a perfect economy and don’t have strong opinions on which policies can and should get us there (except that it should not involve taxes).
It could be a period like that, or it could be 2004, where it was obvious by 2006 which way the winds were blowing. But a lot of that depends on what Democrats do now, in the next 6 months to a year.
This blog is now pretty much just about shitting on Democrats, yeah? I’ve been paying you $6 a month for comedy, but that’s not really what you do anymore.
No, dude. Current events don’t deny you agency over what you write. You could’ve done another Paula Fox bit, and I would’ve laughed. Instead, you’ve decided that all you’re going to do now are “Democrats need to moderate their positions” takes, like some kind of Budget Josh Barro.
I deeply apologize for not writing the exact piece you wanted me to write. Maybe in the future, I can submit a list of topics to you and you can select one, and if you don’t like what I’ve pitched, I’ll pitch some more. Also, I could run drafts by you and provide alts to jokes that don’t tickle your fancy, because apparently my job is to write exactly the blog that you, Tron, wish to read.
I stand by what I’m writing and my numbers are excellent. I’ll get by without you. And I take “budget Josh Barro” as a compliment.
Definitely ignore this moron. Great piece, and funny in the "comedy is tragedy with time" department. We don't even need much time on this one. More, please.
I mean... Maurer cares about Democrats winning, he's on the "center-left" wing of the party, and there's currently a big fight going on about what the party needs to do moving forward. Did you expect him *not* to weigh in?
At the time I first commented, I expected him to write something funny. Now, I just expect him to be a pussy ass bitch who can’t take criticism. See above.
I came here to do two things, laugh at clever, apolitical Paula Fox bits or call Jeff Maurer a pussy-ass bitch. Looks like I don’t have any Paula Fox bits.
I'm going to agree with Tron here. I canceled my paid subscription because, even before the election, I felt like this blog was getting too one-note. It's not that the point Jeff makes isn't true, but he's repeated it so often that I would look at a post title and say, "Ugh, this again." I've got more informative ways to spend my time and money.
I will say this much: "Bernie Sanders populism economics" plus "talk like a normal goddamn human being" is probably, in a strict pick-one-or-the-other sense, a better plan than whatever we're doing now to win an election.
The populist left's plan seems to be to run that combo, and credit the former if they win even if it was the latter plus a Trump economy that concluded with "...the Aristocrats!" that made the difference.
Brown ran two points ahead of Harris -- I don't know if that's "well ahead". It's basically the same amount that Sanders and Warren ran BEHIND Harris. The point stands that if it was true that if Democrats' problem was "turning their backs on workers", Sherrod Brown would still be a Senator.
So if, speaking in purely theoretical terms here, Brown had outrun Harris by 7 points rather than 2, you would concede that populism is an effective way to win elections?
I dunno. I think we're overthinking this. People vote on "vibes" and perceptions. We lost because people blamed Biden (and by extension, Harris) for inflation (which they're likely still paying for, even with the economy improving) and to some extent the notion (fairly and unfairly) that illegal immigration on the Southern border is out of control.
And....that's it? Not sure it's any more complicated than that. Harris and the democratic party in general did the best they could but it's hard to compete with high credit card minimum payments and the belief that the hotels in your town are being overrun with illegal migrants.
Democrats love their vocabulary a bit too much also, which estranges working class people. He lost me at neoliberalism, and is a pretty good example of why they lost because they sound like a bunch of pointy headed nitwits.
I mean, economic populism should include the fact that inflation is what's the least popular. In _that_ sense, Biden wasn't populist on economics, he made the morally correct decision of "better too big relief package than too small".
You should at least look at the idea that the third option "no relief package at all because this is a problem that cant be solved by throwing cash at it" was also on the table and would have been better. Democrats would continue to hurt themselves if they act like "Do Nothing" isn't an option. My least favorite thing W Bush ever said is "when someone is hurting government has to act". I could never believe a Republican said that in such a drippy and saccharine way. Inflation is terribly unpopular and its damage lingers on for years after the numbers drop down to just elevated. Democrats should be able to admit that their two big spending centerpiece bills (The Recovery Act and the Green New Deal in Anti inflation drag) were both bad ideas and Democrats would have done better electorally had they done nothing. Even if you want to hotly argue against it, you should stop and think about allowing it into the debate and maybe even admit its partly true.
Biden and his administration didnt have the competence to solve the problems they identified in the manners in which they tried to solve them. They would have been better doing nothing and seeming aloof then doing the wrong thing and seeming stupid.
They did the morally correct thing and _successfully_ solved the economy. They literally achieved the near-impossible "soft landing". Electorally, sure, it may have destroyed them, but economically they did everything _right_.
Removing Trump's protectionist tariffs and not pursuing student loan forgiveness would have been economically correct policies that would have reduced inflation. Biden didn't do "everything right."
Come Voters! Come see the spreadsheets! The rising of the stock market! Are you not moved by our economics professors singing our praises Does this landing not feel soft to you voters? The Price of food Your rents? The National deficit? The rising household debt, interest rates on homes and increasing defaults on cars and credit cards? Well we sort of calculate them in some of our most primitive graphs and measures, but if you look at this attached spreadsheet you can see that you should really be thinking us for our work!
Wait!
Where are you all going! It was a soft landing! Come back here and vote! The Dow Jones is so high, don't you understand!
Good luck with persuading voters to come back after this exact same argument drove them away.
I'm not a politician or an economist. But I'm someone who prefers seeing good policies to popular ones. And on that count, Biden has been source of a consistent pleasant surprise for me. (The places where he dropped the ball are mostly cases when he didn't do anything at all on an issue where he should've, like border or tariffs.)
"The stock market is at an all-time high" is a good, true, verifiable, and an easily understood line, and one that Republicans have used successfully in years past. ("What about the common man?" is a good counter-argument, but it's directly opposed to the thesis of Jeff's post, because it's that stupid populism doesn't work.)
Most of the rest of the economic messaging was nonsense. I never saw any ads from Harris explaining the inflation. Maybe she didn't want to talk about it at all for the same reason Trump didn't want to talk about abortion at all, but she basically gave up on that issue.
I think the healthy thing for a political party that suffers a stunning defeat is to reject, on spec, and argument that involves any "we didn't message right" style analysis.
Losing political parties should look literally anywhere else first. "We just didn't say it right" is such a terrible thing to start with or from because it's so backwards looking and doesn't yield any changes in policy.
Democrats who argue "the voters are misinformed" come off sounding like dweebs. And people stopped believing Trump was literally Hitler in sufficient numbers to look and see Democrats were talking down to them exclusively.
This result was foreseeable. 340 million Americans. The Democrats don't have to be led by the people who currently have their jobs, yet here we are. If Obama is setting the direction of the party in 4 years, talking about getting the right messages out, you will get President Vance/DeSantis/whatever
Not talking about inflation (other than the weird price-gouging escapade) was probably the smart choice, given it's exactly what aggravated people against incumbents _worldwide_.
"Populism" doesn't mean "popular policies" - it's a specific political philosophy oriented around the basic idea that "elites" are the cause of the problems of the "common man". Where it goes with the specifics depends on the ideology of the populist in question, but that's what "populism" means.
Arguments "by definition" are largely useless, but, for what it's worth, I disagree. That became the carrying-card criterion for populism _because_ it is a universally popular message, but populism is any "choose popular over/without considering good".
I'm just defining the word for ya, friend. "Populism" = "common man vs the elites" political philosophy. You can use the word for something else if you like, but it jumbles your message because you're making up new definitions for words with established meanings.
Someone in the blogosphere (may have been Matt Yglesias?) recently tried to coin the term "popularism" to describe a "pursue popular policies" political strategy - it sounds like that might be more apt for what you're trying to say.
I feel like those charts about how everyone's financial situation is improving never seem to make contact with the reality of many single mothers I know. You can argue that they made bad decisions, and surely they did, but they routinely ask for stuff like laundry detergent and peanut butter, which suggests that they aren't exactly flush.
Well that's a convenient way to deny data. Here is a simple example of how it works: There are 10 people: (adjusting for inflation) 5 are doing financially better than they were, 3 the same, and 2 worse. There I contacted the reality of 2 people doing worse, but when put in the larger picture, things are better overall for the aggregate.
Or put differently, just because median income continues to rise at an impressive rate does not mean there are no examples of poverty or need.
If I spend my $400 income on my rent and groceries, no one will give me $400 for my entertainment.
If I spend my $400 income on my entertainment, I'm going to be homeless, please, give me money for rent and food, do you want me to die?
Your comment deserves a longer response than I'm giving here, but a constant my whole life has been seeing people at all income levels in distress not just from the bad decisions they *made*, past-tense, but the bad decisions they are continuing to make every single day. It's a problem for every single welfare system that if you agree to help people out of a hole then some who were otherwise capable of taking care of themselves will be perfectly fine going into that hole.
I personally don't know any people who are particularly bothered by the fact that America is FINALLY enforcing anti-trust legislation that essentially prevents us from losing jobs and paying higher prices. Ari-trust is essential to a FREE-MARKET because it ensures the necessary competition exists to prevent market and technological stagnation. Hence why our most failing higher education will continue to fail...there is literally no incentive to do otherwise thanks to the government ensuring the loans always get paid and maintain their market dominance through arbitrary mechanisms like "accreditation" (I'm not against standards, but blanket requirements without proven practical practical applications are no different than paying a fee to the mafia for "protection" just so you can continue to stay in business.) People are pissed about endless handouts that absolutely no one asked for but leftists "scholars" in their ivory towers insist "essential" lifelines to the "poor" like subsidized government housing for the homeless, paying for non-citizens healthcare, and spending TRILLIONS on illegal immigrants while the rest of us are literally struggling to stay afloat, and insisting we should now forgive student debt for people who don't even need it.
The main issue with blaming wokeness (or some synonym for it) for Harris' loss is that 2020 was like, the all-time peak of wokeness, and it didn't stop Biden from winning.
As some who generally falls on the Bernie side of economics, that sure is a convincing chart that's causing me to update some of my views. Thanks for sharing
I'm glad to learn that people still exist who can be influenced by information! A fact that I failed to squeeze into the article is that I support a lot of what Biden did -- there's some overlap between Bernie, Biden, and me! But my argument in this article was about the political effect of those actions. And I'm sick to death of the "America is a hollowed-out wasteland" rhetoric -- it's not true, and I object to it whether it's coming from the right or the left.
Now do plots of inflation-adjusted healthcare, groceries, housing, and education.
People aren’t stupid - they actually know when they are slipping backwards
I specifically pointed out that the graph is inflation-adjusted, and inflation includes those goods. Accept the bad news: Things have gotten better.
Home prices - way over CPI
https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-vs-inflation/
Medical expenses - way over CPI
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/how-does-medical-inflation-compare-to-inflation-in-the-rest-of-the-economy/
College - way over CPI
https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-tuition-inflation-statistics/#tuition-rate-increase
I agree that groceries are included in the CPI - but you can see the recent spike. Did everyone’s wages also spike in tandem? Not in my world.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/price-of-food
But sure - try to convince everyone with a line chart that they are really all quite wealthy compared to 20 (or a few) years ago - the things above are all just an illusion.
The one thing that's gotten consistently more expensive over the past few hundred years is labor, and labor-intensive fields have seen big increases. Health care is labor intensive. College, too, but a lot of that is artificial make-work following decades of their customers being price-insensitive. (College textbooks have risen insanely in price, the only material good to have done so, which I just take as evidence of the giant racket.)
Case-Shiller is the value of all housing stock, so it's a little harder to categorize. Some portion is the land value, which is purely positional, and there's no such thing as increasing wages enough so that everyone can live in Manhattan.
Love you Jeff, but I kind of agree with KB. There’s also the problem of perception being reality, at least in part. Some wayward perception amongst the public when it comes to specific categories is understandable. But is your suggestion that the vast majority of the voting public is ENTIRELY WRONG about their economic standing and outlook? Because even if that were true (and I doubt it is), what difference would it make if this mass deception/misperception you posit is felt so solidly across the board?
The last thing I’d point out is a need to differentiate the issue with the message from the issue of the messenger. The reason that young people gave Dems the double freedom bird is because, yes, they are experiencing ACTUAL loneliness, uncertainty, lack of prospects, etc. But a HUGE part of the problem isn’t just that they are being told to ignore their lying eyes and ears (and wallets) - it’s that they are being told that message by solidly established to downright wealthy boomers who own (often multiple) homes, are reaping the benefits of a still solvent social security system, and who will be able to ride off into the sunset on actually funded 401(k)s and retirement savings…
As somebody who is fortunate enough to have JUST clawed me and my small, young family into the middle class, I feel both this uncertainty and the unadulterated rage that comes with millionaire tv pundits (and substack writers…kidding) telling me I should be grateful for what Dems have done for me. I can’t imagine how those feelings would be exponentially worse among a younger contingent, with an even bleaker outlook.
That’s my TED talk, please excuse any typos/unnecessary rambling. Write this from the pooper.
But you're wrong. There is a lot of research that when people earn more money through a salary increase they credit it as being due to them because they're doing such a great job. But when prices go up, they don't see how that might be related to increases in earnings broadly and the need to fund those. So even when people have more real dollars, many of them will see it as "slipping backwards" because they only see that eggs (or whatever) have a higher price.
Jeff has done a lot of that for me recently. A year ago or so I was all in on Lina Khan; now I'm not sure what I think.
Joe Biden ran on raising the minimum wage and then only moved to bail out your student debt and now the left is aghast at the divide non college grads.
I mean democrats don’t really understand why that divide exists as there are still pushes in a lot of states for expanding licensing. Upping barriers for small businesses. And making working for yourself a Herculean task.
All of which helps mandate a college degree since you first need to be rich to even think about any kind of personal business.
Biden couldn’t do much because of Congress
Working class voters want to be able to talk like they always have and not punished for anything non-PC. Same as it was in 2016 and same as it is now.
Yeah, don't forget government spending on things like EV subsidiaries and student loan forgiveness in the midst of an inflationary environment. Working class voters aren't super happy with those priorities.
Man, I don't know. There is no car you can buy cheaper right now than an electric car, thanks to those subsidies. I know at least 4 people that have bought electric just because it's a deal. My son got one for $400 per month, better than an Nissan Altima. Many "working class" people also benefited from loan forgiveness. It's just not enough, I feel, and so people swung the other way.
Sure, but that's the point. Giving money to EV buyers instead of guys with work trucks doesn't sit well.
I wouldn’t consider people who can afford to buy a brand new car working class. Philosophical discussion there aside, the people most squeezed by inflation certainly won’t be the type to buy new.
It is mainly cultural. Democrats bet that they could re-brand themselves as the Girl Boss Party and working class men would stick around.
They didn't.
But she went on Call Her Daddy?!?! The WORLDS foremost blowjob technique podcast?!?!
The graph actually shows that the 2000s weren’t good for the median income earner - the 2008 recession sees income go below the level of 1999 for a few years. The axes are not great but it looks like the income in 1999 is achieved again only by 2010/11 and it’s about 2015 before income increases to the previous peak in 2007.
Then there’s a big rise - which actually might well be Trump and his tariffs. Not a single for neoliberalism.
The graph ends a bit early too, just preceding the recent inflation.
“saying ‘deficits don’t matter’ and playing footsie with Modern Monetary Theory, both things that would do for inflation what Burning Man does for herpes.”
Lucky for me I renewed my insurance policy against “damage to computer screen caused by spitting coffee against it after reading insanely hilarious sentence.”
(But seriously, how do Democrats improve their electability? I’m old enough to remember the wilderness years of 1980-1992, and what it took Bill Clinton and the DLC to win back the White House.)
It would definitely help for us to stop being freaks on cultural issues. On economics, the voters want a perfect economy and don’t have strong opinions on which policies can and should get us there (except that it should not involve taxes).
Not taxes *on them
(Or being *perceived* as freaks.)
Yes, good point. I actually think relativity few of us are freaks, but we often stay silent and let the freaks speak for us.
It could be a period like that, or it could be 2004, where it was obvious by 2006 which way the winds were blowing. But a lot of that depends on what Democrats do now, in the next 6 months to a year.
This blog is now pretty much just about shitting on Democrats, yeah? I’ve been paying you $6 a month for comedy, but that’s not really what you do anymore.
The election is pushing the “political” part in “political comedy” to the foreground.
No, dude. Current events don’t deny you agency over what you write. You could’ve done another Paula Fox bit, and I would’ve laughed. Instead, you’ve decided that all you’re going to do now are “Democrats need to moderate their positions” takes, like some kind of Budget Josh Barro.
I deeply apologize for not writing the exact piece you wanted me to write. Maybe in the future, I can submit a list of topics to you and you can select one, and if you don’t like what I’ve pitched, I’ll pitch some more. Also, I could run drafts by you and provide alts to jokes that don’t tickle your fancy, because apparently my job is to write exactly the blog that you, Tron, wish to read.
I stand by what I’m writing and my numbers are excellent. I’ll get by without you. And I take “budget Josh Barro” as a compliment.
Maybe you could do a "choose your own adventure" style post
I don't know what Tron is going on about, your recent stuff has made me literally laugh out loud many times.
Definitely ignore this moron. Great piece, and funny in the "comedy is tragedy with time" department. We don't even need much time on this one. More, please.
I mean... Maurer cares about Democrats winning, he's on the "center-left" wing of the party, and there's currently a big fight going on about what the party needs to do moving forward. Did you expect him *not* to weigh in?
At the time I first commented, I expected him to write something funny. Now, I just expect him to be a pussy ass bitch who can’t take criticism. See above.
It's funny to criticize someone for being a humorless "pussy ass bitch who can't take criticism", while writing comments like this.
This is part of the bit, right?
You know. There will be an election in 2028.
Come on, even his un-funny articles are way funnier than anything Josh Barro has ever written!
lol. This is new?
Thin skinned Jeff.
Here we go again. Oh readers, don’t forget to tell Jeff how indispensable he is to you. He’s killing it, per Jeff.
I mean, you don't have to be here if you don't like Jeff.
And there probably is a better way to flag you'd like a return to less-political-more-pure-comedic posts than the way Tron went about it.
I came here to do two things, laugh at clever, apolitical Paula Fox bits or call Jeff Maurer a pussy-ass bitch. Looks like I don’t have any Paula Fox bits.
::aggressively removes shirt::
Give it about 2 months, there'll be plenty of comedy fodder from the Republican side.
I'm going to agree with Tron here. I canceled my paid subscription because, even before the election, I felt like this blog was getting too one-note. It's not that the point Jeff makes isn't true, but he's repeated it so often that I would look at a post title and say, "Ugh, this again." I've got more informative ways to spend my time and money.
I will say this much: "Bernie Sanders populism economics" plus "talk like a normal goddamn human being" is probably, in a strict pick-one-or-the-other sense, a better plan than whatever we're doing now to win an election.
The populist left's plan seems to be to run that combo, and credit the former if they win even if it was the latter plus a Trump economy that concluded with "...the Aristocrats!" that made the difference.
Citing Sherrod Brown but not seeing that he ran well ahead of Harris.
And Baldwin in Wisconsin also ran ahead of Harris and largely did it with progressive bona fides.
This is just cherry picking data to support your lame conclusion.
Brown ran two points ahead of Harris -- I don't know if that's "well ahead". It's basically the same amount that Sanders and Warren ran BEHIND Harris. The point stands that if it was true that if Democrats' problem was "turning their backs on workers", Sherrod Brown would still be a Senator.
I'm also well aware of who ran ahead or behind whom -- a detailed breakdown was in my last article. Baldwin ran 0.6 points ahead of Harris. https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/playing-the-blame-game-to-win
So if, speaking in purely theoretical terms here, Brown had outrun Harris by 7 points rather than 2, you would concede that populism is an effective way to win elections?
I dunno. I think we're overthinking this. People vote on "vibes" and perceptions. We lost because people blamed Biden (and by extension, Harris) for inflation (which they're likely still paying for, even with the economy improving) and to some extent the notion (fairly and unfairly) that illegal immigration on the Southern border is out of control.
And....that's it? Not sure it's any more complicated than that. Harris and the democratic party in general did the best they could but it's hard to compete with high credit card minimum payments and the belief that the hotels in your town are being overrun with illegal migrants.
Josh Barro has an interesting take here:
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/trump-didnt-deserve-to-win-but-we
Democrats love their vocabulary a bit too much also, which estranges working class people. He lost me at neoliberalism, and is a pretty good example of why they lost because they sound like a bunch of pointy headed nitwits.
'like herpes at a Burning Man'....best joke ever!
I mean, economic populism should include the fact that inflation is what's the least popular. In _that_ sense, Biden wasn't populist on economics, he made the morally correct decision of "better too big relief package than too small".
You should at least look at the idea that the third option "no relief package at all because this is a problem that cant be solved by throwing cash at it" was also on the table and would have been better. Democrats would continue to hurt themselves if they act like "Do Nothing" isn't an option. My least favorite thing W Bush ever said is "when someone is hurting government has to act". I could never believe a Republican said that in such a drippy and saccharine way. Inflation is terribly unpopular and its damage lingers on for years after the numbers drop down to just elevated. Democrats should be able to admit that their two big spending centerpiece bills (The Recovery Act and the Green New Deal in Anti inflation drag) were both bad ideas and Democrats would have done better electorally had they done nothing. Even if you want to hotly argue against it, you should stop and think about allowing it into the debate and maybe even admit its partly true.
Biden and his administration didnt have the competence to solve the problems they identified in the manners in which they tried to solve them. They would have been better doing nothing and seeming aloof then doing the wrong thing and seeming stupid.
They did the morally correct thing and _successfully_ solved the economy. They literally achieved the near-impossible "soft landing". Electorally, sure, it may have destroyed them, but economically they did everything _right_.
Removing Trump's protectionist tariffs and not pursuing student loan forgiveness would have been economically correct policies that would have reduced inflation. Biden didn't do "everything right."
As for student loans, that's a complex story that has a lot of "temporary band-aid on a larger problem" in it.
Sure, "everything" was an overstatement. Let's just say "they did _enough_ right".
Come Voters! Come see the spreadsheets! The rising of the stock market! Are you not moved by our economics professors singing our praises Does this landing not feel soft to you voters? The Price of food Your rents? The National deficit? The rising household debt, interest rates on homes and increasing defaults on cars and credit cards? Well we sort of calculate them in some of our most primitive graphs and measures, but if you look at this attached spreadsheet you can see that you should really be thinking us for our work!
Wait!
Where are you all going! It was a soft landing! Come back here and vote! The Dow Jones is so high, don't you understand!
Good luck with persuading voters to come back after this exact same argument drove them away.
I'm not a politician or an economist. But I'm someone who prefers seeing good policies to popular ones. And on that count, Biden has been source of a consistent pleasant surprise for me. (The places where he dropped the ball are mostly cases when he didn't do anything at all on an issue where he should've, like border or tariffs.)
"The stock market is at an all-time high" is a good, true, verifiable, and an easily understood line, and one that Republicans have used successfully in years past. ("What about the common man?" is a good counter-argument, but it's directly opposed to the thesis of Jeff's post, because it's that stupid populism doesn't work.)
Most of the rest of the economic messaging was nonsense. I never saw any ads from Harris explaining the inflation. Maybe she didn't want to talk about it at all for the same reason Trump didn't want to talk about abortion at all, but she basically gave up on that issue.
I think the healthy thing for a political party that suffers a stunning defeat is to reject, on spec, and argument that involves any "we didn't message right" style analysis.
Losing political parties should look literally anywhere else first. "We just didn't say it right" is such a terrible thing to start with or from because it's so backwards looking and doesn't yield any changes in policy.
Democrats who argue "the voters are misinformed" come off sounding like dweebs. And people stopped believing Trump was literally Hitler in sufficient numbers to look and see Democrats were talking down to them exclusively.
This result was foreseeable. 340 million Americans. The Democrats don't have to be led by the people who currently have their jobs, yet here we are. If Obama is setting the direction of the party in 4 years, talking about getting the right messages out, you will get President Vance/DeSantis/whatever
I co-sign on the attitude that "we just messaged wrong" is tempting but unhelpful.
Not talking about inflation (other than the weird price-gouging escapade) was probably the smart choice, given it's exactly what aggravated people against incumbents _worldwide_.
"Populism" doesn't mean "popular policies" - it's a specific political philosophy oriented around the basic idea that "elites" are the cause of the problems of the "common man". Where it goes with the specifics depends on the ideology of the populist in question, but that's what "populism" means.
Arguments "by definition" are largely useless, but, for what it's worth, I disagree. That became the carrying-card criterion for populism _because_ it is a universally popular message, but populism is any "choose popular over/without considering good".
I'm just defining the word for ya, friend. "Populism" = "common man vs the elites" political philosophy. You can use the word for something else if you like, but it jumbles your message because you're making up new definitions for words with established meanings.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/populism
Someone in the blogosphere (may have been Matt Yglesias?) recently tried to coin the term "popularism" to describe a "pursue popular policies" political strategy - it sounds like that might be more apt for what you're trying to say.
I _think_ I've seen that word at Yglesias's, yes. Or maybe at Noah Smith's.
I feel like those charts about how everyone's financial situation is improving never seem to make contact with the reality of many single mothers I know. You can argue that they made bad decisions, and surely they did, but they routinely ask for stuff like laundry detergent and peanut butter, which suggests that they aren't exactly flush.
Well that's a convenient way to deny data. Here is a simple example of how it works: There are 10 people: (adjusting for inflation) 5 are doing financially better than they were, 3 the same, and 2 worse. There I contacted the reality of 2 people doing worse, but when put in the larger picture, things are better overall for the aggregate.
Or put differently, just because median income continues to rise at an impressive rate does not mean there are no examples of poverty or need.
If I remember my 40 year old college economics class, the median is half above, half below? Is that right? That half below is a lot of people.....
And apparently they vote.....
If I spend my $400 income on my rent and groceries, no one will give me $400 for my entertainment.
If I spend my $400 income on my entertainment, I'm going to be homeless, please, give me money for rent and food, do you want me to die?
Your comment deserves a longer response than I'm giving here, but a constant my whole life has been seeing people at all income levels in distress not just from the bad decisions they *made*, past-tense, but the bad decisions they are continuing to make every single day. It's a problem for every single welfare system that if you agree to help people out of a hole then some who were otherwise capable of taking care of themselves will be perfectly fine going into that hole.
I personally don't know any people who are particularly bothered by the fact that America is FINALLY enforcing anti-trust legislation that essentially prevents us from losing jobs and paying higher prices. Ari-trust is essential to a FREE-MARKET because it ensures the necessary competition exists to prevent market and technological stagnation. Hence why our most failing higher education will continue to fail...there is literally no incentive to do otherwise thanks to the government ensuring the loans always get paid and maintain their market dominance through arbitrary mechanisms like "accreditation" (I'm not against standards, but blanket requirements without proven practical practical applications are no different than paying a fee to the mafia for "protection" just so you can continue to stay in business.) People are pissed about endless handouts that absolutely no one asked for but leftists "scholars" in their ivory towers insist "essential" lifelines to the "poor" like subsidized government housing for the homeless, paying for non-citizens healthcare, and spending TRILLIONS on illegal immigrants while the rest of us are literally struggling to stay afloat, and insisting we should now forgive student debt for people who don't even need it.
The main issue with blaming wokeness (or some synonym for it) for Harris' loss is that 2020 was like, the all-time peak of wokeness, and it didn't stop Biden from winning.