This morning, I read an op-ed that I can not find right now in which the author opined that it was the perception of the attitudes of rank-and-file Democrats rather than the platforms of the candidates for major offices (President and Senate) that cost the election. The author's position was that while the Democratic candidates ran on center or center-left platforms (Harris was certainly closer to the center than Trump was), many voters believed that the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party was overly woke and overly fixated on transgendered rights.
I'm not necessarily endorsing the op-ed, but I do think that it is worth considering.
Except exit polls show that's
not what most swing voters who chose Trump were primarily concerned about. It was 'the economy, stupid' and illegal immigrants taking our jobs. Most were far more concerned about their pockets than abortion, or 'wokeness', or all the other things staunch conservatives bleat about. Which is actually quite rational of them. The only irrational part is thinking Trump would be better for their pockets. So the Democrat's real failure was in not convincing those people that Harris's
economic policies would be better for them.
What's interesting is that Rebublicans were also concerned that Trump was going off message, and they tried hard to get him to talk about how conservative policies would help the economy and put more money in the pockets of the middle class - which of course we all know is true just because it is (trust me, don't look at the numbers!). And it worked, because most 'rational' people don't care much about politics. What they
do care about is financial security. The immigrant problem is related to this. Most people aren't xenophobic, they just don't want to compete for resources. Liberal economists might tell you that immigrants are good for the economy, but we all know the 'truth' - if an immigrant will work for less then
you are the loser.
That's why in countries around the world the incumbents are losing. Covid severely strained economies globally and locally, and wars in Ukraine and Israel are making it worse. Unfortunately most people have very short memories and aren't rational thinkers. All they see is the price of eggs going up while billions of dollars in aid are going out of the country. Trump then tells them that government waste (not low production due to Covid) is causing inflation, and he has a plan to get it down (never mind that it's already back to where it was when he was last president before Covid). Trump tells them he will stop all those wars and not pay a red cent in military aid, which obviously means more money for us (nevermind that we would have no use for all those tanks and munitions we sent to Ukraine - we weren't giving them cash!). Trump says he will boost domestic oil production and not export it (nevermind that oil is fungable and the government was making money out of selling what we didn't need and couldn't use). Trump says he will eliminate income taxes and replace them with tariffs, which obviously is a net positive becuse you don't buy stuff made in China, right?
Trump made all these claims about how his policies would make the economy better for the average joe, and Democrats didn't have anything to counter it because their agument was that Biden was doing a great job - when we could all see he wasn't (except he was, but nobody managed to explain it to them). Harris was furthering those policies, so voters realized that she wasn't going to break with Biden and make the changes they believed were necessary to get inflation under control etc. That's why her popularity waned, and it wasn't Trump who did that - it was
conservatives managing to get him back 'on message' on the economy -
their message.
This is typically how it goes for the incumbent after dealing with a crisis. No matter how well they do, any residual effect is blamed on them. Covid would have crashed the global economy and killed billions if action wasn't taken, but even the best response wouldn't completely eliminate the damage. Even countries that did very well domestically were still hit by the global effects.
Every country suffered inflation, some much more than the US. But voters didn't look at that - all they saw was the price of eggs going up. That made them ripe for swallowing Trump's (actually conservatives') lies - and Democrats didn't do enough to counter it by
showing how their own policies were better.
