"In 2008, when Obama won the election to succeed an unpopular president from the other party, the exit poll found that 62 percent of voters who said they were dissatisfied with conditions in the country voted for him. In 2024, when Trump won the election to succeed an unpopular president from the other party, the exit poll found that, again, 62 percent of voters dissatisfied with conditions in the country voted for him. Even against an opponent carrying as much baggage as Trump, the Harris campaign was never able to overcome the axiomatic principle of presidential elections: When one party sinks in the public’s esteem, the other rises."
Ronald Brownstein @ The Atlantic
So, again, it's the economy, stupid. Longtime elections analyst, Ronald Brownstein, sorts the data available so far and has a long debrief with the Harris/Walz campaign strategists. Biden/Harris were unpopular, associated by the many with the post-pandemic inflation and rising costs of living, and this axiomatic principle overrode any misgivings the electorate might have had about Grump.
Okay, but if the real economic factors, beyond Covid, most responsible for the recent rise in the cost of living were actually republican-leaning corporate price gouging and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates (with the stated intention of imposing "economic pain" on wage workers), not really Biden or the Dems, doesn't that make this axiom of elections a kind of heads-we-win-tails-you-lose proposition for republicans running the economy? At the very least it puts partisan republican interests in a position to extort the electorate.
This dynamic might not be entirely operable without the cover of a pandemic or war or some other big global disruption to trade and normal economic global exchange but we face no shortage of such events, right? And we just came out of one. And, most importantly, if this axiom is so strong that it can override concerns like violent attempts to overthrow the government and treasonous collusion with hostile foreign dictators then we got bigger problems than the price of gas, I'm here to tell you.
Anyway, I actually like the idea that the number one responsibility for any government, or administration, should be to stabilize prices and sustain a reasonably affordable cost of living for the many, the working classes and wage workers. There's a norm I can get behind. Good idea. Let's do that. But if you're going to do that then you have to give the gov the ability to do that and not leave it in the hands of those, big corporations and Wall Street, who would rather the gov have nothing to do with prices and interest rates or, as partisan Republicans, would like incumbent Dems to be blamed for inflation and the rising costs of living.
This election was made possible by a disastrous alliance of billionaires and violent bigots in the republican party. When they screw up the economy and they surely will-- Lusk is already talking about cutting trillions in social benefits essential to the working classes-- then we hope the ironclad political economic axiom prevailing in '24 still holds but don't be surprised if the culture war against whoever-- immigrants, women's rights, LGBTQ, Muslims, liberals-- doesn't become, again, a paramount national emergency requiring more austerity and sacrifice from the working classes.
But Grump will most likely be able to lower the price of gas, or for awhile anyway. So no-college wage workers have sold out for the price of gas, again.
No comments:
Post a Comment