While progressives continue to argue about the reasons for Harris’ loss – it was the economy! it was fanaticism! – Isabella Weber and Ellie Mistall express their opposing views.
Blame the cost of living crisis
As the dust settles on the 2024 election, stunned Democrats are trying to figure out why the country voted the way it did. In the run-up to Nov. 5, poll after poll showed Americans worried about the cost of living, but many economists and pundits shook their heads in disbelief. They blamed “vibrations”.
Imagine struggling to pay your grocery bills, and then the country’s highest-income economist comes along and tells you that your struggles are just the atmosphere. It is this lack of compassion, this reluctance to descend from the world of elegant models and general numbers to try to understand conditions on the ground, that ultimately made many economists complicit in Donald Trump’s victory.
James Baldwin once said that anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how expensive it is to be poor. People experience inflation differently based on factors such as race, income, gender, where you live, whether you have a car to drive to cheaper stores, whether you can buy in bulk to take advantage of discounts, whether you rent or own a home them, whether you have a mortgage before interest rates rise, whether you are dependent on credit card debt, how many assets you have, and so on. This diversity of lived experience is not reflected in the headlines. For many people, favorable economic data and a booming stock market belied the reality of sky-high grocery prices, sky-high rents, exorbitant health care costs and skyrocketing interest rates.
Exit polls have consistently shown that the economy was one of the biggest concerns for voters. In one exit poll, for example, 46 percent of respondents said they were worse off than in 2020; only 20 percent said the same four years ago about 2020 versus 2016. In another poll, nine in 10 voters said they were worried about grocery costs, and eight in 10 said they were worried about health care, housing and gas costs. And in a third poll, voters from households making more than $100,000 leaned toward Kamala Harris, while those from households making less than $100,000 favored Trump. Many working Americans felt that the Democrats had abandoned them in the fight against pocketbooks and ended up voting for Trump.
Current issue
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Harris’ campaign got off to a promising start, with the vice president proposing federal food price hike laws that polls show are popular, including among voters in swing states. But she stopped putting the plan in the spotlight after Wall Street began pouring mud on it, and several economists unfairly criticized the measures as “price controls.” In reality, Harris’ proposals would not have fixed prices, but would give consumers the right to hold companies accountable if they raise prices excessively in emergency situations.
In the face of such backlash, Harris kept quiet about her strongest message to low- and middle-income voters. Her campaign still ran some price-gouging ads, but she didn’t mention it during the presidential debate; nor has she emphasized in her interviews and speeches the idea that she will protect voters from a spending shock.
Since Harris did not defend the plan, Trump could impeach him without question. He called her price hike proposal “communist,” even though he himself issued an anti-price hike decree during his first term. Far from communist, price-gouging legislation has long existed in red-red states like Texas and Florida.
Harris’s silence won over billionaire donors and reassured economists, but it lost on the American people.
Meanwhile, Trump has promised to cap interest rates on credit cards — a control over the cost of short-term credit. He promised to reduce the prices of energy and other essential goods. He didn’t say how he would do it, but he portrayed himself as a leader who would protect people from rising prices. To be sure, his proposed tariffs would be a huge economic shock if enacted, but on the campaign trail he framed them as measures to protect ordinary Americans.
Capitalist societies are based on a basic social contract: people go to work and get paid enough for their work to afford the necessities of life. When people continue to show up for their jobs, but the prices of basic necessities skyrocket — even if only temporarily — workers feel cheated. The situation only gets worse as the stock market hits record highs and corporate profits soar.
The election results should be a warning. We need to abandon free-market fundamentalism and dare to imagine an economy that meets the needs of ordinary people—not as a pleasant side effect, but as a key goal. We cannot save democracy by talking about saving democracy; we can only save democracy by pursuing policies that provide economic security for the many.
isaber M. UEber
It was bigotry, you fool
Let’s start here: We can all agree that at least some of the people who voted for Donald Trump are racist, right? We can all agree that at least some people voted against Kamala Harris because she’s a woman, right? Trump was voted for by people who are proud to be racist.
Trump was voted for by people who think hating women is cool and edgy. There are an unknown number of “I hate n***** and women” voters, and Trump won almost all of them. He was a racist and misogynistic candidate, not just in my opinion, but in the opinion of all the racists and misogynists who giddily supported him. If you don’t get it, I suggest you stop reading this column and immediately go back to fantasyland from whence you came.
So our question is, why did so many people who don’t consider themselves racist or sexist vote for an outspoken white supremacist, an avowed rapist? And the response I get from both the Democratic Party establishment and the hardcore economic progressives in my social media is, “Well, inflation, you see, and the party has abandoned the working class.” Many people on my side of the aisle would have me believe that millions of Americans have joined forces with the worst people this country has to offer because of the price of eggs.
The economic argument is unconvincing to me because I am black. And while I hesitate to speak for all black voters, I’m pretty confident in my observation that black people like cheap eggs, too. I know a lot of black people, and none of us roll up to the pump and say, “I really like paying more for gas because that’s the price of freedom!”
popular
“Swipe to the bottom left to see more authors”Swipe →
I realized that many white working class men feel that their economic struggles are unfair and unjust (while they think everyone else’s economic struggles are because they are lazy and undeserving), but in reality the black community is more sensitive to inflationary pressures than anyone else in this country. As the saying goes: whenever white people get a cold, black people get the flu. We have less wealth than whites, earn less in dollars, are more likely to be renters, and are more likely to support multi-generational families (with our elders on no or fixed incomes). All of this means that when prices rise and wages don’t keep up, black people, in general, are hit first and hardest.
This is what happened during the inflationary economy of the early 2020s caused by Covid, and yet black people overwhelmingly rejected Trump and his appeal to the “working class”. Black women are a voter group incredibly sensitive to the price of eggs, and a socio-economic group that would wipe out everyone else in a version of a “race war” The price is right– sharply waved him off for the third time in a row.
why? Are black people just dumb? Are we so provincial that we voted against our own economic interests? Arguing that most white voters were motivated more by economics than hate slyly argues that most black voters are too stupid to know what’s good for them.
Unlike some of my progressive friends, I tend to give black voters more credit. I think black voters faced the same economic pressures as white voters, only worse, and despite that, black voters overwhelmingly rejected Trump. Most white voters did not. That’s because the real appeal of Trump’s campaign was not economic, but social. Trump proposed an economy run by billionaires and kleptocrats like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel; such savings are not in the interests of anyone who cares about food prices. But that’s not what Trump was selling. What he was selling was white male cultural supremacy, and that was exactly what appealed to most white voters and a significant minority of non-white male voters.
I like to use what I call the “Black Turing Test”: If a reasonable observer cannot distinguish the actions of a true racist or misogynist (however defined) from someone who is simply subjugating racism and misogyny for their own economic reasons, then without differences.
All Trump voters are either racist or sexist or comfortable enough with racism and sexism that it doesn’t matter. I admit that these people don’t like being told who they are. I believe that saying that these people just want money and bonuses is a more acceptable short-term political strategy than saying that they need remedial social education.
But I’m not going to lie. It wasn’t the economy, fool. Trump ran on pure, pure politics of white identity and hate, and the inflamed hate won.
Ea lie Mgood
More from Nation
Far from being an alien, the future president takes his origins from homegrown authoritarianism.
In the 2024 election, the Democrats screwed up the job with non-union workers. The unions have a plan to get the party on message.
To create an opposition to the incoming Trump administration, the party needs new ideas, not the same establishment that clings to power.
