"It's the economy, stupid!" Why Harris and the Dems lost

Four compelling takes

No, it wasn’t a swing to the right. As political consultant James Carville said long ago, “It’s the economy, stupid!”

I’m working on my own analysis of how we respond to the election, as well as the larger issues of climate and ecological breakdown reported in my last post. For now I’m going to share 4 of the best takes on why we woke up Nov. 6 to a second Trump term. They each make a very convincing case Trump won because the economy is not working for most people.

Washington Post exit polls showed 67% saying the economy is “not so good/poor” despite glowing macroeconomic statistics. Could it be that those statistics do not capture the reality for most people in an economy where most growth and new wealth is going to the upper rungs of the income spectrum? Or that the statistics have been jiggered over the decades to understate inflation and unemployment while overstating growth? These charts demonstrate how the metrics have changed.

The first take is a blistering takedown by Jacobin writer Branco Marcetic, "Democratic Party Elites Brought Us This Disaster". Here are some key excerpts:

“How did last night’s result happen? There’s a flurry of desperate finger-pointing going on among Democratic influencers right now, pinning it all, as usual, on Russia, on their candidate’s race and gender, on her running mate, on the American public’s allegedly low character, and on anything else besides their own failures. The real explanation is much simpler.

“For years now, voters have been telling pollsters that they were fed up with the economy, and poll after poll during this campaign registered them saying it was the issue that would most decide their vote, especially among those who were leaning toward Trump. This held across last night’s exit polls. Across all sevenbattleground states and nationally, survey results were virtually the same: voters viewed the economy as the most important issue in the election; they felt their personal financial situation was worse and they thought so at significantly higher rates than they did in 2020; and huge majorities of those who voted for Trump viewed the economy negatively, considered it the election’s most pressing issue, and voted for the person they thought was going to bring ‘change.’”

“For many loyal Democrats, this will not compute. The Biden economy, party-loyal pundits have said over and over again, is tremendous — low unemployment, strong GDP growth, slowing inflation, a booming stock market — and anyone unhappy about it must simply be brainwashed. Out of view in this self-congratulatory hall of mirrors were the constant statistics that said otherwise: evictions up past pre-pandemic levels, record-high homelessness, cost-burdened renters at an all-time high, median household income lower than the last pre-pandemic year, inequality returning to pre-pandemic levels, and food insecurity and poverty growing by large double digits since 2021, including a historic spike in child poverty.

“Rather than the bread-and-butter matters that voters have consistently said are their biggest concern, Harris and the Democrats were determined to turn this into an election about abortion, democracy, and Trump’s character.”

But wait! Didn’t Bidenomics bring massive new investments in industry and clean energy. Kate Aronoff deconstructs that in a New Republic piece, “Why Bidenomics Failed to Win the White Working Class.”

“The pitch of Bidenomics was that it could solve several problems at once. Laws like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act would help rebuild America’s industrial heartland by reinvesting in American manufacturing, a sector whose workers are 78 percent white and 70 percent male. Reindustrialization could win back voters (working class white men, in particular) who had grown disillusioned with Democrats and drifted toward Trump . . . The way to do that would be to offer massive subsidies to companies to invest in those technologies stateside, and then to insulate those companies from foreign (i.e. Chinese) competition using tariffs and other protectionist measures.”

“Strangely, the executives who shipped manufacturing jobs abroad in the 1990s weren’t the villains of Bidenomics but the protagonists, who the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts were intended to support in creating jobs and an overall spirit of American dynamism. Accordingly, two-thirds of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion in energy-related funds are expected to go to corporations.” (That is Biden’s signature climate bill.)”

“Keeping in mind that the manufacturing workforce is overwhelmingly white and male, exit polling finds that 60 percent of white men in Michigan voted for Trump this year. Sixty-six percent of white men in North Carolina voted for him, too, along with 74 percent of white men in Georgia.”

“Yet most of the middle class—and the working class, for that matter—doesn’t work in manufacturing. Home prices, meanwhile, have risen 45 percent over the last four years, and nearly half of U.S. renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Home insurance and mortgage rates are persistently high, and still-elevated interest rates have made car ownership—a necessity in most of the country—more expensive, too. Healthcare, childcare and college educations are wildly expensive, and can saddle people with six-figure debts for decades.”

Two of the best economists around, Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff, put the election in the long-term context of deindustrialization and financialization of the economy on Dialogue Works. They also take on the capture of politics by wealthy donors, nailing how the Democratic Party has marginalized progressive forces represented by Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

Says Wolff, “What we have witnessed here, in both elections that (Trump) won . . . is a massive revolt by the American employee class, against 40 years of neoliberal globalization.”

1 hour, 38 minutes well spent (though I like to use the 1.25 speed)

Ben Norton of Geopolitical Economy Report provides a well reasoned analysis to prove his case,”Why Donald Trump won the US election: Kamala Harris failed to provide an economic alternative.” Norton always marshals an impressive array of data to back up his argument, and this is no exception. 37 minutes

The conclusion of all 4 takes is clear: While Harris offered some measures such as $25,000 for new homebuyers or paying for home care under Medicare, she did not offer the comprehensive economic agenda needed to address people’s real economic concerns. The kind of progressive program Bernie Sanders offered in 2016. Now we face a Trump White House, possible Republican control of both chambers of Congress, and a Supreme Court that tilts far right.

It’s going to take a truly transformative approach to deal with the crises barreling down on us, economic, social, political and ecological. In my view, we need to rebuild from the ground up, in the communities and bioregions where we live. We need to build the future in place. That’s where we can find hope and make real change, and where I’ll turn next.

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