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Far-right leaders are winning across the globe. Blaming ‘the economy’ or ‘the left-behinds’ won’t cut it
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
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politics
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People continue to blame "the economy" on Trump's victory. Trump was campaigning on actively making the economy worse. So to say that people didn't vote for Harris because of the economy is either demonstrably false or proves that the American people are infinitely dumber than we thought. If you have a problem, you don't vote for the person who's campaigning on making your problems worse.
And you've got the Democrats saying that we should have put up Bernie Sanders. Right after complaining about Biden being too old. So apparently solving the problem of Biden being too old is either (a) voting for Trump who is virtually the same age, or (b) voting for an even older white guy with the same policies. Notice something here?
Your body, my choice.
Women are property.
Like you have a choice.
And before the "they're trolling" excuses come out, people who actually have respect for women wouldn't be "trolling" like this. You don't put your face to the trolling if you don't sincerely believe it.
But sure. You just keep thinking that it was the economy. Then keep putting up minority candidates and wonder why you keep losing to people like Trump. The hard fact remains that American voters in general are far more racist and misogynist than Democrats want to admit, and they showed (for the second time) that they are willing to hand over the country to a pile of garbage like Trump before they even consider voting for a woman.
Think of it. Democrats spent months complaining that we shouldn't put up the old white guy again. And now that Trump won, they're saying that we'd have won if we just put up an even older white guy. And 10+ million of them were so pissed off that we didn't put up an even older white guy that they'd rather sit home and allow an old white guy with dementia to take office anyway rather than vote for a black woman.
People didn't want to vote for a woman. Especially not a black one. That's all there is to it. The rest are just excuses.
The underlying assumption here is that these voters aren't low information voters. The economy was what they themselves say they voted while thinking about. I believe it's pretty clear that perception is more important than reality for these voters, and their perception could not be more wrong about that and many other issues. There is certainly misogyny and racism in there too, but also keep in mind that was largely felt in people staying home, not voting for Trump. Harris got far fewer votes and Trump received nearly the same as last time.
There's no easy one size fits all blame to be had here I don't think, as nice as simple explanations are. I believe lack of populist messaging, following safe trends rather than creating them in the minds of constituents (with exception of the weird insult), lack of emergency covid situation, sexism, and appeals to status quo systems that have flaws all played a role.
I simply refuse to believe this because it just doesn't make sense. If these voters aren't low-information voters, they'd know that Trump plans to increase their expenses by about $400 per month. They'd know that Musk has already said he plans on making things exponentially worse. They'd know that Trump literally has no economic plan besides "get rid of the brown people." And they either voted for him or decided to stay home anyway? That doesn't make the first bit of sense.
This is my point. The policies weren't the problem. Dem policies such as abortion did just fine. The "old white guy" thing mysteriously disappeared once Biden dropped out of the race, and now people are saying we could have avoided this by putting up an even older white guy. They certainly didn't like Trump's policies because Trump doesn't have any and Project 2025 is wildly unpopular. All 50 states went significantly redder.
It certainly wasn't because of policy. Dems did just fine there.
It wasn't because of downticket. Senate and House races went largely as predicted.
It wasn't because Biden was old. Trump is virtually the same age and Bernie is even older.
It's not the economy. Trump plans to make things worse.
The excuses that people are giving just do not make the least bit of sense when up against even a minimum amount of scrutiny. We have people saying "women are property", "your body, my choice", sending texts to Latinos telling them to pack their bags, and telling black people to report for slave duty. We don't have people out there celebrating "the economy is gonna be great again!".
"the economy" is a convenient excuse for people who just don't want to admit they refuse to vote for a black woman. If the "economy" is a concern, you don't vote for the guy who's planning on increasing your expenses by thousands of dollars per year.
They definitely are low information voters. When people hear things they don't like from people they do like, they always assume it's not going to hurt them until it actually does. This might eventually work if they heard it enough, but they never will and don't care enough to pursue the information on their own.
In terms of the old white man thing, I think it's fair to say that while people say they don't want old people running, what they really mean is old people who aren't all there. This should eliminate Trump, but he's never seemed all there and he's had a more shallow decline than Biden. Bernie doesn't meet this qualification because he's still as sharp as ever. Biden's decline was shockingly fast and even turned liberals away despite his government still operating
I did get the very strong vibe from undecided voters that they really wanted to vote for Trump but couldn't tell anyone the reason was racism or sexism because they care too much about their image with liberals or their own self-image.
That all being said, a trending search term on election day was, "Did Joe Biden drop out?" So clearly, the low information problem should be doing some heavy lifting in our conclusions.