Ah, that’s the one, thanks!
Also, it’s always amazing to me when I see evidence that anyone had the patience and fortitude to read that far into one of my long-winded posts 
I put the majority of the blame on the authorities in Wuhan China who failed to enforce their own laws against wild animal meat sales. If they had enforced the law, there would likely have been no COVID, and no resulting worldwide inflation spurt.
That’s the feature, not the bug. That’s why he won (again) and that’s what people wanted. You can feel many things about Trump, but what you know in your gut is that he is different and is outside the norm. People vote on the gut.
So why vote for way outside the norm?
Extremely generally, with lots of glossing over, lots of people expect a certain lifestyle that they are not living and have no hope of attaining. People feel left behind. These people are all races and genders. They have felt this way for some time.
If you feel that way, you just want out of the way things are. It’s not working. You have two choices: you can choose a candidate that wants the same basic system or a candidate that wants to burn it all down.
If you feel that way, I don’t think it’s irrational to go with the guy who promises to burn it down because the same basic system sure isn’t working for you. You can feel that Trump will do that. He exudes it authentically. This is about feeling and expectations not being met. In the mind, feelings and expectations surpass education and logic.
Again, very general. Not claiming it’s the reason. Just trying to get in the mind and understand. I think it’s true and I think the Dems didn’t appreciate it enough in their messaging and Dems just felt like more of the same (clearly they offered the most constructive solutions).
The problem with this line of thinking is that the reason “the norm” isn’t working is because of Republican obstruction. This hasn’t just been an issue with Biden. It goes back several decades. As I noted above, the most recent time the Democrats / liberals have had a real opportunity to enact their agenda without Republican / conservative obstruction was back during the LBJ administration*. We came close during the first 2 years of Bill Clinton’s term, and again during the first 2 years of Barack Obama’s term, but close wasn’t good enough. Had there been an opportunity within the past few decades for Democrats to actually enact their policies, things would be a lot better. But the chance just never presented itself, and the politicians failed to convince enough voters that this lack of opportunity, more than anything else, has been the reason for the lack of progress.
*. An argument can be made that Nixon made progress as an illiberal progressive, but IMHO there has not been any truly progressive major legislation passed in the 1/2 century since Nixon resigned.
Eh that might be true for sweeping reforms like Obamacare or Dodd-Frank but the democrats can (and did) set policies they want on taxes, a variety of programs, tariffs and immigration when they have the presdency and the barest majority in congress.
The post covid recovery was guaranteed to be rogh, but Biden adopted a lot of America first-lite policies that ended up being the worst of all worlds - they got in the way of recovery and price stabilization and people didn’t give the democrats any credit for populist trumpian economic policy.
Well said.
I get what you’re going for here, but so long as we’re discussing hypotheticals: say Harris gets some magic-scenario ability to redo every campaign decision in light of what we all now know. Is there a version of events where you’d say “yeah, in retrospect, that’s an odds-in-her-favor path to the presidency” — or do you say, “huh, I guess I can’t say it’s the fault of the Dems, because, honestly, what set of choices would’ve had a solid shot at leading to a different election outcome?”
I basically agree with both “sides”; Dems have some responsibility but not in the conventional political way. The thing that democrats need to do is get a foothold in the information space, the nuances of the message are of way lesser importance right now.
Everyone I’ve spoken to who is any way right leaning, or not political at all, was very familiar with lots of (false) republican talking points and had not heard any of the debunks. Dems will always lose if this remains the case.
So that means fighting back against Sinclair, twitter, Rogan, all the memes etc. And I have to admit (and did admit at the time) that some of trump’s stunts like pretending to work in McDonald’s and the garbage truck were good ideas. (It helps that with trump’s audience they don’t care / don’t notice the customers were all fake, but Harris is personable enough to have real interactions)
There’s some things that have been pointed out she could have done differently that would have likely helped. She should probably have gone on Joe Rogan’s podcast. She should have probably presented her own ideas (as opposed to “this is what Biden has done and what I’ll keep doing”) of what she would do for the economy, in particular to reduce inflation. That interview with Sunny Hostin on The View would have been an especially good time to do so. Maybe a few other tweaks here and there. But even with all those changes based on 20/20 hindsight, I think at best she would have eked out a narrow win.
There’s one main reason and a bunch of lesser reasons that added up to a lot. Whether any of these can be laid at the foot of the Democratic party is, at least, debatable.
No. 1 reason: A very large portion of the electorate does not live in a fact- based reality. That is not the Democrats’ fault. But, when you combine that with Democrats doing a poor job of getting solid information out to even their own supporters, it’s going to be very tough to win.
For example, I’ve seen democratic supporters complain that Neo-Liberal economic policies are to blame for an economy that is hurting the middle and working classes, and that Democrats need to make a change away from that. But Biden did. His economic policy is based on FDR’s New Deal that charted a path out of the great depression.
Biden’s goal was to chart a path out of the Covid recession. Stimulus, infrastructure, student loan forgiveness, expansion of access to healthcare, expansion of the social safety net, reducing income inequality, reducing the racial unemployment gap, directing more federal spending to small businesses, addressing the racial home appraisal gap, and more things I’m not remembering. It has been working. But, the reputable press is focusing on economic bad news (shown by a study) and in Trump-world, the economy is so dire people are selling their children to buy a bag of beans. Or, to use a real example, I guess, eating other people’s pets. A poll I saw had around 65% of people rating their own economic situation as good, but saying it was bad for most other people. There’s a disconnect with reality. (I can’t find the poll now, but it was pretty clear that lots of people think they’re doing well, but believe the economy is bad, so theajorith of others must be suffering.)
How exactly was Biden’s economic policy the worst of all worlds?
Like, what policies?
The US economy recovered faster than any other modern economy. And it’s one of the strongest economies the US has had, ever. We just live in a post-factual world.
That’s why it’s the number one reason for the outcome of this election. Even people who are paying attention and are skeptical of iffy sources don’t know what’s true and what’s not and what’s spin.
And I don’t know what Democrats could or can do about it. Not only is there no clear way back to reality, it’s getting much harder to tell the difference now. Reputable media report true economic news but focus on the negative or highlight negative spin. So even here on the dope, people think that an incredible economy is terrible, and that it’s fashioned according to the terrible economic policies of the past 40+ years.
Here’s some of the straight dope on the economy.
https://wapo.st/3UZx7Gn (gift link)
There are plenty more like that if you look for them.
Much lesser reasons – Biden should not have run for a second term. But this one is mostly only true because of the first reason.
There were also a few calls post-Biden dropping out that, in hindsight might not have been the best, but it’s hard to say.
Here’s another one, with some theories about the causes of the disconnect.
Protectionism basically. Biden kept a lot of the Trump tariffs and even added some new ones.
They didn’t have nearly as much of an effect on the post-covid recovery as the feds interest rate hikes and the IRA, which both did an admirable job at curbing inflation without significantly curbing economic growth. However, I think the protectionism made inflation and supply shocks worse than they needed to be on the margins. And Democrats got basically no credit for having a populist America-first agenda.
That’s what I mean by worst of all worlds. People shifted to Trump on support for protectionism and blaming Biden for the inflation in 2021 and 2022. This is of course a silly position to take, and it would be nice to have intellectually honest voters that would realize that protectionism comes at the cost of paying more but we have the voting public we have. In the reality where people are dimly only dimly aware of president’s trade policies the tactic I’d prefer is to do good economic policy and then leave the public to credit whatever they come up with. If inflation happens, people that believe in America-first are going to believe that you didn’t do enough for American industries, even if the reality is that the problem was not enough trade. If free trade makes inflation less of a problem, America-first voters may not even realize you had pro-trade policies and might credit domestic investment.
Biden failed to have a social media presence the way Trump did. And becuse of the various platforms it would have been hard to reach the…49%.
A very astute analysis by this poster. Trump is campaigning. What he does best. He campaigns and takes credit continuously. Biden did none of that, a few speeches here and there. But he was so in the back ground, so presidential, that in this social media world it looks like he did nothing. LINK below.
@mahmanbryan on Threads
(" He basically decided to start campaigning again right before Thanksgiving dinner. Migrant caravans, Fentanyl etc. He doesn’t want calm. He wants a storm. He can’t play the hero when everything is fine.")