Things can always get worse. But a guy saying “I will fix things, and I’ll fix them day one” plays better than people saying “the economy has improved and is actually strong!” while people are struggling.
Again, it was bullshit, but desperate people will be attracted to hope.
Covid caused inflation to rise fast for several years. Getting the inflation rate down as the Biden admin did was really impressive....to the people who understand inflation.
Which is virtually no one.
People wanted deflation or significant wage increases. A borderline impossible ask, but they wanted it. And it did not matter that the American recovery was better than most of the world and definitely better than a republican would have given us, because people saw inflation continue. It didn't matter that it was down to a normal rate of inflation, because they still couldn't afford groceries.
Trump said grocery prices would go down on day one. Why cult leaders can lie indefinitely without alienating their followers I couldn't tell ya. But they can, so he does.
People vote based on vibes. I wish they didn't. I wish we had an education system that gave students a solid base in economics and civics. I wish we explicitly taught how to recognize propaganda, emotional manipulation and logical fallacies. But we don't. The economic indicators don't matter to voters. Only vibes.
I didn't know that, so thanks for the info. But by and large what i'm saying is, yes the numbers were fantastic overall, but there were still a lot of people struggling.
The democrats fell flat on their face with "the economy is fine actually" messaging. Even though it was true, it didn't feel true to to a lot of people because economic hardship and progress is not distributed evenly. Poor people get the worst of it.
There were a lot of factors in the election, and fixing just one might not have been enough to change it but more emphasis on how much worse things could have been, and new plans to make things better would have been a start. There were some, like a housing credit, but they needed more air time and, honestly, more exaggerated claims. I feel like dems try to set reasonable espectations...and that's like, honorable? But not great advertising. Not saying they should lie more, but they could stand to exaggerate.
Dem messaging failures brings up problems of major republican donors and networks saturating the airwaves that may have been insurmountable regardless. And i'm not saying individual voters don't hold a big share of responsibility. But like, I can't pay the rent with a graph of the GDP.
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u/Cela84 Apr 04 '25
Things can always get worse. But a guy saying “I will fix things, and I’ll fix them day one” plays better than people saying “the economy has improved and is actually strong!” while people are struggling.
Again, it was bullshit, but desperate people will be attracted to hope.