The red shift in 2024 was so broad that no one localized issue appeared to tip the election in President-elect Donald Trump’s favor. However, one key factor may have been voters’ widespread dissatisfaction with the economy.
Enduring pessimism about the US economy has puzzled political analysts, given that most major indicators suggest it is strong and that the US has recovered better than other countries from a pandemic-induced slump. Inflation has come down significantly from its peak in June 2022, slowing price hikes for basic goods. The Federal Reserve started cutting interest rates, making borrowing money cheaper. The economy has continued to grow at a solid rate. Unemployment dipped to its lowest level in 54 years in 2023 and stayed within a desirable range.
On paper, everything looked great. But in poll after poll ahead of the election, voters signaled concern for the economy and ranked inflation as their top issue. The rough, preliminary voting data available in exit polling showed the same trend.
At the heart of that disconnect might be elements that broad economic indicators often struggle to capture: Despite a “strong economy,” many Americans continued […]
It doesn’t seem to me that facts, logic and reasoning can ever explain an election outcome that is the result of an absence of facts, logic and reasoning.
The author missed an important graph to explain this shift – the charting of overall wealth by segment of the population. Wealth continues to shift upward toward the 1% and 0.0001%. The wealthy gained so much during the pandemic that it would have taken the rest of the population more than a decade to recover. The economy is now structured to do this with the ownership of equities, patients, rent seeking, and exploitative employment relationships. The common folk have not been seeing the wealth re-distributed in their favor. Oh, they aren’t as sophisticated as the Washington beltway insiders, but they know what’s happening. The current political system forestalls change. The elites have been incredibly successful at forestalling change. Where would you expect the population to channel their rage? Don’t like the outcome? Change the structure. Think outside the box.
American voters are dumb because they primarily watch Fox News which continually lies to them about nearly everything. The economy was the envy of the world, but Fox continued to stoke the ire of working class people even though their wages had grown considerably. Gas is way lower than it was—-below $3.00 in most places. Yes, rents are disgusting and clearly show America’s greed upon the wealthy class, but Harris said she would punish excessive price rises. Trump didn’t say anything about costs. Biden’s immigration policy was, yes, late because he had so much more on his plate—-like a pandemic, like getting factories to come back to the US, like getting an infrastructure bill passed, and many other good things he accomplished.
But Fox wouldn’t publish those things, just constantly talking about the immigrants—-which are strongly needed in this country to do jobs that most Americans would never do! Like picking crops, working on rooftops in 100 degree weather. And it is a huge lie that the immigrant population is comprised of criminals! Baloney!!! Their crime rate is way lower than the American crime rate. Nope, Americans are stupid, only watch Fox News, and have no idea what is important for their lives to be better—because it won’t happen with Trump who only wants to make more money and help the very rich. Wake up, America!
It is very simple to discuss politics when you understand that politics is a expression of the human personality and the human personality is explained by the four Archetypes of carl Jung that can be combined in twelve ways.
I’m wondering if this is where the states start to move away from federal as predicted by your 2050 project