The Missing Theory of This Election Is “People Don’t Know Shit”
Making the puzzle piece fit together
I promise that this is my last election post-mortem. Which, sure, is a “this is the last Star Wars movie”-type promise — you didn’t believe that, did you? — but…well, this is certainly my last post-mortem until the next one.
There seems to be a paradox in the election results. Consider what we know: Wealthy voters shifted towards Harris, and less affluent voters shifted towards Trump. Economic issues clearly mattered — voters often cited inflation as their most important issue — which means that voters’ clear contempt for “woke shit” isn’t the whole story (though that part of the story remains true). These data points seem to point to a narrative in which the economy was only working for rich folks, and voters responded by throwing politicians out on their monocle-and-top-hat-wearing fat cat asses.
The problem with that narrative is that the data don’t back it up. The poor and middle class did well under Biden. Real wages (which factor in inflation) rose, the tax burden shifted towards the wealthy, and the “misery index” — which arguably made Jimmy Carter a one-term president — was historically low. Every time I cite these data, I get accused of “just pointing to a graph”, but what I’ll say about that is: The data represent comprehensive measures of real events, if you know a better way of knowing what’s happening in the country then please tell me, but so far, the only alternative method I’ve heard is “assume that my personal situation is also true for the other 329,999,999 million Americans.”
So — as I so often ask myself these days — what the fuck is going on here? There was populist backlash against…the economy that outperformed every developed country in the world? We need to know what’s happening, because Democrats are drawing conclusions from the election, the most popular by far being “I was right about everything and Democrats must now embrace my pre-existing agenda.” The confusion is breathing life into bad ideas. But I think the puzzle pieces fit together if we unpack what we mean by the phrase “voters care about economics”.