Trump’s victory

Donald Trump’s victory last Tuesday has sparked the usual Democratic handwringing that happens whenever an election doesn’t turn the way they had hoped — and centrists and the party’s progressive wing are already making their case for why the party needs to change if it’s going to win elections again.
There is a risk, as always, that the party will read too much into the election results. The fact is those in power in western democracies across the world have been taking a shellacking in the past year as voters everywhere reacted to the global inflation spawned by the economic dislocations of the pandemic. As the Financial Times recently noted, “Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years.”
Younger voters, in particular, who were too young to remember the far worse inflation the country faced in the 1970s and 80s, shifted towards Trump in the mistaken belief that he had something to do with the low inflation the country enjoyed during his previous four years. In fact, he just happened to be in the White House during a portion of a nearly two-decade-long period of low inflation globally.
What’s more, the fact that inflation was back to the Federal Reserve’s preferred two-percent range for the past few months never broke through with an electorate whose sources of information are increasingly unreliable. More Americans, particularly younger voters, rarely utilize the so-called legacy media (think newspapers, the broadcast news networks, or even CNN). Instead, the “news” that most voters receive comes from a wide range of opinionated online sources, largely dominated by right-wing voices, who painted an economy that was strong by traditional measures as on the verge of collapse. As our founders recognized, an informed electorate is critical to the maintenance of a democratic form of government. A dis-informed electorate, which is arguably what we have now, is the path to authoritarianism.
Americans will learn that Trump’s economic policies, such as they exist, won’t bring prosperity back to the middle and working class and will almost certainly spark a new round of price hikes for many consumer goods if Trump actually implements his proposed tariff scheme.
The public’s sour mood coming out of the pandemic led to Trump’s defeat four years ago, and it hurt Harris’s case this time around. That pendulum is likely to swing back two years from now, particularly as the effects of Trump’s dubious economic policies become clearer to the public.
But while much of this was likely baked into the cake, the Democrats’ decision to play to Republicans both weary and wary of a second Trump presidency plainly failed, and it appears it left many of the party’s more left-leaning voters disenchanted. Many chose to simply stay home, as evidenced by distinct declines in turnout in places where Biden had rolled up big numbers four years ago. President Biden’s uncritical support of Israel in its war on Gaza and Lebanon certainly didn’t help, either.
For those in the center-right “Clinton” wing of the Democratic Party, winning over moderate Republicans has been the holy grail quest for more than 20 years and if ever there was an election where this shift was possible, it was this one. And while there were a number of high-profile Republicans who endorsed Harris, those endorsements plainly carried little weight with the vast majority of GOP voters, who stuck with Trump despite misgivings.
In trying to woo Republicans, Harris modified her economic message to focus on minor tweaks to the status quo at a time when most Americans want bolder action to make the economy work better for those in the bottom half and middle. Even in deeply red states, like Missouri, policies historically backed by progressive Democrats — such as a $15 minimum wage and paid sick and family leave — were easily approved by voters. The notion that Democrats need to move further to the right to appeal to voters has been exposed for the magical thinking it’s always been.
Americans are right to believe that the economy is rigged in favor of the wealthy, and Democrats do best when they talk about it in the kind of bold terms that were clearly lacking in this year’s campaign as Harris tried, in vain, to entice more Republican voters.
Trump, meanwhile, exploited voter anger over inflation and doubled down on what most economists believe is a radical return to a tariff policy that is guaranteed to increase wealth inequality. Most voters recognized they were still angry over inflation, but they perhaps lacked the economics background to recognize that Trump’s proposals would almost certainly make things worse. Americans have signed up to learn that lesson the hard way.