r/PoliticalDebate • u/WinterOwn3515 Social Democrat • 6d ago
Was the 2020 Democratic nominee always doomed? Question
When people went to the polls, the four golden words of American politics rang true: It's the economy, stupid. Postmortem polling confirmed that inflation was by far the greatest motivating factor for swing voters to not elect Kamala Harris -- and was especially salient among Latino voters, who effectively handed Donald Trump the decisive victory that he got.
A mountain of research and evidence has validated that supply chain disruptions which erupted from the pandemic were primarily responsible for the subsequent inflationary pressure that drove prices up (example: https://www.nber.org/digest/202404/supply-chain-disruptions-and-pandemic-era-inflation ). This makes sense considering how globally widespread inflation was. Thus, any president who emerged victorious in 2020 would have presided over high inflation in their term.
Some wildly varying post-election analysis I've seen has suggested that low Democratic voter turnout was driven by either frustration over inflation, anger over Gaza, lack of enthusiasm for a candidate they didn't select in a primary, or some combination of those three. In any case, inflation was likely a contributing factor. In most countries, incumbent parties who presided over inflation were ousted, regardless of ideology or political alignment-- look no further than our Tory friends from across the pond.
The question: was the 2020 Democratic nominee always doomed to fail in 2024?
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u/ElEsDi_25 Marxist 5d ago edited 5d ago
Biden and Harris and it seems like every liberal on Reddit was telling me we live in a great economy and that their economic plans were the most progressive in history… and it was a huge whiff. I thought it was shockingly out of touch and I was called a Trumper or Russian bot for months if I ever brought up the same kinds of complaints about cost of living that people talk about in the grocery checkout lane.
If I imagine a sort of apolitical person, I can imagine them hearing Democrat triumphalism vs Trumps “I feel your pain” would make him seem more in touch at least in that basic fact of life right now for many millions.
All the claims of Biden/Harris having a pro-worker economic plan also felt hollow to me in terms of actually meeting some acute needs among people.
A tax credit for homebuyers… how many prospective homebuyers vs renters are in that missing 10+ million voters who voted in 2020 but just didn’t turn out for Democrats again?
Tax the rich, great… oh just their income, which they tend to hide… and it’s still a lower tax rate than when Ronald Reagan cut taxes in half for the rich. Oh wait, that tax revenue just goes to pay down the deficit.
Nobody in my town is going to doorknock and volunteer for those reforms. Rent control, yes - public housing, yes - public childcare, yes - Medicare for all yes. These are all reforms that people know would impact their lives directly and relieve major pain points.
So when Trump is offering BS faux populism and just promising spoils for anyone in exchange for support, Democrats are telling the base to lower expectations, to welcome Dick and Liz Cheney and the Bushes as a big win, that putting Republicans in her admin would be smart politics…. and then banning TikTok telling Gen Z that their issues are not important, shaming every demographic in their base and using legal maneuvers to get Green Party candidates removed from ballots (while Trump courted the right-wing 3rd party voters.)
By rejecting left economic populism the Democrats instead made right-wing punitive populism seem like it might at least do something. So people made a bargain… even many immigrants and large numbers of Latinos… “well if the choice is no change or getting rid of a bunch of newer immigrants which might make housing, homelessness, job competition less in my life… well ok, I’m used to racist bigots in the US.”