Indecision 2024

[noggins]

But, is the difference between 2020 and 2024: six million weak democrats not voting, and a million new trumpites.

Or some chaotic churn where millions of ex-Magas saw the light but even more fuckwits crossed over to the dark side?

[IvanV]

But, is the difference between 2020 and 2024: six million weak democrats not voting, and a million new trumpites.

Or some chaotic churn where millions of ex-Magas saw the light but even more fuckwits crossed over to the dark side?

It would seem to be the latter. Trump took increased votes in certain sectors, such as Latino men. His net vote increase was pretty even across the board, even in solidly D states, but larger in some marginal states.

To win an election you have to excite the target voters' emotions sufficiently to want to vote for you. Reagan showed that. Harris failed to do that sufficiently. But the deficit that needed to be overcome, once Biden belatedly stepped down, was probably too large for anyone to overcome, according to one analysis I read. Harris did in fact make some progress from that point. But the election may well have been unwinnable once Biden failed to step down, by any plausible candidate. But that is not to say that the a potential winning candidate would have been selected by the usual full primary process, it is a flawed process.

The Democrats need to overcome their complacency, realise that winning an election is more than just showing your opponent is a monster - there'll be more monsters along after Trump - and actually understand what is needed to reach target voters' emotions. And find a candidate and policies and ways of talking that can reach them. There really is very little point in demonstrating your opponent is a monster, as we can see, that line of argument attracts few voters, and those that think it don't need persuading. That was the issue with Reagan too - he told all sorts of lies and debunking them was no use.

[noggins]

But Biden won on a platform of "I'm Not Trump"

[Woodchopper]

But Biden won on a platform of "I'm Not Trump"

An important element of Trump's win in 2016, Biden in 2020 and Trump again in 2024 was anti-incumbency. Yes, some people were voting anti-MAGA in 2020, but many were just voting against whoever was in power. Harris was the Vice President in 2024 and wasn't able to define herself as being distinct from Biden.

We have to go back to Obama in 2012 for the last time the incumbent won a consecutive second term.

[Martin Y]

Just to illustrate, this picture has received a lot of attention on social media.

The point isn't that they are persuading people that they're working class. Republican voters will see them as a couple a billionaires and a Kennedy sitting on a private plane. The deliberate message with consuming McDonalds and Coca Cola on a private plane is that they are going to stick it to the managerial technocrats (the kind of people who refuse to let their kids eat at McDonalds and prefer to eat quinoa salad washed down with kombucha). In terms of classes, the picture symbolizes a promised alliance between the aristos and the workers against the bourgeois.


McDonalds.jpg

The jarring artifice of that photo op suggesting an in-flight McMeal is realising McDonalds food is, at best, edible while fresh and still hot. After not too many minutes, it's terrible. I'm now stuck imagining those guys trying to eat old, clammy McD fries and wondering if this is what ordinary people actually like.

[TopBadger]

McDonalds food is, at best, edible while fresh and still hot. After not too many minutes, it's terrible.

Indeed - yet McDelivery exists presumably because people use it... maybe they nuked it for 30s in the galley?

The thing that stuck me is that the conspiracy nutters would have a field day if that plane went down.

[Woodchopper]

Just to illustrate, this picture has received a lot of attention on social media.

The point isn't that they are persuading people that they're working class. Republican voters will see them as a couple a billionaires and a Kennedy sitting on a private plane. The deliberate message with consuming McDonalds and Coca Cola on a private plane is that they are going to stick it to the managerial technocrats (the kind of people who refuse to let their kids eat at McDonalds and prefer to eat quinoa salad washed down with kombucha). In terms of classes, the picture symbolizes a promised alliance between the aristos and the workers against the bourgeois.


McDonalds.jpg

I'm now stuck imagining those guys trying to eat old, clammy McD fries and wondering if this is what ordinary people actually like.

I wouldn’t go that far. Trump’s enthusiastic consumption of McDonalds meals has been commented on for many years. As far as I know Musk wasn’t rich during the 90s when he was a student in the US. In terms of wealth, Hegseth had a normal upbringing and military career. Kennedy though has always been rich, as far as I know.

[Martin Y]

I wouldn’t go that far. Trump’s enthusiastic consumption of McDonalds meals has been commented on for many years. As far as I know Musk wasn’t rich during the 90s when he was a student in the US. In terms of wealth, Hegseth had a normal upbringing and military career. Kennedy though has always been rich, as far as I know.

Fair point. It's a struggle to be fair sometimes.

[Woodchopper]

Gaetz didn’t last long. Hegseth has apparently got more skeletons in his cupboards.

[jimbob]

Gaetz didn’t last long. Hegseth has apparently got more skeletons in his cupboards.

and McMahon

https://amp-cnn-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ ... index.html

CNN
—
A recent lawsuit alleges Linda McMahon, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the Department of Education, knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) employee as early as the 1980s — allegations she denies.

[TopBadger]

Trump has skeletons on display... so not sure what the fuss is with skeletons in the closet of his aides. Voters knew what Trump represents and they voted him in.

[bolo]

Unusually, I don't think this is about public reaction to the nominees and their skeletons. I think it's about Republican senators looking at Gaetz and saying "hell no I'm not voting for that a..hole". Which is a combination of lack of relevant experience/competence, skeletons, and just plain unpopularity on Capitol Hill. Maybe something like a 35-20-45 mix of those.

For Hegseth and McMahon and Kennedy and Gabbard, there's much less intense unpopularity among Senators. I still think there may be enough senators who reject some of these on competence grounds, but I doubt that they'll weight skeletons enough to matter for the result.

This is, of course, not normal, but then we knew that already.

[dyqik]

Unusually, I don't think this is about public reaction to the nominees and their skeletons. I think it's about Republican senators looking at Gaetz and saying "hell no I'm not voting for that a..hole". Which is a combination of lack of relevant experience/competence, skeletons, and just plain unpopularity on Capitol Hill. Maybe something like a 35-20-45 mix of those.

For Hegseth and McMahon and Kennedy and Gabbard, there's much less intense unpopularity among Senators. I still think there may be enough senators who reject some of these on competence grounds, but I doubt that they'll weight skeletons enough to matter for the result.

This is, of course, not normal, but then we knew that already.

Electorally speaking, senators either approve Trump's picks, and then get hammered in the mid-terms for their incompetence and scandals; they don't approve them, and get hammered in the mid-terms by Trump for turning down his nominees; or this is an uncharacteristically cunning ploy by Trump to get rid of his loudest and stupidest supporters.

[bolo]

That's true for many Republican senators but not all. There will be 53 of them in the new Congress (possibly just 52 if a miracle occurs in Pennsylvania). So with Vance breaking ties, it only takes four to vote no if all the Democrats join them.

There are some, like Susan Collins, who may actually want to put some light between themselves and Trump to improve their reelection chances in less Trumpy states. And there are some, like McConnell, who aren't planning to run for reelection anyway and don't particularly like Trump even if they have wimpily gone along with him in the past.

Of course, the chance of an actual no vote is slender. The way this nearly always works is that the White House reads the tea leaves, decides a big unsuccessful fight isn't worth it, and miraculously the nominee discovers that he doesn't want to "create a distraction" or "burden his family".

[Chris Preston]

Of course, the chance of an actual no vote is slender. The way this nearly always works is that the White House reads the tea leaves, decides a big unsuccessful fight isn't worth it, and miraculously the nominee discovers that he doesn't want to "create a distraction" or "burden his family".

Except in this case, Trump loves a fight, especially if he get others to do the fighting for him.

Gaetz is supremely ambitious, but also supremely toxic. Apparently, almost no one in politics likes him.

It appears to me that Kennedy is fawning over Trump to get the recognition he craves. I can't see this lasting. It depends on how much stomach he has for the humiliation and chaos that comes with being in Trump's orbit.

Gabbard, I can see being confirmed. She is a light weight and won't be a threat to those who think they should be Trump's successor in place of Vance.

Like we saw with the House speaker in the current term, I can envisage certain Senators in the GOP voting against the Senate majority leader in an effort to bring them down.

[bolo]

An odd and interesting nomination for Secretary of Labor:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... ary-trump/

[Woodchopper]

...Are, for example, white men without a college degree living in a small town in Wisconsin better off then they were in 2020? If they are then the blogger would have a point....

It's a question I have asked. The handful of American economists I work with tell me that cost of living has gone up more than wages for people like you describe. Though the very poor are better off, as minimum wages and social support have tended to go up. That second point was a surprise to me, but there has been quite an increase in social transfers in the US in recent times. Still not up typical EU levels. But UK and US not so far apart any more, as they have been falling in UK.

It's quite common internationally for inflation to hit the poor harder, even in an economy with average incomes growing faster than price inflation. Because there has been a general tendency for higher skilled wages to go up more than lower skilled wages.

Thanks Ivan. Here’s Tim Harford making a similar point:

Jason Furman, who was a senior economic adviser to the Obama administration, has pointed to several. There’s the prime-age employment rate, which is the proportion of people aged between 25 and 54 who are employed. This indicator shows how many people are engaged with the labour market and it falls if people give up looking for a job, are too ill to work, or simply feel they have better things to do with their time than work for money. In the US, this rate has barely recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In the supposedly struggling euro area, it’s significantly up. Low unemployment rate notwithstanding, perhaps the US economy has struggled to satisfy the people most likely to feel they should have a job?

I’ll add that if the employment statistics are being boosted by older people working then they may perceive that negatively - they’re still working instead of of retiring early as they had planned.

And while wages have grown faster than inflation, the trend has been much less positive since 2019 than it was in the years before. Real median household incomes have fallen since 2019, and the poverty rate has risen.

[…]

while wages have, on average, grown faster than inflation, that may not be true for lower-income households. We’ve seen plenty of signs of “cheapflation”, a tendency of cheaper products to increase in price more than expensive varieties of the same good. The cumulative effect has not been small, and poorer households are almost certainly more vulnerable.

The point of all this? The economy is a complicated system and just because some things are going well for some people does not mean that everything is going well for everyone. And, in particular, not for swing voters on the issues that matter most to them.

[…]

But if the question is “why didn’t American voters understand that the economy was doing brilliantly?”, the question itself is the problem. The economy has many facets and a strong economy for some does not mean a strong economy for everyone. With that in mind, it’s still the economy, stupid.

https://www.ft.com/content/e5c1cc4b-5d8 ... 7f10a31ebf

[edit] Also an interesting post by Paul Krugman on the politics of inflation: https://bsky.app/profile/pkrugman.bsky. ... yuvnkwl22d

[Woodchopper]

Derek Guy thread is a thing of beauty: https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/186045 ... 1zY-PW4R9w

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1860 ... 82858.html

[Grumble]

Derek Guy thread is a thing of beauty: https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/186045 ... 1zY-PW4R9w

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1860 ... 82858.html

Same thread: https://bsky.app/profile/dieworkwear.bs ... nv7ofpx224

[IvanV]

Trump has skeletons on display... so not sure what the fuss is with skeletons in the closet of his aides. Voters knew what Trump represents and they voted him in.

For an authoritarian leader, it is quite convenient for your entourage to have skeletons, because you can choose whether and when to make a fuss about them or not, to keep such people under control.

Mao Zedong used this tactic repeatedly. Some past ideological offence in the senior characters in his entourage was ideal. He could then threaten them with and keep them in line, or use it to get rid of them if they wouldn't stay in line. Deng Xiaoping was the classic example. He was twice condemned as a "capitalist roader" at convenient moments, and after being thus reminded to keep in line, rehabilitated. Though in his case, he was rehabilitated because he had rare and useful skills in reviving the economy. Failing that, Mao had other powers of life and death over people, but preferred not to make a fuss about it. He refused cancer treatment to Zhou Enlai, when he probably would have survived with treatment, but instead had a painful death. But occasionally he did feel the need to resort to murdering his internal opponents, as (probably) with Lin Biao.

[Woodchopper]

Derek Guy thread is a thing of beauty: https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/186045 ... 1zY-PW4R9w

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1860 ... 82858.html

Same thread: https://bsky.app/profile/dieworkwear.bs ... nv7ofpx224

Just followed. Another reason not to bother with Shitter