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Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

As someone living in WI who got barraged with ads from both sides, that wasn't the messaging anyone saw AFAICT. The biggest issue on people's minds was the economy. Dem messaging on economic policy was nonexistent. Women's healthcare isn't an issue that resonates with young (read: unmarried) men. It should, but it doesn't. There could have been some "look out for your wife" messaging, but there wasn't.

There's a lot of people in the comments parroting whatever narrative they cooked up for 2016, but the reality is that both candidates' approaches were wildly different this time around.

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The economy I think was the huge sticking point. You can't have everyone in your party saying "the economy is good, it's growing better than ever, look at all the jobs, etc." while literally no average person is seeing that. They are so out of touch that they think if finance/econ majors on tv say the economy is doing good than it's doing good.

Compared to pre-pandemic - Housing prices have shot up incredibly - Loan interest rates are two or three times higher - Every day goods are higher - Car prices are higher - Insurance is higher - Utilities are higher

And that would be fine, prices go up over time after all, but all of that is on the back of pay, that for most people, has not gone up anywhere close to enough to cover all of that, if it's gone up at all.

This is an interesting phenomanon. The median purchase power is increasing but people feel poor.

Things with limited supply are becoming more unaffordable because the rich are much richer than they were before. So if housing is limited and is seen as an investment vehicle, it becomes unaffordable.

The same goes for health care. There is a limit supply of medical care. Some people can afford much more than others which compounds the issue.

Americans (and most of the collective West) can afford all things that are not in limited supply - food, clothing, gadgets, transportation, etc. This is amazing in the context of history.

The weirdest thing is that both health care and housing do not need to be limited supply. It's completely artifical. We make bad governing decisions that force it to be so. Our problems are not economic but social/organizational ones.

Relatedly, I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD (except Luxembourg):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

This means that the average american really really is financially better off than anywhere else in the world. I'd say that their quality of life isn't - they die much earlier than the rest of OECD, for example. But they are definitely the richest. And not just the richest american but the average american.

There is a fundemental problem that cannot really be solved with housing:

People want a single family homes with a nice property in nice area. They want a short commute and all the convenience of modern life.

There is in fact a hard limit on how many single family homes you can have in a an area. You can build them somewhere else, but then you get long commutes or short commutes to low paying work.

HN, let me remind you, most people do not work in tech banging on a keyboard all day with mild collaboration. Most people still need to commute to their jobs at least once a week. The majority still need to go in everyday.

Families tend to want single family homes. But singles/couples are happy buying townhomes or condos, which we could build a lot more of on the existing land. And we should encourage older couples to downsize (eg CA makes this undesirable because of prop 13)

Add to that a systemic lack of investment in public transportation infrastructure and it makes said commutes completely reliant on private resources.

People are willing to live in condos just fine. But everything is unaffordable now. Every new condo building has crazy HOA fees with prices that are totally out of reach.

We're not building out or building up. So yeah. It's bad.

An SFH in a big city is a luxury, as you say, something has to give. You can't have cheap SFH in a nice neighborhood next to your job for everyone, there is reason why buildings exist

Factor in good schools and other wants well.

> I was quite surprised when recently I realized that the median (adjusted for PPP) disposable income in America was the highest in the OECD

That doesn't really tell you all that much useful. Disposable income just deducts taxes from your gross income. What really matters is the cost of those other things we're talking about: food, housing, healthcare, childcare, etc. When you subtract those out as well, you get discretionary income, and I bet the US is not leading at all there.

It’s not really a straightforward comparison because those categories are discretionary to an extent. For example people in the US seem to eat out at restaurants far more than in other countries. That would certainly increase food spending but clearly it’s a choice people make to improve their life and doesn’t represent a defect in the economy.

Life expectancy in the US is below average but it’s certainly not “much lower than the rest of the OECD”

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d90b402d-en.pdf

Frankly, if wage gains kept pace with productivity gains it’d be a very different and vastly better economic story for the average American. The reality is the recent blip of wage gains didn't make up ground on the last 40 years of stagnation, and it shows signs of slowing in any case, and Americans are feeling that

Ironically wage gains have outpaced inflation in the last 4 years, but that's such a minor effect compared to the lost ground over the previous 40 years that it's not noticeable.

The definition of “disposable income” used in this chart is gross income minus taxes.

I don’t think this corresponds with what most people think that means. i.e. gross income - (taxes + housing costs + food + health/childcare). I certainly didn’t.

That's the correct definition of "disposable income". The latter value is called "discretionary income", and a lot of people incorrectly say disposable when they really mean discretionary.

Yeah it’s hard to calculate a comparable figure on this when savings in one country is basically just temporarily holding money for the medical industry and getting to collect gains on it in the meantime, and in another, it’s actual savings.

Much like, say, IQ, wealth shouldn't be compared across populations without massive amounts of contextual normalization. Individual wealth measures don't account for institutional safety nets, nor social/cultural affordances, nor geography, nor weather, nor history, nor-

Suffice it to say that trying to directly compare individual wealth across disparate populations is so disingenuous as to be tantamount to spreading falsehoods. People feel poor because they are poor; Americans simply cannot afford many of the things that other developed economies provide for their residents. We can make lots of small changes to help with this^ (i.e., we don't need a massive overhaul or revolution), but the people calling the shots have to actually admit that people are not doing well, and that the costs people face today are burdensome. They won't, because they're afraid of not being reelected (and then they lose anyway).

^Solve food deserts by opening bodega-like shops in both urban AND suburban neighborhoods.

^Replace surface parking with structures housing amenities that people can walk to.

^Increase mass public transit access by building rail and bus/bike lanes.

Whether one thinks things are bad or good is subjective and should not be relevant, although it does appear to matter electorally. A rational voting public would vote on a forward looking basis -- which candidate would deliver the biggest expected improvement.

It takes $600k now to have the buying power of $200k in the 80s

The economy is 100% intentionally managed to protect the prior generations story mode way of thinking

> You can't have everyone in your party saying "the economy is good, it's growing better than ever, look at all the jobs, etc." while literally no average person is seeing that.

Isn't that literally what happened in his first term? Remember "I built the greatest economy the world has ever seen"? These claims were backed fully and completely by the stock market and not the rank & file. And this is the same situation we find ourselves in now. All these years later we're still in a situation where "the economy" is going gangbusters, but the average person feels left out.

I would say absolutely yes, which is ironic to say the least. I think the fact that he didn't follow through on his promises got lost in the crazyness of the pandemic times but do remember, he did not get re-elected. Also americans don't really think that far back when it comes to presidential elections, they tend to be here and now things.

I think the bigger problem isn't that the Dems didn't try to take credit for growth, but that they didn't point out that actually things weren't that rosy in 2020 and basically conceded the entirely false argument that Trump's term made the economy better and Biden's made it worse.

Sure, Trump didn't cause the pandemic, but neither did Biden and the inflation isn't unrelated to Trump's fiscal policy being looser than it needed to be even before the pandemic either, as well as being fundamentally the Fed's job to solve[2]. It's difficult[1] for an incumbent to win by attacking the track record of the last government especially when much of it was factors outside their control, but not impossible, especially since Trump has presented wavering voters with plenty of other reasons not to vote for him. Trump is living proof that excuses work...

[1]Not impossible though: an unpopular British government won a majority in 2014 by constantly blaming slow post recession growth on the other party's borrowing five years earlier

[2]You can absolutely guarantee that if Trump was in power the US would have experienced at least as much inflation, and he'd have wasted no time in blaming the Fed

I agree, but also think the number of voters that have the attention to be influenced by such a nuanced argument is vanishingly small.

> I think the bigger problem isn't that the Dems didn't try to take credit for growth, but that they didn't point out that actually things weren't that rosy in 2020 and basically conceded the entirely false argument that Trump's term made the economy better and Biden's made it worse.

This is more or less the direction I was heading w/ my post. I don't think it's a messaging issue per se. Rather it's control of the messaging. The economy in general has been on a steady path for a while, despite ups & downs: it's trending towards a bimodal distribution where certain parties are doing quite well and others are doing less well. But what I've seen the last several election cycles is the indicators that dominate what I see on TV, read online, etc swap depending on who is in power. So my expectation is that literally nothing will change yet we'll be hearing about how awesome the economy is for everyone in several months.

My prediction is that the next four years won't see any improvement either, and the republicans will similarly be voted out again next election.

If "the economy" is going to be fixed, first Congress and the senate will actually have to start passing bills again, but that's probably not happening for another decade

The economy is about to become the only 2020-era talking point left. The only Congressional action will be a national abortion ban, which is simply and anticlimactically saying that abortions will be moved to Canada. And the popular vote in this election proves no widespread Democratic party vote tampering. So there will be a day, sometime in 2025, when a critical mass of Trump supporters need to ask, "Who is this Elon Musk guy who I didn't vote for?"

> All these years later we're still in a situation where "the economy" is going gangbusters, but the average person feels left out.

It doesn't matter. Trump claimed he'd build the greatest economy again. He didn't provide any details on what he plans to do that will actually improve people's lives. He just let people jump to their own happy conclusions.

>> He didn't provide any details on what he plans to do that will actually improve people's lives.

He did provide high level detail. He said he'd use tariffs to exclude foreign made stuff, which will necessitate "made in America" and bring manufacturing back. He said he'd balance the budget, which (theoretically) has long-term effects. He said he'd deport illegals, which should reduce demand for housing and hence prices.

You can disagree with any of those things, but I don't think it's right to say he didn't offer anything specific.

>He didn't provide any details on what he plans to do that will actually improve people's lives.

No, but he had a very simple and catchy message that even people with the lowest IQ can understand and remember: "Fuck illegal immigrants, fuck China, America first, USA no. 1".

Election messages need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of education and intellect. If you start boring people with facts and high brow speeches that only the well educated can understand, you lost from the start.

Yes, that's true, but the problem is that these past four years have been bad for everybody, so they remember the Trump years as being better than they actually were.

> these past four years have been bad for everybody

They've been pretty good for some people.

I lost my job a few months back, and I feel like the messaging from Harris/Biden was everything's great! Keep doing whatever is happening. Voted for who spoke to me.

Every company I join literally has an arm in Mexico, India, Pakistan, Colombia or Ukraine - and it always started feeling like at any minute those people would have my job. And they do. I want an administration that makes it so that those people don't have my job. And yes, I have always been willing to work for a lot less, but all the other Americans want more and more and more, so that it's expected for a programmer in the US to make 200k, so these companies decide to hire someone in Colombia for 80k. I'll take 100 and work a lot closer than that person in Colombia. But no companies here will listen to that. And I'll do it as someone with 20 years of experience.

But the only thing people on the left care about, as usual, are issues that actually don't matter. Yes I get it you want Gay rights and you want Abortion rights, but the reality is those things are not going away in the states you're already in. But on the other side, American people are being pushed into a terrible economic state.

Go ahead and not listen, HN doesn't. It's WAAAY to left.

They've been great for US Stock holders, which basically comprises most of the Upper and Upper Middle Class.

In fact, so good, people think anything buy 10-20% yearly gains on assets is bad

>And that would be fine, prices go up over time after all, but all of that is on the back of pay, that for most people, has not gone up anywhere close to enough to cover all of that, if it's gone up at all.

BLS data shows real (ie. inflation adjusted) wages has gone up since the pandemic.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Their methodology produces results that are not representative of the economic situation of average american families.

The average household income is 80k(ish) the average house is 420k(ish)

In Bethlehem, PA (a fairly middle of the road place tax wise) that means $5050 take home pay a month and a mortgage payment (FHA 3.5 down, 6.7 interest) of $2650 a month. That is more than half your pay just on a mortgage, not pmi, not insurance, not utilities, not anything else. Do this calculation across the country with localized numbers, do it with rent instead. Add a car and insurance for it into the mix. Then try adding in health insurance, groceries, etc. You are going to find that the numbers result in average people being squeezed and guess what? That lines up with peoples actual experience.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paycheck-to-paycheck-definition...

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/amid-a-resilient...

My interpretation of this is that pay has not kept up with inflation.

Edited to be less witty

It's worth keeping in mind that inflation is a theoretical construct based on assumptions and formulas that may not apply for every individual or subpopulation.

But still haven’t matched productivity gains since the 1970s[0]

Everyone likes to point this out like it somehow made up for all the wage stagnation of the last 40 years and it most definitely did not.

Not to mention these wage gains are slowing fast.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff....

The data may show that. The people don't feel that. (Many of them don't see it in their budgets, either.)

When (some) people feel they’re worse off and blame it on the government, telling them government produced statistics says they’re actually better off is totally going to make them trust the government more. /s

Edit: Without the snark, lots of people believe their rent, grocery bills, energy bills etc. have gone up a lot more than official inflation numbers (and that can be true even if the inflation numbers are “accurate” for some definition of accurate), and you’re not going to convince them using anything derived from these inflation numbers.

We're still at 390 levels of cost in a 370 world.

I agree "It's the economy stupid".

Where the Democrats went wrong is they looked at the economic figures for stuff like corporate profit margins and the stock market and said "look how good the economy is!" when those profit margins are high because they've jacked prices and regular consumers are feeling the squeeze. Unfortunately there's little a President can do about that. Corporate consolidation was largely complete before they even took office and monopolistic behavior is to be expected. The pandemic supply chain disruptions gave companies cover to increase their margins and that's what they did.

Theodore Roosevelt was well known for monopoly-busting. It is something the president can influence and the U.S. has a dozen major monopolies that should have been busted long ago.

"the economy is good, it's growing better than ever, look at all the jobs, etc." while literally no average person is seeing that.

I think I'm an average person. Car prices came down and I was finally able to buy a sedan. Unemployment seems low. Eggs are expensive, sure, but on the other hand, my brand of yogurt always seems to be on sale and oatmeal prices are flat, so it's kind of a wash there. The economy seems pretty fine to me.

Certainly, there have been no threats to shut down the government (like in '18-'19), which did do a number on my retirement plan at the time...

I don't buy it. There's a reality distortion field at work here. If Trump had been in office he would he would have been touting the economy as the greatest in history. And 'average people' would have 'seen that' despite not 'seeing it'.

I don't vote for Trump. I don't know anyone aside from some crazy family members who like him. I'm in an extreme blue state that was called when only a few percent of the vote was in. I don't even know anyone who listens to Trump's speeches or sees this ads.

Every single person I know feels this economy is terrible. Of every age. From new graduates, to senior people. Even the most extreme Obama or Bernie people feel like things are going very badly.

Everyone on campus was consistently outraged when Biden would gloat about his economy.

It's not Trump. I have no idea what his message even is.

This is an own goal. Democrats believed the total bullshit that economists spew about how good things are. When people actually feel how terrible they are.

And trump voters, not understanding inflation, think he will bring down prices.

I'm in the Bay - am I the only person that thinks the economy is going great?

My wages are up since Biden started. My rent, my biggest expense, has held the same. NW up a lot from stock market gains.

There seems to be a lot of inflation with food ,restaurants and domestic work, but isn't lower wage people getting higher wages a good thing?

Becoming the refuge-party for fleeing Republican neoliberals (joining the existing Democratic ones) is really gonna cripple the party when the party that popularized (among the political set—voters never liked it) that damn world-view is abandoning it.

Pay went up a ton too for low income people.

But still haven’t matched productivity gains since the 1970s[0] Everyone likes to point this out like it somehow made up for all the wage stagnation of the last 40 years and it most definitely did not.

Not to mention these wage gains are slowing fast.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-aff....

That would make it a left/right thing. As a European: there is no left in america, there is a liberal right and a conservative right.

The economy is good in america, but that just means that the amount of "resources" in the country is increasing, but, if "average joe" benefits from that or not is a question of how those resources are distributed.

Left/Right is about economy.

Being on the right means that you find it more important that the total pool of resources is increasing.

Being on the left means that you care more about how the resources are distributed.

What happened here is IMHO that the conservatives did the populist thing, they claimed that regular people would get more resources if they won, while still claiming that they would distribute less resources away from wealthy people.

They are not wrong in saying that the economy is good, it is just that since there is no left in american politics, it seems like some people have forgotten the other perspective, since redistribution of wealth have been almost an insult in america for so long. Yet, last time he was president, trump managed to send everyone a check, signed by himself, but paid for by taxes, without being called an evil communist.

I listened to a radia program where poor americans where interviewed, and that was the thing that they remembered about trump, he sent them a check.

So, in conclusion, there is a large group of poor americans, that associate the guy that wants to remove taxes for rich people with what I (according to the above definition) consider to be left wing politics.

> there is no left in america

There is, though? It’s just no represented at all because of FTPT there is based no constituency where it can get 50%. Usually not even in Democrat primaries.

Sanders got 25% of the primary vote in 2020 despite being a lost cause for most of the voting.

Yes, that was what I meant.

As a European: there is no left in america, there is a liberal right and a conservative right

This gets parroted too often. America objectively provides more abortion access than Europe. Speech here is undoubtedly more expansive than in Europe. Sure, unions may have more power in Europe, but not so much more that I'd be saying "there is no left in America".

It's astounding how often the left/right dichotomy gets discussed without any acknowledgement that there are many axes. For the purposes of this discussion I assumed the collectivist/individualist axis (in my opinion usually the most pertinent one).

I think GP means economic left / right.

Europe seems to be pretty good at being on the right lately. Even compared to America. I think the two party system just creates more centrist government, which is perhaps a strong argument for it.

And Trumps proposed tariffs will only accelerate price increases[0]

It’s clear it has support from rank and file republicans as well, it is more than feasible that if republicans win the house too we will see tariffs in short order

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trumps-new-tariff-proposa...

It will almost certainly accelerate inflation, but won’t it also give domestic manufacturing workers hurt by globalization a lot more demand for their work, and leverage to increase their wages? It seems like the main people hurt by this would be the upper middle class and above, the execs, designers, and managers who’ve directly and indirectly managed large international teams of laborers working at low rates, as they’ll get hit by the inflation, but see no additional demand/leverage to increase their wages. They’re the part of the bimodal wealth distribution that has until now done very well by globalization, and I think this election is largely a reaction by the other mode.

> won’t it also give domestic manufacturing workers hurt by globalization a lot more demand for their work

Temporarily perhaps, the push for automation in manufacturing (and farm operations) will be very strong.

No. You can't just wave a magic wand and order manufacturing home. Capitalists exported a lot of skill and industrial infrastructure to overseas markets, which can't be rebuilt overnight.

There was talk about this in the first term too, and it ended up with a lot of money from tariffs being used to subsidize farmers because they found themselves doing so poorly that suicides spiked.

It hurts everyone, the price shocks will be felt for years, and any gains that can be made won't matter.

Wage gains won't keep pace with any price increases either, Republican's have already outlined policies that are regressive to average Americans[0][1]

About the only thing tariffs will do is consolidate power at the top and allow the largest corporations to buy out smaller ones that can't cope as well.

We are remember, talking about broad spectrum tariffs here, which will hit any import, from food to solar panels.

[0]: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/32a303df-1977...

[1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/10/30/trump-reduce...

The president has huge amounts of executive authority over tariffs. I don’t know where the boundaries are but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw huge tariff increases in the first hundred days.

And that inflation was caused largely by pre-Biden Trump policies of giving tax-breaks to billionaires and allowing blatant corporate greed. Inflation is not a quick phenomenon. It has lags. It has stickiness. People don't know this because they don't take any economics.

And, more importantly, today's inflation is by large firms exerting their market control and monopolistic tendencies. How many grocery companies are there and in their region? Kroger is trying to buy out Albertsons to completely dominate the midwest, to lower quality and increase prices like all monopolists. What needs to be done is anti-trust enforcement which Biden has attempted. But none of this is known by 90% of the country and 0% of Trump voters.

Yeah, Kroger's behavior is infuriating. I've stopped shopping there; fortunately I have choices.

You left out wages.

> while literally no average person is seeing that

I mean, frankly as a Gen Z man I don’t understand this at all. I’m doing a lot better than I was 4 years ago. Finished school, got a good job, etc.

I was about to retire early, with the risk to the ACA I’m not sure.

I guess, from a Western-European perspective, the problem is that with the choice of Democrats and Republicans you get the choice between right-wing and ultra right-wing. Having right-wing politics that funnel money from the poor to the rich, or the tenants to the landlords, is in the interest of the financial backers of both parties. Messaging-wise, the Democrats have always been "more honest" (low bar, it's hard to be more dishonest/convoluted than Trump anyway), so maybe that's why Trump seems to come out ahead there.

You're touching on one of the struggles for many left leaning voters and why the democratic party struggles with enthusiasm and to win. To many on the left, the party markets itself as "the least bad option" and thus "the only choice". Anyone in sales would tell you that is not the best pitch.

I get where you're coming and the Dems' greatest sin is probably pulling the rug under progressive candidates in primaries of some elections, but at some point you gotta look at the things Biden/Harris did for all Americans as president and consider if it passes the threshold from "least bad option" to, dare I say, "good, but obviously not perfect option". Things like increasing the threshold for overtime pay, an anti-redlining mortgage lending framework, pushing the HHS to reschedule cannabis to schedule III, actually showing up on a picket line, etc.

Reminds me of the quote by Gore Vidal:

"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat."

I'm not sure I understand the criticism. This is bad? People like property rights. Progressives like them. Conservatives like them. Economies like them.

Meanwhile there are substantial differences between the two wings, what services and programs they think government should provide, how problem solving should be approached.

normally I'd agree about Trump's honesty, but in the debate and subsequent Harris interviews I saw a lot more deflection, misdirection, lies/mistruthes and non-answers than I did from trump. Sure trump says some wild things which are often only 50% ish true. But kamala would openly call things lies that were verifiable fact, those are lies too, and she lied a lot.

I dont want to get into a flame war, 50% is a generous number, since many times he isn’t speaking full intelligible sentences. Trump gets a pass on absolutely outrageous things, which he creates by the second. I feel that he is so bad, and so incessant with his content creation., that he causes an integer overflow in the audience. At that point, he is once again assessed with an average rubric.

I feel that his success here suggests that this is a strategy that will succeed globally, and that many political candidates are going to be emulating his “style”.

> I saw a lot more deflection, misdirection, lies/mistruthes and non-answers than I did from trump

Yup, it just came without the crass jokes and the mannerisms but I guess the confidence was pretty high that people would forgive her because she's just "not trump".

I think they totally bungled the messaging and stuck their head in the sand. With all the billions of campaign money, they spent most of it calling trump a fascist or orange idiot a bunch more times, hoping that's enough to bump voter numbers. There is a dose-response curve there and after some point it just doesn't yield linear results.

I think you perceived that because you expected Trump to lead the election and her to follow in his wake. She deflected to the things she wanted to talk about to a usual degree, and did not lie more than usual for core-Democrat politicians, which is not a lot. They just don't address what they don't want to talk about.

Ultimately she lost, and probably should have even more aggressively emulated him by promising things that aren't even real. Like how do you circle the promise that the war in Ukraine will be over tomorrow. I'm not making it up, that was repeated ad nauseum on the campaign trail. I guess all that matters is winning.

All politicians lie. They're only ever called out by the "other side".

My theory is that legal sports betting makes the economy seem artificially worse for a lot of people. It has had a measurable impact on bankruptcy rates, and is causing a lot of self-inflicted financial stress. Trump's main platform is that your problems aren't your fault, and I think that resonates well with people struggling because they are throwing out their disposable income every month.

I’ve never bet on sports but watched my grocery bill skyrocket. A few years ago I posted year-over-year grocery prices and in aggregate the bill was 50% over the course of 12-months. Since then we’ve seen insurance and utilities skyrocket, creature comforts like streaming services are all up. CPI may say one thing, but my checkbook feels much worse. Disposable income has all gone to sustain a reduced quality of life.

What do you think will happen to grocery prices now?

Does that really impact a lot of people? The total size of the legal sports betting industry is $11B, which is only about 0.04% of US GDP.

https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39563784/sports...

I am not on Facebook, but my wife is. According to her there are countless posts from women complaining that their husbands / boyfriends are wasting their money on sports betting.

So while it's a small percentage of GDP, it is a much larger percentage of their budget.

When looking at some profiles of celebrating Trump supporters on Reddit, basically 100% had a large number of posts in sports betting topics, or Wall Street/day trading topics. An interesting demographic overlap there.

Back in my day I remember when the same anti-porn conservatives would also tell you that gambling bans are good. I can't believe that conservatives gave up on moral purity.

This is peak “tone-deaf coastal elite”.

> Women's healthcare

Further, the democrats have been in power for 12/16 years, and multiple years controlling all 3 houses. They did nothing to help with Women's healthcare. I have followed the issue closely, and I still don't understand what they Dems were going to do to keep abortion legal. If it's a state issue, how would the President change anything ? If it's national issue, why haven't they already done anything ?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Combined...

The 111th Congress was the only time in the last 20 years Democrats had a filibuster-proof trifecta and that was for 72 days. [1]

That was the government that gave us the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.

The other Democrat trifecta was the 117th Congress[2] but if you look that's only with independents in the Senate that caucused with Democrats. Obviously also not filibuster proof.

That's the government that gave us the CHIPS act.

Think about how often parties are in power and they can't even fill appointed positions because of partisan opposition during confirmation, let alone pass legislation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/117th_United_States_Congress

> That was the government that gave us the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.

Aka Romneycare, originally put forth by the Heritage Foundation. If that's the best Democrats can do, no wonder people aren't too optimistic about them.

> filibuster-proof

Well there's your problem. The GOP knows that you need to sidestep those kind of tedious anachronisms in order to wield power effectively and get what you want. The Dems needed to learn that lesson several administrations ago.

>Further, the democrats have been in power for 12/16 years, and multiple years controlling all 3 houses.

When was this exactly? The last time democrats controlled presidency and both houses was during Obama's first term and they passed the most historic overhaul of healthcare in this country, which was a huge win for women's healthcare.

And they had a hell of a time getting it passed, too. There’s no way it would have gone through if it included a hot ticket item like abortion rights.

> The last time democrats controlled presidency and both houses was during Obama's first term and they passed the most historic overhaul of healthcare in this country, which was a huge win for women's healthcare.

Was it? From a foreign perspective it doesn't seem to have changed the conversation around US healthcare at all.

They controlled the Presidency, House and Senate at the start of Biden's term.

Democrats held all Presidency, House, and Senate in the first two years of the Biden administration. 2021-2022

ah obama, the good old stable days.

The same reason the GOP didn't do anything about the border or gun rights when they had the chance. Why solve an issue when you can use it to get people to vote in the next election? Its a gamification of government. They are more concerned with keeping their jobs than governing.

Trump had the Wait in Mexico policy which was great. GOP never promised anything on gun rights, but Trump single-handedly banned bump stocks after the Las Vegas massacre which is more than Obama ever side on gun control.

And then his judges reversed the ban

> I have followed the issue closely, and I still don't understand what they Dems were going to do to keep abortion legal. If it's a state issue, how would the President change anything ? If it's national issue, why haven't they already done anything ?

They could pass a national law that protects a right to travel to other states for an abortion if your state bans them.

With the existence of the Senate filibuster, passing laws is very difficult even when you win. There are entire topics where significant reform is basically impossible, from anyone.

This is why America's supreme court is so important: One can argue that most federal level changes in the last 8 years cane from the court just changing their mind on what used to be settled precedent.

So why didn’t they?

Controlling the house doesn't mean anything. Any minority easily control legislation with the ability of an easy filibuster. You seem to forget trump was in for 4 years as well with many split Congresses. You can't blame democrats for all the bad things for that period when one party (minority at times) is actively working for the 1%

Obama wanted to do that but couldn't

Isn't it true that Roe should have been codified long ago? I wonder why that never happen like it did in Canada after Morgentaler

Because it was a critical fundraising topic for decades (on both sides, to be fair).

I don't exactly know how much of national politics is optimizing for fundraising rather than for making citizens' lives better, but it's clearly far too great.

That's a popular misconception that has been shattered for well over a decade. That is nearly impossible with the filibuster, there was one slim window of 1 or 2 months in Obama's terms that they could have squeezed it in. Otherwise it's a fight to the death every time with the republicans in the Senate (filibuster)

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15abortion.ht...

> "the first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act"

https://www.reuters.com/article/markets/us/obama-says-aborti...

> "I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion, or at least considering getting an abortion, particularly if we can reduce the number of teen pregnancies," Obama said.

    > They did nothing to help with Women's healthcare.

What about Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act)? I think that helped many women secure healthcare, which is incredibly important during pregnancy, childbirth, and early childhood.

    > keep abortion legal

As I understand, after the US Supreme Court cancelled (I don't know the correct term) protection abortion rights, many states automatically banned it (via "trigger" laws.) However, I read that many women are using video calls with out-of-state doctors to get prescriptions for (chemical) abortion pills. I wish I had more hard numbers on it, but the number of abortions has not fallen as much as people thought. Also, depending upon your income level and proximity to a neighboring state that still allows traditional (surgical) abortion, many women drive to the next state for the procedure.

I mean.. it is technically not inaccurate, but it fails to account for the remaining portion of the balance of power.

That said, there were very few moments, where a given party had house, senate and presidency at the same time. And most of those moments were divided almost evenly in half so breaking ranks had a big effect.

I think what I am saying it is a tired talking point.

Can't remember where I read this but essentially most Americans are single issue voters on the economy. They just pick their second most important issue when the economy is humming along nicely.

The economy has been fine for many peoples working lives during ZIRP. But when people feel like their struggling to afford diapers and cereal most other issues become secondary.

Then all those people are in for a heck of a rude awakening. I can tell you what’s going to happen to the cost of everyday goods with a 100% tariff placed on top, and the answer isn’t: they’re going down.

Populism only works because the average voter doesn't understand economics or politics. Or much of anything they're voting for really.

What “everyday goods” are getting a 100% tariff? Is there a list somewhere?

And the Harris campaign's answer to this was...?

Keep in mind that this is after the Biden admin/Congress gutted half of his proposed infrastructure reform. That half was already compromised compared to what progressives wanted, and they STILL couldn't pass it. Guess who stayed home yesterday?

When you say, "Your only choice to save democracy is to vote for me," reasonable and rational people conclude that democracy is already done for and simply don't vote for anyone. And there were warnings that this would happen - like the primaries in Michigan - but establishment Democrats didn't listen (or didn't care). So, now, here we are. How's that for a rude awakening?

This has been my thought as well. Inflation was high, so low-propensity voters against the current party show up while those for the current party don't. It will take some time to see what the actual voting shifts were, but the economy has always been an accurate predictor.

The general consensus was to avoid high unemployment as that would anger voters.

Now we know high inflation is much much worse in the minds of voters.

Probably true, honestly. High inflation impacts everyone, where high unemployment probably affects fewer people directly.

The money from ZIRP mostly goes to the upper class as it props up asset values - stocks, land & housing, luxury goods, etc.

In general easy lending benefits the richest the most - that's why you saw such a growing split between the wealth of the richest and poorest after throwing away the gold standard.

>The money from ZIRP mostly goes to the upper class as it props up asset values - stocks, land & housing, luxury goods, etc.

One that people tend to miss: compensation for high-income professionals. When that gets bid up, so does the price of everything they spend money on. Education/childcare, personal electronics, healthcare, transportation, food, etc. It's not just the wealthy and ultra-wealthy; when the upper middle class can pay and not feel pain, that's taken as a signal to jack up prices across the board.

I would most certainly categorize what is commonly known as the "upper middle class" as wealthy. Upper-middle usually has a sizable wealth, mainly in real estate, equities, etc. So it is not only the rich and ultra-rich (but of course them benefit from this the most if they don't do anything too stupid). Of course all of these terms and definitions are quite fuzzy so the whole argument hinges on some implicit agreement as to the specifics.

ZIRP was the cause of that pain.

    > essentially most Americans are single issue voters on the economy.

Isn't this true in all democracies? It is very hard to stay in power if the economy isn't doing well.

In Portugal the same two parties have been consistentently fucking up the economy for the past 30 years with no end in sight. It's comically bad.

They then announce pensions for majority groups like the elderly and get voted into power by the same groups they are financing.

Woah, I had to look up the historical economic performance of Portugal. I found GDP growth figures from 1996. Man, it is rough: About 1.5% per year. Ref: https://tradingeconomics.com/portugal/gdp-growth-annual

That is so low for an upper-middle/lower-upper income country. (Most economists would not describe Portugal as high income in 1996.) I expected EU integration would have made their economy boom. You are right: I have not seen this pattern before. Normally, good democracies can "right the ship".

Why does this persist in Portugal?

Democratic messaging really failed. The economy was a winnable issue for them. Trump's promises (20% broad tariff, mass deportation, make the Fed a political office, trade wars) would devastate the economy and cause significant inflation. Even Elon Musk admits that Trump's plans will tank the economy. https://x.com/whstancil/status/1851265385909092565

Now right wing commentators are saying that Trump won't actually do what he promised.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/11/wh...

> right wing commentators are saying that Trump won't actually do what he promised

I expect a lot of voters actually thought that would be the case: "yeah yeah he has to make noise during the campaign, once he gets in he'll just give us some more tax breaks, he's not crazy."

I guess we'll see if that's the case.

Most of the stuff he promised he won't do. Simply because of the sheer complexity and resources involved. It's not in his nature to focus and work out complex issues. Imagine the logistics required to simply apprehend, process and deport 10-15 million people at scale. He'll probably do better at closing the border than any past president. That's for certain. But actually deporting all undocumented migrants already within the country. yeah, that's not happening.

At best , its going to be performative on many things. Even with structural changes to the administrative state that the GOP's project 2025 seems to be promising - it's harder than it appears.

Regarding tariffs - China is currently in an economy slump. Trump being transactional in nature , its certain the Chinese will be open to bilateral agreements. So I don't see tariffs lasting long.

He and Vance both said they would focus on criminal deportation first. Considering that most illegals breaking laws are just let loose free to commit crimes again by left-leaning states - those folks will now get to be kicked out like they should have been.

Then, he will apply his rule of: no adding regulation, unless you first remove regulation. The one-in, two-out program to cut regulatory costs. Considering he definitely did this in his last administration and did save ~$100 billion, reasonably certain he will do this again.

It's not in Trump's nature to do the work, but all he has to do is sign the bill. It's staffers that do the work.

In 2016 the staffers were mostly Bush people, and the 2016 presidency was mostly a Bush repeat.

In 2024 the staffers are going to be much different. If Trump gets a trifecta all bets are off -- we'll get policy set by whoever gets Trump's ear.

Under the Biden/Harris administration even software engineers were hurting and couldn't find work. Unprecedented

> even software engineers were hurting and couldn't find work. Unprecedented

Is the tech bust of 2000 so easily forgotten? And then the global financial crisis of 2008?

It was a combination of factors: zero interest rate policies changed to fight inflation and the Tax Cut Jobs act of 2017 changes (section 174) requiring capitalization of everything softwsre development related except bug fixes went into effect for tax year 2022.

If software developer salaries cannot be expensed and it’s now 5 times more expensive to borrow money to expand, jobs will be lost.

Oh, and the TCJA was championed and signed into law by then President Trump.

>Under the Biden/Harris administration even software engineers were hurting and couldn't find work. Unprecedented

Sure.

And why do you think that might be?

In other words, do you think policy changes have instantaneous effect on issues like unemployment, or perhaps they take some time?

>But when people feel like their struggling to afford diapers and cereal most other issues become secondary.

Not entirely unreasonable.

Now, if only they had the brains to realize that the economy during the current term was shaped by the decisions made in the previous term.

Cue Trump's 2nd term being propped up by everything Biden did to un-fuck Trump's 1st term.

Poe's law comes to mind for me here. But I guess this comment is sincere.

> The biggest issue on people's minds was the economy.

Which is kinda bizzare to me as a European - American salaries and economic output are growing the fastest of basically any developed economy, _especially_ in the poorer segements of society. By all accounts, post-COVID Dem policies have been incredibly succcessful.

But that's not good enough?!

American wealth isn't uniformly distributed. And as soon as you fall below a threshold of poverty in the US you feel it 10x more painfully than an equally poor person in Europe.

The US series Breaking Bad talks about a well-behaved chemistry teacher who resorts to manufacturing and selling drugs after he gets cancer and finds out that his savings are no where close to covering the medical cost. He needs to magic the money from somewhere or simply die. Such a context for the story will sound utterly bizarre to almost all Europeans (including Russians).

> The US series Breaking Bad talks about a well-behaved chemistry teacher who resorts to manufacturing and selling drugs after he gets cancer and finds out that his savings are no where close to covering the medical cost

At the risk of going off topic, this is a popular, but incorrect meme. Walter could have had enough money for his cancer treatment, especially after getting the offer of paying it off by his former cofounders. He started selling drugs to provide for his family because his cancer was terminal. (And continued because of his own hubris.)

>The US series Breaking Bad talks about a well-behaved chemistry teacher who resorts to manufacturing and selling drugs after he gets cancer and finds out that his savings are no where close to covering the medical cost.

This is an incredibly bad example and a meme that clueless people (usually Europeans) love to bring up time and time again but if you watch the show carefully, you'll see that Walter actually had health coverage for his chemo therapy from his school insurance but he resorted to selling meth because he wanted the best chemo therapist in the sate of New Mexico, and one of the top 10 in the whole US, so he had to go privately out of pocket. In Europe you'd also need a boatload of cash or a top private insurance if you'd choose the best private chemo therapist and clinic in the country outside the public health system where Walter would be on long waiting lists if he were in Europe.

And reason number two, he mainly sold meth because he had a huge ego that prevented him from accepting charity for his treatment and he loved the danger and thrill of it in his mid-life crisis to compensate for being a looser/push-over his entire life holding his career back despite his scientific brilliance, nothing to do with the US health system, that's why the show's writing and character development was so good.

Anyway, pointing at a fantasy TV show as an argument for real life issues is just silly. It's not real.

While I mostly agree with your overall point about wealth distribution in the US vs Europe (based on my purely anecdotal understanding of Europe), that Breaking Bad analogy I keep hearing over the years is just wrong in terms of what happened in the show (even though that analogy being bad doesn’t defeat your larger point at all).

Walter (the protagonist) didn’t start manufacturing drugs as the last resort to pay medical bills. From the get-go, Walter got offered a job by his former co-founder friend Elliott (who ended up turning their startup into a successful corp, while Walter ended up quitting and becoming a teacher), with the explicit mention of their health insurance being sufficient to cover any medical expenses Walter might incur.

That happened literally in the first few episodes of the show. Walter refuses because of his stupid pride. Later on in the show, Elliott and his wife straight up offer Walter to cover all medical costs (current and future ones), and he still refused. He had many many fantastic outs that didn’t require him to continue manufacturing drugs (or even starting to do so in the first place).

I am mostly upset about this inaccuracy, because it undercuts one of the most important aspects (if not *the* most important aspect) of the show. It is a story about a man who lived a life full of regrets, feels impotent, and found an excuse to do all the bad things that make him feel good, self-important, and inflate his ego to crazy highs, all without feeling any remorse whatsoever.

Sort of. As far as I remember, his primary motivation wasn't to get treatment (he actually doesn't want to get treated at all at first), it was to leave behind enough money for his family.

The healthcare in America is so bad you have to be a drug kingpin to afford it.

Yeah man, we usually die waiting for treatment instead. I had cervical spine issue which made it impossible for me to work, walk for longer than few minutes, sit in certain positions. I would need to wait 3 years to get it fixed in my EU country and that is after few years of paying more in healthcare contributions than some of the most expensive premium insurance plans in US.

I paid out of pocket to be able to function. Whatever the solution to American healthcare costs is it's not what we do in EU.

I'm not a Yank so I've got no clue about the reality on the ground, but is that actually true? Sure, the statistics say GDP is growing or whatever, but do real, normal working people feel the effects of those bumps? Cause the way it seems is that you've got a few extremely wealthy milli/billionares sucking up every single possible cent that can be sucked up while your average Joe gets screwed more and more. Companies are doing great, and so are people in the stock market, but is that representative of the rest of the country? I suspect it isn't

The economic term-of-art is the GINI coefficient. And, yeah, the US's GINI is crazy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

The average person sees grocery costs rising, and is unable to move because they can’t replace the interest rate on the loan they have. This feels quite squeezing.

> Cause the way it seems is that you've got a few extremely wealthy milli/billionares sucking up every single possible cent that can be sucked up while your average Joe gets screwed more and more.

Is there hope that this will change under Republican government?

Yesterday I went out for lunch. By myself. At a local Mexican restaurant. I ordered a burrito and a bottled coke. My bill was $18. Four years ago, that same meal at that same restaurant was $8. My salary has not doubled with inflation, but many of my costs have.

No fancy economics equations can compensate for continual sticker shock at the consumer level.

Same, small town, and the prices keep changing so fast in the last five years that the restaurants went from relatively nice durable menus to cheap little paper plastic flaps, because they kept having to reprint the menus again and again with all the price hikes.

The rapid change in prices have been a lot to adjust to, but consumers seem OK with it because they keep buying expensive goods.

If I understand the argument, we're collapsing the world order over the price of a burrito?

I believe I can answer this as I personally saw it as an issue ( with the disclaimer that I think neither candidate even suggested appropriate corrective actions ). Our household is above average for US and the state and yet I still have near constant drain on my cash reserves on a regular basis. In other words, my real purchasing power decreased DESPITE some increase in absolute salary numbers.

Could this be that if you don't have a social safety net things are much more worrying economically ?

And because of that, voters have routinely installed the party for 50 years that promises to cut welfare?

There's an economic component, and an emotional component.

Economically, inflation hurt. Real wages may have come up to compensate, but you get the inflation first, and then, some time later, then you get the wage increases. It still hurts. Even if the wages increase more, it still takes some time to recover.

Emotionally, it's not just the pain (and the remembered pain) from the inflation. It's Clinton calling people "deplorables". It's Biden calling them "garbage". It's the feeling that the Democrats have abandoned the working-class people - abandoned them for a couple of decades, in fact.

Trump speaks those peoples' language. He understand their sense of rejection and abandonment. Those are the people that the Democratic party claimed to champion, but the party took their support for granted, and championed a bunch of identity causes that the working class doesn't identify with at all.

Turns out ignoring and insulting your long-term base isn't a good way to win.

We Americans are thinking the same thing. The reality is that America is in the midst of a dramatic cultural decline—especially in rural America, which has become more frivolous, callous, and undignified, even if they're no more uneducated than twenty years ago.

Cost of living has outpaced wage growth in the last several years for most Americans.

I can't speak for what it feels like on-the-ground, but the numbers saying American real wages are growing fast, especially for poorer people.

You should look where the economy is growing and where the salaries are growing. It's not uniform at all.

The entire situation (as an EU country citizen who moved to another EU country) and the narratives around it are funny to me because they're the same as the ones going around for years in my birth country.

"Side X should learn they should get better candidates, otherwise people are not going to show up" way of thinking included, which has only led to further decline as the "conservatives" win and make the situation worse taking more and more seats and control in state controlled companies while at the same time pushing their own companies to absorb more and more of the budget. Yeah, not showing up because you did not like the candidate was a great success - if you wanted the decline to accelerate, that is.

Well, good luck US friends, to you and us all.

>But that's not good enough?!

It has never been enough, in at least 70 years, for democrats to do good enough. They are graded on this insane curve compared to perfect, and they always fall short since they haven't had serious (more than 60 senators) political power in decades, so they can't do much.

Consider the Palestine issue. I wonder how many young progressives stayed home because Harris refused to say "I will ban Israel from buying US weapons", despite it being clear from polling that doing so would lose her some votes and undeniably increase republican voter turnout. But nope, they refused to see that reality, so they didn't vote for her "maybe we will tell them to kill fewer babies" tactic.

Oh well, in just a few years the problem of Palestine will probably be solved for good. I hope those voters are happy.

Meanwhile republicans can say "I have a concept of a plan" and say that harris should be shot by 9 guns and they get 70 million votes.

My brother is the weird conservative that thinks "Trump didn't win the election in 2020" and "maybe we should regulate companies a little", but that didn't stop him from voting for the one shouting for violence. Maybe that's because he has, even during bush's term, been of the opinion that "all democrats should be shot", which he says right in front of me. I bet he wonders why we don't have a better relationship. It's always for something absurd too, like he said democrats should be shot because of Michelle Obama saying children should be able to eat healthy food at school, which for some reason made her responsible for the decline of school lunch programs since the 80s (a time which he did not experience). It's just another nonsensical thing republicans believe about their country because fox news said it every day for a year even though it's objectively untrue. Our state's school lunch program was better under Obama than it was when he was in school and yet he is sure that Michelle Obama, who has no powers as a first lady, was personally responsible for decisions our STATE made about it's school lunch program.

I don't know what else to say. They believe lies, when I tell them that they believe lies they tell me to my face that I should be shot, and when I say "fuck you" to that, they insist that I'm so divisive and partisan. It's just absurd the reality they live in. It seems so stressful to believe that the government is going to send a liberal twink to steal your guns and shit in your litter box and trans your kid.

But when you can go in front of a judge and say "nobody rational would watch our news program and believe it" and "we literally made up out of whole cloth a story about how the democrats stole the election, despite the fact that many of us were not so sure about pushing such a total lie" and suffer no consequences, what the fuck else is there to do?

Most Americans have very little interest in and less knowledge of the world outside the US. Moreover, many of them don't want to know anything that would require them to rethink their position.

I get a lot of political text messages from multiple red states (for some reason) and it was almost all culture war stuff from the right. But maybe the messaging was super-different in swing states.

The culture war crap is low-hanging fruit for fly-by-night scam PACs who don't know what they're doing. Hence the incompetence displayed when you get ads for states and races you have nothing to do with.

We didn't see much of it here in Milwaukee County. We got boatloads of mailers from WisGOP framing Trump as a moderate candidate, though.

> don't know what they're doing.

Or do they? This strategy seems to work for them so far.

For politicians, economy is the GDP and stock market.

For the common folk, economy is their purchasing power.

That's where there's the disconnect.

Whats bizarre though is that consumer spending has been strong.

There is this bizarre mixed signals problem where all the metrics look strong, and yet all the people are complaining.

My personal belief is that the crazy economics of the pandemic was kick in the head to most people's perceptions of finances. Things got really good for a lot of middle and lower class people, and now there is pain in the return to normal.

And housing.

And for financial media it is the stock market.

Which can be separate from the purchasing power.

NB: I added stock market and didn't see your reply.

Or even some "look out for your husband" messaging, but men only mattered to one side in this election to the degree that they were incidentally useful to women.

I didn't understand the focus on abortion as an issue for people. It's a legislative problem after Roe was overturned and it's not clear to me what the presidency would do to change that other than asking the other branches to take a federal action.

It's really all about control of the courts. They can, for all intents and purposes, throw laws away, inclusive sections of the constitution with little to no recourse without a level of control of the legislative branch that is extremely rare.

Given that congress is so naturally weak, the most important part of it is the senate's role in federal judicial appointments.

It was a winning ballot measure, and protection for it was passed in most states it ran (even states where Trump won). Didn’t translate to enough enthusiasm for voters though.

It’s currently unclear, but it’s likely congress could enact a nationwide ban.

I think it was even more simple: Democrats put a senile man up for office.

> There could have been some "look out for your wife" messaging, but there wasn't.

Instead, they ran ads implying that husbands were trying to force their wives to vote trump, a narrative that comforts their own biases but does nothing for the people they needed to convince.

Yeah, why would people ever support a party that seeks to vilify them?

> There could have been some "look out for your wife" messaging, but there wasn't.

No but there was plenty of "if you're married and vote for Trump you're a misogynist" or "no real man with daughters can vote for Trump" messaging which rightly fell flat.

That Trump won the popular vote is astounding. That he's currently ahead in Michigan is insane, politically/electorally speaking. By 10pm last night the MSNBC crowd was already starting the "this was just about the economy," "no incumbent Dem could have won," "no challenging Rep could have lost" cope.

The Democratic party has an opportunity here to put DEI, identity politics, and culture war nonsense in the garbage where it belongs, and everyone on the left who was talking about unity and bringing America together 24 hours ago has an opportunity now to show whether they meant it, or if they only meant it on their terms.

Calls for unity in politics always is a call for everyone to unify behind the speaker rather than for everyone to find common ground.

Political unity is something of a pipe dream when you look at some of the represented political groups in the US. I won't call out specific groups, but people can likely imagine at least one group they really don't want to have any power. Maybe because of media fearmongering, maybe real, but there's probably some group you perceive terribly. I don't think an electorate is supposed to represent all groups, no matter how extreme. There's no room for justice or equality or whatever if we give power to people actively targeting democracy or other people. It's dishonest to act as if there's some reasonable compromise in this scenario.

With Trump’s party platform planks #17, about removing race and gender from school curriculae, #18, regarding a ban on transgender female athletes, and #19, regarding political deportation and “making colleges patriotic”, I believe the culture war is being strongly fought by Trump as well, as much as I wish it wasn’t.

> Dem messaging on economic policy was nonexistent.

In what way do you think the Republicans care about the economy? How should the Democrats communicate better that the Republicans tank the economy with every presidency only to be recovered by the Democrats who hand off a winning economy to the Republicans? To be completely honest, I don't think most Americans can even understand the argument.

Being from California, I couldn’t see what the ads were like and I’m extremely curious about something.

Were there a bunch of ads explaining why tariffs are going to cause pain and raise prices? And would be likely to spike inflation again?

I’m guessing no due to the election result but please confirm.

You can’t explain things like that to most voters, it just won’t work.

> Were there a bunch of ads explaining why tariffs are going to cause pain and raise prices? And would be likely to spike inflation again?

Yes. They billed it as the "Trump tax."

Women actually deserve a constitutional amendment to protect their rights, not a court ruling of the most dubious jurisprudence. Because of Roe V. Wade the political will create a new actually applicable amendment was never pursued - a bandaide that eventually fell off.

Part of the problem is that most people lack the cognitive capacity to understand the legal argumentation of Roe V. Wade and how shaky it was and so they out of incompetence set themselves up as women's rights constitutional amendment obstructionists

The "abortion" issue is very poor marketing and I don't understand why this has never been corrected. It's not about unwanted children, it's more about the 1/5 chance a woman has of miscarrying and what happens after (along with the array of other pregnancy related issues).

The issue is that the extremists on both sides get the microphone and muddle the debate as much as possible.

Right, you can't actually talk about any real compromise position. All anyone hears are the two extreme options. People who talk about miscarriage, mother's life in danger, and so on are trying to convince you that because those exist all abortion should be legal. Anyone who is against abortion sees right through that. If anyone was serious about the compromise position where those types of things are allowed but otherwise abortion was illegal they might be able to get many against abortion on their side - except that they won't because give an inch and they take a mile is reality and everyone "knows" if you compromise at all they will just be back against next year asking for more.

Conservatives think that's just a lie. They openly reject the harms that are actively happening right now in Texas.

How do you win an election when your opponent is apparently not bound by reality? Maybe Harris should have just promised puppies and rainbows and candy.

>Maybe Harris should have just promised puppies and rainbows and candy.

She did, and no one fell for it.

Consider that, just maybe, you're the one not bound by reality.

An liberals are not honest about caring. They are arguing because of a few bad cases all abortion should be legal, instead of using this as a reasonable compromise. So long as those are the two choices a lot less humans die if all abortion is banned even if some mothers die as well. (Do not say a fetus isn't a human - that might work for you but it doesn't apply to anyone against abortion and you just look like an idiot for not recognizing what they see as an obvious fact and we get nowhere).

If you want to support a compromise: most of what you need to do is shut up everyone who will only accept their extreme position.

If they sold it as a "universal right to basic healthcare" it would be more palatable to most people.

Fact of the matter is most abortions are elective. It is, in fact, about unwanted children. It is however a shame actual health risks are lumped in - mostly due to marketing.

> Women's healthcare isn't an issue that resonates with young (read: unmarried) men

Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, not American, so my opinions don't matter.

I'm married with two daughters who are in their early 20s. The abortion issue has come up in my household when discussing Trump v Kamala, but the thing that the Democrats didn't seem to get is that even though it's something that my wife & daughters care about in the abstract, it's not a PRESSING matter for them because they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.

That doesn't mean that they aren't pro choice & don't want women's reproductive rights protected at the federal level, like it is here in Canada. But on the hierarchy of things that matter to them today, it is extremely far down on the list. What matters to them most right now is the economy and rising crime rates.

The right wing also spun it as "why on earth do the Democrats think that every single woman is dying to murder her unborn baby?" And while us pro-choicers don't look at it that way, I think that kind of worked as a reminder that while it's an issue, it's just not the most important one affecting their day to day lives at the moment.

The problem is, even when there is never the plan of having an abortion, healthcare support for women suffers greatly from the abortion plans. Because it gets legally problematic for doctors to provide healthcare for women. Sooner or later you will have a patient with a medical emergency during a pregnancy. There are already enough incidents where critical ill women don't get medical treatment because they also are pregnant.

While I agree with you I think you are missing the point made by parent which is seems to me that it's not a psychologically pressing issue.

It still seems wild to me because I don't share that psychology but am probably biased because I live in a place with a social safety net and most criminals don't have access to guns here so crime is less scary to me : Muggings are rare probably because it's not very profitable and is more of desperate/drug-addict thing.

Being a drug dealer seems much more profitable and I don't feel targeted as a person. Shootings remain rare

It has never been about it being "pressing", or even about ideology. It's about cold, calculated electoral math.

Abortion is what's called a Wedge Issue[1]. It is so because the public opinion on the US is divided roughtly 50% for it and 50% against it.

On top of that, the US presidential election is a First-past-the-post[2] system. So if I manage to get 52% of the votes and you only get 48%, I win everything, you lose everything. You can probably imagine where this is going: Instead of convincing 51% of the people I only need to convince 3% of the indecisive, and I win.

Finally, the US is a very polarized country. The "other" is always bad, "we" are always good. So the wedge issues tend to "align". If you and I agree on abortion, we will probably also agree in most of the other wedge issues.

All of these factors together result in that both Democrats and Republicans are forced to "optimize", so their campaigns all revolve around the same wedge issues. They must, if they want to win.

If you ask me, the least complex way to get the country out of this rut would be changing the voting system to something other First Past The Post.

Unfortunately, the people who are in a position to make such a change are the least motivated to make it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_issue

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

rising crime rates.

What can you do about a low information voter?

they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.

People rarely plan to get an abortion. Setting that aside, more than anything, from a political perspective, this is an issue about freedom. I'm not planning on buying a firearm any time soon, but I wouldn't support a firearm ban (and thankfully, I don't have to worry about this because no mainstream politician is running on this policy). It doesn't matter what your thoughts about abortion are, women should have the freedom to have autonomy over themselves. Also, the anti-abortion laws are also preventing women from getting medicine for treating some chronic disease.

> What can you do about a low information voter?

I already explained this in another reply, but while crime rates might be going down across the board, I'm talking about what my daughters, my wife and their friends are telling me. And they are not low information voters, because crime rates are sky rocketing in our area and the data supports that. We live in what used to be considered one of the safest cities in all of Canada, and now we hear about a new shooting or stabbing in public just about every week. Mostly drug and gang related.

Everything else you said, especially about the abortion issue being a freedom issue, is preaching to the choir. I agree with you. I'm talking about the mindset of my wife, my daughters and their friends and what they say matters to them.

> What can you do about a low information voter?

You can cite various statistics to a person up until the point their car or house is broken into. Or, until they don't feel safe at night any longer in the neighborhood they grew up.

We can double down and say these are "ignorant" voters, maybe even insult them, but I doubt that will help win them over. Even worse, it will alienate them.

>this is an issue about freedom.

There is a fundamental issue that pro-choice people (of which I am, as well) continuously overlook with this argument: a fetus isn't merely a clump of cells up until it leaves the woman's body. At some point it's a viable human being and also deserves rights. Is that 3 months? 6 months? 8 months? I don't know, but it's somewhere.

Most people in the world share that view; why are pro-abortionists so ignorant of it?

> What can you do about a low information voter?

Crime has increased in the US. The official numbers were wrong and were recently corrected, instead of dropping by 2% they actually increased by over 4%.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859346

This is something that the average person saw. The only people who didn't were in a bubble.

You are capturing why I think abortion is a good wedge issue but a poor campaign issue.

* Men aren't directly affected by it (~50% population)

* Woman over 40 aren't generally affected by it

So woman between 18-40 who can vote are the group most affected by abortion policy. And as you point out, even they aren't directly affected until they actually need one. So the skin-in-the-game for most people is very low. Most people vote and are opinionated on it as a sort of proxy for woman's rights.

However, some issues like house affordability, crime, employment, etc are very high for skin-in-the-game. People are currently affected or know people currently affected by these issues.

I would absolutely be affected by my wife dying from something which should be preventable but has been made pretty much illegal.

I would absolutely be affected by my friend dying from something which should be preventable but has been made pretty much illegal.

I am not an 18-40 woman and I am affected by the abortion policies in my state.

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I agree with you but you're missing the point.

As I said, women's reproductive issues ARE important to them. It does come up in discussions.

The point is that people often tend to be single-issue, or few-issues voters... and there are policy issues that are just way more important to them right this very second. Issues like the economy and the housing crises.

My wife and I were living on our own and starting a family when we were our daughters' age. Our daughters not only still live with us but they have abandoned any hopes of ever being able to own a home of their own.

Our oldest daughter, who will turn 25 soon, wanted nothing more in life than to have a family and she is seeing the time window for that slip by. She thought she'd be married with a home and kids by now. She found her partner, he lives with us now too. Why would the abortion message resonate with her when what's bothering her most is that she wants kids?

From what I've heard in the news, the women who were single-issue-voters on abortion tended to be older women who are concerned about the rights of their daughters and grand daughters.

But I do wonder how many young women are in similar situations to my oldest daughter. Women who are more concerned about whether or not they can have kids versus whether or not they could terminate an unwanted pregnancy. They might not be a huge voting block, I honestly don't know. But I can't imagine that the abortion message resonated with this demographic at all.

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> they're not planning on needing an abortion ever, let alone any time soon.

Accidents happen. Do they not have sex ever?

>Women's healthcare isn't an issue that resonates with young (read: unmarried) men. It should, but it doesn't. There could have been some "look out for your wife" messaging, but there wasn't.

Because sensible people don't think that Trump presidency means "no healthcare for Women".

> Women's healthcare isn't an issue that resonates with young (read: unmarried) men.

This seems to be an oblique reference to something specific about that healthcare. If someone doesn't articulate a proposed specific amount of time or objective physiological thresholds for a procedure, they aren't serious. I saw no evidence for this from either campaign, so I guess they agreed the issue was not at play.

> It should, but it doesn't.

A flight or bus ticket to California or Colorado for a once-in-a-lifetime service costs multiple orders of magnitude less than the recurring cost of groceries and basic goods.

Your wife dying because your flight got delayed, and you being imprisoned for trying to save her, are also once in a lifetime events.

I believe that abortion to save the mother’s life is legal in all 50 states, every territory and the federal district.

There are a small number of women who have died due to their physicians and/or hospitals misinterpreting the law, just as there are patients who die every day due to physicians’ and hospitals’ mistakes. Those are issues which need to be addressed.

But — so far as I know — right now there is nowhere in the country where if a pregnant woman’s life is threatened by her pregnancy then she cannot legally obtain a medical abortion.

How many people die because they didn't obtain an abortion in the nick of time? Is this normally an urgent service (outside of legally time-limited states?)

How many people struggle to afford buying groceries?

You are absolutely right, but there are still a lot of people who can't pony up the cost of flight, lodging, etc. at short notice in a stressful situation.

I think not being able to afford food and basic services may make it more difficult to sock away the $500 required for this edge case.

If you don't get arrested when you get off the return flight.

"bus"???

Isn't one of the proposals from Republicans is to ban inter-state travel for pregnant women?

One of the southern states introduced a new crime, "Conspiracy to commit abortion", which specifically targeted the idea of traveling out of state, researching abortion providers outside the state, and aiding someone with transportation, lodging, or financials around terminating a pregnancy.

I hope you will enjoy your flight to another state the next time you are sick and need surgery.

Fortunately, I'll be able to afford it because I won't be pumping my entire paycheck into social programs, groceries, and supporting a massive population of unskilled illegal immigrants.

I think Trump won college educated white women. In fact, I think he did better in every demographic? Most of them for sure.

So to blame this on "unmarried white men" is counter productive.

I’ve only seen exit poll demographics for key states. Republicans won college white men but only at 50%. He performed better among married white men (28% of sample) than non-married white men (20% of sample). Looks like his biggest gender gap is among suburban whites. Looks like his most-supportive crosstab is evangelicals, happy with the Supreme Court, whose primary issue is banning abortion.

I recall seeing polling that actually showed unmarried white men is actually the demographic that supports abortion the most.

hardly surprising

Yeah. Most democrat leaning people here and outside are not reading the situation correctly. We are currently in the process of the creation of a new world order. Its happening everywhere. Right-wing, anti-immigrant, egomaniacs with little respect for democracy as we know it are taking power in all of the western influence sphere. It might be because this is the way countries like China/russia can undermine the hegemony of the west. It might be because of the way the internet works that takes away power from the systems that used to work. Or what we could conclude that the story the liberals/left are telling all over the world implicitly locks out most people that vote and is self destructive. Either way. Don't believe the pundits they are consistently wrong.

The anti-immigration thing is because the great experiment of mass migration has failed to work for the average person, and the political left have failed to show up with an answer, a policy, a plan -- anything, really. People are voting for candidates who are at least willing to pay lip service to the issue. I don't know how bad it is in the US, but in the rest of the West, it's been a disaster. Overcrowded cities, erosion of quality of life, strained services, competition for housing, suppression of wages, the complete abandonment of on-the-job training, falling tertiary education standards, minority enclaves with values that are fundamentally incompatible with the West... The list goes on.

Very few of the things you’re listing are caused by immigration. They’re caused by institutional neglect. The person telling you they’re caused by immigration has no intention of addressing the institutional neglect, because that doesn’t get them power.

Meanwhile, the services you need, right down to food, are supplied in many cases by immigrants. So it’s working for the average person extremely well.

This is simply the ancient political strategy of blaming our problems on groups of people that are different, and not actually taking responsibility to identify and fix the real causes. It is a formula as old as time for despots to seize power by fabricating an enemy that doesn’t exist from peoples prejudice and fear.

"Lip-service" is probably a good way to put it, since all those issues are also happening in countries without a lot of immigration, but most people don't look too far outside of their own country when considering problems in it. It is easy to look for a simple to understand change, and lay the blame on it, and people like easy answers for things they would rather not have to think about (like economies).

Most of those issues are probably better explained by the trend for jobs, especially higher paying ones, to be more and more concentrated in cities. There has been almost no policy push to realistically address that from anyone, outside of lackluster and temporary measures to encourage jobs in smaller cities.

Constant immigration is not sustainable. Especially when people come from cultures which are very different than the west. They have different value systems, religions, etc. There is also the problem of scale, imagine if all of India moved to Germany. What would happen? At some point the politicians will have to look at the issue.

> Overcrowded cities, erosion of quality of life, strained services, competition for housing, suppression of wages, the complete abandonment of on-the-job training, falling tertiary education standards,

Pretty sure the ever wealthier owner class is to blame for that, not immigrants.

> minority enclaves with values that are fundamentally incompatible with the West

And this is a massively overblown problem mostly pushed to distract voters from those listed above.

How you figure immigration is the cause of all that? You might as well add hemorrhoids and back pains to your list.

It's getting really noticeable across every western democracy.

The far-left strategy seems to be clientele politics, and attempting to rule over the fractured result.

Speaking for where I know, immigrants have been substantially higher net contributors than non-immigrants while the research on wage suppression suggests it's almost certainly not true except in some very small, very specific scenarios.

So - are population and housing costs going up and infrastructure failing to keep up, while businesses don't invest? Sure - but that's down to a failure to invest the proceeds of change, not down to the change itself.

You'll get a lot of hate for saying these things, but it's good you said them.

People really need to face reality and that our society simply cannot sustain even limited immigration if those people end up as a negative for the state in terms of financials.

What you're observing is that:

- there's immigration

- normal people are getting shafted

However, the two things are entirely unrelated.

However, the ones doing the shafting tell people they're related so often that people believe it.

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Where I live I have the impression that cities are overcrowded because that’s where the jobs are. I don’t think immigration is the main problem, but I don’t know the actual data.

But well, immigration has to only increase. Many of the problems of the West are due to insufficient immigration. And at the present time, we don't even care much about quality. We need just "bodies": whoever is willing to come, ideally those who are likely to have lots of children (although their birthrate falls dramatically once in). Because a generation down the road, those people will run out and countries will be competing hard to get ANYONE in.

I’m curious how “mass immigration” has obviously and clearly impacted people’s daily lives in middle America - outside of media

> the political left have failed to show up with an answer, a policy, a plan -- anything, really.

This is factually untrue. U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 was a legislative bill that was proposed by President Joe Biden on his first day in office.[0] It died in committee.

The reality is that illegal immigration is good for ALL business (regardless of whether you are democrat or republican) in the US. This is the hush-hush wink-wink reality that most politicians understand but would never say publicly. They create appearances they are doing something (e.g. creating legislation that might fix the problem) but knowing it won't ever pass in a partisan legislative body.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Citizenship_Act_of_2021

You would need to show up with data to back up those claims.

I live in (around) a major city. Sure it's overcrowded but that has nothing to do with foreign immigration and everything to do about it being a economic powerhouse. Quality of life has been increasing since the city has invested/is investing in more transportation/bikeable lanes/better air pollution standards/less noise. Also laws that are forcing better insulation standards are a net quality of life both in terms of comfort and footing the bill. Even the people who really need to take their cars will benefit because there will less traffic jams on account of 1. people for whom it was mostly comfort leaving the road and 2. reduced speed means less unnecessary braking to get out and in the motorway around the city.

Strained services seems to be because of budget tightening. It's a policy choice that has to do with ideology (don't fund a service when it could made profitable by outsourcing it) and trying to save on budgets because of a bad economy. Again you'd have to back up with data that it has something to do with immigration.

I could on and on but basically what you are saying there was too much new people too fast but I don't think this is nowhere true in my western european country.

The only thing that could worry is the minorities enclaves but it's not hard to break up a ghetto by opening it up sociogeographically and economically, you just need to the political will to do so but instead it's left in place and used as convenient fear-mongering tool for politicians.

Immigration is not at a historic high in us or Europe. I think it’s a combination of regressive social policy and redistribution upwards plus moderately high immigration which leaves an opportunity for populist bigots to leverage anti immigration rhetoric in elections.

Everyone in Europe has been talking about it for decades and many parties on the left have nuanced views on it, and they're certainly not ignoring it. In the US, "the wall" Trump was banging on about in 2016 already existed. Deportations under Obama were higher than under Trump, and higher still under the Clinton administration.

Secondly in many countries "the left" hasn't really been in power for a long time; often government are in the centre or centre-right.

All the things you listed are a result of neoliberal austerity politics much more than they are a result of immigration.

> experiment of mass migration has failed to work for the average person

Could you precisely articulate this experiment ? America has had stable mass immigration for the longest time, arguably its entire history. Do you mean the entire American experiment ?

In what manner has it failed to work for the average person and in what manner has it harmed their bottom line ?

> Overcrowded cities, erosion of quality of life, strained services

American Cities are some of the most underpopulated in the whole world. Its only crowded city (NYC) has high positive sentiment for immigrants and owes the core of its historic identity to mass immigration. Not sure how immigration erodes quality of life or strains services. The US doesn't offer much in the way of services to immigrants anyway.

> competition for housing

This is 100% a building problem. The US has had high levels of immigration for a long time [1]. Immigration isn't going to suddenly shock the housing system. While the absolute population of the US keeps increasing, American cities have stayed woe-fully underbuilt. [2] New housing also isn't being built where people could use it. IE. within commute distance from offices in city centers.

> suppression of wages

Unfortunately these have been a long time coming. The alternative is jobs being shipped out of the US. The issue is even worse in Europe, where education is worse, employees work fewer hours and skill levels in new-tech are limited.

Wage suppression occurs differently in low and high skilled jobs.

In the low skill domain, the US already overpays blue collar workers, unionized factory workers and restaurant wait staff compared to the rest of the world. These jobs aren't threatened by immigrants, they're threatened by automation.

Among high skill workers, it is a statistics problem. 7.5 billion people from developing world want to be inside America's 300 million people bubble. Even with a 10x inefficiency, there will be twice as many talented people outside this bubble than inside it. So, the only way for the bubble to maintain its superiority is to keep skimming off the top. At 140k employment based green cards/year, that's 0.1% of the children born around the world that year. So even with another 10x inefficiency, the US would only allow the top 1 percentile of the whole world in.

The US wants this top talent. Because at their caliber, they are going to outcompete the US, and fundamentally alter unipolar power structures that give US its modern form. We're already seeing this with China. Now that the US has stopped having the same appeal to top Chinese candidates, Chinese geniuses now build within China, eroding America's control in every industry, one at a time. Eg: The world's best AI institutions are all Chinese [3]. The institutions didn't improve that much. It's just that America stopped being able to poach their best away.

Wages WILL be suppressed. The competition free utopia of the Boomers and Gen-Xers was only possible because the US emerged as sole superpower of the 20th century, while Asia rebuilt from scratch. Now that the world is stabilizing again, American wages can't hold up to scrutiny from the rest of world.

> the complete abandonment of on-the-job training, falling tertiary education standards

Not sure what immigration has to do with any of this.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184487/us-new-privately-...

[3] https://csrankings.org/#/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&infore... _______

> I don't know how bad it is in the US, but in the rest of the West, it's been a disaster.

If you're talking about Canada and Europe, that's a whole another story. Yes, their mass immigration programs have been unmitigated disasters. But, you can't plainly extrapolate that to the US. The specifics matter. On that note, I wish you were more specific about what kind of immigration ?

Skilled vs unskilled

Legal vs Illegal

Vagrant men in their 20s vs Families

Religiously conservative vs liberal

Tolerant vs Fundamentalist ?

It makes a difference.

Migrants are how people are fed and how many esential jobs are filled. They aren't the problem, even illegal immigration are blips (although massive wars have put huge pressures on countries) and are only set to get worse with climate change.

The root causes of the issues are war, climate change and demographics. No amount of "battening down the hatches" or "sticking your head in the sand", which is right wing answers to this, are going to solve it. The real solutions are strengthening global co-operation and international agencies.

Unfortunately we're going in exactly the wrong direction.

Correlation != causation, yet again for billionth time even otherwise smart folks easily do this mistake, usually emotions cloud their rationality. There is 0 proof as in any form of research that proves what you claim, you don't even try to back it up.

All this boils again to emotions - people see french teacher having head cut off by student due to showing muhammad's picture in the class, and this trumps 1000s other data points and discussions. I am not saying such things should be ignored or swept under the carpet, but analyzed rationally, discussed and good measures taken, even very harsh if they are the best course of action. Simple folks don't want to hear arguments, they want to see blood and whole world to fix their lives so they can live like some tiktokers they follow en masse.

For Europe, yet again Switzerland is doing stuff 1000x better than rest of the continent. They have 3x the immigration of average western EU country, yet 0.1% problems with it. But its population is smarter and less emotionally driven, so populists have it much harder here. Also they as society setup the whole immigration as set of rules as expectations that everybody +-adheres to. But EU has too big egos to actually admit somebody is better and just learn from more successful, so they will keep fucking things up till people are so pissed they will vote for people who will do further long term damage but will tackle scary immigration boogeyman.

Now its really not a good time for democracies that don't have well educated smart self-sufficient population, dictators are coming better off.

Your comment is a fantastic display of how easy it is to obscure bigotry with reasonable-sounding window dressing.

That is going to be explosive because there isn't a developed economy anywhere that can avoid major crises without maintaining or increasing immigration levels over the coming decades as the effects of fertility rates really start to bite.

In the UK we saw the Tories try to play the ball in two places at once: Enable lots of immigration while simultaneously pretending the country was under siege to appeal to the anti-immigrant crowd. It blew up in their faces in a spectacular way.

While I'd like that to be an accurate description of why the Tory party lost, my understanding is that the migration topic was basically the only thing the Tories did that continued to resonate with voters, and what actually lost them was a continuing series of incompetent leaders, starting with Cameron (who didn't realise the mic was still hot immediately after resigning). Nobody (of any party) liked May, Johnson got away with pleasing lies until Partygate, Truss was a forgettable joke, and Sunak was basically Jim Hacker.

IMO the only reason the Tories didn't lose sooner was that the Labour party was also stuck with Corbyn.

How about door 3: only allow immigration for skilled individuals capable of adding outsized value to our economy?

Japan is way ahead of the west in falling birthrates, but in spite of very little immigration there hasn't been any major crisis, just gradually declining standards of living.

> coming decades as the effects of fertility rates really start to bite.

I mean one solution is to promote policies that encourage people to have more children, but we "can't afford it", expecting we'll be able to afford the incoming social care crisis.

What are those major crises? Decrease in housing prices?

> We are currently in the process of the creation of a new world order ... with little respect for democracy

Damn, we should have definitely installed an anointed candidate with zero primary votes .. to save democracy.

The result is a combination of all these factors and many others, including racism, misogyny, and a desire to return to a time when groceries were cheap. Next summer, the recession will come as a great surprise to those who expected to be better off under Trump

You sound quite confident. Are you willing to place financial bets?

All the libertarian mumbojumbo about the internet and encryption prove to be wrong. The internet becomes a tool of mass surveillance and misinformation affording the oligarchic takeover and dissolution of democracy and broad based freedoms.

It might also be that neoliberalism just is failed and dead.

The wake up call should have been 15-20 years ago.

I stopped reading at new world order. I guess we’ve gone full circle now as this used to be what the GOP said about dems.

Or maybe, just maybe, the Democrats (and other similar parties elsewhere) went too crazy and left and did not focus on real issues ordinary people face?

The Overton window has shifted insanely right in the US. The democrats would be considered centrist or even centre right in much of the EU.

Liberal isn't left. Maybe their problem is that they actually didn't go left (workers).

It's more that their marketing targeted people who are already Democrats and moderate Republicans. The first group didn't need convincing, and the second group is small. The independents and swing voters they should have courted were left in the cold and either didn't vote or went for Trump. They kept preaching to choir, and the choir kept shouting "Hallelujah!", so they thought they had it in the bag.

What, in practice, was too crazy and left in the Biden administration? (Honestly asking)

I'm concerned about this "group paranoia" phenomenon that I increasingly see among friends and family. Yes, just like in the past it was the Devil himself manipulating kings and people, now it is China and Russia that secretly hold sway over Western governments (when it's not the Jews).

More than that, I think there was a lot of democrat messaging that the economy is the greatest its ever been because of Biden. When I would say, it is because of Nvidia, haha. and what does that have to do with the price of milk or eggs for some random american?

Nvidia has literally nothing to do with record low unemployment.

I'm pretty sure some guy who made it big on stocks now can afford to have his front deck renovated.

If you replace “Nvidia” with the much broader “technology” then it is indeed the major reason the modern world economy is good.

Yeah, that's the core. Politicians love to claim "the economy is good!"... but if the people see it in their daily lives that almost none of that supposed "good" makes it into their pockets, there will be problems. People aren't stupid ffs.

Many people got raises after the inflation shock... but rent hikes ate that up, prices for food and staples didn't go down despite fuel/energy prices going low, and many people didn't get raises at all or (especially in the tech sector) got laid off entirely.

People literally are stupid. Inflation was a global phenomenon, clearly not “caused by” POTUS, and the US managed it far better than every peer.

The idea that if you don’t like inflation you should vote Trump is pretty much the definition of stupidity.

The fact that Tim Walz made it through a 90 minute debate without mentioning the CHIPS act a single goddamn time absolutely blows my mind.

Dems could try to explain why Trump's economic policy made the US economically brittle, leaving Biden no choice but to pay the piper to avoid a depression. You're not going to woo voters with that kind of narrative, though, even if it's the truth.

Similarly, when the friendly The View hosts asked Harris what she would do differently from Biden, I assumed her team would have drilled that obvious talking point into her with flashcards.

My mind was blown when she said "There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact."

He's a knucklehead, remember?

you got it buddy, been in tech (silicon valley) for 25 years. I got laid off in August 2023 and the market sucked even back then. No recruiters reach out anymore. Back in 2022 it was twice a day or more.

That doesn’t even help for married men because they can use contraception with their wife.

But they can't use contraception to stop their wife dying from a miscarraige of a wanted child in a state where the doctors fear being jailed for taking the necessary medical steps for saving the mother's life, if that looks too much like an abortion.

Remind me again - who in the history of the world has ever not been ok with abortion to save the mother?

This has already been covered. Any Dr too scared to read and interpret a law needs to give up their license because they’re pushing a political agenda.

If you don’t want to get pregnant it’s quite easy even if you don’t use contraceptives. Mistaken pregnancies need to go back to health class.

The very contraception republicans are in record repeatedly wanting to ban?

https://apnews.com/article/contraception-senate-abortion-bid...

Re: “look out for your wife”: I’m going to say the unpopular but perhaps true thing… there are limits even to the amount of reproductive freedom society can grant women while being able to sustain a replacement rate that keeps it alive, and even women know it. I have been having a small but increasing number of conversations where people are absolutely questioning whether we’ve over-indexed on trying to sell women this “be just like the salary men no consequences” narrative—with women who were all about reproductive freedom in their 20s and all of a sudden they are 35, have a great job, but can’t easily have kids anymore, feel unfulfilled and feel like they were lied to. It’s real even if it’s not how you specifically feel. I don’t have the answer but I think the almost anti-child democrat narrative, which Kamala dialed to 11, really really misses the beauty and wonder of childbirth and frankly the core need society has to actively and healthily sustain itself (which simply cannot be done via import). We don’t all work and make money just to die, do we? Humans are programmed to build legacy.

I say this because I fundamentally believe that Democrats need an answer for this if they want to remain relevant. You can’t milk reproductive freedom for eternity. Americans want the focus to shift back to a more nuanced and biologically adapted conversation around sustainable social narrative. That or we need mechanical wombs.

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