Almost no mention of America's dire affordability/availability problems with housing. Nor spiraling costs of education - though that might be more of an out-of-control arms race, or negative-sum game.
The issue seems to be that the US voting public is overwhelmed by the complexity of understanding what a good idea looks like or what is in their own interests. A lot of that can be laid at the feet of the Boomers though. Hopefully they pull through, the US has historically had a remarkable ability to lurch out of disaster and sort of shamble on into accidental prosperity.
I can't agree. The highest profile elections we are offered have, in the recent past, been choices between absolutely terrible options. In 2016 we could choose between a largely reviled Iraq War supporter and Trump, in 2020 the senile Biden and Trump, and in 2024 a continuation of Biden's term, represented by a poor politician hand-picked by the party and Trump, the one-term loser.
In my adult life, the best candidate I have been able to vote for is a guy whose signature achievement in office was passing a heritage foundation Healthcare bill centered around fining me for not bolstering Blue Cross' bottom line. How am I supposed to vote in my interests?
How are these equivalent to each other? That’s such false statement I don’t know how anyone can give it a pass at this point
Maybe you might feel that Harris was herself an objectively good option, one who would successfully solve some of the problems brought up in the article. I personally find that very hard to believe.
Because those very same "sane" economic policies didn't actually do much perceivable improvement to the lives of most Americans. TFA even mentioned that Harris probably would've fired Lina Khan because "number must go up". Sure, being able to cancel Netflix with a button is nice but people want fucking healthcare and for there to be a shred of dignity in working an honest living.
People in 2020 were suffering, so they voted for change. People in 2024 were suffering, so they voted for change. People in 2026 will be suffering, so they'll probably vote for change...people in 2028....
Whether they were applicable to the day to day realities of many Americans is beside the point I'm making. It of course matters and goes a long way to explain how the Democrats lost the election in 2024, however, the policies weren't going to intentionally lead the US economy into a recession and promote economic uncertainty, shatter trust with our historic allies etc.
Of course if you're looking at things purely from a logical, calculating, "lesser-evil" perspective Harris is the better candidate, but a lot of people can plainly see that their quality of life has gotten worse compared to how their parents and grandparents were doing at their age. A large amount of people who see things getting worse and feel like they have nothing to lose is how you get political extremism and candidates like Trump winning elections.
I am perplexed by this blend of comments. It reads like a desperate attempt to whitewash and normalize the trainwreck that is the Trump administration. Trump is not in the same category as any other president in terms of utter destruction and dismantlement of social safety nets available to US citizens. They are not the same.
It's baffling and completely unserious to even insinuate Harris, by extrapolating Biden's work and legacy, would be equivalent or comparable to the hostility the Trump administration exhibited towards the working class and low income families. Biden fought hard to push forward policies like the student debt forgiveness program, which Trump-supporting republicans did everything in their reach to eliminate and revert. They are not the same. Even suggesting they are is insulting to everyone's intelligence.
I dislike the mentality that if someone criticizes one party, it means they must automatically support the other. Those are two different things! Personally I think this administration is the worst for America since the Reagan administration.
> I am perplexed by this blend of comments. It reads like a desperate attempt to whitewash and normalize the trainwreck that is the Trump administration. Trump is not in the same category as any other president in terms of utter destruction and dismantlement of social safety nets available to US citizens. They are not the same.
The point I was trying to make is that US-style capitalism, where the government exists to serve large corporations and the people who run them, inherently results in social and political instability. Ignoring the average person in favor of stock market gains creates a large number of people who are hopeless, see things getting worse, and feel like they have nothing to lose, which is when you start seeing right-wing populists winning elections.
> It's baffling and completely unserious to even insinuate Harris, by extrapolating Biden's work and legacy, would be equivalent or comparable to the hostility the Trump administration exhibited towards the working class and low income families. Biden fought hard to push forward policies like the student debt forgiveness program, which Trump-supporting republicans did everything in their reach to eliminate and revert. They are not the same. Even suggesting they are is insulting to everyone's intelligence.
The Democrats have shown time and time again that they don't care about earning people's votes. Even the gains the Biden administration had made for things like antitrust law and consumer protection were set to get rolled back under the Harris administration. "At least we're not Trump" is not an inspiring message. I think it's been telling that when the Democrats had a narrow majority in Congress during the Biden administration, over and over they threw up their hands saying "we don't have the votes" and let the Republicans stop Biden from implementing his agenda, but now that the Republicans have a narrow majority suddenly Trump has all the power in the world to dismantle the government piece by piece. After what happened with David Hogg getting forced out of the party for saying that maybe we should have some younger people representing us (note that 3 Democrat representatives have died in office this year), I genuinely believe that party leadership would rather keep losing elections than give an inch to even the most milquetoast reforms. We're left with a party of septuagenarians whose skills are in clinging to power, not delivering positive results for their constituents.
Where's the Senate parliamentarian nowadays? Sure doesn't seem to stand in Trump's way
They aren't equivalent as you said, and thats what I am solely discussing
Pause. Even though I'm not a US citizen, it is very hard to try to spin Biden's term as anything other than one of US's best governments in decades.
Comparing Biden's term to any of Trump's terms, specially the utter pyrrhic trainwreck that is the current term, and proclaim they are comparable is simply something not rooted in reality.
Try to be serious.
Concretely, I lost real pay under Biden; at the same time, buying a house where I live probably is half again as expensive as it had been. Even my most narrow economic interest is that both these problems get fixed. Do you think Harris would have done that?
I beg you to pause, take a deep breath, look at any of Trump's terms, and compare it with the output of Biden's administration.
Do that, and you simply cannot say with a straight face that there was no choice or difference in outcomes. Not even as a joke.
If you are honest with yourself and with everyone, you will acknowledge how outlandish that idea is.
Let's be serious.
Biden let hundreds of thousands continue to die not taking serious action about COVID (Trump of course did the same, and they both did it previously for Line Go Up reasons). He crushed strikes, he failed to pass promised reforms despite congressional majorities.
Nobody here has said they're equivalent. Nobody. Biden not being as bad as Trump does not mean Biden was working for the interests of the working class, is what is being said. If your political project refuses to engage with the working class, you can't blame them for not voting for you.
True. But the ever-upward cost of housing is obviously a major locus of one-way asset prices, and The Number Go Up Rule.