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People who are upset about high prices and stagnating income do have a point. People who think that prices will go down because they were lower last time Trump was president fail to understand cause and effect at a fundamental level and have me thinking some undemocratic thoughts.
I think these people are gonna get a reality check when the tariffs kick in, the dollar continues rapid devaluing, etc.
Deporting half the farm workers will surely reduce the cost of groceries.
A lot of them won't. They'll keep blaming whichever minority they think of, or simply be mad at higher prices without actually ever analyzing where those higher prices came from. We saw it in 08, we saw it after COVID, and we'll see it now.
They got $1200 last time, surely it will happen again
The economy is good but all the money is going to the rich. “Quick, let’s elect the rich guy who campaigned with the other really rich guy to help us get our fair share.”
So that's a way of saying the economy is bad that starts off with a lie.
The economy is working as it was rigged to do and by most measures, it’s good, but it doesn’t work for most people. Trump is not going to help that because it’s people like him (and also directly him) who rigged it to work like that.
Yep. Dumb as a box of rocks.
But no, no one should blame voters that "think" like this...oh no.
Unpopular opinion: blaming the voters is counterproductive. It's important to understand why they voted (or abstained) the way they did.
Yes, some percentage of voters are indeed racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. But hypothetically, another percentage are people who were unhappy because of economic reasons and felt they were presented with two bad options:
Is this hypothesis correct? I don't know, but just assuming the voters are ignorant, or just saying that leopards will eat their faces, isn't productive.
Shouldn't be an unpopular opinion
But the ongoing theme is that “voters voted on the economy” and if you do just the smallest, tiniest bit of research of on one of those magical rectangles we all have in our pocket it’s blindingly obvious that Trump is probably going to screw it all up.
It’s like everyone turned on Fox News for half an hour and went “yup, this is our guy.”
We can blame crappy education, but my barely functional public school at least taught us to do our own research at least to some degree.
I’m not saying the campaign was perfect, but we have to assert at least some effort on the part of the voters — how do you vote for someone only having seen the news or a manufactured social media feed, c’mon.
I remember my girlfriend, just staring at the TV when that female rapper was literally twerking at one of Kamala's democrat conventions.... and was like "what the fuck is this?" I mean, I get it that celebrities can and do help candidates, but the messages being sent by the Democrats were just crazy... like, it's all a party and not that serious. And for the record, my lady is Mexican and very liberal...
That has to be a joke. How can I find it? Sounds very unreal
No, most people decided neither option was good enough. Trump destroyed the economy, Biden finished it off. Harris lies to voters and said they were better off than they were under Trump, which isn't true for any group of voters.
So if Harris doesn't even see a problem, she's not going to help. Trump is a liar but at least sees there's a problem. At worst nothing changes regardless of who gets in office using this reality. At best maybe Trump accidentally does something good.
Harris, by deciding to lie about the Biden economy and ignore the economic reality the majority of Americans are experiencing, effectively eliminated herself as a candidate. She explicitly and implicitly stated she doesn't care about and will not improve economic conditions.
Harris ran the same campaign as Clinton, plus genocide. She failed worse than Clinton. It was predictable, guaranteed really.
Well the economic reality will be improving in the next 6-12 months, right after Trump takes power.
This is what always happens: some Republican becomes president, trashes the economy then when Democrats take power they’re on cleanup duty. But of course the results take longer than four years, so another idiot is elected into office and the pattern starts all over again. Republicans take credit for their predecessor’s economy and people shit all over Democrats.
This pattern has been happening for as long as I can remember (I’m 35); it baffles me that no one else sees it.
With fascists in control, are we sure productiveness is a concern? GL with fascism when shits unproductive as fuck.
I’m angry about how bad the economy is, so I’m going to vote to make it substantially worse.
So let me get this straight.. telling people who are struggling financially and can barely make ends meet 'No you aren't! You're just too stupid and uncultured to understand these numbers!' doesn't get you their vote and even can make them vote for the other guy!? Who would have thunk!
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Been getting a lot of mileage out of this quote
Trump voters when reading this article:
The economy isn't dictated by some natural law and the metrics that we measure it's state are completely arbitrary.
The economy exists only to improve the lives of the people who make it. If the people (overwhelmingly) say the economy is bad, then we already have the answer and need to work backwards from that. The fact that stock market reports say otherwise doesn't address that fact anymore than "the sky is blue" counters "I'm hungry."
If they really cared about fixing the economy they'd be progressives.
Every bad thing their own president does to them is justice. Every bad thing he does to others is injustice.
I understand being frustrated with the government, I understand struggling, I understand feeling like no one's working to make life less challenging. I understand doing something crazy just to force some sort of change.
However, I don't think this election included an option to alleviate any of those things. To me, this felt like an election where the US decided on what type of country it wants to be, for their own future and to the rest of the world.
However, I don’t think this election included an option to alleviate any of those things.
Totally agree. Which is just another way Democrats fumbled the election. When people are struggling and your candidate says "I wouldn't change anything" it's not a good look.
There’s a big fucking difference in my mind between voting for Trump and not voting. I know the electoral math makes those choices roughly equivalent, but in terms of personal motivations, there is a difference.
This is, to be frank, a big step in viewpoint for me. Before the election, I was all “staying home is a vote for Trump”. I was doing my best to be pragmatic. But I cannot deny that the DNC shit the bed SUPER HARD here. And thus, I cannot deny the fact that there’s a BIG difference between “I’ll vote for the party that’s gonna fuck me over more rapidly” and “I don’t want to vote for either party that’s been fucking me over for close to two decades”.
Biden got inflation under control. He passed the CHIPS act. Average wages rose. Dems want to raise the minimum wage. Unions had a renaissance during Biden’s tenure.
Trump voters are lying. They voted for Trump because they are racist and misogynist and they mistakenly think he will lower their taxes.
Those that sat out the election were the real problem.
There's not one single reason when the election went the way it did, just like there is not one demographic that made the election go the way it did.
But the argument "It wasn't the economy. The economy is great, just look at these numbers [published by the government]!" is just politicians falling for their own rhetoric.
The US governments have been skewing official statistics for decades. I've lived through decades of "Oh, X is fine" when my lived experience has been quite the contrary.
I suspect that a significant source of D's sitting this election out is similar to a lot of R's thoughts: "You've ignored us for decades telling us that things are getting better, but they never do. We're done. Burn it down."
Maybe they don't expect things to get better after this election, but maybe their hoping that spreading the suffering will prompt more people to demand change as well.
Just a thought.