Liberal Pundits Were Dead Wrong on Americans’ Economic Pain
https://jacobin.com/2024/12/liberal-pundits-democrats-economic-painOpen linkView original on lemmy.worldhttps://jacobin.com/2024/12/liberal-pundits-democrats-economic-painOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
This is something I was saying all along.
When people tell you "I'm hurting!" the answer is NOT "What are you talking about, Jack? Things are GREAT!"
They WANT Clinton's lip bite and "I feel your pain!" It's LITERALLY the economy stupid.
Telling people 3% inflation is no big deal when it's compounded on top of 3% on top of 9% is how you end a political career.
The View gave Harris a lifeline when they asked her "What would you do different?" and she blew it with "not a thing that comes to mind."
Even if there was nothing she could have done differently, she could have said "We should have been more empathetic to critics of the administration, from Afghanistan, to inflation, to Gaza."
It wouldn't have MEANT anything, but would have given the appearance of meaning something, a tactic Democrats usually excel at. ;)
Promising to be four more years of Biden was an astonishingly idiotic move.
And it's not that Biden was an objectively terrible president. His administration did a lot of genuinely good things. But as you say, the Democrats completely failed to understand the degree to which the average voter is struggling.
It didn't help that Democratic leadership seemed intent on sniffing their own farts.
"President Joe Biden will be remembered among the most consequential presidents in American history."
https://connolly.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=6113
https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-on-president-bidens-announcement-1eb78b3ba3fc
https://www.barrons.com/news/pelosi-hails-biden-as-one-of-the-most-consequential-us-presidents-78f53c86
Also Pelosi:
“A Mount Rushmore kind of president of the United States.”
https://mynbc15.com/news/nation-world/pelosi-wants-biden-added-to-mount-rushmore-such-a-consequential-president-nancy-joe-kamala-harris-november-election-2024-presidential-washington-dc-politics-abraham-lincoln-teddy-roosevelt-george-washington-and-thomas-jefferson
He'll also be remembered for his historically low approval ratings. Not even Trump dipped as low as Biden. And whether or not that rating is justified is irrelevant — those numbers matter when deciding what platform you're going to run on.
It blows my mind that a candidate could looks at Biden's numbers and then turn around and say they wouldn't change anything. Literal insanity.
The entire DNC leadership needs to be shown the door and replaced with people who at the bare minimum know how to read a fucking graph.
Explaining the election result is simple: people picked comfortable lies over uncomfortable truths.
Let me guess, Biden and his Democrats were the "truths"?
Four status quo stans mad already, but those are rookie numbers.
Yes. These truths are things like the economy is improving but will take time, prices will never go back to what they were before Covid, man-made climate change is a real existential threat to human civilization, legalizing abortion results in fewer deaths than banning it, trans people exist, and institutional racism exists.
Some of the comfortable lies are that tariffs will fix everything, fuel prices will drop if we drill more, wars in Ukraine and Palestine can be easily ended with simple negotiation, and Project 2025 isn't the working plan for the Trump presidency.
About to get a lot worse under the donvict.
If it's something negative towards liberals or democrats, it won't get much traction in these parts...
Bet