Tuesday's Most Active Threads

All of the most active threads yesterday were about the election and, while they might have started out discussing different aspects of the topic, they eventually ended up talking about the same things. Therefore, rather than writing about four threads that are essentially the same, I'll just write one entry today. For the record, the most active thread yesterday was titled "2024 Election Results" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The thread, which was only started around 6:30 p.m. yesterday, is currently 174 pages long. That is almost 2,000 posts. As everyone surely knows by now, the outcome of the election was not what I either expected or hoped it would be. The morning after an election, everyone is suddenly an expert and, in this regard, I guess I am no different. However, it is with quite a bit of humility that I write this today. MAGA posters seem to have a strong desire to hear folks like me admit that we were wrong. So, let's get that out of the way. I was wrong. Right up until about 9:00 p.m. last night, I was expecting Vice President Kamala Harris to win. In the daylight of a morning after what was, for me anyway, an electoral disaster, I am not even sure where to start when trying to make sense of things. As such, here are a few random, early thoughts.

I was already aware that Harris was unpopular with the White working class. This was obvious by the failure of the Teamsters union to endorse her, but even more so by any real-life contact with members of the working class. But the fact that this trend has extended across racial and ethnic lines was a surprise to me. I don't know anything about the Hispanic community, but it is clear that Democrats have not done a good job appealing to that group. Former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump was historically popular among Hispanics last night, something that is a complete indictment of the Democrats' strategy. I have no idea what needs to be done to correct this situation, but it is critical to the Democratic Party's future that the problem is solved. What is most frustrating about the Democrats' problems with the working class is that President Joe Biden, and by extension Harris, has done a tremendous amount for that group. Biden went to bat to save union pensions. His Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act have led to huge investments in U.S.-based manufacturing, creating new jobs and returning critical industries to the U.S. Trump says that the tariffs he plans will spur U.S. manufacturing, but Biden was already succeeding in doing exactly that. One irony is that voters in the exact locations where new jobs have been created by factories built because of Biden's policies voted against Harris. It may sound elitist to say that these voters voted against their own interests, but it is hard to see things otherwise. It is quite possible that the programs that funded these new factories will be cut by the incoming Trump administration.

My next comment is also related to Biden's job-creating legislative successes. To me, the story of the Biden administration was that he inherited a crashed economy in the midst of a global pandemic and turned things around with historic job creation. Top economists repeatedly advised Biden to enact policies that would keep inflation in check, but result in massive job losses. Biden ignored such advice and, instead, pursued policies that would keep existing jobs and create new ones. The resulting inflation was unwelcome, but in recent months has been brought under control. Those who are still complaining about inflation should consider what things would have been like if they had lost their jobs instead. As much as those like me are accused of being elitist, true elitism is glibly ignoring masses of people being thrown out of work just so that you can pay a dollar or two less for a dozen eggs. Moreover, Biden's policies were not necessarily responsible for inflation. Rather, corporate profiteering through price gouging, supply chain disruptions, and monopolistic market control arguably contributed much more to increased prices. While Biden's economic policies may have been his biggest success, his inability to communicate those successes was among his biggest failures. For her part, Harris is equally guilty. Far from running on these achievements, Harris ran away from Biden, rarely mentioning his economic successes. She seems to have assimilated Republican criticisms of the economy and tried to stay away from the topic. I could be wrong — something my expectation that Harris would win this election clearly shows is possible — but I really think that Harris would have been better off challenging the prevailing thought that Biden's economy was a failure and instead reminding the public of his accomplishments. Then, she should have run on those accomplishments. Instead of saying that she is going to create an opportunity economy, she should have been campaigning on a record of historic job creation, unparalleled investments in U.S. manufacturing, and record economic growth. Her message should have been that electing Trump will put these accomplishments at risk (which it will). However, ultimately it is possible that the price increases — something that was a global phenomenon unrelated to Biden — were too big of a hurdle for Harris to overcome.

This leads to another thought that has been rolling around in the apparently empty hollow of my skull. Billionaires played a significant role in Trump's victory. Wealth inequality is a huge problem in the U.S., and Trump is probably only going to make it worse. The pandemic proved to be hugely beneficial to the already extremely wealthy. Billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk got richer and richer while common people struggled with higher prices. The gap between rich and poor expanded exponentially. One result of this is that despite historic gains in the stock market and a generally fantastic economy, the lower and middle classes were not seeing that economic success. While Bezos gained the equivalent of an annual blue-collar salary every minute, actual blue-collar workers saw their spending power eroded. To make matters worse, the exact billionaires who have been benefiting from Biden's economic growth are now aligned with Trump and will likely lean on him to pursue policies from which they benefit even more exclusively. There are two areas worth watching: cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. I think that Silicon Valley tech bros are over-invested in each of these areas, and the only way they can avoid massive losses is to look to the government. Watch for Musk, Peter Thiel, and other billionaires to support programs that route government money to AI and help keep cryptocurrencies afloat. The campaign spending by the crypto industry may be one of the most overlooked factors of this election. They spent millions and almost never mentioned cryptocurrency at all. But the politicians that benefited from that spending are fully aware of to whom they may owe their victories. Favors will be expected to be repaid. In this regard, I have struggled to describe what I expect to be the future under Trump, but I think I have finally come up with the correct term. What we will be observing is the "Putinization" of America. Our oligarchs are aligned with the country's political leader and will work together in a transactional relationship to ensure power and wealth for themselves. The rule going forward is that those who are useful to and supportive of Trump will benefit, and those who aren't will suffer. Trump is not Hitler or Mussolini, but rather a second-rate Putin. Given that Musk has the ear of both the real Vladimir Putin and our mini-Putin, we can even expect coordinated policies.

Finally, in any campaign, the buck stops with the candidate. The candidate has one job, and that is to win. In this case, Harris failed. Lots of excuses can be made, but ultimately, this is her failure. I've already discussed my disappointment that she ran away from Biden, but there are other areas in which I think she made mistakes. The campaign clearly decided that the path to victory ran through moderate Republicans. Harris moderated her policies and paled around with Liz Cheney, touting the support of a horde of never-Trump Republicans. She left the progressive wing of the party to those like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They worked diligently, but Harris rarely threw them a bone. To the contrary, Harris frequently made their jobs more difficult. Nowhere was this more evident than when it came to Israel's genocide in Gaza. For most of the campaign, Harris offered supporters of the Palestinians little more than the back of her hand. Even when Muslim and Arab Americans were begging for the smallest morsel, they were ignored at best and insulted at worst. The final result in Michigan is not known as I write this, but Trump is ahead. Trump made a serious effort to attract Arab and Muslim support. In the city of Dearborn, which has a huge Arab-American population and which previously gave Biden 80 percent of the vote, Trump came out ahead with Jill Stein in second. Harris is a lowly third. I think that Biden and Harris' subservience to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a negative impact far beyond Arab and Muslim Americans. Americans like leaders, and Biden has been completely deferential to Netanyahu. Harris did little to suggest that she would be any different. I don't think anyone believes that either Biden or Harris has the ability to end the fighting. Trump may well be worse, but if he decides he wants the fighting to stop, most people probably believe that he will make it stop. This is just one example in which those looking for a strong leader would be more likely to vote for Trump.

There are a number of factors that I haven't addressed, including race and gender. Certainly, misogyny and racism had a role to play. In addition, I haven't mentioned immigration. Others will give these topics ample attention, I'm sure.