4 ms·

What could the Democrats have done about it? Inflation was successfully reduced back down to normal levels without a recession, successfully managing a soft lan

by cmdli 2y ago

What could the Democrats have done about it? Inflation was successfully reduced back down to normal levels without a recession, successfully managing a soft landing. What else could they do?

angrysaki 2y ago
Just picture Bernie Sanders hammering home that the wealthy are screwing everybody. That's the kind of messaging they need but they would rather loose than move left.
- spankalee 2y ago
  Identifying a viable villain and being mad about it would probably have helped, but the election pretty clearly shows that moving left would have had a _worse_ result.
  - UncleOxidant 2y ago
    I'm not so sure of that if they found a way for the message to connect. Bernie did pretty good with his messaging in 2016.
  - greycol 2y ago
    Arizona and Nevada both voted for abortions rights even though they voted republican. The left and right aren't a boolean option, a left candidate who says the system isn't working may do just as well as a right candidate who says the same because they get more of "the grocery prices are broken" crowd even if their overall policies are less palatable.
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    How exactly? Harris didn't run even a center-left campaign, she pushed center-right except on a few issues at the margins and it was late in the game on that front. Americans generally favor more liberal policies economically, like stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, student debt cancellation etc. There was a lot to offer voters of all stripes there. I think too many Democrats counted on a huge pro abortion turn out of women specifically and that translating into democratic votes, which, even to my surprise, it did not.
    - lynx23 2y ago
      Have you ever considered that the stance regarding pro aboriton amongst women is to a certain extend age dependant? What I have noticed anecdotally amongst my acquintances is that older women tend to change their mind on that matter, at least sometimes. I am suspecting this has has plain egotistical reasons, simply because they no longer have to care, paired with a certain amount of women that had an abortion and never really managed to find peace with themselves about it. TL;DR: Careful, not all women are pro abortion, possibly not even the majority.
    - TimTheTinker 2y ago
      I think most conservatives have a strong idea in their mind of who their idealogical opponents are: ivory-tower academics, liberal business people and politicians, and all the plebs who side with them to push ideologies and social policies they don't want (policies like people born as men competing with women in sports). Harris did nothing to distance herself from being strongly associated with that liberal cohort. Regarding social policy and ideology, she came off as being far-left to the average conservative.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Take a look at the results of the various referendums. Some of the same states that have voted for Trump with a hefty margin also voted for things like raising minimum wage or guaranteed paid sick leave.
- EricDeb 2y ago
  exactly its all messaging. dems suck as messaging and kamala was not the right person to deliver messages because she avoided interviews, conversations, etc. Dems needed someone who would go on any show at any time like Bernie does.
- exceptione 2y ago
  The problem is: Bernie can hammer all he want, but there is no platform to reach the voters. That is __the problem__ for the Dems. 1. The big media is in the hands of a select few (tech) oligarchs. Look for the accelerationists there. 2. Take notice of what happened at the WaPo. Bezos fell on his knees for Trump, fearful of having his other business interests been killed. 2. I mean: no reasonable platforms. The false balance in the New York Times is below the most horrible standard you can get in journalism. New York Times Pitchbot exists for a reason. 3. In the US the press is allowed to spread fake news. Some media make a living of it. Others (see 2) try to give a neutral impression by presenting false balance 4. The serious, damaging analysis will get moved below the fold, if there is one. ==> Now you have gotten a system where the populace doesn´t even get informed anymore, so no serious debate is possible. ==> The Dems are not even able to have their own policies, they have to lean deeply right to stay not too much out of touch of what is presented as normal discourse in the media. If the US slips further from Anocracy to Autocracy, it will be 1) because the press gave the autocrats the nod and 2) some powerful captains of industry were on board, 3) and they were helped by radicalized far right christianity (Heritage Foundation et ali.). An echo of Weimar.
  - angrysaki 2y ago
    I don't disagree, which is sort of my point. The democratic party apparatus and their allies don't want that platform/message. I was mostly just pointing g out ghat there is a stance/platform that could combat right wing populism.
    - exceptione 2y ago
      > The democratic party apparatus and their allies don't want that platform/message. Sure they would love to use a reasonable platform with broad reach, but they haven´t. Relevant media are heavenly partitioned in buckets of insane "Infotainment Corp" and "Sane Washing Corp". There is simply no room for truth if you give non-truth equal space. Non-truth can be made as entertaining as possible, sucking out all oxygen for truth. That is what Americans allowed to happen over the decades, and the consequences are getting more grim every election. It is not even about Trump.
- gizmo 2y ago
  You can -- to some extent -- combat right wing populism with left wing economic populism, but there are two key problems with this strategy: 1) the Democrat party hates economic populism. Bernie would have to hijack the party like Trump did. But where Trump has many allies in positions of power, Bernie has none. 2) the populist rhetoric that people like the most is false. Grocery prices aren't high because supermarkets suddenly got greedy. Worker exploitation isn't why billionaires exist. I also don't think it's good strategy blame a minority group for all the problems in the country. Billionaires are not a protected minority obviously, but when you stoke anger against one group it can easily result in a different group getting unjustly targeted (Mexicans, trans people, etc). We don't need any more of that and politics of hate and resentment isn't the way forward.
  - ImHereToVote 2y ago
    The COVID years oversaw the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Either billionaires really earn their pay, which implies that they are thousands of times more productive as a person than the rest of us - literally superheroes. Or - if you accept this as the obvious bullshit that it is - then all that money is not a fair compensation for anything, but rather the consequence of being in a position of economic power that makes it possible to extract wealth from the economy in one way or another. How exactly said extraction is done is immaterial - if the wealth is unearned, it means that it was taken from someone else, since someone ultimately did the work necessary to create it.
    - TimeBearingDown 2y ago
      You seem focused on the labor theory of value, and sidestep completely the entire idea of investors, or the entrepreneurial function they serve. Advocate for higher taxes if you wish, but acknowledge that economics are not a zero-sum game and propose an alternative to savvy investment, unless you simply want to foment division or to upend modern capitalism entirely.
rqtwteye 2y ago
At a minimum they should have admitted that inflation is a big problem. Instead they chose to ignore it or lecture people why they are wrong that inflation is a problem. Same with the border.
- gizmo 2y ago
  High prices are a big problem, but the primary thing you can do to compensate for that is push wages up through stimulus spending, which Biden also did very aggressively. When people have a wrong perception (i.e. that Biden did poorly on the economy) you cannot contradict them or lecture them. That's a losing strategy. But if you don't correct them they will continue to blame Biden. That also loses. The border/immigration suffers from similar perception problems. When people believe that dems are shuttling illegals to swing states in order to steal the election, how can you respond to that? Or to claims about illegals eating cats and dogs? Trump is very effective at messaging that invokes strong emotions. People will forget about grocery prices and the border once Trump is in office. Trump will shout things and maybe do a few publicity stunts and that's enough to appease people. The actual reality matters little.
  - ImHereToVote 2y ago
    https://genevavsarette.pages.dev/immyufx-border-crossings-in-2024-compared-to-2024-tbssuqc/ https://genevavsarette.pages.dev/immyufx-border-crossings-in...
  - FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
    Stimulus spending CAUSES inflation. You are expanding the money supply. You want to reduce prices, then you need to cool off the economy and reduce the money supply. Lowering govt spending PLUS raising taxes would have been the way.
    - gizmo 2y ago
      Stimulus spending can cause inflation, but doesn't do so necessarily. A cursory look at deficits and inflation charts will tell you as much. Biden got inflation under control and got the economy to bounce back very quickly -- a feat very few people believed he could pull off. "Reducing prices" means deflation, which doesn't happen outside of a depression. Triggering a depression intentionally is absolutely bonkers in terms of policy.
UncleOxidant 2y ago
The real problem is housing costs. They should've laser focused on that. A lot of that is due to short supply, so build more houses (Harris mentioned this in her plan, but I don't think it connected). Also look into wall st buying up rentals - there are cities where most of the apartment complexes are owned by 2 or 3 companies, if one of them raises your rent and you try to find housing elsewhere you find either that the same company has raised rents in their other buildings or the other companies are doing the same.
- eschaton 2y ago
  Way to ensure the real estate holding companies and their owners switch their lobbying dollars and campaign contributions to the other party.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
    Or, pass a law restricting ownership by holders of SSN. Only 1 example. I'm sure simpler things can be done such as preventing subsidized mortgages by non-citizens. Etc. Of course, this is tough, which is why it would never be done. And that's why you lose elections. If a president won't do it, what makes anyone think that a cowardly congress would ? Plus , the usual suspects of real estate inflation are urban centers with heavy if not complete 1-party control for years. So any attempt at national policy has no credibility when local policy -which is already in control- continues to ignore the problem. Contrast this with Trump - say what you will, he is willing to take flack to do things that are very unpopular, and that's what makes him stand out. Remember the early innings on the border wall ? Walking out of Kyoto ? The collective meltdown. Exactly.
- sethammons 2y ago
  imagine a Trump response: build, baby, build. We are going to make so many new houses, they wont be able to sell them there is so many. People will have extra houses. People will beg me, please president Trump, no more houses.
  - drawkward 2y ago
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - 1984 is not a winning message in the US. Dems should have seen people are suffering and instead of giving them economic data given them hope (the Republicans at least offered some 'other' to blame/direct anger at). Most Americans use food as their comfort/escape. They can no longer even afford that. Personally, I think the Democrats need to run on ending zero hour jobs and $1 cheeseburgers. Zero hour jobs are ones where people have to have 1 or more jobs that don't give you a schedule until the start of the week, don't guaranty you any hours (other than that you will get less than 36), don't give benefits. It allows companies to cut to the bone (which overworks people) knowing that if the company needs more hours they will just push up the hours later in the week (which wreaks havoc on peoples lives because these people often need to work/juggle hours at two jobs). Companies should have to staff like they used to with actual jobs and not treat/schedule people like EC2 instance. At the least the government shouldn't count zero hour jobs as 'employment' in the traditional sense. They are not. They are human EC2 instances and that is a very stressful(harmful) way to live.

by cmdli 2y ago

What could the Democrats have done about it? Inflation was successfully reduced back down to normal levels without a recession, successfully managing a soft landing. What else could they do?

angrysaki 2y ago

Just picture Bernie Sanders hammering home that the wealthy are screwing everybody. That's the kind of messaging they need but they would rather loose than move left.

spankalee 2y ago
Identifying a viable villain and being mad about it would probably have helped, but the election pretty clearly shows that moving left would have had a _worse_ result.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  I'm not so sure of that if they found a way for the message to connect. Bernie did pretty good with his messaging in 2016.
- greycol 2y ago
  Arizona and Nevada both voted for abortions rights even though they voted republican. The left and right aren't a boolean option, a left candidate who says the system isn't working may do just as well as a right candidate who says the same because they get more of "the grocery prices are broken" crowd even if their overall policies are less palatable.
- no_wizard 2y ago
  How exactly? Harris didn't run even a center-left campaign, she pushed center-right except on a few issues at the margins and it was late in the game on that front. Americans generally favor more liberal policies economically, like stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, student debt cancellation etc. There was a lot to offer voters of all stripes there. I think too many Democrats counted on a huge pro abortion turn out of women specifically and that translating into democratic votes, which, even to my surprise, it did not.
  - lynx23 2y ago
    Have you ever considered that the stance regarding pro aboriton amongst women is to a certain extend age dependant? What I have noticed anecdotally amongst my acquintances is that older women tend to change their mind on that matter, at least sometimes. I am suspecting this has has plain egotistical reasons, simply because they no longer have to care, paired with a certain amount of women that had an abortion and never really managed to find peace with themselves about it. TL;DR: Careful, not all women are pro abortion, possibly not even the majority.
  - TimTheTinker 2y ago
    I think most conservatives have a strong idea in their mind of who their idealogical opponents are: ivory-tower academics, liberal business people and politicians, and all the plebs who side with them to push ideologies and social policies they don't want (policies like people born as men competing with women in sports). Harris did nothing to distance herself from being strongly associated with that liberal cohort. Regarding social policy and ideology, she came off as being far-left to the average conservative.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Take a look at the results of the various referendums. Some of the same states that have voted for Trump with a hefty margin also voted for things like raising minimum wage or guaranteed paid sick leave.
EricDeb 2y ago
exactly its all messaging. dems suck as messaging and kamala was not the right person to deliver messages because she avoided interviews, conversations, etc. Dems needed someone who would go on any show at any time like Bernie does.
exceptione 2y ago
The problem is: Bernie can hammer all he want, but there is no platform to reach the voters. That is __the problem__ for the Dems. 1. The big media is in the hands of a select few (tech) oligarchs. Look for the accelerationists there. 2. Take notice of what happened at the WaPo. Bezos fell on his knees for Trump, fearful of having his other business interests been killed. 2. I mean: no reasonable platforms. The false balance in the New York Times is below the most horrible standard you can get in journalism. New York Times Pitchbot exists for a reason. 3. In the US the press is allowed to spread fake news. Some media make a living of it. Others (see 2) try to give a neutral impression by presenting false balance 4. The serious, damaging analysis will get moved below the fold, if there is one. ==> Now you have gotten a system where the populace doesn´t even get informed anymore, so no serious debate is possible. ==> The Dems are not even able to have their own policies, they have to lean deeply right to stay not too much out of touch of what is presented as normal discourse in the media. If the US slips further from Anocracy to Autocracy, it will be 1) because the press gave the autocrats the nod and 2) some powerful captains of industry were on board, 3) and they were helped by radicalized far right christianity (Heritage Foundation et ali.). An echo of Weimar.
- angrysaki 2y ago
  I don't disagree, which is sort of my point. The democratic party apparatus and their allies don't want that platform/message. I was mostly just pointing g out ghat there is a stance/platform that could combat right wing populism.
  - exceptione 2y ago
    > The democratic party apparatus and their allies don't want that platform/message. Sure they would love to use a reasonable platform with broad reach, but they haven´t. Relevant media are heavenly partitioned in buckets of insane "Infotainment Corp" and "Sane Washing Corp". There is simply no room for truth if you give non-truth equal space. Non-truth can be made as entertaining as possible, sucking out all oxygen for truth. That is what Americans allowed to happen over the decades, and the consequences are getting more grim every election. It is not even about Trump.
gizmo 2y ago
You can -- to some extent -- combat right wing populism with left wing economic populism, but there are two key problems with this strategy: 1) the Democrat party hates economic populism. Bernie would have to hijack the party like Trump did. But where Trump has many allies in positions of power, Bernie has none. 2) the populist rhetoric that people like the most is false. Grocery prices aren't high because supermarkets suddenly got greedy. Worker exploitation isn't why billionaires exist. I also don't think it's good strategy blame a minority group for all the problems in the country. Billionaires are not a protected minority obviously, but when you stoke anger against one group it can easily result in a different group getting unjustly targeted (Mexicans, trans people, etc). We don't need any more of that and politics of hate and resentment isn't the way forward.
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  The COVID years oversaw the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Either billionaires really earn their pay, which implies that they are thousands of times more productive as a person than the rest of us - literally superheroes. Or - if you accept this as the obvious bullshit that it is - then all that money is not a fair compensation for anything, but rather the consequence of being in a position of economic power that makes it possible to extract wealth from the economy in one way or another. How exactly said extraction is done is immaterial - if the wealth is unearned, it means that it was taken from someone else, since someone ultimately did the work necessary to create it.
  - TimeBearingDown 2y ago
    You seem focused on the labor theory of value, and sidestep completely the entire idea of investors, or the entrepreneurial function they serve. Advocate for higher taxes if you wish, but acknowledge that economics are not a zero-sum game and propose an alternative to savvy investment, unless you simply want to foment division or to upend modern capitalism entirely.

rqtwteye 2y ago

At a minimum they should have admitted that inflation is a big problem. Instead they chose to ignore it or lecture people why they are wrong that inflation is a problem. Same with the border.

gizmo 2y ago
High prices are a big problem, but the primary thing you can do to compensate for that is push wages up through stimulus spending, which Biden also did very aggressively. When people have a wrong perception (i.e. that Biden did poorly on the economy) you cannot contradict them or lecture them. That's a losing strategy. But if you don't correct them they will continue to blame Biden. That also loses. The border/immigration suffers from similar perception problems. When people believe that dems are shuttling illegals to swing states in order to steal the election, how can you respond to that? Or to claims about illegals eating cats and dogs? Trump is very effective at messaging that invokes strong emotions. People will forget about grocery prices and the border once Trump is in office. Trump will shout things and maybe do a few publicity stunts and that's enough to appease people. The actual reality matters little.
- ImHereToVote 2y ago
  https://genevavsarette.pages.dev/immyufx-border-crossings-in-2024-compared-to-2024-tbssuqc/ https://genevavsarette.pages.dev/immyufx-border-crossings-in...
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  Stimulus spending CAUSES inflation. You are expanding the money supply. You want to reduce prices, then you need to cool off the economy and reduce the money supply. Lowering govt spending PLUS raising taxes would have been the way.
  - gizmo 2y ago
    Stimulus spending can cause inflation, but doesn't do so necessarily. A cursory look at deficits and inflation charts will tell you as much. Biden got inflation under control and got the economy to bounce back very quickly -- a feat very few people believed he could pull off. "Reducing prices" means deflation, which doesn't happen outside of a depression. Triggering a depression intentionally is absolutely bonkers in terms of policy.

UncleOxidant 2y ago

The real problem is housing costs. They should've laser focused on that. A lot of that is due to short supply, so build more houses (Harris mentioned this in her plan, but I don't think it connected). Also look into wall st buying up rentals - there are cities where most of the apartment complexes are owned by 2 or 3 companies, if one of them raises your rent and you try to find housing elsewhere you find either that the same company has raised rents in their other buildings or the other companies are doing the same.

eschaton 2y ago
Way to ensure the real estate holding companies and their owners switch their lobbying dollars and campaign contributions to the other party.
- IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
  Or, pass a law restricting ownership by holders of SSN. Only 1 example. I'm sure simpler things can be done such as preventing subsidized mortgages by non-citizens. Etc. Of course, this is tough, which is why it would never be done. And that's why you lose elections. If a president won't do it, what makes anyone think that a cowardly congress would ? Plus , the usual suspects of real estate inflation are urban centers with heavy if not complete 1-party control for years. So any attempt at national policy has no credibility when local policy -which is already in control- continues to ignore the problem. Contrast this with Trump - say what you will, he is willing to take flack to do things that are very unpopular, and that's what makes him stand out. Remember the early innings on the border wall ? Walking out of Kyoto ? The collective meltdown. Exactly.
sethammons 2y ago
imagine a Trump response: build, baby, build. We are going to make so many new houses, they wont be able to sell them there is so many. People will have extra houses. People will beg me, please president Trump, no more houses.
- drawkward 2y ago

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - 1984 is not a winning message in the US. Dems should have seen people are suffering and instead of giving them economic data given them hope (the Republicans at least offered some 'other' to blame/direct anger at). Most Americans use food as their comfort/escape. They can no longer even afford that. Personally, I think the Democrats need to run on ending zero hour jobs and $1 cheeseburgers. Zero hour jobs are ones where people have to have 1 or more jobs that don't give you a schedule until the start of the week, don't guaranty you any hours (other than that you will get less than 36), don't give benefits. It allows companies to cut to the bone (which overworks people) knowing that if the company needs more hours they will just push up the hours later in the week (which wreaks havoc on peoples lives because these people often need to work/juggle hours at two jobs). Companies should have to staff like they used to with actual jobs and not treat/schedule people like EC2 instance. At the least the government shouldn't count zero hour jobs as 'employment' in the traditional sense. They are not. They are human EC2 instances and that is a very stressful(harmful) way to live.