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1796 points koolba | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.214s | source
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drawkward ◴[] No.42063854[source]
It's the economy, stupid:

-Inflation is not prices; it is the rate of change in prices. Low inflation doesn't imply low prices. -Aggregate statistics don't necessarily explain individual outcomes.

The Dems failed on this count massively, and have, for maybe the last 40 years, which is about the amount of time it took for my state to go from national bellwether (As goes Ohio, so goes the nation) to a reliably red state. This cost one of the most pro-union Senators (Sherrod Brown) his job.

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UncleOxidant ◴[] No.42066822[source]
> The Dems failed on this count massively

What was their failure here? The failure to explain to the economically illiterate that while inflation is now about where it was prior to covid that prices won't be going down (unless there's some sort of major recession leading to deflation)?

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crazygringo ◴[] No.42066984[source]
Yup, there's nothing they could have done. That's the tragedy of it.

You can't just educate people in a campaign that the President doesn't cause inflation, when it's the result of a global pandemic. They just don't listen and don't care. The different campaign messages get tested among focus groups. The ones that try to teach economics or explain inflation perform terribly.

This isn't a failure of Democrats at all. This is just pure economic ignorance among voters.

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drawkward ◴[] No.42067092[source]
To paraphrase Rumsfeld: "You go to elections with the populace you have."

If the Dems don't/won't/can't account for it by changing their messaging, devising better or more readily understood platforms, then it is on them. You have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.

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1. vundercind ◴[] No.42068437[source]
You can manufacture a favorable electorate. Republicans have been extensively working on that far harder than the Dems have since some time around Goldwater and the last great re-alignment, and it kicked into overdrive in the 80s. They pushed for loosening rules around mass media so they could do it better, and they succeeded. This current re-alignment of their party is an outcome of that “farming” they did over decades growing out of control of the party leadership post-Citizens United and the huge shake-up in campaign spending that brought in.

This observation admittedly provides little actionable for democrats in the near-term. But one strategy that demonstrably works is picking demographics and pushing media at them that creates a demand for solutions to issues they didn’t previously think existed (and need not necessarily exist). Look at e.g. the molding and elevation of the modern pro-life movement for an early example, or at their entire current platform, very nearly, for a bunch more-recent ones.