Trump wins presidency for second time

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.

> 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)?

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.

You will never win in a democracy if your stance is 'the voters failed me'. That the dems have chosen that mindset saddens me.

It's not the voters job to come to a party, it's the party's obligation to figure out how to appeal to voters. The dems chose to tell people who are suffering that 'the economy is great, this is what we think a good economy looks like and we are patting ourselves on the back for it'. To voters that are suffering that seems like 'our version of good doesn't GAF about you'. Not a great message. You could have the best economics professors/communicators in the world explaining it, people still aren't voting for that.

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?

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.

They were constantly mentioning the cost of living, and even proposed extreme measures (such as price controls) to try to fix the issue. Democrats were not avoiding the issue at all. Same with the border, where they worked with Republicans to pass a massive border bill that Trump then killed.