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)?

I think the only solution was also the craziest/most risky and the party would have never gone for it.

Hold an open primary with a candidate that talks in no uncertain terms about the failures of the Biden presidency, and the new path forward, criticizing the Biden admin for not doing enough on inflation.

I think essentially Trump won in 2016 and 2024 because he was willing to take such a risk against political norms, and this was a change election. No explaining the causes of inflation, or what Biden did right and incremental steps were going to change that. People wanted a visionary leader, and while I disagree with Trump, I think Trump and Musk provided that new vision for America.

I hate this by the way, I'm an incrementalist policy wonk who in general hates visionary leadership.

But Trump talked about stopping at nothing to remake the American economy to radically improve the lives of all Americans. Harris talked about $25,000 to buy a house.

> criticizing the Biden admin for not doing enough on inflation

But the Biden admin clearly did enough to fight inflation. He may even have done too much.

The framing of the US discussion around inflation is itself a lie.

This is kinda the point I'm trying to make, that in the current environment most people want a leader who isn't afraid of lying to make a point. That is in my perspective what vision mostly is. When things are in crisis, like 2020, people were probably more comforted by boring competence.

For instance, in terms of visionary leadership, I think Musk fans mostly don't care that he lies about when a product will be delivered. They want to believe so to speak.

I still think you got it the exact wrong way around.

People want honesty. Trump saying people have economical problems is honest (at least relatively). Keeping the discourse around inflation because Biden did a great (?) job there isn't. (That applies even if the Rs were the ones focusing on inflation, unfortunately people don't discern that well.)

I really think that if the Ds said "we beat inflation, but that doesn't immediately help you. we will do X to beat low salaries next" it would be well received. But that requires honesty.

At the same way, Musk fans like that he delivered X (there's a lot of impressive things you can put here). Talking about the future is always bullshit anyway, so he being wrong there is less important than he having delivered stuff before. The things those people are ignoring are the fact that he only put money on it, or that the more he gets involved, the less his companies are able to deliver. Not that he is wrong about the future.