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Realizing that there has never been a more important presidential election in our lifetime, that the road to the White House may well run through Pennsylvania, and that every vote matters, The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Kamala Harris today.

The newspaper asks, will you vote for the prosecutor or the convict?

Will you choose the candidate who supports restoring Roe v. Wade, or the man who bragged about overturning it?

Will you choose the candidate with a tax plan to help the middle class or the one who wants to help the superrich?

Will you choose the candidate who backs a tough bipartisan immigration law or the guy who killed the measure?

Will you choose a woman of color who wants to unite the country, or a man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and divisive comments and actions?

Will you choose the candidate who supports LGBTQ rights or the one who wants to roll back protections for the gay community?

The choice is obvious writes The Philadelphia Inquirer: Kamala Harris.


https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/a/endo...

The newspaper [the Philadelphia Inquirer] asks, will you vote for the prosecutor or the convict?
...
Will you choose a woman of color who wants to unite the country, or a man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and divisive comments and actions?

But, but, that's all well and good, but gas cost me less 5 years ago, and grocery prices were so much lower too! Plus, The Border! and The Wars! and The Stock Market..(ok, maybe not the stock market). 😊

<smh>

PS - They should have framed the difference as "The Prosecutor or The Perpetrator?"

But, but, that's all well and good, but gas cost me less 5 years ago, and grocery prices were so much lower too! Plus, The Border!

I've said this from time to time, but voters don't just care about policies. They care about priorities.

One commentator I saw said that Democrats' weakness in the polls can be explained in three words:

Eggs cost more.

And there's perhaps some amount of truth to that. But I think that it's a little more.

Democrats are having a much harder time not just because "eggs cost more." It's because during the rise of inflation, Democrats didn't seem to care. The Biden Administration really wanted to get Build Back Better passed. That was their priority at the time. And acknowledging that inflation was rising, or prioritizing fighting inflation, would have hindered that effort. Because most mainstream economists would have advised that a multi-trillion bill at a time when unemployment had already dropped back below four percent would be inflationary. Especially since some part of the high inflation being experienced at that time was due to the prior big spending package from a year earlier:

https://www.vox.com/23036340/biden-american-rescue...

So they minimized inflation concerns (Team Transitory!). There was no blue ribbon panel on inflation, no Inflation Czar appointed, no "Whip Inflation Now!" retro campaign. Nothing to signal to the public that the Democrats were listening that people were upset about inflation. Certainly no "whole of government" effort to stop it. They renamed the bill to the "Inflation Reduction Act," but didn't change the substance of it in any material way.

It was one of the top priorities of Americans. The Democrats did not act as if it was one of their top priorities. The Democrats acted as though they weren't listening to what the voters were concerned about (well, except for Joe Manchin, and Hakeem Jeffries should send him a fruit basket or something). And so the Democrats lost the trust of the voters on the economy.

I think a similar dynamic played out on the border as well. Americans were consistently telling pollsters they were worried about the volume of unlawful crossers, but the Democrats never really made it a priority to do anything about it at the time. They came around later on, when the political costs were very apparent - but I think they already had lost the issue.

So it's not just that voters don't like Prices and The Border. They don't like that the Democrats didn't listen to the fact that voters were really upset about Prices and The Border.

albaby1: Eggs cost more.


More than 100 million birds have died since the HPAI outbreak that started in 2022. It has become the most deadly HPAI outbreak in history. In 2015, during the last major outbreak, 50 million birds died.

My simple math tells me this outbreak is twice as bad.

But I guess it's the democrats fault. If Trump Thee Fascist was president, there would be no bird flu.


https://www.npr.org/2024/09/27/nx-s1-5126581/egg-p....

But I guess it's the democrats fault. If Trump Thee Fascist was president, there would be no bird flu.

Agreed. The convict would say there isn't a problem, and then mention bathing them in UV light and injecting bleach.

But I guess it's the democrats fault.

Again, my point was not about fault. It was about listening and priorities.

(Okay, it's a little about fault - the American Recovery Plan was, in fact, probably bigger than it should have been in order to avoid inflationary pressures.)

At the midpoint of the Biden Administration, Americans were very upset about inflation. It was one of their top concerns. The Administration did not act as if it were one of their top concerns. And I don't think it was - I think the Administration's primary concern was getting a groundbreaking and sizable green/climate bill passed, and protecting themselves from the progressive base that was thinking of Sanders' $6 trillion package as a good place to start.

Because they really wanted to pass a very big bill, one of the things they had to do was minimize inflationary concerns. Which, looking back, was a positive for getting the bill passed - but at the cost of demolishing voter trust on inflation. Pursuing an expansionary fiscal policy at a time of high inflation and low unemployment was a choice - the Democrats wanted the policy priorities that were in the spending bill, but they then left themselves open to valid criticisms that they weren't responding to what the voters wanted at the time.

That's why I jokingly suggested Hakeem Jeffries should send Joe Manchin a gift basket. He was one of the few Democrats that elevated those concerns into the discussion over the BBB efforts in mid 2022. Regardless of whether you agree with the specific changes he was insisting on (especially his protection of fossil fuel development), his argument that voters cared more about keeping inflationary pressures in check than new programs was probably on point.

LOL if you endorse my candidate - then you have a spine.

Good ol' Putin Soviet Union acolytes.

(Btw, you don't have a candidate. You have a figurehead, put there by ex Presidents and Goldman Sachs.....)

But I guess it's the democrats fault. If Trump Thee Fascist was president, there would be no bird flu.

Agreed. The convict would say there isn't a problem, and then mention bathing them in UV light and injecting bleach.
|
I think Albaby is talking about messaging. Now I knew about the deaths, but I've watched them across china, the Philippines, and some here in the US, but we didn't message it. This might be a weakness underscored. Why are we consistently bad at messaging? Or it seems so?

"Why are we consistently bad at messaging? Or it seems so?"

----------------------------------------------

the 2 worst shit sandwiches in my lifetime: the s.s. GWB handed over to Obamam, and the s.s.
trump handed over to Biden. Dems should have been screaming from the rooftop about the actual
total dumpster fire that the Republican Presidents dumped in their lap. Biden should have been prefacing every public statement with a statement that the utter mishandling of covid by trump forced America into the situation we found ourselves in.

Trump has a huge role in the inflation that occurred in Biden's term. Like everything, he's
skated away from any consequences, but his absolute hamfisted bungling of the Covid response
led Biden into the situation he was in: Do we let the Country fall into a Great Depression, or do we flood the Country with stimulus cash ? How does anybody think the great businessman trump
would have handled it if he had won in 2020 ? He'd have done the same damn thing, but of course would have grifted a big chunk to him and his "associates".

the 2 worst shit sandwiches in my lifetime: the s.s. GWB handed over to Obamam, and the s.s.
trump handed over to Biden. Dems should have been screaming from the rooftop about the actual
total dumpster fire that the Republican Presidents dumped in their lap. Biden should have been prefacing every public statement with a statement that the utter mishandling of covid by trump forced America into the situation we found ourselves in.

I don't think that would have helped, because that wasn't where the Democrats damaged themselves.

The American Rescue Plan was popular. That was the big spending package that the Democrats passed shortly after Biden took office. That was the massive stimulus to jump start the economy after Covid. When it passed, the unemployment rate was still above 6% and the economy was still reeling. And the inflation rate was under 3%.

Where the Democrats really damaged themselves was after that. By the time the infrastructure bill was passed in late 2021, unemployment was already back down to pre-Covid levels - but inflation was nearly 7%. When the Administration moved to the rest of the Build Back Better bill, inflation was close to 9% and unemployment was back down to near-record lows.

We weren't in s.s. territory any more when those bills were passed. By the time the IRA was being negotiated, it was very clear that the ARP had been bigger than the economy could accommodate without inflation. Expansionary fiscal policy carried a big risk of making inflation worse, and certainly didn't "message" to voters that Democrats shared their concern about inflation.

Ultimately, this wasn't only partially a messaging problem. It was mostly a priorities mismatch. Voters were deeply concerned about inflation at that time. Democrats wanted to seize the opportunity that their majority provided to get some of their longstanding priorities enacted (like more money for infrastructure and to fight climate change). Those two things didn't match up, and Democrats chose the latter. They felt it was more important.

Regardless of the merits of that - regardless of whether the Democrats were right that it was more important to pass the BIL and IRA than to slow down - it didn't line up with what voters said was their big concern. Instead of paying attention to inflation, the Democrats handwaved it.

The messaging made it worse, but that wasn't the Democrats doing it badly - it was a choice. The Democrats could have gone out and said, "inflation is terrible and it's all Trump's fault." But that would have made passing the more spending bills harder. Especially since progressives were still dreaming of a $6T or $3T size Build Back Better Bill. To keep the BBB (later the IRA) alive, Democrats had to message as if the super-high inflation wasn't a problem - that it wasn't high compared to historic levels, that the "misery index" was still low, that inflation was transitory - and therefore there was no reason to throttle back the fiscal expansion.

Democrats got the IRA passed, but they're paying the price now.

Unemployment was high when the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law.
Inflation was high when the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law.
Both are low today. And this was accomplished with high GDP growth, no recession, and real wage growth.

U.S. economic stats include inflation, unemployment, GDP growth, and wage growth. Which past economy would you prefer? Stats for 9 times in the last 8 years, sorted by my order of preference (inflation under 3%, unemployment under 5%, real GDP growth above 2%, higher wages):

Inflation  Unemployment  realGDPgrowth  realMedianWage         notes
  2.2%         4.2           3.3%             371       Goldilocks economy
  2.0%         4.7           2.1%             352       moderate GDP growth
  1.7%         3.6           1.3%             367       low GDP growth
 
  2.7%         6.1           1.8%             373       high unemployment
  1.6%         6.4           1.8%             373       high unemployment
  0.5%         13.2          -7.5%            393       high unemployment
 
  3.4%         3.5           3.2%             366       high inflation
  6.6%         3.6           2.3%             362       high inflation
  7.0%         3.6           4.0%             362       high inflation

The U.S. economy has not only avoided recession. It’s growing faster. Oct. 24, 2024
High interest rates have less effect on growth
"The U.S. recession that was supposed to happen now appears to have become the economic expansion that just won’t end. The economy is on track to show unexpectedly brisk growth for the second quarter in a row. And it shows little sign of hitting the brakes. This wasn’t supposed to happen... GDP is the official scorecard of the economy. Until very recently, analysts believed the economy could only grow only about 1.8% a year under ideal conditions. Now that assumption is being questioned. Three years of high inflation has left millions of households stretched, especially lower-income families. Hiring has tapered off and the unemployment rate has topped 4% for the first time in more than three years."
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-economy-avoi...

observation  Unemployment  Inflation  FedFunds  realMedianWage  realGDPgrowth                                notes
  Jan-2017       4.7         2.0%       0.65          352           2.1%                     January 20, 2017: Trump inauguration.
  Jan-2020       3.6         1.7%       1.55          367           1.3%                             pre-pandemic economy
  May-2020       13.2        0.5%       0.05          393           -7.5%                  April 2020: COVID recession official end.
  Jan-2021       6.4         1.6%       0.09          373           1.8%                     January 20, 2021: Biden inauguration.
  Mar-2021       6.1         2.7%       0.07          373           1.8%           March 11, 2021: American Rescue Plan Act signed into law.
  Mar-2022       3.6         7.0%       0.2           362           4.0%               March 16, 2022: Fed starts raising the Fed rate.
  Aug-2022       3.6         6.6%       2.33          362           2.3%       August 16, 2022: Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 signed into law.
  Jul-2023       3.5         3.4%       5.12          366           3.2%               July 26, 2023: The Fed stops raising the Fed rate.
  Aug-2024       4.2         2.2%       5.33          371           3.3%                                     today

the 2 worst shit sandwiches in my lifetime: the s.s. GWB handed over to Obamam,

That was the worst. The GFC was an ideological financial disaster and the Neocons didn't survive it. They died with it, and we got Trump.


and the s.s. Trump handed over to Biden.

That was bad, but nowhere near as bad as the GFC. The inflation caused by supply chain problems and exacerbated by bird flu, etc., was dealt with, but we needed a message that worked through that and Albaby seems to have outlined our weakness there. How do we get better at messaging? Our messaging on Trump himself may not work. We'll see in the next two weeks.

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