One of my US correspondents put a very interesting idea to me overnight.
The Democrats might be feeling pretty despondent right now and with good reason. They got a great deal wrong in this election campaign, starting partly with the moment that Biden refused to give way to a younger, more able candidate and partly with the fact that, at present, they do not even seem to know how to spell change, let alone offer it.
But, as my correspondent pointed out, Trump has offered change to everyone, and whilst superficially, each of those to whom he has made a promise might like what he has offered, the reality of the change that he might put on the table is going to be massively uncomfortable for most in the USA.
Trade wars will create economic disruption.
Deporting the millions of undocumented people in the US will deny workforces to large numbers of American companies and leave parts of the US, like Florida, that are essentially engaged in care services, devoid of the staff that they need to function. It will also be immensely costly and intensely socially disruptive.
There is a serious risk of a battle between the Fed and the federal government over interest rates in the making. That will not be good for American households.
The massive cut to Medicaid, education and other Federal programmes that so excite Trump and Musk will massively harm the well-being of millions of Americans.
And, importantly, if there are no signs of progress on any of these issues, as there were none post-2016 on things like ‘the Wall', the buyers regret that will very rapidly emerge (as it has in the UK for Labour) will result in a massive backlash against the Republicans.
Large numbers of seats in the House and one-third of the seats in the Senate will be up for election at the midterms in just two years' time. The Democrats might be in a total meltdown right now, and I have little sympathy with them because much of what they had to offer the American people was dull, at best, and profoundly unappealing at worst, but in a political system as desperately two-party orientated as that in the UK is, the backlash against the Republicans for failing to deliver on any, some or most of the promises that they have made, which failure seems very likely with Trump in charge, will swing those elections very heavily in the Democrat's favour.
I see quite a lot of logic in this, even though a Democrat revival without an acceptance of error within that Party feels fairly unappealing.
If, however, this logic is right, expect the mayhem that Trump says he might unleash to begin as soon as possible after the inauguration.
2025 might prove to be a very bad year for the USA.
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I looked at the presidential elections in the USA.
Trump got 73.4 million votes, Harris 69.1 million.
But if we look at the 2020 election we get:
Trump 74.2 million, Biden 81.3 million.
Overall 13 million fewer voters in 2024 than 2020. The Democrats saw the largest fall of 12.2 million.
So a lot of voters decided not to vote, presumably because they were not happy with what was on offer. Trump won because he kept the majority of his supporters from 2020.
Cannot find any details of the total of electors so cannot work out the turnout.
“Trump won because he kept the majority of his supporters from 2020.”
Trump also picked up many votes from those who voted for Biden because they did not feel or receive any DIRECT benefits from Biden’s economic policies. Biden’s policies helped the country as a whole but DIRECT benefits did not trickle down to, as we say in the USA, the Middle-Middle Class.
The USA Middle-Middle Class are those that have good jobs and probably own a home but are living paycheck to paycheck. Something happens where they miss two months of paychecks and they are done for. These are the people who got Trump elected.
2020 election had special circumstances that did not repeat in 2024. The empiricist inside me would say that Biden won because of circumstances beyond his control. Trump’s response to black lives matter and COVID moved large amount of voters to the democratic party. Biden was lucky to win in 2020. Those intense feelings are not around anymore. Luck ran out and we have gone back to a picture like 2016.
Thank you, Richard.
With regard to migration, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/MIGRATION-DEPORTATIONS/akpeoeoerpr/ may be of interest.
Noted
BUT – that is a very different type of deportation. Those are not of people embedded into the US economy, I suspect
Richard all valid observations.
But as we know this will not stop Trump claiming that he has for example produced the biggest economic growth ever for the USA even though the reality will be very different.
There is little chance of the facts getting in the way of a good fantasy spin.
The US electorate, just like the UK’s has done , will lap it up.
In the meantime if Project 2025 is implemented then watch how the Western world will follow.
Very scary especially as there is no evidence that in the UK that Labour will do anything to “stop” the rise of the pernicious drift to the right.
Richard, what’s the difference between Sanctions and Tarrifs here, to what extent does the petro-dolllar-status protect US – both Wall St. and High St – from the inflation its sanctions and tariffs create? In fact, does it not uniquely immunise the US from reduced buying power?
related, but possibly off-topic, wouldn’t we need to go back to FDR (or maybe the year before the Kennedy shooting, 1962) to find a year that wasn’t bad for US/ US leadership of the planet?
Tariffs inrease orices in the US
They cannot reduce prices in the US
Does the dollar provide protection from tat? No, in my opinion. This is domestic
And, re FDR – was he good for the planet? I doubt he thought about it.
I heard a bit of the Today Podcast on R4 last night, & someone said we take Trump literally but don’t take him seriously, but the US he’s taken seriously but isn’t taken literally.
It’s the opinion of several of my Facebook mates in the US.
On the American website The Other 98%, a lot of people are interested in what one might call social democratic ideas. But they don’t have a focus point in terms of leadership with a coherent narrative. They quote various people but there seems to be no organised movement. I suspect that will change as Trump’s programs start to bite.
Thank you, Ian.
With regard to organisation, a bit of history:
In the noughties, Howard Dean, as Democratic party chairman, set up the fifty state strategy, a bottom up type of party organisation. However, the party elite and their owners did not like that as the grass roots tended to lean left.
Obama initially used the party machine in his 2008 insurgent campaign, but, in office, swiftly let the machine wither and replaced it with his own team, which led to “shellackings” (Obama’s term) in 2009 and 2010, the latter resulting in the loss of Congress. By the mid teens, the Democratic Party was broke* and was bailed out by the Clintons, which secured Hillary’s nomination in 2016. It’s little known how the Clintons and their media allies encouraged Trump to run, thinking the neophyte would be swept aside by the professionals.
*Politico reports that Harris raised and spent more than Trump and her campaign and the party are in debt.
The Clintons and Obamas have a big network of operatives and consultants who are parachuted into campaigns for a fee, even overseas. The Democratic Party is a husk, which the powers that be like as it’s biddable. Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, also helped set up the Democratic Leadership Conference, composed of centrist governors, mayors and Congress men and women, to sideline the Democratic National Committee.
Readers in the UK should think of how Labour Together Limited has sidelined the party at large, national policy forum and conference.
In addition to working with the US arms of my employers, I have also been seconded to US trade bodies in Washington, hence being interested.
Readers may be interested in: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/bernie-would-have-won.
Thank you, Colonel
the single transferable party perhaps?
In other words Trump is going to be bad economic news for the majority of those who voted for him. Just like it was the first time, when he gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy and undermined health care making it more expensive for many.
That’s why i find it difficult to accept it was the economy that drove people to vote for him. I think it more likely there are complex sociological reasons. It’s strange how so many, all? pundits, polls, journalists got it so wrong on the day, but, the next day knew exactly what caused him to win. There’s been a massive, political, social, media and journalistic failure for years.
It is the fact that median real incomes have not increased at all since 1980. Basically 100% of GDP growth has gone to the top 10% ever since Ronald Reagan and Thatcher (in the UK as well). So that is why folk are cross – they can see the millionaire class flaunting their wealth and they know they personally don’t have it, struggle with debts, in the US with health care costs, student loans, being unable to afford housing or get to the point of starting a family, insecurity, etc. So they are wide open to anyone that promises to ‘fix that’. The fact Trump didn’t do much and Biden was making some effort didn’t really register as 4 years in either case isn’t really long enough to counter 40 years. Plus I don’t think Biden / Kamala did as much as they could and should, also seem to have been distinctly poor at messaging. I think Kamala needed something very obvious that might have cut through, like e.g. raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $15. The current $8 is completely ridiculous and hasn’t changed for about 25 years. Compulsory paid holidays of say 3 weeks pa might have been another, and some limit on the right of employers to sack you. At the moment they can just say ‘you’re fired’ and you are out with nothing right away. We take it for granted you get a month’s notice (or in lieu), but not in the US.
Thank you and well said, Tim.
I have just come across that statistic elsewhere and was about to quote.
I found it interesting that in some states where Trump won, progressive social and economic measures were also passed.
I accept all that, and we need to tackle these issues, but why would you then vote for a man who is so obviously unfit, a snake oil salesman, a crook, misogynist, serial business failure, who has a strange relationship with Putin (as does Musk), who failed to deliver on his promises during his first term – where’s the wall, why did illegal immigration increase, did he drain the swamp, and still drenches everyone with barrage of shit and lies and promises to be an autocrat. And more.
Do his voters just deny all that and think he’s a fine upstanding guy who will save America?
We need some ethnographic research to uncover the roots of support for people like Trump and Johnson so we can understand how to counter their poison.
How do I spell this out?
The answer is that in a system that only allows truly terrible choices they thought the alternative was even worse.
I expect it will be. If you look at the farce the House went through with Mike Johnson and them being unable to agree on a budget just a few years ago, the infighting easily outdid the pettiness a room full of leftists is known for.
The Senate will remain reasonably disciplined so long as Mitch McConnell is alive.
But it’s the White House, where the majority of insanity is going to come from. Trump has promised to start deportations on day one. I expect Stephen Miller will have some level of competence this area, and I suspect he’ll be heavily involved in it. Stocks for private prison companies have spiked on anticipation of the entire mass deportation campaign. For profit concentration camps, what could go wrong?
Other remarks that Trump has made bleeding up to the election, he did promise that That they wouldn’t have to vote ever again. The GOP has total control of the federal government. They are in a place of controlling voting rights to outright election cancellation over some emergency which they’re more than capable of creating tanking the economy what offer just such an excuse.
Let’s see….
Mitch McConnell is stepping down as Republican leader in the Senate. John Thune, John Cornyn and Rick Scott are the candidates to replace him.
Josh Barro, a Democrat commentator, on why the Dems lost: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/trump-didnt-deserve-to-win-but-we. They promised a lot – too much – and couldn’t even get simple things done. Quite apart from all the Republican lies about the availability of trans surgery for illegal migrants (none) and other issues.
Thank you, G.
I’m getting confused.
Is Moscow Mitch now flavour of the month?
With regard to the prison industrial complex, please look no further than its champion Harris and wonder no more why so many blacks and even white men / young men did not bother voting.
Until sixty years ago, prisons were often run by the department of agriculture. They have always been rackets.
“Is Moscow Mitch now flavour of the month?”
YES!!!!!!!!
Moscow Mitch, who is a die-hard Kentucky Regan Conservative not a Trump-MAGAt who should be in jail for defrauding Medicare like Scott did, is a metric-fuck-tonne superior then Rick “Skeletor” Scott, Senator from Florida.
I live in Florida so I KNOW!
2025 might prove to be a very bad year for the U.K.
The thing is this.
It does not matter how bad it gets in my view.
Like filling a hot air balloon with hot air, the rich will fund whatever rubbish will come at the next U.S. election and so the clusterfuck will continue until political in the U.S. is sorted out – here in the UK too.
Political what sorted out. What you are trying to say seems to be important, so needs to be clear.
Should have said ‘political funding’ – sorry.
Too much real ale last night………………
“Should have said ‘political funding’ ”
Citizens United destroyed that hope.
Then – Bay Tampa Bay – Citizen United’s and it’s work needs to be destroyed and put out of business by a party in America offering a real change.
Hard I know, but that is where to start.
@PSR
It must start with the USA court system.
Citizens United was a Supreme Court decision that kept getting appealed from the lower courts until it reached the highest court where the Supreme Court over-turned all the lower court rulings.
If you have a spare $USD Billion, I can start proceedings a week from tomorrow.
So there you have it. ENJOY!
🙂
Excellent article on how inflation fueled Trump’s victory and why prices are not coming down anytime soon or maybe ever. I was able to read this article outside of the paywall due to my “log in” with the New York Times. Hope you can too!
https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/AEHmWvx3DwYeZy31JQEsyIAfKnI?.intl=us&.partner=sbc&.lang=en-US
I could not get in…
Try this link but you must log in to a “free” or “paid” NYT account.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/briefing/how-inflation-shaped-voting.html
Here’s the real reason why Trump failed before to boost the US economy and will fail again for the simple fact he’s an ignorant hot-head in regard to how economies work:-
“Essentially, for reshoring to work, the domestic economy needs to have the capacity to match demand. But the US (like the UK) has lost manufacturing capability in many areas. Rebuilding that capacity is not going to happen overnight.”
https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/trump-wants-more-trade-tariffs/
There was an snippet on the way one of Trump’s policies will impact ordinary people (most of whom voted for him) with a story one of the OSINT people (in the US) I follow. They reported that the wife of a friend whose husband works for a small engineering company in Pennsylvania told her that the staff were called into a meeting with management on Wednesday to be told that they wouldn’t be getting an Xmas bonus this year as the company have taken the decision to spend money on rapidly stockpiling components to avoid the increase in import costs due to Trump’s tariffs that they expect to kick in in early 2025. Apparently – and as is the case with many people – the workers thought China would be paying the tariffs – as Trump has repeatedly, and loudly, stated – and were shocked to learn that this isn’t the case and that the US company that imports (or buys) the goods have to pay it.
I am sure that misconception is massively widespread
“Large numbers of seats in the House and……………………. will be up for election at the midterms in just two years’ time.”
Per Wikipedia FYI:
“Members of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections also occur when a seat is vacated early enough.”
To make a short story long; The house has 435 voting members so it is possible to de-seat and throw all the “bums” out of the US House of Representatives in one election cycle if the “Throw the Bums Out” Movement is ever resurrected in the USA.
Richard and readers may be interested in: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/dnc-doubles-down-on-failure-rejecting-sanders-calling-out-party-for-abandoning-workers-and-economic-justice.html.
Thanks
Whatever the reasons for people voting for Trump, and I know my views are different to many expressed here, I think this could be the election where we say goodbye to any hope that we will manage to keep global warming within manageable limits.
That was also my first thought. Today is the first day I’ve managed to read anything about the US election, I’ve been far too depressed to do so since I woke up to the end of the world on Wednesday morning.
Interesting from you Richard and Colonel Smithers. In a post truth world, its hard for the fact that few benefits accrued to his supporters under his last Presidency to stick in the minds or experiences of is supporters. The FACT that the ‘little’ people feel heard is enough it seems to keep them going, beans on the table or no beans. When you feel ‘loved’ one can go without for years. The tropes about elitist, cocooned Democrats, in a hollowed out ‘husk’ of a Party all resonate for me. Bernie Sanders is right but too late is he right. The Democratic Party is representative of nothing and that is why despite all the money it is broke and broken and has broken America by allowing the rampant ascendancy of a greedy demagogue and his billionaire friends. All that money and the strategists focused on abortion??? I knew that would not cut it in USA and I have only been to USA once. All the pollsters wrong? I felt in my bones and read the runes what Bernie was saying – the little people feel heard under Trump and the little people of course don’t blame their leader but ‘the other’.
Protest voting gave us Brexit.
Protest voting gave the USA Trump.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t understand the impulse to knowingly vote for the most horrendous option, simply because the other option isn’t as shiny as it could be.
I am really not in the mood to forgive those who did. Talk about enabling a fascist? That’s what just happened. And ordinary people are already suffering the backlash.
Like a friend of mine, whose niece (whose parents are Mexican, but have been citizens of the USA for years) was told at school that “The bus is coming for you.” And boys in other schools telling girls “Your body, my choice.” And my own niece’s friend who got snidey remarks from the pharmacy cashier when she went to buy her birth control pills yesterday.
People are frightened because the fascists have been enabled. This is a lot more than economics. Sorry….
I agree with you
It is really hard Jan not to be angry with voters on these issues.
The risk in politics though is that once it stops being about ‘big ideas’ it becomes about ‘little ideas’ – people’s partiality, their own quite personal opinions about other people’s business become the politics.
It is still not really their fault (I know I am sounding like that chap from Nazareth) because they are being exploited by modern public relations methods that have been amplified by a complicit trad’ media and social media networks.
When politics doubles down on identity and personal politics, we should know that something is seriously wrong with politics and our democracy – it has become nothing but a mass distraction device.
I agree that proper citizenship is one whereby the citizen practices intellectual self-defence by being more discerning about what she/he is being told as well as keeping an eye on those who agree with you – numbers are important in politics you see, strength is in numbers.
All those Trump voters looks like a movement – but it is not really, it’s just a bunch of people all thinking about themselves and many are going to be let down.
The politics we have now panders to the worst aspect of human behaviour. But the economics of modern democracy I’m afraid still calls the shots. To get us like this has taken HUGE amounts of money. And I still think that your ire should be directed upwards, not to your neighbours or strangers because sooner or later the truth of all this might make them think again and you might have more in common with them again one day and you will need each other.
There’s an article in the Guardian by Ben Davis today offering an interesting but plausible explanation of Trump’s win.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/trump-victory-explanation-scrutiny
My knowledge of the US economic landscape isn’t sufficient to know how true this is but he suggests that people at the lower end of the income scale felt better off under Trump because of the measures put in place to counter the effects of Covid….there was a temporary safety net, or quasi wefare state, regarding housing, job security and unemployment benefits which faded away under Biden. Of course accompanied by inflation. So if Covid hadn’t happened I’m guessing people would have had a rather different experience of Trumps economic ideas.
On a different but related issue, at least related to electing a fascist, I’ve seen three excellent films in the last 10 days.
All dealt with the experience of of living under an authoritarian regime or organisation, and the difficulty and great personal cost of confronting them – often having to make life changing, even life and death decisions.
“The Teacher Who Promised the Sea” by a Catalan film maker – set during the rise of fascism in the 1930’s and the way it still impacts people today.
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” – set in Iran during the recent hijab protests – the director is now in exile, having been sentenced to flogging and several years in prison.
“Small Things Like These” – set in Ireland and touching on the Magdalene Laundries and the hold of the Catholic Church.
All served as a warning of the very personal consequences for an individual living under authoritarian rule…..they will stay with me, and I only wish they could be more widely seen and understood.
Thank you
I must get to the last of those films.
I became aware of the existence of these laundries in the 80s. It was shocking then, and noting will change that.