It’s The Economy Stupid or How Voters Got It Wrong

Why does it take, take a seven-foot-tall former professional basketball player to deliver the bad news. What about? How the citizens of the US misinterpreted the pricing of a dozen eggs as a bellwether for the US economy. The news is the economy was not bad. We weathered a pandemic because a president and a congress made sure there was enough financial and healthcare resource for everyone. The nation weathered the worst that could ever happen. And the result? The population believed the political lies cast about by a make-believe man.

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“It’s the economy, Stupid”: How Voters Got Wrong the Major Reason They Backed Trump, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

SUMMARY: President-elect Donald Trump tapped into deep anxieties about an economy that seemed unable despite its recent growth to meet the needs of the middle class, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide.

Worries about everyday expenses helped Trump return to the White House. In key states, Trump’s voters saw illegal immigration as imposing new costs on their communities. Many believed that their own financial well-being was at risk after the burst of post-pandemic inflation. More voters said they were falling behind this year than they did in 2020.

Trump made inroads among lower-income voters, middle-income voters and voters without college degrees, AP VoteCast found. All those groups appeared to put as high a priority — if not somewhat more so — on their family budgets than the worries about the future of democracy that motivated much of Vice President Kamala Harris’ coalition.

MY TAKE: I don’t want to spend a lot of time rehashing the election. It’s too painful. But it is important to analyze some of the reasoning behind Trump supporters so the same mistakes are not repeated. In essence, this election offered Americans a choice between eating a meal of steak, potato, and green beans or eating a plate of urine-and-feces-soaked mud from the pig sty.

America chose the mud—and now we all have to eat the foul mud.

The disturbing part is not just that in doing so they enshrined women as second-class citizens (and are in deep denial that they did so) and threw open the door for decades of the marginalized being even worse off, it’s that the reason they claim they did it—the economy—will actually be made worse.

They actually set fire to their own money.

“It’s the economy, stupid,” Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist emphasized in 1992. That was true this election year as well. Polls of voters stated that the main reason they voted for Trump was because of concerns about the economy. This was especially true among Trump’s base: lower-income voters, middle-income voters and voters without college degrees. These groups specifically complained about the price of eggs and milk to symbolize their economic fears (“Harris was Trumped by the price of eggs and milk”).

Said one Latino Trump voter, “Out here, you pay $5 for a dozen eggs. It used to be $1, or even 99 cents.”

That kind of fuzzy thinking is more of a threat to the future of this country than all the nukes in Russia and China. First, the cost of eggs isn’t very significant when calculating the inflation rate and monitoring the Consumer Price Index (CPI). For example, the cost of a dozen eggs rose from an average of $1.01 in 1990 to $2.86 in 2022, which is an increase of 183.2 % in 32 years. But when you factor in thousands of items, not just eggs, there is a 123 % increase, significantly less than just eggs.

Even then, there are other questions to ask:

• What are the causes of the rise in egg prices? Avian flu outbreak worldwide. The high cost of chicken feed. Government regulations prohibit cages to ensure cage-free eggs. High demand (Americans consume 279 eggs a year per person). Supply chain disruptions (weather and other factors slowed supplies).

• Were any of these causes directly the Biden Administration’s fault?

• What specific policies has Trump proposed that would directly address these problems? And is there any proof they will work?

Of course, none of these questions entered the minds of those voters. Nor is this about eggs. They just thought that prices were higher now than four years ago, so they were better off four years ago. Prices inevitably will be higher in 2028 than in 2024. Will they use that same logic then?

Without context, this is like parents demanding the firing of Johnny’s high school teacher because Johnny failed the class.

– First, ask whether Johnny attended class regularly.

– Second, ask whether Johnny studied and did his homework.

– Third, ask whether the parents made sure the homework was done, that he understood the assignments, and that they sought a tutor if he was struggling.

– Fourth, does Johnny have a learning disability? That’s way too much trouble. Better to blame Johnny’s teacher—which, of course, does Johnny no good. The goal was to place blame, not actually help Johnny.

Since we can’t know what the state of the economy will be under a Trump presidency, the best that any intelligent person can do is to ask expert economists to evaluate Trump’s economic proposals. They did. Expert Economists concluded Trump would make things worse:

– “Trump’s economic plans would worsen inflation,”;

– “16 Nobel Prize-winning economists warn that Trump’s economic plans could reignite inflation”; and

– “Trump’s anti-inflation economic plans would likely send prices surging.”

What I can’t figure out is how these voters concluded that the economy would be better off under Trump. If it does improve, it won’t be because of his policies. The Biden Administration governed during an international crisis of inflation yet, despite that, the economy right now is very strong (“The economy is strong, data shows.

Why do so many Americans think otherwise?”)

Those who panic-voted for Trump based on their faulty understanding of the economy were the victims of a relentless campaign of disinformation. Even as the economic numbers kept improving, the Trump machine (assisted by Russian and Iranian bots) blared that it was bad and getting worse, without any evidence. And millions of Americans believed the lies because, without critical thinking skills, they are defenseless against lies. Once they’ve committed to the lies, they are stubborn and arrogant in defending their irrational choice because they think stubbornness and arrogance are virtues.

Yeah, it’s the economy, stupid. Which Trump supporters got completely wrong. Worse, for a few pieces of silver, they were willing to brush aside all the moral and social issues of having a rapist, racist, and fraudster as their leader.

They sold their souls—and country—for cheaper eggs.