(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Economic Populism: The Road Not Taken [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-15 2024 was a change election. Asked if they thought the country was on the right or wrong track, two in three Americans said the country is on the wrong track. Globally, incumbent governments fell, as they paid the price for their handling of the post-pandemic economy. In the United Kingdom, the Tories suffered their worst defeat in a century, in France, President Emmanuel Macron’s party was decimated at the polls. In the United States, we have just seen Donald Trump re-elected to the White House. In 10 large countries this year, the incumbent party has either fallen or had their vote share reduced, the first time this has happened in a century. All across the wealthy countries, people have experienced the pain of high post-pandemic inflation and rising inequality and evicted the party in power. However, the size of Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris will, in the end, be under 2%. That suggests that there is a world where Harris could have won the election. She outspent Trump, she had more favorable press, polling showed that people liked her more. So why did she lose? Why did Democrats struggle? Because the party has rejected economic populism and this was an election where that’s exactly what a majority of Americans wanted. Source: The Hill When Sen. Bernie Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016, conventional wisdom was that Clinton was the better candidate because Sanders was too far left. Now, I will have to clear something up, for this essay, when I say, “left”, I mean economically left, not culturally left. In that election, Trump won by outperforming his national numbers in the battleground states. That allowed Democrats to say that his victory was a fluke. In this election, we have to say that maybe Joe Biden’s presidency was the fluke, that maybe we have missed the boat since 2016: that Americans are angry about inequality and inflation. By “inflation”, I don’t just mean the CPI, which is the measure economists use to see the level of consumer good prices. I’m talking about assets like houses, which are not a part of the CPI calculation. Take a look at the chart below, which shows the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index: Source: FRED [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/15/2286578/-Economic-Populism-The-Road-Not-Taken?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/