Which Party Is in Trouble, Again?
Thoughts after a very blue night
Yesterday was a very good day for Democrats and a very bad
day for both MAGA and the oligarchy. If I were a properly house-trained pundit,
I would immediately follow that statement by throwing some shade at Democrats.
But this was a blowout, pure and simple.
Here are a few takes on what just happened:
The polls beat the pundits
Nobody should have been surprised that Democrats had a very
good night. These elections were, as expected, largely a referendum on Donald
Trump, and polling says that Trump is very, very unpopular. Even if you
dismissed Trump’s dismal approval rating as fake news,
there were plenty of other indications that Trump would drag his party down.
The second No Kings Day was the largest one-day demonstration since Earth Day
in 1970. Democrats have been outperforming by something like 15 points in special
elections. And polling averages favored Democrats in key races.
So everything pointed to big Dem gains, although the scale
of the victories was a surprise. There had been a steady drumbeat of warnings
that Mikie Sherrill, in particular, might be in trouble. Instead she won in a
13-point landslide.
Yet for the past few months the punditocracy has been
obsessed with the narrative that Democrats are in big trouble, out of touch
with Real Americans ™. I’d like to see some soul-searching among those pushing
that narrative — the same kind of soul-searching they’ve been demanding from
Democrats. But I won’t be holding my breath.
It’s still (largely) the economy, stupid
The 2024 election was mainly about economics. There was a
big runup in prices in 2021-22, as the world economy, recovering from Covid,
experienced a lot of supply-chain bottlenecks. This price surge, coming after
decades of low inflation, upset voters. Biden administration officials could
and did point out that it was a one-time price hike, that inflation — the rate
of change of prices — fell rapidly from its 2022 peak, and was back to
more or less normal levels by 2024. They could also point out that America’s
inflation experience was very similar to the experiences of other nations, e.g.
in Europe, indicating that global factors rather than Democratic policies were
the main culprit.
But voters were unmoved by these arguments, if they heard
about them at all. What they did hear was Donald Trump promising not just to
reduce inflation but to bring prices way back down. And many of them believed
him.
Of course, Trump didn’t have a plan, or even a concept of a
plan, about how to accomplish this. Instead he imposed tariffs and began
deporting immigrant workers, both of which raised prices.
So prices haven’t come down; instead, inflation has
accelerated. And the job market has gotten worse. Thanks to the shutdown, we’re
not getting official employment numbers, but I’ve been looking at private
surveys. One number I find especially striking is the Conference Board’s “labor
market differential,” the difference between the percentage of Americans who
say jobs are “plentiful” and those who say jobs are “hard to get.” This number
is way down, which says that ordinary Americans perceive a very tough job
market:
Source: Haver Analytics
Pretty clearly, many Americans now believe that they were
lied to. My guess (we’ll know more in a few days) is that this is especially
true for Hispanic voters, who swung to Trump believing that he would deliver
prosperity and are swinging hard back to Democrats now that he hasn’t.
It also surely doesn’t help that Trump and his minions keep
insisting that everything is great, that there is no inflation and the economy
is booming. This doesn’t persuade anyone not in the cult and just makes them
look out of touch. Which they are.
Which party is out of touch, again?
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York, in the face of
hysterical opposition from the big money, has grabbed many of the headlines,
which I understand — it’s an amazing story. And I wonder what the right-wing
tech bros are thinking: If Wall Street couldn’t buy New York, can they really
buy America?
But Mamdani’s win doesn’t tell us much about national
politics: New York City is just very different from the rest of the country.
I’m seeing some commentators argue that Mamdani will be a
problem for Democrats, allowing Republicans to paint them as extremists who are
out of touch with America. But Republicans would do that anyway. For what it’s
worth, Mamdani may be on the left, but all indications are that he’s a
pragmatist who will get along fine with the rest of his party.
Meanwhile, you know which party is out of touch and riddled
with extremists? The G.O.P.
If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning,
it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t
matter much to ordinary Americans. Republicans may be obsessed with trans
athletes, but most people aren’t. Polls and yesterday’s elections suggest that
rants about the menace of illegal aliens have a lot less traction with the
public than G.O.P. apparatchiks imagine — and that Americans don’t like the
spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street.
This disconnect between party priorities and what matters
to ordinary people seems to me like a much bigger deal than Democratic
“wokeness,” which was always exaggerated anyway.
And if we’re talking about extremists within the party,
well, Democrats have people like Mamdani, a mild-mannered guy who says he’s a
socialist but really isn’t. The Republican Party, by contrast, has been largely
taken over by outright fascists, and is facing a major outbreak of old-fashioned antisemitism.
Now what?
Last night’s blue wave won’t stop MAGA’s attempt to
consolidate authoritarian rule in America. If anything, they’ll redouble
efforts to rig the 2026 midterms, although California, by approving a major
redistricting, has largely neutralized their gerrymandering plot.
A couple of months ago I noted that previous examples of
autocrats who consolidated power after winning an election, from Hitler to
Viktor Orban, did so while they were still popular. I asked whether a despised autocrat could do the same.
After yesterday, it’s clear that Trump really is despised. Can he still end our
democracy?
I guess we’ll find out.
