Originally Posted by FurnaceFace
To me It's really a Maslow Hierarchy of Needs like situation. It seems a majority of voters feel the economy is the biggest issue. They are worried about affording rent, food, and other basic needs. One party talks endlessly about how the party in power caused this, and we can fix it, here's some broad ideas and the party n charge doesn't really push back a lot, and focuses on "that guy is evil, don't vote for him." I found it strange how Harris et al never seemed to have a message of:
"we just came out of an unprecedented global event, the entire world hurt from it, but you know what, we're doing way better than other countries. Inflation was high, it was hard for everyone, but we've brought it down and now we are at 2%. The best in the world. Our policies brought it down, and with other policies like [a national minimum wage, loan forgiveness, infrastructure investment to get more of you highly skilled blue collar workers back to work in your industries, et al] we will continue to improve."
I'm sure political writers could do better. The point is there was an opportunity to address the concerns, and simply state how you will improve it, while also explaining tariffs in simple terms. Perhaps they were too gunshy of that because they felt it would be easy to argue Harris was in charge when it was bad. I still think she should have leaned into that, and said I was in charge, and I brought it down faster than anyone could have. That, or just distanced herself completely from Joe: " Joe was the leader, I wasn't, I'd do things differently."
I find it amazing how poorly they read the biggest demographic and didn't understand their biggest issue. Perhaps hindsight, but she was really cut off at the knees: clear ties to an administration people were upset with, 107 days to get people to really know her, and then race and gender that will have played smaller parts, but had to still be there.
I'd like to see the parallel universe where Biden withdraws in January, and Wilmer, Newsom, or someone from outside the administration was the candidate with more time to connect.
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