From TPM Reader JG …
Usually I agree with your takes, but not with what seems to be your acceptance of the idea that the Trump victory was part of the global rejection of incumbents because of post-pandemic misery. The failures were two: first, Biden’s signal failure to educate the American public about the post-pandemic situation and what his policies were doing to get us through this period. We see the trade off: a few more points of unemployment means suffering for a relatively small group but reduces inflationary pressures that would lead to price increases for the population as a whole. Inflation — precisely because it expresses itself across the general population is politically riskier than protecting the well-being of the otherwide unemployed, a fraction of the population. You can defend the policy choice for more stimulus on grounds of compassion and the common enterprise, but do recall any such case? I don’t. You know Bill Clinton would have been making that case. And more generally to explain and defend success in navigating the post-pandemic environment.
The second failure is on the Harris campaign. They focused almost exclusively on the argument that Trump is a bad man and almost none on the argument that he was a bad president! The idea that people could think, “Am I better off now or 4 years ago” and not immediately think of 1000s of Americans dying daily and Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic response — that’s a failure of campaign messaging. Where were the ads portraying grieving children/spouse whose parent/spouse died alone in a hospital because they followed Trump’s advice to ignore the risks, use ivermectin, don’t use masks, the pandemic will disappear on its own, etc. The US will face risks in any presidency; the question is, how will the president respond? We know how Trump will respond to a grave threat — with avoidance and incompetence. And the US suffered 10,000s, 100,000s of unnecessary deaths as a result. Skull and crossbones the hallmark of his failed presidency. Bad men can be good presidents; bad presidents continue on that path. Not part of the Harris campaign.
Because Trump is both a bad man and a bad president, I think the next several years will be rocky. I wonder how he will explain the considerable inflation that his promised policies will launch.
I would like to qualify or clarify my point. I’m not saying Biden and his administration didn’t do anything wrong. Or that his administration was doomed from the beginning. I’m saying that I don’t think we can evaluate what happened last night without taking cognizance of the fact that almost every other post-pandemic Western government has been very unpopular and that they’ve almost all gotten clobbered in elections. Given that pattern, why would we expect him to fair differently? What could he have done differently? It’s not a matter of saying it was set in stone, more a matter of expectations setting and seeing the terrain he was playing on.
