You will never win in a democracy if your stance is 'the voters failed me'. That the dems have chosen that mindset saddens me.

It's not the voters job to come to a party, it's the party's obligation to figure out how to appeal to voters. The dems chose to tell people who are suffering that 'the economy is great, this is what we think a good economy looks like and we are patting ourselves on the back for it'. To voters that are suffering that seems like 'our version of good doesn't GAF about you'. Not a great message. You could have the best economics professors/communicators in the world explaining it, people still aren't voting for that.

But the economy is pretty great: 4.1% unemployment - I'm old enough to remember when 5% was considered full employment, inflation rate back down close to pre-covid levels, manufacturing up, etc. EXCEPT there's one big problem with our economy: Housing. There's not enough of it so prices for housing are very high relative to incomes. The solution: Build a lot more houses. Harris mentioned this, though I don't recall a lot of details for how they were going to get there. If a lot of people didn't have to pay more than a third, sometimes over half of their income for housing the inflation wouldn't have been nearly as painful.

Foreign born employment increased [1], while native born employment actually decreased [2]. My wife combined the graphics [3]. The axes are in thousands of persons, so we lost 4 million native jobs and gained 4.2 million foreign born jobs. Coincidentally, that is about how many votes the democrats lost by.

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073395

2. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413

3. https://i.imgur.com/KtBGrkg.png

Your wife's graph is massively misleading. Why would you choose to put two different scales on the y-axis when they are already in the same units? The reality of the data you linked to is that the 5 million job difference you claim is pretty much an arbitrary artifact based on whatever month you place your starting line, the amount of native jobs is essentially flat from pre-pandemic. The amount the foreign-born jobs changed is on the same order of magnitude as seasonal fluctuations in native-born jobs and would barely register as a blip if you used a fair and consistent scale.

I thought the GPs post was an interesting claim so I dug into it and I think you may be wrong in this case, let me know if I have made any mistakes or misunderstood some of the data.

If you go to https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413#0 and click Edit Graph, then Add Line (at the top) then add LNU02073395 (Foreign Born dataset) and then export to CSV it's relatively clear that in 2007-01-01 (start of dataset) at 18.3% of jobs were held by foreign born individuals, and by 2024-10-01 (end of dataset) it was 23.7%. When reviewing the slope of the data, it's not tied to the month of choice, there is a relatively clear linear trend over time. Jobs as a % are being taken from native born Americans.

If we look into census data at https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acsbr... we see that as of 2022, 13.9% of the US population was foreign born. If 13.9% of the population hold 22.5% (2022-12-01 data from the fed) of the jobs, I can see why some people may have a concern there. Furthermore, if we look at sources of immigration in the census data, we see that roughly 50% come from Latin America, which has the highest percentage (79.7%) of individuals in working age (18-64) of which 82.8% do not have a bachelors degree of higher. Also, in support of the previous paragraph, the census data shows us that as of 2022, 66.9% of foreign born individuals held a job vs 62.9% native born.

I see a very persuasive argument for "they took our jobs" here.

In practice, my guess is that it's much more complex than that, but I do see how the raw numbers support the argument.

Here's what you are missing, the relative populations of native born and foreign born have changed over that time period. If you do the same thing for the population data (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/seriesBeta/LNU00073413) you see that the graphs are almost exactly the same. % of foreign born population goes from 17.5% to 22%, versus the 18.3% to 23.7% you called out for job change.

Yes I agree that the two align (and that I should have compared FRED to FRED vs bringing in Census data). But the best way I add what you wrote to what I wrote is would be:

"Immigrants are coming at a rate that increases their portion of the population and thus their portion of jobs" which squares pretty directly with the "they took our jobs" arguments?

But the data evidence we are discussing doesn't show any squaring of your statement at all. The only thing it shows is that the the amount of foreign-born individuals has increased, and that they hold down jobs at essentially the same rate as native-born Americans. If the data didn't look like that people would be complaining that immigrants are lazy, and don't work and are dragging down the economy. It's all a big nothingburger.

I don't see how you can possibly say that. If in 2007 you went to 100 jobs you would see 18.3% of foreign born people holding them vs 23.7% now. This is a change of nearly 30%. Of course people notice this and are concerned about it.

I am not arguing against immigration in any way (I am both an immigrant and a refugee), but I do recognize why someone who sees this on the ground feels the way they do.

But it just simply is an argument against immigration, which we can totally have but which Is a different discussion. Unless you are suggesting that you want increased immigration, but for them not to be employed, which I think would be an extremely niche position.

> there's one big problem with our economy: Housing. There's not enough of it so prices for housing are very high relative to incomes.

Swing and miss. We will have the record high ratio of housing per capita within the next 2-3 years. We're WAY above 1980-s, and only slightly below the 2006 levels.

But you're actually getting closer to the truth: economic forces are pushing people to move into ever-densifying urban areas, that simply will NEVER have low housing prices. And it's a nearly zero-sum game, so every unhappy worker in a tiny flat paying 40% of their salary in rent, means that there's a new abandoned house somewhere in Iowa.

This in turn makes people in Iowa poorer, and they start hating the city population.

Building more houses in big cities will NOT solve this. We need a concerted push to revive smaller cities, by mandating remote work where possible. Another alternative is taxing the dense office space.

Labour force participation is what, 3 million below 2019? It's really bad.

Isn't a lot of that boomers retiring early? I'm a 61 year old that's not participating in the labor force because I'm tired of playing the tech interview games (I don't blame this on the Biden admin) and I don't need to participate anymore. My wife who is 63 would like to work again after being laid off last year, but ageism seems to be a very real thing so she hasn't gotten hired anywhere (again, not Biden's fault that ageism is a thing). Since labor participation rate is determined by working age population (16 to 64) I guess we're both contributing to that lower labor participation rate. (and come to think of it both my sister and my wife's sister are in a similar situation, both around 60)

The people living 4.1% unemployment have (one or more) zero hour jobs where you don't know if you even have work each week, let alone the hours (but always less than 36) until the start of the week, with no benefits, living paycheck to paycheck, dealing with the hassle of having roommates at home so no place to truly unwind, and a huge cut to food they can afford which was really their last form of comfort. Car costs have gone up to the point they are just holding on to what they have hoping it keeps running.

This isn't a 1960s 4.1% unemployment good economy. And it's no way to live. You are forced into a state where are you constantly reacting out of stress, not really living. You can't blame those people for not understanding the nuance of your 'the economy is great, this is what good looks like'. It's not fair to call them bad/dumb people because of it. They are good people struggling out here in the trenches.

You're not wrong, but it's tough to see how electing a more pro-business (ultra pro-business) president/party is going to fix that. They're going to take away even more worker rights as they favor business.

What could the Democrats have done about it? Inflation was successfully reduced back down to normal levels without a recession, successfully managing a soft landing. What else could they do?

The real problem is housing costs. They should've laser focused on that. A lot of that is due to short supply, so build more houses (Harris mentioned this in her plan, but I don't think it connected). Also look into wall st buying up rentals - there are cities where most of the apartment complexes are owned by 2 or 3 companies, if one of them raises your rent and you try to find housing elsewhere you find either that the same company has raised rents in their other buildings or the other companies are doing the same.

Way to ensure the real estate holding companies and their owners switch their lobbying dollars and campaign contributions to the other party.

Or, pass a law restricting ownership by holders of SSN. Only 1 example. I'm sure simpler things can be done such as preventing subsidized mortgages by non-citizens. Etc.

Of course, this is tough, which is why it would never be done. And that's why you lose elections. If a president won't do it, what makes anyone think that a cowardly congress would ?

Plus , the usual suspects of real estate inflation are urban centers with heavy if not complete 1-party control for years. So any attempt at national policy has no credibility when local policy -which is already in control- continues to ignore the problem.

Contrast this with Trump - say what you will, he is willing to take flack to do things that are very unpopular, and that's what makes him stand out. Remember the early innings on the border wall ? Walking out of Kyoto ? The collective meltdown.

Exactly.

You can't fix the housing prices by flooding the country with illegal immigrants. That math don't math.

imagine a Trump response: build, baby, build. We are going to make so many new houses, they wont be able to sell them there is so many. People will have extra houses. People will beg me, please president Trump, no more houses.

Damn. Ever considered going into marketing?

> They should've laser focused on that.

They did!

> A lot of that is due to short supply, so build more houses (Harris mentioned this in her plan, but I don't think it connected).

That was a main part of her platform. And of course it was connected. That was the entire point!

This is what infuriates me. People aren't even listening to what she's campaigning on.

It was LITERALLY the FIRST thing she talked about as candidate. Instantly. I think this exchange perfectly reveals the true core of the issue: most people, even those educated and engaged with politics (like 15% of the voter base) don't listen to, remember, or care about policy. Not even a little bit.

This entire thread is ripe with it; hundreds of suggestions about what policy would have worked, what she SHOULD have focused on.

It doesn't matter. It's obvious when you really just embrace it: she should have lied her ass off. Blatantly. Overly simply obvious lies.

"I will fix the economy. I will triple your paycheck and lower prices at the grocery store. I will half the cost of a house. Free college for everyone. 5x the military budget"

Why not? If people don't listen to the truth and vote instead for the man who tells very nearly EXCLUSIVELY lies then what is there to lose?

At a minimum they should have admitted that inflation is a big problem. Instead they chose to ignore it or lecture people why they are wrong that inflation is a problem. Same with the border.

High prices are a big problem, but the primary thing you can do to compensate for that is push wages up through stimulus spending, which Biden also did very aggressively.

When people have a wrong perception (i.e. that Biden did poorly on the economy) you cannot contradict them or lecture them. That's a losing strategy. But if you don't correct them they will continue to blame Biden. That also loses.

The border/immigration suffers from similar perception problems. When people believe that dems are shuttling illegals to swing states in order to steal the election, how can you respond to that? Or to claims about illegals eating cats and dogs? Trump is very effective at messaging that invokes strong emotions.

People will forget about grocery prices and the border once Trump is in office. Trump will shout things and maybe do a few publicity stunts and that's enough to appease people. The actual reality matters little.

Stimulus spending CAUSES inflation. You are expanding the money supply. You want to reduce prices, then you need to cool off the economy and reduce the money supply.

Lowering govt spending PLUS raising taxes would have been the way.

Stimulus spending can cause inflation, but doesn't do so necessarily. A cursory look at deficits and inflation charts will tell you as much. Biden got inflation under control and got the economy to bounce back very quickly -- a feat very few people believed he could pull off.

"Reducing prices" means deflation, which doesn't happen outside of a depression. Triggering a depression intentionally is absolutely bonkers in terms of policy.

They were constantly mentioning the cost of living, and even proposed extreme measures (such as price controls) to try to fix the issue. Democrats were not avoiding the issue at all. Same with the border, where they worked with Republicans to pass a massive border bill that Trump then killed.

Price controls don't work. That is a dumb solution.

The border bill was done only after three years of doing nothing against massively increasing crossings.

Just picture Bernie Sanders hammering home that the wealthy are screwing everybody. That's the kind of messaging they need but they would rather loose than move left.

Identifying a viable villain and being mad about it would probably have helped, but the election pretty clearly shows that moving left would have had a _worse_ result.

Arizona and Nevada both voted for abortions rights even though they voted republican. The left and right aren't a boolean option, a left candidate who says the system isn't working may do just as well as a right candidate who says the same because they get more of "the grocery prices are broken" crowd even if their overall policies are less palatable.

How exactly?

Harris didn't run even a center-left campaign, she pushed center-right except on a few issues at the margins and it was late in the game on that front.

Americans generally favor more liberal policies economically, like stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, student debt cancellation etc. There was a lot to offer voters of all stripes there.

I think too many Democrats counted on a huge pro abortion turn out of women specifically and that translating into democratic votes, which, even to my surprise, it did not.

Have you ever considered that the stance regarding pro aboriton amongst women is to a certain extend age dependant? What I have noticed anecdotally amongst my acquintances is that older women tend to change their mind on that matter, at least sometimes. I am suspecting this has has plain egotistical reasons, simply because they no longer have to care, paired with a certain amount of women that had an abortion and never really managed to find peace with themselves about it. TL;DR: Careful, not all women are pro abortion, possibly not even the majority.

I think most conservatives have a strong idea in their mind of who their idealogical opponents are: ivory-tower academics, liberal business people and politicians, and all the plebs who side with them to push ideologies and social policies they don't want (policies like people born as men competing with women in sports).

Harris did nothing to distance herself from being strongly associated with that liberal cohort. Regarding social policy and ideology, she came off as being far-left to the average conservative.

Take a look at the results of the various referendums. Some of the same states that have voted for Trump with a hefty margin also voted for things like raising minimum wage or guaranteed paid sick leave.

I'm not so sure of that if they found a way for the message to connect. Bernie did pretty good with his messaging in 2016.

exactly its all messaging. dems suck as messaging and kamala was not the right person to deliver messages because she avoided interviews, conversations, etc. Dems needed someone who would go on any show at any time like Bernie does.

The problem is: Bernie can hammer all he want, but there is no platform to reach the voters. That is __the problem__ for the Dems.

1. The big media is in the hands of a select few (tech) oligarchs. Look for the accelerationists there.

2. Take notice of what happened at the WaPo. Bezos fell on his knees for Trump, fearful of having his other business interests been killed.

2. I mean: no reasonable platforms. The false balance in the New York Times is below the most horrible standard you can get in journalism. New York Times Pitchbot exists for a reason.

3. In the US the press is allowed to spread fake news. Some media make a living of it. Others (see 2) try to give a neutral impression by presenting false balance

4. The serious, damaging analysis will get moved below the fold, if there is one.

==> Now you have gotten a system where the populace doesn´t even get informed anymore, so no serious debate is possible.

==> The Dems are not even able to have their own policies, they have to lean deeply right to stay not too much out of touch of what is presented as normal discourse in the media.

If the US slips further from Anocracy to Autocracy, it will be 1) because the press gave the autocrats the nod and 2) some powerful captains of industry were on board, 3) and they were helped by radicalized far right christianity (Heritage Foundation et ali.).

An echo of Weimar.

I don't disagree, which is sort of my point. The democratic party apparatus and their allies don't want that platform/message.

I was mostly just pointing g out ghat there is a stance/platform that could combat right wing populism.

> The democratic party apparatus and their allies don't want that platform/message.

Sure they would love to use a reasonable platform with broad reach, but they haven´t. Relevant media are heavenly partitioned in buckets of insane "Infotainment Corp" and "Sane Washing Corp".

There is simply no room for truth if you give non-truth equal space. Non-truth can be made as entertaining as possible, sucking out all oxygen for truth.

That is what Americans allowed to happen over the decades, and the consequences are getting more grim every election.

It is not even about Trump.

Yellow Journalism has been around since the 1890s, and to a degree journalism has always been about propaganda - it's hard to spread your opinion without a printing press, and by the time the poor can get their hands on them, the upper classes/wealthy/capital holders have had access to this level of automation for some time/captured huge chunks of the market.

In a way, it is a bit of an oddity that there has been trust in journalism in recent decades - some individual acts like publishing whistleblower accounts or corruption have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.

Meanwhile, we have seen again and again - particularly in Murdoch owned properties - that the interests of commercial media do not align with what we consider the common good; ie

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_controversies

Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US). Then we end up back here, wondering why groups in the electorate have wildly different perceptions

You are hitting the nail right on the head.

> have lead to an outsized perception of it being for the public good.

Exactly!

> Yet we do nothing about it in particular (Australia and the US).

Right.

First step: getting the public to know what the role of the Fourth Estate is in a democracy.

Second step: getting the public to know that they currently live in absurd infotainment landscape, getting them to understand how their media works.

Third step: getting the public to understand the importance of democracy.

Fourth step: holding media outlets accountable for misinformation.

The big danger for those in the know is that they get cynical. Then you have recreated the Soviet/Putin ecosystem, and the oligarchs have free reign. America is inching far closer to that, but in the mind of Americans "this can't happen here".

You can -- to some extent -- combat right wing populism with left wing economic populism, but there are two key problems with this strategy:

1) the Democrat party hates economic populism. Bernie would have to hijack the party like Trump did. But where Trump has many allies in positions of power, Bernie has none.

2) the populist rhetoric that people like the most is false. Grocery prices aren't high because supermarkets suddenly got greedy. Worker exploitation isn't why billionaires exist.

I also don't think it's good strategy blame a minority group for all the problems in the country. Billionaires are not a protected minority obviously, but when you stoke anger against one group it can easily result in a different group getting unjustly targeted (Mexicans, trans people, etc). We don't need any more of that and politics of hate and resentment isn't the way forward.

The COVID years oversaw the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in history.

Either billionaires really earn their pay, which implies that they are thousands of times more productive as a person than the rest of us - literally superheroes.

Or - if you accept this as the obvious bullshit that it is - then all that money is not a fair compensation for anything, but rather the consequence of being in a position of economic power that makes it possible to extract wealth from the economy in one way or another. How exactly said extraction is done is immaterial - if the wealth is unearned, it means that it was taken from someone else, since someone ultimately did the work necessary to create it.

You seem focused on the labor theory of value, and sidestep completely the entire idea of investors, or the entrepreneurial function they serve.

Advocate for higher taxes if you wish, but acknowledge that economics are not a zero-sum game and propose an alternative to savvy investment, unless you simply want to foment division or to upend modern capitalism entirely.

Economics are only not a zero-sum game to the extent physics permits it to be. No amount of financial wizardry can change the fact that, ultimately, it's the labor that produces all wealth on the planet. Investors in modern capitalism, for the most part, serve the function of parasites, so yes, it would be very nice to upend it entirely.

I'm not making an argument about fairness. It's clearly unfair. I also don't dispute that wealthy people benefit from exploitation, just like we all benefit from labor in low wage countries.

However, I do dispute that wealth extraction is the primary source of wealth for the wealthy. Just like an engineer can save 100k in monthly AWS charges with 15 minutes of optimization work a good capital allocator can transform pointless labor that produces little to no value into labor that benefits society. The optimization process is the same: the engineer saves clock cycles and the capital allocator saves labor hours.

Labor is necessary ingredient for wealth, but labor by itself produces nothing. That's why humanity has lived in mud huts for eons, despite working every waking hour.

October 2023 impressed upon me how quickly "kill the rich" can take on an antisemetic tint and become "kill the rich, you know, the jews"

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - 1984

is not a winning message in the US. Dems should have seen people are suffering and instead of giving them economic data given them hope (the Republicans at least offered some 'other' to blame/direct anger at). Most Americans use food as their comfort/escape. They can no longer even afford that. Personally, I think the Democrats need to run on ending zero hour jobs and $1 cheeseburgers.

Zero hour jobs are ones where people have to have 1 or more jobs that don't give you a schedule until the start of the week, don't guaranty you any hours (other than that you will get less than 36), don't give benefits. It allows companies to cut to the bone (which overworks people) knowing that if the company needs more hours they will just push up the hours later in the week (which wreaks havoc on peoples lives because these people often need to work/juggle hours at two jobs). Companies should have to staff like they used to with actual jobs and not treat/schedule people like EC2 instance. At the least the government shouldn't count zero hour jobs as 'employment' in the traditional sense. They are not. They are human EC2 instances and that is a very stressful(harmful) way to live.

That's not the position of the politicians and messengers of the party, that's the position of democrat voters after many desperate attempts to reach and persuade other voters.

No absolutely right.

This old school form of campaigning on issues and policy are just redundant in this day and age.

Trump just showed us the speed of the current media cycle. Its minutes or hours. Democrats and all "rational" styles of electioneering on "issues" and "policy" are doomed to fail agains Trump style content. Trump can insult or harm so many voting groups in a day, that people are completely exhausted and then just blank it out.

If Biden did the same thing, it would result in the same electoral outcome, it would not cost the dems any more votes. People would just be exhausted by Biden, and then blank him out too. Then it would be whatever default placeholder people like to think about when they think "Presidential candidate", and would then vote without having to worry about what they were doing.

Its honestly insanely amazing. Its like we have been doing politics wrong since the Greeks.

This is an astute comment; we are in the social media era of elections, probably have been since 2016.

Policy Vibes > Policy Content

>This is an astute comment; we are in the social media era of elections, probably have been since 2016.

No it isn't. In the U.S., we were consciously doing it wrong because the Greek system failed for the specific reasons that are currently being discussed. The democracy broke down to the issue of personality coalesced voting blocs, that once delegated to, used the levers of power to make the task of holding onto that power easier. There was a reason the Electoral College was designed in to the American System, and there was a reason National political parties were specifically warned against by the Early Founders, and it was because down that road was the path to repeating the Greek's mistakes.

The Faithless Elector was a feature, not a bug.

>Policy Vibes > Policy Content Is specifically the death knell of a political system.

I am just point out where we are on a road map, without making any claims about the territory itself.

Hey, thanks for your response. The Greek bit was Hyperbole. I added it there out of frustration.

Could you elaborate more ? Are you talking about demagogues and oligarchy? My Greek history is weak.

Pretty much.

Quick things to stash for later for brushing up on those subjects in particular:

https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/04/07/civics-101-keep-...

https://www.greece-is.com/learning-from-the-demagogues-of-an...

The problems of today are not novel. Regrettably, we don't do the best job in grinding this info in within the traditional civics education of about a year in the teenage years. The demagogues in particular were a flavor of politician that found their stride "working" the lower parts of the Athenian democracy. The periods in which they were most active were noted for being spikes in instability of the Athenian democracy; even if paired with and consented to by the masses. The context and history of those times were used as foundations for the architecture of the U.S. system of government, in which much of the thinking behind why things were structured in the ways they were arr documented in the Federalist Papers.

The Federalist papers, specifically No. 10 is where Madison touches on the ills of faction, and the inevitable challenge it presents in a government first and foremost concerned with the securing of Liberty. He puts it far better than I. If you read nothing else in the spirit of a civically inclined individual. I beseech you to take the time to peruse the Federalist Papers; hell, hit up the anti-federalist papers too. Be well-rounded! They didn't enter building the foundation of the U.S. blind, neither should we! Start here:

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10

I strongly recommend sticking with copies maintained by the Library of Congress. It can be found elsewhere, but I've run into things online claiming to be documents written by the Founders where the biblio seemed to check out, but the content was massively doctored.

I will include the following excerpts from #10 though; Madison discusses the problem of faction presents to systems of governance specifically applied to the task of preservation of Liberty:

>From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

[TL;DR: Democracies are rife with an excess of sacrificing the individual to the whims of the majority. There is no real check to ensure that the smaller party can be secure in their liberty against a sufficiently motivated quorum. The specific breed of politician here, is indeed, a reference to the demagogues]

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.

[TL;DR] A republic is seen as desirable to democracy due to the quality through which by focusing the duty of operating the governmental function through those with a predisposition or knack for it, it's possible to craft an institutional corpus that can cut through the noise as it were, and get down to the essence of the public good. This theme reoccurs multiple times in the civic architecture of the U.S. The Jury->Judge, the House->the Senate. Each function taking a broad sentiment, then making it some smaller groups entire job to wring out the general vibe to the specific end that best serves the public good. A danger is recognized, however, in that this dynamic admits the chance of danger when this institutional arrangement is co-opted by groups sufficiently motivated and coordinated to attain these levers of power, and employ them to their own ends.

Madison continues enumerating how at least, the republic offers a chance at mitigation of this danger through sufficient diligence on the part of the electorate being on guard against these types of perfidious politician. Tragically, this mechanism doesn't tangibly exist today. The political parties we have today are the embodyment of the supporting institutions/collusive actors that make it possible for perfidious, well-heeled individuals to seize the seats of power rather than being organically elevated to such positions by the collective wisdom embodied in their localities. The Party tells the locality eho to vote for, not the other way around. The Democratic Party (DNC in particular), is a particularly egregious example of this with their reliance on Superdelegates.

Despite the Papers being written in a time long before the Internet ended up supercharging our ability to coordinate over vast distances, where the fastest that info was going to propogate was as a packet by train or horse; much of what they lay out is still eerily prescient today.

If ever you have spare time, the history around these documents is well worth your time.

> Madison continues enumerating how at least, the republic offers a chance at mitigation of this danger through sufficient diligence on the part of the electorate being on guard against these types of perfidious politician. Tragically, this mechanism doesn't tangibly exist today…

Hey, you can ignore the steps I’m working through below to articulate my conjecture.

Suffice to say it focuses on whether modern variables make certain assumptions anachronisms, leading to a failure of the edifice.

—————

It looks like one variable was a plurality of thought.

I feel, but don’t have the exact dots to link together, that this is a placeholder for quality of thought.

Quality here being a function of the time taken to apply logic and reason on a set of facts up their logical conclusion.

Since the advent of cable and TV, the velocity has increased.

However so has the reason numbing quality of the information diet.

This is to a degree motivated reasoning from my end, since I am thinking about how individual reason is now secondary to the information being fed into the larger polity.

You are almost there imho.

That is where Journalism should come into play. But popular media have a business model of spreading fakes, being outright partisan and are mostly driven by clicks rage and engagement. That is what a Chaos Actor like Trump provides. To see what is happening it is more insightful to look what forces are behind Trump.

In the US media landscape, it is not possible to have a genuine debate. Every hour there is new nonsense that will kill of any "boring" news.

Not as a matter of nature. But as a betrayal of democracy by the Fourth Estate, opening the door for anti-democrats.

It is a deliberate choice, helped by self-delusion and exceptionalism. It is painful to watch a society marching to where we know where the end is.

Hell I wont even blame the fourth estate anymore.

Fox came on the scene, and it worked as a business. In the end that means it gets funding, and is the competitive business model.

Other media orgnizations had to deal with all sorts of other barriers such as editorial standards etc.

I will add though, that Fox probably survived competition because it had such a close link to the Republican party. I wonder what would have happend if it were a more active market.

Actually scratch that - I remembered the issue with this market. Once we started having conglomerates of a certain size, acquisitions and the consolidation of media assets and newspapers was inveitable.

So even if there were other conservative view points, it would eventually be absorbed by "Fox" or whatever dominant entity in the market.

----

I would like to blame Rupert Murdoch, but I am beginning to see that the man just found a chink in the armor of how society organized its media systems, and exploited it.

There's always the hope that the average voter can find their way to a considered, moral vote. That didn't happen.

Agreed. Trump has been successful mostly not because of any meaningful policy, but from being able to capitalize on Democrats tendency to treat the uneducated as fools and even call them deplorable.

Gangs and fringe movements thrive off taking in the rejected.

Until Democrats can find a way to reach the opposition in a way that isn't condescending they will continue to lose and drive away voters. The so called deplorable will grow.

They need to design, build, and walk over the bridge - patiently, despite all the chaos and negativity.

If they continue to do the same thing and treat their fellows as idiots and expecting different results..is delusional and insane.

Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers and yet plenty still voted for him. By word and deed it's very clear how little Trump thinks of women, and yet white women as a bloc elected Trump. Hillary Clinton used the phrase 'basket of deplorables' ONCE, 8 years ago, but that was an unforgivable mistake. By contrast nothing Trump does sticks to him.

The perception that Democrats are smug and condescending have certainly hurt them. But that perception is mostly the result of relentless Republican messaging. Tim Walz is a down-to-earth governor of Minnesota who treats everybody with respect. He's a lot less condescending than JD Vance. But the perception of Democrats hating regular people persists.

> Tim Walz

This lunatic, during the debate with JD Vance, volunteered that he didn't believe the First Amendment protected "hate speech" even before Vance could finish accusing him of that. I had previously given him the benefit of the doubt over that MSNBC clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ns76RCmWs) where he stated:

> There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech and especially around our democracy

Thinking that perhaps Walz just meant social media companies ought to censor "hate speech" and misinformation for the greater good, but during that debate, he left no doubt that he thinks "hate speech" isn't protected. And of course the Tim Walzes of the country want to be the arbiters of what is and isn't "hate speech."

I'm not running for office so I can say this.

Their fellows are idiots and fools.

I know it's not a winning strategy to point this out. But it doesn't stop it being true.

That you present a subjective opinion as fact doesn't make it true.

The “deplorables” thing is kind of amazing. The message was “you guys are wrong, only like a third of Republicans are all the things you say—committed racists et c.—and the rest are normal, reasonable people we should try to reach and serve” but was delivered the kind of way a couple policy wonks and campaign strategists sitting and looking at hard polling and behavioral data might talk, such that it was disastrous. “Some of you write them all off, but [looks at meta-study] only about a third of them are committed to principles and ideals that might, fairly, be called ‘evil’ or ‘disgusting’ or what have you”.

A lesson in how shitty delivery can deliver exactly the opposite of the literal message you’re conveying.

To paraphrase Rumsfeld: "You go to elections with the populace you have."

If the Dems don't/won't/can't account for it by changing their messaging, devising better or more readily understood platforms, then it is on them. You have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.

There is no competing message to be had. The people believe that whoever is in charge is bad because their lives are terrible. They just ping pong between parties without caring to investigate policies.

You can’t appeal to voters like this apart from not being the person in charge.

The election was close. I don't believe this at all. It's simply being tone deaf. Not to mention the strong democrat support in the mid terms (when inflation was arguably worse).

The election wasn’t close at all? I’m not sure what you mean by this. Trump won both the popular and handily won the EC.

I’m willing to put money down right now that the next president is a Democrat. Not by virtue of messaging or campaigning but just because people will still be suffering and the dems will be the opposite of the status quo.

Just a guess but midterms probably emphasised the educated vote which seems to have swung Dem recently.

The college educated have been trending strongly toward Democratic affiliation since some time between ‘04 and ‘11, depending on your source.

You can manufacture a favorable electorate. Republicans have been extensively working on that far harder than the Dems have since some time around Goldwater and the last great re-alignment, and it kicked into overdrive in the 80s. They pushed for loosening rules around mass media so they could do it better, and they succeeded. This current re-alignment of their party is an outcome of that “farming” they did over decades growing out of control of the party leadership post-Citizens United and the huge shake-up in campaign spending that brought in.

This observation admittedly provides little actionable for democrats in the near-term. But one strategy that demonstrably works is picking demographics and pushing media at them that creates a demand for solutions to issues they didn’t previously think existed (and need not necessarily exist). Look at e.g. the molding and elevation of the modern pro-life movement for an early example, or at their entire current platform, very nearly, for a bunch more-recent ones.

It's hard to conceive of a change in the Democratic strategy that would have gained more votes without losing others. In contrast, there is seemingly nothing that Trump could say that would lose him support. Trump had a very high "floor" that he could not fall below. Democratic voters are fickle and would just as soon stay home or vote third party as a protest vote.

But the Dems did. They did everything you're asking for. Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable.

That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway.

The message of this election isn't that Democrats did something wrong. It's that they did everything right, and a majority of voters simply still don't care. They don't think the insurrection mattered, and they think Trump will fix inflation because he's a strong businessman. And they don't listen to anyone who says otherwise.

I don't see anything the Dems could have done about that. You can't force people to listen, you can't force people to understand economics. That's not something campaigns can do.

> can't force people to understand economics

People were actively deceived along the way. Do you remember that intially Yellen (and Powell together) called the inflation "not broad enough to be considered inflation", then called it "transitory" and justified printing so much money all the way into 7% inflation. At 3% PCE, Powell said everybody to relax, that nobody should doubt they will use every tool they have to fight inflation. Bostic at 2% PCE said he is not worried, he welcomes higher inflation, approaching 4% inflation would be cause of concern and would require action. Action that never came. They just lied and misinformed the people for years. People listened to this, it was all over the media. It's wrong to suggest people didn't listen.

Do you remember after 5 years of review they came up with symmetric inflation target of 2% and they instantly abandoned it because that would require lower inflation for decades to come. And nobody in media questioned it, they said people "misunderstood the target".

They don't want to educate people about the economy, they want people as stupid as possible.

Your criticism of Yellen and Powell's messaging is valid, but I have a very hard time believing that had any impact on this election.

The US fared better than almost industrialized nation post-pandemic. Our inflation is currently under control, unemployment is low, wages are rising. I have a hard time believing that anyone could have handled a hard situation better than the Biden administration. Meanwhile, Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas that would make the prices paid by most Americans far far far higher than what they're paying today.

The overlap between "People who know Jerome Powell and think he did a bad job" and "People who think Trump's fiscal platform will be good for the average American" is close to zero people.

>Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas...

...but they are very good memes, as in units of information that compete for attention. I think we are now, post-2016, in the social media era of elections, where policy content matters far less than policy vibes.

Is it? Because between part time job, gigs, and people falling off unemployment benefits from receiving them too long I don't trust unemployment figures, they are measuring the wrong thing. It seem people work longer hours, for less disposable income overall.

Don't bother with unemployment, look at labor force participation.

>The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution.

Objectively untrue; Harris lost.

>You can't force people to understand economics

You're correct. So you have to reformat the message. The Dems failed to do this. I can tell you have never been a teacher: teachers are forever having to change their messaging because different people understand in different ways.

This teaching thing is a terrible comparison. As a teacher you have a captive audience with a (somewhat) agreed upon goal: the student(s) are going to learn something.

This is absolutely not the model for candidate<->electorate relationships in any way. If anything, the elector(ate) wants the candidate to simply tell them things that confirm what they think they already know.

Are you serious? The entire nation was fully captivated this election cycle.

Captivated is not captive, and even if it is etymologically adjacent, most of the electorate did not expect to have to learn about stuff like econometrics ...

Then I meant captivated AND captive. Why are you being pedantic?

How was anybody captive? I didn't see a single campaign ad or watch a single rally, except for a couple of brief excerpts that I chose to.

You're missing the critical point: it's not about captive, it's just that this helps with the critical point, which is an expectation of learning taking place, rather than worldviews/prejudices confirmed.

I see, I missed that nuance in your point.

> Objectively untrue; Harris lost.

I would fault the Democratic party platform itself, not the campaign. It's valid to say the campaign was executed well and that the failure was due to disagreement with the Democrat party line.

Trump has a policy platform they agree with more -- that's something that is not easily overcome by how the campaigns are run.

E.g. "secure the border". Trump fought to build a wall during his first term. To voters who want a more secure border, that speaks louder than anything either candidate can say (or not say) during their campaigns about what they will or won't do.

> Objectively untrue; Harris lost.

Yeah, sometimes if you play by the rules you lose.

> So you have to reformat the message.

They did, and it didnt matter.

The argument here is essentially: 1) IF the dems communicated correctly, they would have won 2) They did, and it didnt matter. 3) If they had communicated correctly they would have won.

Correct communication here is a place holder for winning.

Consider the many things the Dems did pull off, including Biden dropping out, and the massive massive outreach and funding they used to get the message out.

Consider that Trump is definitionally reprehensible, as just a human being, forget the standards America used to have as a presidential candidate. Seriously - tell me you think that Trump <the person> is actually what you want in a Republican candidate. Every single time, Trump supporters have to resort to some variant of "he didn't really mean that", to defend him.

There is FAR more incorrect in Dem electioneering than just communication. I think the fundamentals of how elections are held have changed. You dont really need policy any more.

Because you guys twist everything the guy says

This is nonsense.

From the memorable “grab them by the pussy”, to fabricating stuff about the draft recently.

“ She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.”

The only twisting here is when people try to ignore what he is saying and pretend he meant something benign.

They could have also not perpetrated a genocide. I haven't committed a single genocide during the biden term. How hard can it be?

Pretty much any US president would've supported Israel similarly.

They don't have to though. It's easy, just don't send weapons to a perpetuate a genocide. A child could pull it off.

Sure, I don't disagree but that's not the policy of the US under many, many presidents.

The democrats told people who are suffering 'the economy is great, this is what great looks like to us'. How is that a winning message with people suffering?

> That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway.

So, put differently, you're saying that Democrats did not have Product-Market fit, while the Republicans did. Yes?

> The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution.

She had 0 counties where she outperformed 2020 biden.

>> Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable.

But when you have the VP is running for the office that her boss has just occupied for the last four years, the whole point of the VP running is to continue what they started - not suddenly say you would do a bunch of stuff differently when YOU were riding shotgun on the poor economy, inflation, immigration and crime.

Harris was asked repeatedly what she would do differently and said "nothing". She was a horrific candidate. She couldn't speak to voters without a teleprompter, she was a cringe worthy public speaker, she was never on message and always reverted back to, "Well Donald Trump did this and that." which never connected with voters.

She also had a front row seat to Biden's mental decline and repeatedly went in front of the media and defended him to the very end when he was removed and she replaced him. Harris was the same person who got zero financial support from democrats during the 2020 campaign, had to drop out and didn't even make the primaries because of the lack of support from voters.

If you were paying attention, this was completely predictable.

By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door. He connected with voters, reached across the aisle and formed a coalition with RFK, Gabbards and Musk. He went on podcasts to reach younger voters. Anybody else see Vance on the Theo Von podcast? He campaigned relentlessly in the key battleground states, he did tons of impromptu interviews.

There's a reason he's projected to get 300+ electoral votes AND win the popular vote and nothing in your comment would seem to understand why.

Take a look at the markets today. Take a look at the price of Bitcoin right now.

The country wanted significant change and they voted that way.

I think every single thing Trump did during the last 3 months hurt his campaign, actually. It had just already gotten to the point where nothing he said mattered, because people were choosing him based on their experience in 2019

"By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door."

This is when I knew you were screwing with us.

Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door - Hardly.

Dems are not in the venues where people are talking about these issues. I see tons of right wing youtubers, tiktokers, podcasts, and there is just far less dems in these environments or willing to go to these places. You need more Bernie types (not necessarily his politics exactly) but the willingness to go these places repeatedly and talk about ideas.

Buttigieg did this literally nonstop on behalf of Biden and Harris. Did nothing.

The problem is he's not harris and he just started doing this like a month ago.

Its hard to say what happened internally, but Biden could have stepped down in time for them to have a proper primary.

> The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution.

polls had 'country on the wrong path' at ~75%

Kamala Harris wouldn't break from biden on anything, even when she was begged by the media to do it several times over several days.

That's just one example of dumb shit the dnc/kamala did.

Trump's a pretty singular personality. He floods the zone with bullshit and denigrates vast swathes of the electorate. His insane ramblings are just considered by his adherents to be part of his allure and mystique. The American people can't seem to get enough of it, presumably because they so strongly identify with his character.

I have no love for Democrats but it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done. The common wisdom in the past had been that Trump is some kind of liability for Republicans, but at every turn he has been underestimated and I question that assumption.

To me Trump looks like a true master of his craft, and there is no line of carefully triangulated messaging that will resonate more with typical Americans than his stream of vitriol and lies.

> it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done

Don't choose such a unpopular candidate as Kamala. Have a primary instead of appointing someone.

Unpopular meaning "a woman"?

oh please... identity politics helped lose this election for the Dems bigly. Let's not bring it here.

There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer...

> There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer...

What I think I'm reading here is that you feel like Trump is a better public speaker than Harris.

Assuming that this is a genuinely held belief that you have, I suggest that you consider that perhaps this is very subjective.

i understood it as unpopular because of being associated with biden and inflation/border-issues... she couldnt chart a new course and was stuck with defending bidens record.

the gaza issue also probably didnt win any points in pennsylvania etc

In Argentina we got tired of lawyers/politicians roleplaying as economists, so we voted a real economist for president. In tree years we will be able to tell you if it was a good idea...

Hah! Good luck. An economist is as much a politician as those other guys, who were likely lawyers.

He's looking good though. I'm quite happy for you.

The media insisted on comparing him to Trump or Bolsonaro for years, but if you actually listen to what he says, he sounds moderate social democrat. Go figure what the media is doing while he speaks...

So far it's been working out great compared to the previous guy.

I compare Argentina's election to buying a car. One of the candidates basically ruled the country for 18 months, got inflation over triple digits annually, the exchange rate went to infinite, among other economic and administrative mishaps.

It's kind like test driving a car where it's engine overheats, the radiator explodes, and basically falls apart.

Your choices then become either buy the thing you know is broken and doesn't work, or buy the other new mystery thing which says it's going to work though you haven't tested it.

It's basically a known bad versus an unknown, yet still 44% of people voted for the broken car.

Milei so far has been doing great economically and getting inflation down, we'll see how it goes next year.

Don’t be ridiculous. There’s a lot more that they could have done to win. And should have done. But they didn’t. And if they’re smart they won’t continue to make the same fatal mistake as you are doing right now by generalizing more than half of the American population as too dumb to know what is good for them.

> make the same fatal mistake as you are doing right now by generalizing more than half of the American population as too dumb to know what is good for them.

They made the same exact mistake in 2016 and from what I can observe in this thread and similar ones in other forums, the lesson has not been learned. They will keep their smug ideological superiority complex, disdain those who dare to disagree with them and thus will continue to disenfranchise a large swath of the population.

It's the opposite. When someone says you are "talking down" to them by using big words, the solution is to dumb it down with simpler words, not to increase the vocabulary.

Can't help but notice you didn't actually say any of what they could have done to win

How can I put this gently? Read the room!

For instance, they made protecting women’s rights a big part of their campaign when most states already had on their ballot laws to protect women’s rights in their constitution. Or they had previously passed laws since roe v wade was overturned.

You want to win? Try doing some basic research into what is going to matter to the people come Election Day.

Can we blame them for thinking they had already won given their opponent? Yes. Because that very well may have been a contributing factor to oversights like these.

I was under the impression that most economist said that the ARP and IRA was a significant contributor to inflation (amongst many other factors, supply chain issues, war in Ukraine, labor shortages, etc.), so it’s not factually incorrect to lay some amount of culpability on the administration?

Covid was coming to an end, and yet Democrats decided to still go on another trillion dollar spending spree, inevitably leading to inflation.

It's incorrect to characterize this as "pure economic ignorance among voters"

Trump printed $4T in a year, Biden printed $1.5T in 3 years. 80mph vs 10mph.

The 80mph is what got us to inflation town. If someone looks at 80mph and 10mph and says "I'll elect the 80mph guy because 10mph is irresponsible" then yeah, I'm pretty comfortable characterizing that as pure economic ignorance.

Glad someone understands inflation. This is true and all we can hope is that someone close to him understands this.

Trump didn't print $4T, the bi-partisan effort in Congress for COVID relief did.

I think the problem in voters eyes is that Biden did not stop after this. He pushed through multiple trillion dollar bills on top of it.

I'm not saying I agree with that stance, but calling the $4T Trump's doing is a really misleading. It was not part of his economic agenda at all.

> It was not part of his economic agenda at all.

Then why did he make the IRS reprint COVID relief checks so he could add his name to them?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/inside-the-disaster-trumps-si...

I mean that is obvious right? It was self-promotion, one of the few things Trump is really good at. That doesn't mean it was in his economic agenda to pass trillions in debt funded covid relief or that he was even responsible for it.

Yep. It was probably the singular reason (of a few) he lost 2020.

Yeah Trumps spending was bipartisan but Biden unilaterally poured fuel on the fire after Covid.

Inflation is down prices aren't going to come down if we spend less.

Maybe they could have tried not shutting the economy down while helicoptering free money on everyone? This combined with policies that make energy way more expensive while also allowing the immigration system to be abused... I'm not sure there is a more perfect recipe for inflation? So they did a bunch of inflationary things, then kinda got the inflation under control, and then you're puzzled when people are still upset about the inflationary things that were done?