10 Comments

I do hope the Democratic party does an honest post-mortem. Losers often double-down instead.

The DEMs need to position as a party of positivity & progress, by toning down their more extreme regulatory & environmental people.

They need to prioritize winning back white non-college males.

And they need to throw their trans craziness in the dustbin .

What are the chances much of that will happen? Will they stick with the narrative that Trump's victory shows that the country is the racist.

Expand full comment

I think Democrats and the western thinking class need to wake up. Can you really accuse minorities (latinos etc) voting for Trump as racist?

He increased his share of the vote in the Bronx!

Expand full comment

Yes. The accusations of racism have always been false.

People routinely do NOT change their thinking when proven wrong, but instead double down. It can take multiple losses before they question themselves.

With parties, it depends on what type of leader emerges next.

Expand full comment

Yes. I think that the next leadership in the Democrats will matter a lot. Since there won't be a new Presidential candidate for years, there may be more of an organic process to see if and when a Democrat in opposition (House, Senate or State level) really speaks to people.

Expand full comment

There are probably some people who could emerge as leaders of the DEMs.

It requires a mix of center-of-left policy and enough charisma to be able to hold their own against the radicals.

Someone could emerge for 2028, or 2032, or...they can take their time.

I don't know if there's any existing governor or senator or Big Town mayor who could emerge that way.

Expand full comment

"full employment"

A more detailed review of the the job situation is that we created a lot of low wage jobs for foreign workers that have to get topped up with government subsidy. Immigrant nursing brigades wiping peoples butts in nursing homes.

Also, a lot of soon to be retired people saw stocks and houses high when rates were too low in 2021/2022 and concluded they should retire early, only to find out inflation was going to make their savings not last long enough.

That's fine for the stock market and some Guatemalan "asylum" case that's better then Guatemala, but not particularly good for native voters.

Expand full comment

who is supposed to work in the nursing homes?

Expand full comment

The honest long term solution is "nobody". Our economy can't become a giant medicare/medicaid nursing home. We are going to need a different model then that.

The point is that "number go up" isn't actually helping all those people that just voted for Trump. That's why its not translating into people feeling good about the economy.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a991717-ff1b-401e-9188-b58423c7266d_717x955.png

Expand full comment

Thanks for a thoughtful post !

Expand full comment

> what we see is that full employment pisses people off. Looks like they don’t care about inequality and literally only care about inflation. This explains why the left constantly downplays inflation everywhere it occurs.

Excited to see what you find on the “inequality” assumption. Inflation is easy enough to explain, “I can buy fewer groceries with the same money.”

I’ve always found it annoying when you’re looking for an overview of a place, and it will be like “everything is awesome but it’s unequal”, as if it’s obvious that inequality is a problem.

It seems separate from just concern for the least well-off too, like there’s an impulse to lower the ceiling and not just raise the floor. Political fliers from Dems (where I’m at) use “billionaire” like a slur.

Expand full comment