It was the economy and so much more.
The New York times shared the following this morning in a piece by German Lopez.
Why did Donald Trump defeat Kamala Harris? One answer was clear even before Election Day: Voters consistently said the economy was their top issue, driven primarily by concerns about inflation. And they trusted Trump more than Harris to handle it. “It’s the economy, stupid” is an old cliché in American politics, and it often proves true.
Still, Trump’s achievement contained a mystery. On paper, the economy seems OK. Inflation is down recently. Wages are up. But anger persists. That’s because higher prices cause a special kind of pain — one that lingers and, historically, leads voters to punish the people in charge. Tuesday was no exception.
Today’s newsletter explains why voters still blamed the Biden-Harris administration — and why America’s leaders are far from alone in feeling the public’s fury over inflation this year.
Why does inflation anger voters so much? Some economic problems, like high unemployment, affect only a minority of the population. But higher prices affect everyone.
Inflation also taps into what psychologists call “loss aversion”: People feel negatively about losses much more than they feel positively about gains. So although wages have kept up with inflation or surpassed it, people still feel more pained by sticker shock at the grocery store than elated by their gains.
To make matters worse, consumers can’t do much about inflation. They simply have to cut back their spending on certain things or work more hours to afford them. The sense of loss combined with a feeling of powerlessness leaves people furious. They expect their leaders to fix the problem.
Inflation fell to normal levels over the past year, but high prices remain. Eggs still cost nearly triple what they did four years ago. When people imagine an ideal end to inflation, they think of prices returning to normal. That hasn’t happened, and economists don’t expect it will. When the polling firm Morning Consult surveyed U.S. voters about inflation, they were comparing prices with those from 2020. They blamed President Biden and Harris for the increases since then, fairly or not.
“Americans were comparing this economy to one without inflation, whether or not that was a realistic option according to economists,” said my colleague Ben Casselman, who covers the U.S. economy. “They weren’t saying, ‘Inflation is tough, but at least I have a job thanks to Biden.’ They were saying, ‘Of course I have a job, but now I have to deal with all this inflation thanks to Biden.’”
At the same time, the solutions to inflation can make the problem feel worse in the short term. To stop price increases, central banks raised interest rates. That made loans, credit card payments and mortgages more expensive — another set of higher costs that consumers had to deal with.
The key to the piece above is that just because inflation goes down from 9% to 3%, the prices don’t go down. The rate of inflation goes down but the prices still increase but at a slower rate.
Americans learned that inflation is caused by excess government spending and saw that Biden/Harris/Obama were spending trillions with nothing to show for it.
Americans wanted common sense back and a strong economy. They want to enjoy life and not worry about making it to the next paycheck. This is one reason for the Trump win. This was never shared by the media. They ignored this and thankfully for new media.