The above is not hard to understand. No administration in US history, catered to the wealthy, more than Biden/Harris. Inflation killed the living standards of the bottom half of US earners. The asset heavy, however, have rarely had it so good. Home values and stocks have soared. Climate dollars, often finance Dem donor green companies, that could never survive, without tax payer subsidy.
Biden devoted much of his efforts to student loan forgiveness. No one carries more student debt than Americans with graduate degrees. Doctors, lawyers, MBAs, PHD engineers, and their ilk, tend to marry each other. Under Biden's attempted plan, a 26 year old lawyer, married to a 25 year old MBA, earning $250K together, annually, could have had $40K of student loan forgiveness, under the right circumstance. No one mentioned, as young people they were already earning more than 3X US median family income. On their way to half million dollar family incomes, or more, in middle age.
Biden handed these same people $7500 checks, when they bought an $80K luxury EV. Where Biden really improved their lives, was the human tsunami of cheap labor. Business owners are thrilled with employees that never complain about pay, unsafe working conditions or sexual harassment.
High income families were also thrilled. In the 90s, an educated, stay at home parent, was a status symbol. The parent spent their days devoted to kids under age 5, ferrying children to private school, and a plethora of other after school activities and social events. A house keeper appeared a few days a week.
Times have changed. A stay at home spouse, is an oddity, regardless of income. 2 professional parents, especially if they travel, require, near, round the clock assistance, basically, for 16 years. Multiple nannies, driving to multiple schools, is not uncommon. Toss in a full time housekeeper and/or cook, along with gardeners and pool care. Except for those with generational wealth, such a staff, year after year, is expensive. Biden made the lives of the wealthy, much more enjoyable, when he made domestic help, cheaper and more abundant.
It is not hard to imagine, why the wealthy, so overwhelmingly , supported Harris.
One of our local commenters said Trump's anti-immigrant policy would make it harder for her to find a nanny. Gee, sorry it's getting harder to find someone to raise your kids for you.
As is usually the case, follow the money. The wealthy vote to maintain and advance their privilege. Another piece missing here is the percentage of higher educated getting their income from government connections, including the NGO industry. Biden and Harris are the big government "leaders".
"No administration in US history, catered to the wealthy, more than Biden/Harris. Inflation killed the living standards of the bottom half of US earners."
Perhaps you need a refresher on U.S. history, because regardless of what you believe about the post-WWII presidents, it is undeniable Jackson, McKinley, Coolidge, Harding and Hoover were all far more explicitly servants of the wealthy. (in the case of Jackson, Harding and Hoover, they were also patrons of the financial deregulation that laid the groundwork for kicking off two Great Depressions, in 1837 and 1929) That's to say nothing of Reagan's sponsorship of the neoliberal takeover that eventually led us to the 'Lesser Depression' that began in 2008.
Plenty of the wealthiest oligarchs in the country supported Trump. They support the presidents of both parties, ever more so since the Reagan 80s, which unleashed them. The New Deal era is one of the few times in which one political party mostly froze them out.
But it is notable that it is only Trump that has re-started the Gilded Age practice of explicitly handing them positions within the U.S. state designed to exert power over the design of the government, Russia-style--most prominently with Musk and Lutnick, but less prominently in appointing the greatest number of billionaires to key government offices since, well, the record he set in his first term.
Great article. Great data. Should be required reading for "progressives."
It explains why my wife and I, Democrats for 50 years of voting, switched two years ago to be Independents, and voted for Trump (who we detest) in this year's election. Progressive/Democrats no longer speak for the people we always had advocated for. In fact, progressives often look down on them.
Very few of my college educated friends have strong partisan leanings, and to the best of my knowledge held their noses and voted for whom they regarded as the lesser of evils. I would have voted for almost any other Republican, but voted against both.
Did it occur to you, Mr. Moore, that Los Alamos is chuck full of government employees (people who use their education to primarily push paper), and government contractors---all on the tit of whom? Of course, like Northern Virginia, they will vote heavily democrat. I'm frankly tired of the whole education gap reasoning when it is a posteriori thinking, drawing the conclusion you desire by ignoring salient fact.
The shift of wealthy, educated black voters isn’t what’s most significant—it’s the percentage of educated black voters who voted for Harris at 72% vis-à-vis 56% of white college graduates. Because racism has to some extent diminished fewer voters are voting race. More working class black voters are voting class and educated black voters who would have been Republicans if not for race are now voting Republican, just like an even greater minority of educated white voters.
As for why wealthy, educated voters have moved to the left that’s easy. Virtue is a luxury good that we can afford. Because we’re financially well off, we don’t have to sweat it about the price of eggs or gas so we can afford to worry about other people, about the environment, and a range of other issues that aren’t strictly self-interested. Because we’re educated we universalize whereas the lower classes take care of themselves and their own. The lower classes can’t afford idealism and don’t have the imagination to concern themselves with issues beyond their small circle.
I guess what really troubles me is that Biden did not do anything that raised the price of eggs. Inflation went up in pretty much the whole world to my knowledge due to Covid and wars. Somehow Biden/Harris was blamed for the effects of Covid but Trump wasn't and apparently people believed that there could be mass deportations and high tariffs without inflation. Do you think that if inflation or unemployment goes up in the next four years but a white GOP man is running against a woman in 2028 that the woman will win?
American farmers are the most productive on earth, and they have the luck of sitting on some of the most fertile soil, on the globe. The notion that groceries went up in the rest of the world, so Americans should have to accept the same, does not hold water.
Without government intervention, cheap groceries are an American birthright. Reagan ended the USSR, but it really ended for good, in a Randall's Grocery Store in Houston. Yeltsin looked at the price and selection of meat, fish, baked goods, fruit and veggies, and was amazed. He asked his interrupter to ask a stock boy, pushing a broom, if his family shopped, there. The kid responded, yes, everyone he knew shopped at Randalls. Yeltsin would later remark, he knew the Soviet Union was over, when he realized the Stock Boy, ate better than Politburo members.
Dems spent trillions unnecessarily, and inflation ran. Trump returned money to taxpayers, Biden flushed trillions. Programs like $48 Billion dollars for high speed internet, that did not manage to connect, even one house to the internet. He handed billions to companies like Rivian, because how could the US manage without S100K EVs, that cause the manufacturer to lose $100K bucks, on each vehicle produced. The list is nearly endless.
World Supply lines are far less important, when a country produces more of their own food, then they need. Our inflation was, overwhelmingly, produced by bad DC policy, even Larry Summers admits that.
This is a nice fairy tale, but totally detached from geopolitical and economic realities. Notably, under Biden, the US had the lowest inflation in the G20 amongst countries not named China (which endured a recession) or Saudia Arabia (which controls the global oil supply), along with the highest rates of growth and the lowest rates of unemployment. The dollar achieved its highest valuation in 20 years.
Under Trump, the US had one of the most blundering, ill-executed and tardy responses to the pandemic in the world. And before the pandemic, after Trump inherited an economy with high-growth, low unemployment and low prices, 300% less jobs were created from 2016-2020 than from 2012-2016. (all dwarfed, of course, by job growth from 2020-2024)
Stories about birthrights that don't exist don't cover up these realities. The price system doesn't care about where you were born. It cares about supply, demand, and (most importantly) the power relations that underpin them.
"World Supply lines are far less important, when a country produces more of their own food,"
Tell that to India, the most self-sufficient nation in the world in terms of food supply, whose rate of inflation is still higher than the U.S.'s, and fell far more slowly from its post-pandemic peak, under its own MAGA equivalent, Narendra Modi.
The point on inflation is not the absolute cost of any product but the percentage increase. One may assume that American farmers are wonderful but that does not change the fact that prices will go up when slaughterhouses are shut down because of COVID. I hope, though, that your hero Trump brings the price reductions he's promised.
Would some of this be explained by the college educated being subjected more and more to liberalism over rot past 30 years in their education and the news sources they have been watching. The news is one thing but living out here in the real world, higher paying jobs for high school grads has diminished and inflation is killing us. Those in higher income levels don't feel the inflation or job market as we do.
When a district swings a few points right in 2024 compared to 2020, how do we know how many voters in that district switched from Biden to Trump versus how many Biden voters stayed home in 2024? Was it a "rightward" shift or a "couchward" shift?
Have wondered the same, bur yesterday Fareed Zikaria (spelling?), hardly a right winger, noted 90% of all US counties moved Right. That would seem to be different, than people just staying home.
1. Narrow the focus of the message to pro-unions, anti-trust, anti-wealthy, anti-corporations.
2. Take from the Trump playbook and suck up all the oxygen meaning ALL Democrats, All the time complaining about Trump, the wealthy, the corporations, etc.
I say the root of all of our problems is Citizens United allowing corporations and wealthy to spend millions on elections influencing the results.
ProjectLeapfrog.org is dedicated to getting corporations and money out of politics.
As a Republican, I urge you to please do #1 and #2 because it was so effective during the last election. (Hate the rich, cripple business. That's the ticket!)
Do you have any policies that maybe voters would be interested in?
The above is not hard to understand. No administration in US history, catered to the wealthy, more than Biden/Harris. Inflation killed the living standards of the bottom half of US earners. The asset heavy, however, have rarely had it so good. Home values and stocks have soared. Climate dollars, often finance Dem donor green companies, that could never survive, without tax payer subsidy.
Biden devoted much of his efforts to student loan forgiveness. No one carries more student debt than Americans with graduate degrees. Doctors, lawyers, MBAs, PHD engineers, and their ilk, tend to marry each other. Under Biden's attempted plan, a 26 year old lawyer, married to a 25 year old MBA, earning $250K together, annually, could have had $40K of student loan forgiveness, under the right circumstance. No one mentioned, as young people they were already earning more than 3X US median family income. On their way to half million dollar family incomes, or more, in middle age.
Biden handed these same people $7500 checks, when they bought an $80K luxury EV. Where Biden really improved their lives, was the human tsunami of cheap labor. Business owners are thrilled with employees that never complain about pay, unsafe working conditions or sexual harassment.
High income families were also thrilled. In the 90s, an educated, stay at home parent, was a status symbol. The parent spent their days devoted to kids under age 5, ferrying children to private school, and a plethora of other after school activities and social events. A house keeper appeared a few days a week.
Times have changed. A stay at home spouse, is an oddity, regardless of income. 2 professional parents, especially if they travel, require, near, round the clock assistance, basically, for 16 years. Multiple nannies, driving to multiple schools, is not uncommon. Toss in a full time housekeeper and/or cook, along with gardeners and pool care. Except for those with generational wealth, such a staff, year after year, is expensive. Biden made the lives of the wealthy, much more enjoyable, when he made domestic help, cheaper and more abundant.
It is not hard to imagine, why the wealthy, so overwhelmingly , supported Harris.
One of our local commenters said Trump's anti-immigrant policy would make it harder for her to find a nanny. Gee, sorry it's getting harder to find someone to raise your kids for you.
As is usually the case, follow the money. The wealthy vote to maintain and advance their privilege. Another piece missing here is the percentage of higher educated getting their income from government connections, including the NGO industry. Biden and Harris are the big government "leaders".
"No administration in US history, catered to the wealthy, more than Biden/Harris. Inflation killed the living standards of the bottom half of US earners."
Perhaps you need a refresher on U.S. history, because regardless of what you believe about the post-WWII presidents, it is undeniable Jackson, McKinley, Coolidge, Harding and Hoover were all far more explicitly servants of the wealthy. (in the case of Jackson, Harding and Hoover, they were also patrons of the financial deregulation that laid the groundwork for kicking off two Great Depressions, in 1837 and 1929) That's to say nothing of Reagan's sponsorship of the neoliberal takeover that eventually led us to the 'Lesser Depression' that began in 2008.
Plenty of the wealthiest oligarchs in the country supported Trump. They support the presidents of both parties, ever more so since the Reagan 80s, which unleashed them. The New Deal era is one of the few times in which one political party mostly froze them out.
But it is notable that it is only Trump that has re-started the Gilded Age practice of explicitly handing them positions within the U.S. state designed to exert power over the design of the government, Russia-style--most prominently with Musk and Lutnick, but less prominently in appointing the greatest number of billionaires to key government offices since, well, the record he set in his first term.
Great article. Great data. Should be required reading for "progressives."
It explains why my wife and I, Democrats for 50 years of voting, switched two years ago to be Independents, and voted for Trump (who we detest) in this year's election. Progressive/Democrats no longer speak for the people we always had advocated for. In fact, progressives often look down on them.
Very few of my college educated friends have strong partisan leanings, and to the best of my knowledge held their noses and voted for whom they regarded as the lesser of evils. I would have voted for almost any other Republican, but voted against both.
Did we EVER want Tammy Duckworth. Someone who actually inspires us.
Did it occur to you, Mr. Moore, that Los Alamos is chuck full of government employees (people who use their education to primarily push paper), and government contractors---all on the tit of whom? Of course, like Northern Virginia, they will vote heavily democrat. I'm frankly tired of the whole education gap reasoning when it is a posteriori thinking, drawing the conclusion you desire by ignoring salient fact.
The shift of wealthy, educated black voters isn’t what’s most significant—it’s the percentage of educated black voters who voted for Harris at 72% vis-à-vis 56% of white college graduates. Because racism has to some extent diminished fewer voters are voting race. More working class black voters are voting class and educated black voters who would have been Republicans if not for race are now voting Republican, just like an even greater minority of educated white voters.
As for why wealthy, educated voters have moved to the left that’s easy. Virtue is a luxury good that we can afford. Because we’re financially well off, we don’t have to sweat it about the price of eggs or gas so we can afford to worry about other people, about the environment, and a range of other issues that aren’t strictly self-interested. Because we’re educated we universalize whereas the lower classes take care of themselves and their own. The lower classes can’t afford idealism and don’t have the imagination to concern themselves with issues beyond their small circle.
The working class also can't afford and despise the boutique cultural issues that the wealthy whites are so fond of.
Do you even hear yourself?
I guess what really troubles me is that Biden did not do anything that raised the price of eggs. Inflation went up in pretty much the whole world to my knowledge due to Covid and wars. Somehow Biden/Harris was blamed for the effects of Covid but Trump wasn't and apparently people believed that there could be mass deportations and high tariffs without inflation. Do you think that if inflation or unemployment goes up in the next four years but a white GOP man is running against a woman in 2028 that the woman will win?
American farmers are the most productive on earth, and they have the luck of sitting on some of the most fertile soil, on the globe. The notion that groceries went up in the rest of the world, so Americans should have to accept the same, does not hold water.
Without government intervention, cheap groceries are an American birthright. Reagan ended the USSR, but it really ended for good, in a Randall's Grocery Store in Houston. Yeltsin looked at the price and selection of meat, fish, baked goods, fruit and veggies, and was amazed. He asked his interrupter to ask a stock boy, pushing a broom, if his family shopped, there. The kid responded, yes, everyone he knew shopped at Randalls. Yeltsin would later remark, he knew the Soviet Union was over, when he realized the Stock Boy, ate better than Politburo members.
Dems spent trillions unnecessarily, and inflation ran. Trump returned money to taxpayers, Biden flushed trillions. Programs like $48 Billion dollars for high speed internet, that did not manage to connect, even one house to the internet. He handed billions to companies like Rivian, because how could the US manage without S100K EVs, that cause the manufacturer to lose $100K bucks, on each vehicle produced. The list is nearly endless.
World Supply lines are far less important, when a country produces more of their own food, then they need. Our inflation was, overwhelmingly, produced by bad DC policy, even Larry Summers admits that.
This is a nice fairy tale, but totally detached from geopolitical and economic realities. Notably, under Biden, the US had the lowest inflation in the G20 amongst countries not named China (which endured a recession) or Saudia Arabia (which controls the global oil supply), along with the highest rates of growth and the lowest rates of unemployment. The dollar achieved its highest valuation in 20 years.
Under Trump, the US had one of the most blundering, ill-executed and tardy responses to the pandemic in the world. And before the pandemic, after Trump inherited an economy with high-growth, low unemployment and low prices, 300% less jobs were created from 2016-2020 than from 2012-2016. (all dwarfed, of course, by job growth from 2020-2024)
Stories about birthrights that don't exist don't cover up these realities. The price system doesn't care about where you were born. It cares about supply, demand, and (most importantly) the power relations that underpin them.
"World Supply lines are far less important, when a country produces more of their own food,"
Tell that to India, the most self-sufficient nation in the world in terms of food supply, whose rate of inflation is still higher than the U.S.'s, and fell far more slowly from its post-pandemic peak, under its own MAGA equivalent, Narendra Modi.
The point on inflation is not the absolute cost of any product but the percentage increase. One may assume that American farmers are wonderful but that does not change the fact that prices will go up when slaughterhouses are shut down because of COVID. I hope, though, that your hero Trump brings the price reductions he's promised.
Just a question, are there any liberals on this liberal patriot cite or just Trump voters who want to gloat?
Would some of this be explained by the college educated being subjected more and more to liberalism over rot past 30 years in their education and the news sources they have been watching. The news is one thing but living out here in the real world, higher paying jobs for high school grads has diminished and inflation is killing us. Those in higher income levels don't feel the inflation or job market as we do.
When a district swings a few points right in 2024 compared to 2020, how do we know how many voters in that district switched from Biden to Trump versus how many Biden voters stayed home in 2024? Was it a "rightward" shift or a "couchward" shift?
Have wondered the same, bur yesterday Fareed Zikaria (spelling?), hardly a right winger, noted 90% of all US counties moved Right. That would seem to be different, than people just staying home.
Pockets of Democratic growth are admirable.
But we need the DNC to adopt two plans of attack.
1. Narrow the focus of the message to pro-unions, anti-trust, anti-wealthy, anti-corporations.
2. Take from the Trump playbook and suck up all the oxygen meaning ALL Democrats, All the time complaining about Trump, the wealthy, the corporations, etc.
I say the root of all of our problems is Citizens United allowing corporations and wealthy to spend millions on elections influencing the results.
ProjectLeapfrog.org is dedicated to getting corporations and money out of politics.
As a Republican, I urge you to please do #1 and #2 because it was so effective during the last election. (Hate the rich, cripple business. That's the ticket!)
Do you have any policies that maybe voters would be interested in?