Here's why Kamala Harris lost the election, in two charts (and I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself):
As the first chart notes, "Debt Balance Credit Cards in the United States ... reach[ed] an all time high of 1.14 Trillion USD in the second quarter of 2024." The second chart is from a 2023 CNBC story.
Credit cards are practically charging “loan shark interest rates” after hitting historic highs this year, said Barry Glassman, a certified financial planner and member of CNBC’s Advisor Council....And they're even higher now, hitting 21.76% in August.
The average interest rate for all credit card accounts hit 20.68% in May, the highest on record, according to most recent Federal Reserve data.
Harris fell victim to forces that have swept the globe:
Worth remembering before the blame-game gets too personal: "Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents", @jburnmurdoch https://t.co/2S3Y9JMpk6 via @ft pic.twitter.com/fU81JAyloK
— Tim Bale (@ProfTimBale) November 7, 2024
Ordinary people were already struggling more than their parents, then inflation struck in 2021. It hurt incumbent parties all over the world.
Yes, it has receded in America. Yes, we now have the strongest economy in the world.
But the two charts at the top of this post show how the economy looks to people who were already struggling to pay their bills every month when inflation hit. In all likelihood, they pulled out credit cards to buy necessities, and now they can't pay those credit cards off.
My wife and I can afford to pay our credit card bills in full every month, but I don't look down on people who can't. If your family is bigger than ours, if you're younger(we're in our sixties), if you've ever had a stretch of unemployment or big medical bills, you have it harder than we did. If you went to college or grad school in the past twenty years, you'd be shocked at how small our student loan burden was in the 1970s.
By economists' criteria, this is a booming economy. It's pretty sweet for people who can afford it. But I completely understand that it doesn't look so sweet if you're living paycheck to paycheck.
I tried to run a one-person business for a while in my twenties and early thirties and got myself in debt. It sucks. It sucks to pay a partial bill and see no decrease in the debt because the interest keeps compounding and compounding. I managed to get out of that debt and never looked back, but when you're in the thick of it, it's miserable.
If you've never been in that situation, count your blessings. If you think everyone who gets into debt is a bad person, well, I guess I was a bad person.
For millions of Americans, this is still a bad economy, just as it is for people around the world. There are other people who voted for Trump because they like his swagger or his misogyny, but I think Trump would have won because the rising tide in America failed to lifted millions of boats.
I'll be happy when the news cycle shifts to Trump's plans, or even to some non-political story. Right now it's dominated by politicians and pundits who want Democrats to throw trans people under the bus, or stop using the word "Latinx" (a word Democratic politicians don't actually use), or generally become Republican Lite, even though that didn't work this year. But this was apparently an unwinnable election for Democrats. If we have elections in the future, they'll be under different circumstances. There are mistakes Democrats can correct, but they can't fight history.
And always remember: Kamala Harris got 48% of the vote. This was not a blowout. It was not a landslide. Harris's voters were close to half the country. If Trump had lost with 48% of the vote, pundits would be urging Democrats to be conciliatory to Trump voters. We deserve a respect we'll never get.
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