Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk attributes the whole election result down to incumbency. Harris was unable to separate herself from Biden and that's about it. He thinks she ran a better campaign than Clinton and Trump ran a worse one than he had done twice. I tend to differ in that I don't it was a good campaign, albeit she didn't have much time.
But speaking of incumbency, how about the billions upon billions sent to Ukraine with nothing to show for it other than hundreds of thousands of dead, a wrecked country and sanctions against Russia that backfired. Or Israel's assault -- with no end in sight to a US-funded genocide. Maybe Americans actually do care about these grift-infused boondoggles especially when they connect the dots to economic hardship at home? Trump was able to point out that the world is on fire and you guys are useless and then deceptively offer himself as the peace candidate, which is a big lie as Kyle has pointed out many times. But low information voters would fall for it. Foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster under Biden/Harris--and I don't think it's insignificant in terms of the election results.
I also heard Kyle Kulinski citing what I've heard other places but haven't dug into too closely, which is that basically in every democratic elexction in the world this year, the incumenbent party lost votes. Except in Mexico, where they elected their first Jewish President and North America's first female head of government from AMLO's incumbent party. And Sheinbaum won in a landslide. AMLO was defiitely successful in building his MORENA party into the leading party and with a clear social-democratic orientation.
The anti-encumbent trend probably has a lot to do with the cutback of temporary social-support programs put into place during the COVID epidemic and with neoliberal phobia about actually using price controls to limit the post-COVID bursts of inflation..
Oh, yeah, foreign policy matters in elections. In this case, it was easy and understandable for voters to think that the world's a mess. And that Biden's policies in Ukraine and Israel in particular are messes. Because they are. For pollsters to measure how much of a role that played is hard, because many voters' impressions of foreign policy are not as specific as, "inflation is too high." But the standard-issue US media pundits are also always going to fall back on safe clichees like "it's the economy" without looking much closer. And then there are the inevitable media junkets to a diner in some small city where they can interview old white people about the election, most of whom will respond with whatever they think it is that won't irritate too many of their circle of friends in case it shows up on TV.
Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk attributes the whole election result down to incumbency. Harris was unable to separate herself from Biden and that's about it. He thinks she ran a better campaign than Clinton and Trump ran a worse one than he had done twice. I tend to differ in that I don't it was a good campaign, albeit she didn't have much time.
But speaking of incumbency, how about the billions upon billions sent to Ukraine with nothing to show for it other than hundreds of thousands of dead, a wrecked country and sanctions against Russia that backfired. Or Israel's assault -- with no end in sight to a US-funded genocide. Maybe Americans actually do care about these grift-infused boondoggles especially when they connect the dots to economic hardship at home? Trump was able to point out that the world is on fire and you guys are useless and then deceptively offer himself as the peace candidate, which is a big lie as Kyle has pointed out many times. But low information voters would fall for it. Foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster under Biden/Harris--and I don't think it's insignificant in terms of the election results.
I also heard Kyle Kulinski citing what I've heard other places but haven't dug into too closely, which is that basically in every democratic elexction in the world this year, the incumenbent party lost votes. Except in Mexico, where they elected their first Jewish President and North America's first female head of government from AMLO's incumbent party. And Sheinbaum won in a landslide. AMLO was defiitely successful in building his MORENA party into the leading party and with a clear social-democratic orientation.
The anti-encumbent trend probably has a lot to do with the cutback of temporary social-support programs put into place during the COVID epidemic and with neoliberal phobia about actually using price controls to limit the post-COVID bursts of inflation..
Oh, yeah, foreign policy matters in elections. In this case, it was easy and understandable for voters to think that the world's a mess. And that Biden's policies in Ukraine and Israel in particular are messes. Because they are. For pollsters to measure how much of a role that played is hard, because many voters' impressions of foreign policy are not as specific as, "inflation is too high." But the standard-issue US media pundits are also always going to fall back on safe clichees like "it's the economy" without looking much closer. And then there are the inevitable media junkets to a diner in some small city where they can interview old white people about the election, most of whom will respond with whatever they think it is that won't irritate too many of their circle of friends in case it shows up on TV.