No One Cares About The Economy In Good Faith

I find it equal parts infuriating and humorous when I read a New York Times story in which a reporter asks with great earnestness why some baby boomer at a Midwest diner is voting for Donald Trump and they respond with some practiced word salad that's supposed to mean "the economy."

That we are supposed to believe any middle class or working class voter is backing Trump because Big Daddy has finely tuned economic policies designed to improve the material lives of regular folks is, well, insulting. But that's exactly what we've gotten over the past nine years of Americans finding ways to justify their Trump backing in mixed company.

I am being forced to vote for the openly fascist candidate, they say, because I paid six bucks for a carton of eggs eighteen months ago. I have no choice but to vote for Trump because mideast oil state royalty jacked up gas prices right before the 2022 midterms to hurt Democrats. McDonald's french fries have increased by 82 cents since 2020 – what choice do I have? The tolerant left – we're so tolerant, no one has ever been more tolerant – is supposed to nod and say we understand. That kind of economic anxiety will force one's hand.

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The defining political statement of the 90s – as older millennials and Gen Xers will certainly recall – was former Clinton adviser James Carville stating in his cajun accent, “It’s the economy, stupid.” This became the guiding light for highly-triangulated, hyper-neoliberal Democratic politics throughout the 90s and into the Obama era. The economy, it was thought back then, was the only thing that mattered. Most Americans would vote for their economic interests, the Carville doctrine said. And since Democrats and Republicans weren’t wildly different from each other on most issues, this was the case. Bill Clinton cruised to re-election in 1996 talking about little else but the economy, and Al Gore won in 2000 on the strength of those economic policies, though the Supreme Court’s conservative justices installed his opponent, George W. Bush, as president. So it goes. 

The idea that someone prepared to vote for Trump for a third time this November is going to have a change of heart because Joe Biden and congressional Democrats work to lower health care costs or eliminate student loan debt for millions of Americans is ludicrous. In fact, I would bet – per the Lib Owning Manifesto, of which I am familiar – that many Trump backers would happily pay ten bucks for a dozen eggs or five bucks for a gallon of gas or resume their $1,400 monthly student loan payments if it meant their guy was back in the White House. This is the cost of doing business – business in this case being the politicization of the federal bureaucracy, illegal imprisonment of politicians they don’t like, concentration camps for migrants, the acceleration of climate-destroying policies, jailing women for having miscarriages, and turning the federal government into a weapon of mass repression against LGBTQ people and Americans of color and labor unions and everything else they fucking hate and fear. 

Economic policies mean absolutely nothing in the 2024 presidential race. 

The Carville Doctrine Has Got To Go

The political realities of this bygone era are no longer instructive. The hyper-partisanship of the Newt Gingrich era morphed into the radicalization of congressional republicans during the Obama years, which hardened into all-out partisan warfare in the Trump era. Economic successes and failures – or even economic plans – make little difference today because you are either in this tribe or that tribe. And no tax incentive or health care cost savings or free pre-K is going to move a person from one tribe to another. 

Following the Carville doctrine in the 2020s is political malpractice verging on political suicide. Because, you see, no one gives a shit about the economy in good faith anymore. 

I’m not breaking any news when I tell you “economic anxiety” is a cute little code word for the terror white Americans feel as they feel their societal domination slipping away. They say things like “DEI policies are a problem” because they can’t say what they want to say. The slow dismantling of white supremacy as government policy is what they’re worried about, mostly because conservatives can only think in terms of hierarchies of oppression. If they treat us like we treated them when we were on top, they think, how bad is life going to be? So they engage in breathtaking levels of bad faith to tell the New York Times or a pollster or a coworker why they must cast yet another vote for a candidate whose only platform is to end representative democracy in the United States. 

It certainly doesn’t matter to these folks that there really was never an inflation problem under Biden. 

Research over the past couple years has shown again and again that corporations jacking up prices of their products largely drove inflation during the first few years of the Biden presidency. Americans were expecting inflation after the COVID-era injection of capital into the economy to keep families and businesses afloat as the virus ripped through the country. Corporations took this opportunity to gouge us on every imaginable product. This, in case you are wondering, was unprecedented. 

We love our capitalism, don’t we folks. 

“It’s one thing for corporations to pass reasonable increased costs to consumers. It’s another for them to line their coffers by exploiting Americans who are just trying to get by,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, an organization that detailed how inflationary issues were exacerbated by the corporate world from 2021-2023. “Even as supply chain snarls have receded and the U.S. economy has stabilized, our research finds that businesses continue to pad their bottom lines at the expense of American families.”

The report concludes that corporate interests “tacitly colluded” to hike prices to eye-watering levels and take in record profits while working Americans saw more of their paychecks going to the bare essentials of modern life. Not that it matters, but corporate profits have never been higher than they are today. If you guessed this will not satiate the corporate beast, you, of course, are exactly right. 

None of this will register for anyone who has done nothing but think of Trump’s glorious return to the White House since he lost in 2020. That Biden and his administration have made great efforts to control inflation without destroying the economy and further immiserating working class people means nothing as we head into the 2024 election. Because, again, economic issues are a political nonentity in the current political climate. No one cares about the economy as long as their guy is in charge. 

Here’s why I’m so obnoxiously confident in my assessment of the importance – or lack thereof – of economic policies in 2024: Trump’s favored economic approach would supercharge inflation for years to come, according to economists who know about this shit. He has no plan to keep the U.S. economy from entering a inflationary tailspin that could lead to a prolonged recession, something for which right-wing economists and media outlets have so badly wished during the Biden years. If Trump’s policies lead to out-of-control inflation, precisely zero Trump voters will regret their support for the Big Boy. 

They’ll pay $12 for a gallon of milk with a big fucking smile on their face, knowing the libs are crying and coping. When the Federal Reserve is forced to raise interest rates to 20 percent, they’ll ask us if we’re triggered, if we’re going to cry. That’s politics in the 21st century: Upsetting your opponents at any cost. 

There’s no reason for Biden and his surrogates to talk about the economy in the months ahead of Election Day. The left has no reason to appeal to anyone's economic interests because those will never override a person's desire to inflict political and cultural pain on those they hate. We must stop pretending people care about the economy in good faith.

As I’ve been told to stick to sports, I would suggest the Biden team stick to abortion rights. It’s the jet fuel for prolonged Democratic domination of national politics. 

It’s abortion rights, stupid. 

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social and on Threads and X at @CDCarter13.