Wednesday Morning Rant

"People vote their pocketbooks" is an expression so common and so old that it is has become something of a political axiom. As James Carville put it back during the first Clinton campaign, "it's the economy, stupid."

The economy is always a key part of any given campaign. If it's doing well, it isn't doing well enough to the opponent. If it's doing poorly, the incumbent lies about it and the challenger calls out the lie. You can set your watch by it. Recession, growth, inflation, stability, deficit, surplus, unemployment, job growth - it's all the same. The candidates will behave predictably in accordance with the axiom. It's one of the pillars of American elections.

But Carville's quip is not the be-all and end-all. Other things do matter, and this is an election where other things may even matter more. The economy sucks right now. Inflation is high and growth is low (in fact, growth is negative if one subtracts the federal deficit spending each quarter from GDP). Labor force participation is declining. Unemployment is going to march inexorably upward. The petrodollar has failed. Deficits are staggering. The "economic landscape" is rocky and perilous.

And yet, it isn't a top issue to voters. More people are financially on the ropes, and "the economy" routinely polls outside the top position - often the top two or three positions - this cycle. Ace posted about this last week (don't comment on old threads!) in the entry titled "Poll: Immigration, Crime Top Issues for Voters." There are other polls that support this. "The Economy" is up there - it always is - but it often does not come out on top. Given economic conditions, it should and yet it is often going home with the silver or the bronze - or not even getting a spot on the podium.

This is because the axiom is not actually axiomatic. The economy is the top issue when things are otherwise okay. In the early 90s and the early aughts, things were otherwise largely okay, except for 9/11 and the subsequent wars - but those wars were also fairly popular. Even as late as 2008, as things were starting to break up with the muddling wars and the hollowing out of American industry was approaching its maximum, the financial crisis was so stupendous in scale that it dominated all.

Not so today. The country - and the world - today looks nothing like it did 16 years ago. The economy is faltering, but so is nearly everything else. The open border is a disaster that people across the country are harmed by every day. Pro-crime Soros-style policies directly and physically threaten and harm urban dwellers throughout the land. "Wokeness" in all its forms - social, sexual, economic, political, religious and so on across the spectrum - is now so corrosive that it cannot be ignored. Antisemitism is surging and anti-white racism is becoming the norm. The world has changed

Note that last month - the despicable "Pride Month" - was fairly muted. The backlash last year has left businesses especially cautious. Some went all-in as always, but it was much less noisy than in years past. There is more litigation than ever surrounding "DEI" type policies, too, and some potentially-interesting battles are forming up. The condition that dare not speak its name - the triple standard of "law" - is increasingly acknowledged, both by those decrying it and those claiming that such assertions are preposterous. The vast overextensions in the culture over the past 16 years combined with the continuous social, political and policy disasters from COVID to date have conspired to eclipse the economy in an election cycle that should, by historical norms, be dominated by it.

Carville and all the rest who rely on "people vote their pocketbooks" are correct only when things aren't blowing up on all fronts. There will likely never be a campaign season where the economy is simply not an issue at all - but this is a season where, bad as it is, it is of comparatively low or middling importance.

There are simply too many other problems that hurt too many people for the pocketbook to dominate the field.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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