Among Democratic senators, it is difficult to find someone with more progressive positions than Sherrod Brown. The senator from Ohio since 2007 has been especially critical throughout his career of his party’s tendency to distance itself from the US working classes in the Midwest, which has lived in a permanent sense of crisis since the beginning of the decline of the traditional industry in the eighties. He has always enjoyed the support of the unions in his State and has participated in picketing in the calls for some strikes. Brown, 71 years old, but looking younger, is the closest thing to a left-wing politician that can be found in the United States.
In this Tuesday’s election, Brown was defeated by the Republican candidate, Bernie Moreno. It has been a disputed contest. Moreno obtained 50.2% of the votes to Brown’s 46.4%, with just over 200,000 votes difference. Moreno, born in Colombia, entered politics three years ago after making a lot of money as the owner of luxury car dealerships. Rejects the right to abortion and supports the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico. Years ago, he called Donald Trump a “lunatic,” but now he considers himself a 100% Trumpist politician.
Ohio is a State that has evolved in the last twenty years to clearly conservative positions. Even so, Democrats hoped that Brown could resist in these elections, which has not been possible. The end of his political career serves as an example to understand the result of the elections that Trump won.
It didn’t matter that the big numbers for the North American economy were positive since the end of the pandemic. The impact of inflation on the household economy was going to punish the party in power, although few thought that it would go to the extremes that occurred at the polls.
Kamala Harris focused her campaign on warning of the dangers that Trump poses to the future of democracy. The majority of voters considered that their economic situation was more important when deciding their vote, as is the case in almost all countries. You cannot call them selfish. It’s just that the Constitution doesn’t feed you every day.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who won re-election in Vermont with 63% of the vote, had harsh words for Harris’ campaign strategy. “It can’t be much of a surprise that the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, finds that the working class has abandoned it.”
In one of the latest polls by The New York Times, the pessimism of voters was evident, as had been reflected in many other polls. Only 28% of people believed that the country was moving in the right direction and only 40% approved of Joe Biden’s management. With those numbers, any party in any country is doomed to defeat. This discomfort was widespread throughout the population regardless of age, education and gender, and was only less intense among those over 65 years of age and the black population.
When asked which candidate he trusted most to steer the economy, Trump had a seven-point lead over Harris. In other surveys, that difference was greater. 51% thought that the economy needed important changes. Only 3% believed that no change was necessary.
Exit polls on Election Day pointed to an obvious culprit: inflation. 67% said the economic situation was bad or very bad, according to the NBC poll. The family economy was worse for 45%, the same for 30% and better for 24%. Only 24% stated that inflation had not caused serious problems. As happens in all countries, the impact of prices was more intense on low and middle incomes as it was very evident in food and housing, two of those expenses that are inevitable.
Kamala Harris lost three points among those with incomes below $30,000 annually compared to Biden’s results in 2020. She lost five points with voters between $30,000 and $50,000. The loss of support was greater, eight points, in households with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000. As in Spain, the participation rate at the polls increases depending on income.
In 2023, the median salary in the US was $48,060 annually, although there are large differences between states (in Texas it was $45,970, in California it was $54,030).
Faced with this reality, the message focused on the very good macroeconomic data in the US was doomed to failure. And it’s not that those figures are false. The country’s GDP per capita reached $65,548 in 2019. In 2023, it rose to $81,695. Unemployment in October of this year was 4.1% of the active population, 3.4% among those over 24 years of age. The Wall Street Stock Market chained record increases.
That level of full employment could not hide the fact that wages had not risen to the same level in the service sector as inflation. In many North American states, the Latino population has a very important presence in the service personnel, which helps to understand why Trump has enjoyed a record of support among them above that achieved before by any other Republican candidate.
When prices began to fall, a significant part of the population did not see the good news anywhere. At a macroeconomic level, it was an undoubtedly positive fact, but families did not see it that way. After all, prices had not fallen, but had stopped rising so quickly. Since the end of 2023, the increase in wages had been higher than that in prices, but not enough to compensate for the previous loss of purchasing power.
The increase in prices was not uniform. Cheaper products had larger price increases than more expensive ones, according to a study cited by the Financial Times. Regarding employment, the fear of losing a job increased throughout this year among workers with incomes of less than $50,000. Non-payments on the amounts that must be paid for payment with credit cards have also been higher in low-income households.
The increase in prices began with Biden in the White House. It would have happened under any other president. Voters remembered that inflation had been low in Trump’s first term. Republicans took it upon themselves to blame the immense public spending package promoted by Biden so that the population could withstand the impact of the pandemic, which was much higher than that carried out in European countries.
Inflation is a delegitimizing weapon of governments. Its ability to prevent price increases is not great, but what is certain is that the parties in power will suffer the political consequences.
The phenomenon has also occurred in Europe. For that and many other reasons, the Conservatives were annihilated in the British elections. In France and Germany, governments are at a low level of popularity. The Social Democrats are heading for certain defeat in Germany’s 2025 elections.
No one has come out unscathed. Economic pessimism has a brutal capacity to kill governments.
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