Or is it just more hopium?
I’m hoping to spread a little bit of hopium during this holiday season, not because I’m trying to blow smoke but because I’m honestly not as pessimistic about this coming election as a lot of people are. It’s not that I’m not extremely nervous. I know as well as you do that anything can happen and this political situation is extremely volatile. After all, just two years ago we had an attempted coup!
But after having lived through some earlier panics that inform my feelings about this election, I’m just not ready to call for the hemlock. Yet. I know it will take hard work and close attention to what’s going on over the next year, but I do believe it’s possible. I’ll try to bring you analysis that I find as I scour the internet everyday that may at least give you some pause.
JV Last of the Bulwark is a bit of a curmudgeon. Sometimes he is down right dark but I often find his analysis interesting. Today he discusses a conversation with economist Noah Smith about Biden’s chances in the election and why Smith believes he will win.
I don’t know if he’s right but it’s certainly worth taking into consideration. He starts off by pointing out something that I’ve said for years, based on my own experience, which is that consumer sentiment and economic polling are very lagging indicators. I’ve observed in the past that it always takes about a year for people to catch up to reality.
Last recounts Smith’s thesis:
Inflation is now—we think—finished. This week’s suggestion that the Fed is looking at multiple rate cuts in the coming months caused the markets to jump. Projections now suggest that the economy will continue to be strong through 2024.
Having achieved a soft landing, the next phase of the business cycle may be expansion. As such, Goldman Sachs believes 2024 will be even better than initially thought.
As these economic realities continue to stack on top of one another and prices remain stable, consumer sentiment will eventually come around—as it always does. By the middle of 2024 we should see a measurable uptick in people’s perception of the economy; by late 2024 voters should be fully caught up.
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Hopium? Maybe. But it doesn’t sound off base to me. I’m already seeing a change in the media which is an important first step.
Smith argues that Biden’s approval numbers will improve as will his polling. (God, let’s hope so.) “By staying the course, not panicking, and letting the growing economy do the work, Biden will be in a strong position for reelection simply because of the fundamentals.”
Last likes this argument because it doesn’t just rely on the polling being skewed or abortion being the magic bullet everywhere. It assumes instead that despite the bizarre nature of this election, what with a psychopathic would-be dictator currently under 91 felony indictments running against the incumbent, things haven’t changed so very much.
As he says:
And I like same-as-it-ever-was heuristics, because (1) they tend to be true¹ and (2) they assume persistent levels of low information among voters.
And I might add, if those normal heuristics, like a successful incumbent, a good economy and a monstrously dangerous opponent aren’t relevant at all, we are in much, much bigger trouble. So yeah, maybe it’s hopium but what else have we got?
Being Last, he’s still not happy with that argument, even if it’s true, because despite all that the odds still give Trump a pretty good fighting chance to pull it off which is as chilling as always. And why? Because we’ve got evidence that a massive number of Americans have been exposed to illiberalism — and they like it. This will be lasting legacy of Trump. They now know that the rules were made to be broken.
The whole Republican party has been activated and they now believe they have a right to attain power by any means necessary. Trump may lose but he’s just the beginning. This anti-democratic, authoritarian worldview is now the organizing principle of the Republican Party.
I do believe it’s possible that public opinion is on the verge of catching up to a good economy and a lot of the people who now say they disapprove of Biden will come around. I don’t know how many of them will, however, and no matter what, I believe the electoral college vote is going to be close. We just have to hope that reality and sanity will assert themselves in enough of the population that we can at least finally put Trump out to pasture. It may not cure the disease but we can cut out the tumor that caused it.
We’ll be keeping a super close eye on this seven days a week all year long here at Hullabaloo, as we always do. If you are of a mind to help me keep this thing going over what promises to be an unprecedentedly tumultuous year, I’d be most appreciative. Your support means the world to me and I am very, very grateful.
cheers,
digby
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Happy Hollandaise everyone!