Trump's Triumph!

Trump’s victory was an all-out sweep. He took all of congress to a shimmering red victory in the wake of his own presidential win, thoroughly reformed the Republican party in his image, and he won the electoral vote by a large margin and even dominated the popular vote.

One thing Trump’s huge triumph may do is make me wrong about the nation falling into the chaos of civil conflict this year. I think I said along the way (I know I thought it) that the one hope to avoid that conflict would be a victory so strong (by either side) that it leaves the other side with no argument that the election was stolen from them. (I’m too lazy right now to go back and try to find where I said it.)

I’m pretty sure we won’t be hearing much anymore from the Trump crowd (especially from Trump, himself) that the election was rigged. The instant death of that argument, if it happens, as I predict it will, will prove the lie to that four-year Trumpian claim. We’ll see, if that proves to be the case, that the election is only rigged if he loses. Let’s see, as vitally important as he said this issue was to the future of America, if he makes election reform a major goal of his presidency any more than he did after laying the same groundwork ahead of what turned out to be his 2016 victory. My point here, though, is that we won’t be seeing civil war out of the Right, even though it did a great deal of talking about civil war, now that they won by a landslide.

At the same time, the Left has been given such a severe blow that it MAY walk away with its tail between its legs. MAY! It’s still possible, maybe even probable, that they will revolt in the days ahead as Trump’s government begins to materialize and even more likely they will next year as he starts pushing through new policies, but it is less likely that the Left will rundown chaos this year, given the decisive victory by Trump. They may feel a little disempowered, and that’s the only possibility I’ve seen for getting through this election without a citizen’s revolt by one side or the other over the results.

As Matt Taibbi wrote late last night:

Scripps also called Pennsylvania at 1:30 a.m., and it just may be that there isn’t room for even the appearance of crookery this time. Even Rick Wilson, who would coax his mother onto a sinking lifeboat if he felt it were political useful, just went on the Brian Williams show and said something to the effect that Trump won the election fair and square.

It’s the economy, Stupid

Actually, Trump’s victory was about many things, not just the economy. (That’s not me saying “stupid.” It’s just an expression.) However, by far the strongest driving force that stood out in exit polls was the economy. That, of course, fits my thinking exactly.

AP got this basic point as to why Trump won and, yet, completely missed it at the same time, which is no surprise. They note, as a fact stated in exit polls, that half of the people who voted for Trump said inflation was the biggest issue that drove their decision, but then AP has the audacity or ignorance to claim that Trump managed for many to “paper over” the fact that “the economy … is robust”—backing the same tired talking point that the mainstream press has been parroting all year on behalf of Biden and Harris.

“Overall, about half of Trump voters said inflation was the biggest issue factoring into their election decisions. About as many said that of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to AP VoteCast.

“He papered over the fact that the economy by many conventional metrics is robust — inflation is largely in check and wages are up — while border crossings have dropped dramatically. He talked right past the facts and through relentless repetition convinced voters.”

Not on your life. While I never predicted which way this election would decide, one thing I did say was that America historically always votes it pocket book: It never elects an incumbent for president during a failing economy, especially a recession!

The TRUTH is that the press and the Biden administration have mutilated statistics in order to literally paper over economic reality with what they write in their papers in order to create an illusion that this horrible economy is robust, and it didn’t sell. They couldn’t make it stick. If the economy was so strong, Harris wouldn’t have had to try to run away from it. It would have been easy to convince Americans that she and Biden had made them prosperous (especially after continuing to throw so much free money in their hands in continuing Trump’s free-money moves during the early Covid days).

What Americans knew in their gut was that, if the economy was robust, they wouldn’t be feeling the pain of inflation so deeply. Americans didn’t buy the garbage that AP has bought into because AP trusts the statistics put out by Biden.

I’ve pointed out many ways all year that we could tell the statistics were wrong, particularly labor statistics but also real GDP because it doesn’t really factor out actual inflation. It isn’t “real.” We saw endless declining manufacturing reports, lots of little signs that inflation is still rising behind the scenes, constant downwardly revised job figures, proving all past months were lies or bad mistakes, but always trying to convince us the present month was real. We even heard from the Fed that the job reports were in great error, and then we saw the government still had to revise its past twelve-month aggregate of new jobs down by almost a million. People feel every day how much harder it is to get by, so they know their wages have not kept up with inflation.

Given the exit polls, if the Trump victory proves one thing resoundingly it is that America is in a stealth recession—unseen in the stats but felt in the pockets, unbelieved by the elite who are in charge, but deeply believed by voters. It may be a recession in some parts of the economy—such as manufacturing—and not in others. It may be hitting more in some states than others. So, it may be evolving in a somewhat spotty way, but there has never been anything like a recession to kick an incumbent out of office. And it wasn’t just Republicans saying it:

Broad economic discontent, sharp divisions about the nation's future and polarized views of the major-party candidates mark voter attitudes nationally in ABC News preliminary exit poll results of the 2024 election….

Nationally, the share of people saying they've gotten worse off under the current administration (45%) is the highest in presidential exit polls that have asked the question -- even surpassing the 42% "worse off" in 2008, in the teeth of the Great Recession….

The economy remains a key irritant. Voters say it's in bad shape by 67%-32%.

On the rigged election concerns, however …

In preliminary exit poll results, 81% of Georgia voters say they're very or somewhat confident the state's elections are being conducted fairly and accurately, more than say so nationally (68%). These views are bipartisan, ranging from 94% of Democrats to 78% of independents and 72% of Republicans.

Americans by a large majority are comfortable that their elections are not rigged, especially in the supposedly (according to Trump) very rigged Georgia. On that matter, the vast majority clearly did not buy into the Trump lie that was thrown out unanimously by 60 courts, including very conservative courts and the most conservative Supreme Court in decades. All courts said the stolen election of 2020 was a nothing burger.

The economy, however, was far from nothing in the American mind, and Americans, with equal wisdom, didn’t buy the lie from Biden either. They tossed the bum and his bum partner out. No second term for Team Biden because … it’s the economy. It’s a lot of other things, of course, such as the horrendous levels of Biden censorship, and his turning the US into chapters of 1984 with how he handled Covid, but, when asked what drove them most, voters answered resoundingly, “The bad economy.”

In 2020, 16% of Georgians said they were worse off financially than they were four years prior, but in 2024, 52% say they are worse off financially than four years ago. Even Harris had to campaign on how she was going to make economic hardship go away. Why would she do that if the economy were not receding badly? You’d capitalize on your economic success, but few would have believed her on that, and she knew it. She actually had to run from Team Biden’s economic track record, not on it.

And to think we spent more trillions of dollars to get here than we ever have before! That’s a fail! Bigly!

Says CBS, voters were …

dissatisfied with the state of the country, the economy and by the many voters who were feeling the impact of inflation….

Two thirds of voters described the economy as bad, and those voters who did went big for Trump.

And on a personal level, more said they were worse off financially compared to four years ago — and 8 in 10 of those voters backed Trump.

I think John Rubino summarized the day’s news nicely in terms of what this victory may mean for civil unrest:

The election is over, and the result is pretty close to a best-case scenario. The victory margin is big enough to head off the expected civil unrest, giving us a more-or-less peaceful transfer of power. And if Trump and his team keep their promises, they’ll quickly address the existential threats of global war and mass illegal immigration, while protecting free speech.

It certainly wouldn’t have been that way if Trump had lost, given that a large number of Republicans said, even ahead of the fact, they would not accept losing the election.

On the financial front, it’s a different matter. Though people voted Biden out over the economy, markets responded in mixed fashion:

Now for the bad news. This morning the financial markets responded to the election in two completely incompatible ways. First, traders bid up stocks…. At the same time, interest rates spiked….

If stocks and interest rates can’t both rise in the long run, which trend is right and which is wrong? This chart contains the probable answer:

We’re so deeply in debt that rising interest rates have become intolerable. So if the Fed doesn’t intervene, the markets will.

Both candidates promised a lot more debt spending—not in so many words, of course, but that is what their stated economic plans add up to—a LOT more debt.

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