It's Still the Economy, Stupid--But They're Trying Very Hard to Make You Forget It

After months of hearing that "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" from the media outlets covering the 2024 presidential election, which were eager for the election to be about anything else, it turned out to be about . . . the economy, stupid. Afterward the media outlets admitted as much, however reluctantly--saying stupid things like "It Wasn't the Economy, it Was Inflation" (as if inflation were somehow a thing apart from the economy)--and then hastened to bury the realization as they went on selling the "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" narrative again in spite of the hard facts.

Consider the particularly popular "White male rage" variation on the argument--and how it compares with the data on how Americans actually voted. According to the data set published by U.S. News & World Report, 54 percent of the White women who voted, 44 percent of Hispanics (including 40 percent of Hispanic women), and 17 percent of African-Americans (including 11 percent of African-American women), voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump. Given those numbers it is safe to say that the majority of the votes for Trump came from persons classifiable as outside the "White male" category--all as, not incidentally, a far from negligible 39 percent of White males voted for Harris (a vote on the part of that group just 7 percent lower than the vote for Harris among White women). That does not rule out the "status politics" of the country, which the media do everything in their power to whip up at every turn in the shabbiest and most cynical way, has factored into the electoral outcome. However, the reduction of Trump's victory to "White male rage" simply does not find validation in the numbers, or anything else--though of course, those who wanted to pretend "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" have never let hard fact get in the way of their loathsome culture war-mongering.