Subject: Re: WHERE did Dem voters go?
IBiden engineered the softest landing of any world leader, and our economy is humming along nicely (except for the debt, which neither party seems to be able to control). True that Biden benefited from pent-up demand coming out of COVID, but that was true of most world leaders. Yet we still landed mostly softly, and have recovered better than just about everybody.

I know you and I aren't typical in that we actually get informed (you more than me), but I would think that would be pretty basic. Of course, perhaps the Dems' problem was that they didn't highlight that in their advertising.

I don't think it would have mattered. We went through a prolonged bout of elevated inflation, and voters hated it. It doesn't matter that it wasn't caused by Biden. It doesn't matter that it was lower here than elsewhere. It doesn't matter that wages bounced back later. We went through about two years of elevated inflation, and voters lost all trust in Democrats to handle the economy because of it.

I think Democrats made it worse on themselves with the Build Back Better Act. There were just too many economists that were pointing out that it was folly to hit the gas pedal on the economy at a time when inflationary pressures were so high - when it was apparent that perhaps the ARP itself had been too large.

Biden gambled that Americans would prefer the growth and low UP that would come with it. He gambled wrong. To quote Jonathan Chait's quick take on the election:

But Biden’s policies worsened his predicament. He ignored warnings of inflation, believing that the fastest return to full employment and rising wages would be rewarded by a grateful public. Biden was following a strategy designed by the “anti-neoliberal” movement, which believed a populist economic strategy provided the key to building a Democratic majority. A 2020 memo laying out this strategy by the Hewlett Foundation, which poured millions of dollars into an intellectual campaign to spread these beliefs, called for “a new consensus permitting governments more room to spend on efforts that boost aggregate demand without worrying about inflation quite so frantically.”

Many liberals (including me) were eager to believe these policies could produce rapid growth without the risk of inflation or that inflation would prove more tolerable than slow growth and high unemployment. This proved mistaken: People prefer to believe their wage gains are a credit to their own skill and that inflation is the government’s fault.

https://archive.ph/egBym#selec...

So Biden (and the Democrats) got blasted over the economy. Americans didn't want high inflation, but they got high inflation. It was Biden's job to steward the economy, but the economy did something Americans hated. So they didn't approve of his performance.