For Agitprop purposes, I’m asking comrades to help aggregate any and all effortpost responses, critiques, or general thoughts that you have seen or written pertaining to yesterday’s U.S. election that you think have standalone value for discussion either online or IRL.

I made a post for that purpose here, and ideally it can be used not only for general discussion, but as a reference for well thought out responses in discussions about the election to save all of us some brainpower.

No shitposts please, as we’d like to highlight some comrades’ actual effort in constructing responses or analysis, but humor is 100% welcome to help make your point!

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[–] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 43 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

all those articles from months ago that were like "it's really strange how Americans seem to think the economy is bad when it's actually really great and awesome. what could possibly be the explanation? republican media? brainwashing? have they just not been told that the economy is good? are they spoiled from all the money we gave them during the pandemic?" are extremely funny in hindsight.

political analysts spent years of their lives in the best universities; now baffled at the fact that the area under the curve of an inflation graph is more important than whether the curve is going up or down, and whether wages outpace that inflation. calculus makes fools of us all, I suppose. so as much as I wish that Harris would have lost solely on the basis of pro-Palestinian voters (this would be the best possible timeline out of all the horrible ones where Trump wins), it might in fact just be the economy, stupid

[–] mkultrawide@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Incredibly frustrating to hear "educated" neoliberals talk about how "inflation is lower than anywhere else in the developed world" in response to people complaining about how high prices are. Those are fundamentally different things! Its day one, "EcOnOmIcS 101" stock versus flow variable stuff. The prices are too damn high! Saying prices are growing at a slower rate than elsewhere is a terrible retort to that complaint.

That CNN graph showing only 5 counties in the entire country where wage growth outpaced inflation needs to be spammed to all of these losers.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The funny part is that Trump will destroy the economy, too, if he actually implements his tariff plan without first spending years subsidizing domestic manufacturing (which it seems like we're only doing for chips right now because the US is concerned about losing Taiwan for some reason). I wonder if people are right and we'll either trade off one term presidents now or devolve into fascism. Unless capitalism's immune system can spit out another FDR to save it with some New Deal style concessions.

[–] mkultrawide@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago

Honestly, whoever ended up in charge was fucked either way, because I think we are on course for another big economic "correction".

[–] edge@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

which it seems like we're only doing for chips right now because the US is concerned about losing Taiwan for some reason

The US is already overextending its supplies in Ukraine and Israel, while also antagonizing China and Iran.

If the US goes full hog on Iran, which they really want to do, they'd be hard pressed to simultaneously defend against a Chinese takeover of Taiwan.

No China doesn't particularly want to do that, but the US being bogged down in Iran while also supplying Israel (and Ukraine under Biden, but no longer under Trump) would probably be their best opportunity ever.

Which means if the US wants to continue antagonizing Iran and China, they have to be prepared to lose their semiconductor colony even if that's not a guaranteed scenario.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

Makes sense. This is why I love hexbear. Everyone is so informed.

[–] djphdk@hexbear.net 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

On NPR this morning, there was a story on Latino voters. The guest opens the spot saying, "the top issue for Hispanics was actually the economy" and "most said that they were worse off financially compared to 4 years ago." The guest and host then spend 5 minutes talking about how the problem with Harris campaign's outreach to Latino voters was that they used the terms Latinx and progresista.

Absolutely nothing will be learned by liberals.

[–] edge@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The economy was definitely the most important factor by far, but I'm guessing a large majority of Latino Trump voters do take issue with the Spanish language-defying term "Latinx".

[–] context@hexbear.net 14 points 1 week ago

it'll be interesting to see how the next decade develops. i predict an increasing rift between the political class and basic awareness of reality as they rely ever more heavily on metrics that demonstrate concretely how good the economy is under their own management, not even realizing that their own thumbs are on the scales. woe unto us all when some company starts offering to use "ai" to fill in sparse econometrics.

[–] cricbuzz@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well thank goodness it looks like they're finally realizing the error of their ways!

https://xcancel.com/whstancil/status/1854029871187452087

Will Stancil:

Yes: economic dissatisfaction ultimately reflects the domination of the information environment by the right wing (and antisocial sentiment more generally), rather than real economic conditions, which are better than most voters have ever lived through.

:yea:

[–] Parzivus@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago

which are better than most voters have ever lived through

by what metric lmao