“Low-engagement voters are likely to decide this election, and I’m not sure about how much they will consider the relationship between the candidates, the “vibes,” and the policies that are actually likely to determine how much it costs to finance an automobile purchase.”
This is infuriating and utterly depressing. It makes me angry at a swath of the American people that not only are not taking seriously Trump’s utter character unfitness for office; they’re not even thinking through which candidate will deliver policies that will personally benefit them more. If they want to shoot themselves in the foot, our democratic system enables them to do so. It just sucks the rest of us have to live with the consequences of that.
I am an optimist, but if trends don’t significantly improve for Biden, he will lose. Trump already over performs his polling, and he’s currently *leading.* If these low information voters show up in droves, and if there really is as much of shift away from Biden in the working class vote, especially among young voters and voters of color, then it’s not going to be close. Trump will win in an electoral college landslide with Biden winning the popular vote by a few million point margin.
I am pulling for Biden big time, I personally like him, and he damn sure doesn’t get the credit he deserves from these voters. But the facts are what they are, and I think we all need to at least be prepared for another Trump presidency and what that entails across the board.
Low-engagement voters don't follow politics for a hobby. They don't think politics has a big effect on their day-to-day life and they have other things to do than worry about it all the time.
Ideally I think everyone should inform themselves and vote, but I don't understand resenting these people. Would they be better off if they spent their leisure hours watching cable news, or arguing about politics on social media?
Obviously resentment is not a productive emotion in general, but yes, they (and all of us) would be better off if, around the time of an election, they spent just a couple of hours figuring out which candidate’s policies are more likely to actually lead to their preferred outcomes (i.e. if you care about inflation you really shouldn’t vote for Trump)
If they're going to engage in a consequential act like choosing who will run the country, they should make an effort to know something about the choice they're making. Acting otherwise is irresponsible and should be resented. We'd be better off if there was more social pressure to be an informed voter.
It is a democracy, even the the misinformed can vote. It is probably healthier to expect your politicians to meet voters where they are than to resent your fellow citizens for not being as intelligent and responsible as you think they should be.
First, just because they "can" doesn't mean that they should choose to do so with no sense of obligation or the gravity of their decision. There are plenty of things that people can do without taking seriously that can have negative outcomes for others; we can't legislate people into giving a damn about the consequences of their actions. Hell, the most famous democracy in history (Ancient Greece) had serious social norms around being educated before you vote. Back then, being a low information, voter was aggressively socially prohibited; having the power to vote was seen as a responsibility to be taken seriously.
Second, politicians "meeting them where they are" is simply asking politicians to run the dumbest, most single issue campaign possible in order to activate the lizard brain of people who can't be bothered to actually think about complex issues. I'm not sure how that is better for us as a country.
Are you struggling to discern the difference between social censure and disenfranchisement? Nobody said that people shouldn't be allowed to vote, I simply said that it should be not socially acceptable to choose to vote when you haven't done any due diligence on your options.
I mean, I think to be a good citizen one should be informed to a certain degree. Which means if they’re concerned about inflation and immigration and of course just general democratic norms, they should not vote for Trump. They should be aware that Trump will not make prices fall and in fact his proposed policies would be inflationary. They should know that he is the main actor responsible for killing the immigration deal (immigration has gotten out of control under Biden, yes, but Biden was and is willing to fix it).
Sure, but we live in a big country full of all different sorts of people. Some pay too much attention to the news, some don't pay enough attention to the news.
I've been thinking about these "you don't know swing voters" pieces and I realize that only swing voter I know is fifty-something ex-cop who's worked as a contractor for some friends of mine with a second home in New Hampshire. I've gone skiing with him once or twice and he is a kind, extremely generous person whose political opinions are insane. For example he seems to think Justin Trudeau wants to impose Sharia law in Canada. He thinks Biden is to blame for inflation but he said he might vote for Biden anyway because he's gay and he worries Trump would end gay marriage. (Ironically this really isn't something he should worry about.)
I genuinely like this person but I don't wish that he spent more time consuming news. It would be snooty and classist for me to hold his opinions against him as a human being, he's somebody who comes from a different place from me.
I hear you. I don’t mean to sound elitist or classist. I tried to be deliberate in my language and not say “uneducated” and use Josh’s language of “low information,” even though it’s a distinction without a difference.
I run into people all the time who are low information voters and they predictably blame Biden for inflation, that they can’t buy a house, that groceries and gas are too high, etc. I’m sure if I had a conversation with them about political issues in depth, we’d agree on most of them. But I don’t really go there because politics is so toxic these days, and I really don’t have enough time to talk things through with them anyway. By any measure, I empathize with their plight and I know their suffering is real, even though I think they are misguided about their political choices.
I don't think that this guy has a plight I need to empathize with, he seems to be living exactly the life he wants and also to do a lot of admirable volunteer work. He just never went to college and never got into the habit of following the news very closely.
What are you talking about? MAGA has lost every single election since 2018. Trump has consistently UNDERperformed his primary polling by 10-20 points (where he really should be OVERperforming). Maybe I'm delusional, but I don't see any way in hell Trump wins this election. He certainly hasn't grown his base since 2020, and the general election is really going to reinforce how advanced his dementia is - he already can't hide it. The RNC is using all of their (rapidly depleting) funds to pay his legal bills, leaving little for a general election, or to support down-ballot candidates.
I realize Josh is writing this column as if Trump is just another run-of-the-mill republican candidate and this is just another election between a standard democrat and a standard republican, but it isn't, and everyone knows that.
Trump outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020. Assuming that he will underperform in 2024 seems like very wishful thinking. I think the odds of Trump winning are at least 60% and all the betting markets agree with that.
There is nothing even remotely similar in the 2016 and 2024 elections. They may as well be a hundred years apart in terms of politics and where the country is. Democrats overperformed (and mostly won) in 2018, 2020, 2022 ("Red Wave!"), special elections in 2023, and so far in 2024. Of course we should continue to be vigilant, but to say that Trump has a 60% chance of winning is doomsday delusion.
He has a losing record, yes, but midterm and off-year elections have favored Democrats because these voters have shifted to their party, and they are more educated and engaged. Low turnout voters seem to turn out every four years, and Trump did over perform his presidential polling in 2020. However, it’s imperative to note that those are essentially two incumbents, most people don’t want either of them to run, and thus I doubt there will be the same turnout as in 2020. And that favors Democrats for the same reasons listed above. It might be a silver lining here.
The spending category is why I have a hard time stomaching full democratic control. Biden’s proposed spending increases are just insane in the current circumstances. Democrats continue to keep pushing to normalize the incredibly expensive expanded child tax credit. Tax policy will be better under Democratic control, but as your multi-time guest Jason Furman has pointed out, Democrats won’t be able to make any significant deficit headway by holding the line at 400k. Obviously just about everything looks worse if Trump is in the White House. And republicans sure aren’t making a pivot towards sanity on any front.
Yep. On so many other things, seems like I’m in the camp with centrist Dems, but for us green eye shade types, it seems like a choice of 16oz of poison or 32oz
I don't want to oversell this, but the evidence there is *does* suggest that would-be retirees treat the Social Security full retirement age as a meaningful indication of when they ought to retire. So it's not nothing.
A 2nd Trump presidency will gravely injure the USA, economically and socially, but the USA will survive and Trump will be done playing the American dictator after four years. The more serious harm will be to the entire world, as he helps Putin defeat Ukraine and with that encourages him to embark on further aggression against other parts of Europe. China will also see a Trump presidency as the best time to invade Taiwan. In other words, a world in flames, just like the 1940’s. If you don’t think it could happen again, watch this about the Hitler supporters, both in the public and in Congress, in the late 1930’s.
This is not the world I want my three grandchildren to live in.
Josh, would you consider a regular podcast discussing the concrete repercussions of a 2nd Trump term? As you say, it is more likely than not to occur. Personally, I think the odds are in the 60-70% range. We have 9 months to prepare and I would love to hear what you have to say. Maybe you can bring on some other ‘tell it straight’ type guys like Matthew Iglesias to get in the weeds and help us understand what to expect.
Josh, I generally like your takes, but you lost me the moment that you suggested that Trump would make decisions regarding the federal budget based on political implications or long-term fiscal implications for the United States. If Trump is elected, all of his actions will be predicated on two things, first, what is best financially for him and second, what gets him the most applause and adulation from his group of ignorant worshipers. Those are the only things that motivate him.
"...blunder our way into a nuclear war or some similarly awful foreign policy catastrophe."
I would argue that shoveling money and arms to Ukraine has risked that nuclear war, for a place Barak Obama himself said was of no strategic interest to the U.S. The blob poses a bigger potential foreign policy catastrophe than The Donald
The problem with this thinking is that it implies a policy that is tantamount to letting Russia engage in aggression with or otherwise invade any non-NATO member - at any time, however they see fit. People like to point to "the blob" as a convenient bogeyman, but it's clear that a majority of Americans find the invasion to be morally abhorrent, even if we quibble on the specifics. And 58% still support both maintaining a flow of arms and aid to the country.
Meanwhile, I find the prospect of Trump blundering himself into a larger conflict with China, or some other grave misstep, to be much more likely than any escalation by Putin in the existing conflict. I also think our stance on Ukraine, with a clear red-line against any further U.S. involvement (i.e. troops on the ground), to be a very effective deterrent at keeping him contained. Much more so than doing nothing would.
“Low-engagement voters are likely to decide this election, and I’m not sure about how much they will consider the relationship between the candidates, the “vibes,” and the policies that are actually likely to determine how much it costs to finance an automobile purchase.”
This is infuriating and utterly depressing. It makes me angry at a swath of the American people that not only are not taking seriously Trump’s utter character unfitness for office; they’re not even thinking through which candidate will deliver policies that will personally benefit them more. If they want to shoot themselves in the foot, our democratic system enables them to do so. It just sucks the rest of us have to live with the consequences of that.
I am an optimist, but if trends don’t significantly improve for Biden, he will lose. Trump already over performs his polling, and he’s currently *leading.* If these low information voters show up in droves, and if there really is as much of shift away from Biden in the working class vote, especially among young voters and voters of color, then it’s not going to be close. Trump will win in an electoral college landslide with Biden winning the popular vote by a few million point margin.
I am pulling for Biden big time, I personally like him, and he damn sure doesn’t get the credit he deserves from these voters. But the facts are what they are, and I think we all need to at least be prepared for another Trump presidency and what that entails across the board.
Low-engagement voters don't follow politics for a hobby. They don't think politics has a big effect on their day-to-day life and they have other things to do than worry about it all the time.
Ideally I think everyone should inform themselves and vote, but I don't understand resenting these people. Would they be better off if they spent their leisure hours watching cable news, or arguing about politics on social media?
Obviously resentment is not a productive emotion in general, but yes, they (and all of us) would be better off if, around the time of an election, they spent just a couple of hours figuring out which candidate’s policies are more likely to actually lead to their preferred outcomes (i.e. if you care about inflation you really shouldn’t vote for Trump)
If they're going to engage in a consequential act like choosing who will run the country, they should make an effort to know something about the choice they're making. Acting otherwise is irresponsible and should be resented. We'd be better off if there was more social pressure to be an informed voter.
It is a democracy, even the the misinformed can vote. It is probably healthier to expect your politicians to meet voters where they are than to resent your fellow citizens for not being as intelligent and responsible as you think they should be.
First, just because they "can" doesn't mean that they should choose to do so with no sense of obligation or the gravity of their decision. There are plenty of things that people can do without taking seriously that can have negative outcomes for others; we can't legislate people into giving a damn about the consequences of their actions. Hell, the most famous democracy in history (Ancient Greece) had serious social norms around being educated before you vote. Back then, being a low information, voter was aggressively socially prohibited; having the power to vote was seen as a responsibility to be taken seriously.
Second, politicians "meeting them where they are" is simply asking politicians to run the dumbest, most single issue campaign possible in order to activate the lizard brain of people who can't be bothered to actually think about complex issues. I'm not sure how that is better for us as a country.
I suppose we could restrict voting rights to the college educated, or to people able to pass a test.
Are you struggling to discern the difference between social censure and disenfranchisement? Nobody said that people shouldn't be allowed to vote, I simply said that it should be not socially acceptable to choose to vote when you haven't done any due diligence on your options.
I mean, I think to be a good citizen one should be informed to a certain degree. Which means if they’re concerned about inflation and immigration and of course just general democratic norms, they should not vote for Trump. They should be aware that Trump will not make prices fall and in fact his proposed policies would be inflationary. They should know that he is the main actor responsible for killing the immigration deal (immigration has gotten out of control under Biden, yes, but Biden was and is willing to fix it).
Sure, but we live in a big country full of all different sorts of people. Some pay too much attention to the news, some don't pay enough attention to the news.
I've been thinking about these "you don't know swing voters" pieces and I realize that only swing voter I know is fifty-something ex-cop who's worked as a contractor for some friends of mine with a second home in New Hampshire. I've gone skiing with him once or twice and he is a kind, extremely generous person whose political opinions are insane. For example he seems to think Justin Trudeau wants to impose Sharia law in Canada. He thinks Biden is to blame for inflation but he said he might vote for Biden anyway because he's gay and he worries Trump would end gay marriage. (Ironically this really isn't something he should worry about.)
I genuinely like this person but I don't wish that he spent more time consuming news. It would be snooty and classist for me to hold his opinions against him as a human being, he's somebody who comes from a different place from me.
I hear you. I don’t mean to sound elitist or classist. I tried to be deliberate in my language and not say “uneducated” and use Josh’s language of “low information,” even though it’s a distinction without a difference.
I run into people all the time who are low information voters and they predictably blame Biden for inflation, that they can’t buy a house, that groceries and gas are too high, etc. I’m sure if I had a conversation with them about political issues in depth, we’d agree on most of them. But I don’t really go there because politics is so toxic these days, and I really don’t have enough time to talk things through with them anyway. By any measure, I empathize with their plight and I know their suffering is real, even though I think they are misguided about their political choices.
I don't think that this guy has a plight I need to empathize with, he seems to be living exactly the life he wants and also to do a lot of admirable volunteer work. He just never went to college and never got into the habit of following the news very closely.
What are you talking about? MAGA has lost every single election since 2018. Trump has consistently UNDERperformed his primary polling by 10-20 points (where he really should be OVERperforming). Maybe I'm delusional, but I don't see any way in hell Trump wins this election. He certainly hasn't grown his base since 2020, and the general election is really going to reinforce how advanced his dementia is - he already can't hide it. The RNC is using all of their (rapidly depleting) funds to pay his legal bills, leaving little for a general election, or to support down-ballot candidates.
I realize Josh is writing this column as if Trump is just another run-of-the-mill republican candidate and this is just another election between a standard democrat and a standard republican, but it isn't, and everyone knows that.
Trump outperformed the polls in 2016 and 2020. Assuming that he will underperform in 2024 seems like very wishful thinking. I think the odds of Trump winning are at least 60% and all the betting markets agree with that.
There is nothing even remotely similar in the 2016 and 2024 elections. They may as well be a hundred years apart in terms of politics and where the country is. Democrats overperformed (and mostly won) in 2018, 2020, 2022 ("Red Wave!"), special elections in 2023, and so far in 2024. Of course we should continue to be vigilant, but to say that Trump has a 60% chance of winning is doomsday delusion.
He has a losing record, yes, but midterm and off-year elections have favored Democrats because these voters have shifted to their party, and they are more educated and engaged. Low turnout voters seem to turn out every four years, and Trump did over perform his presidential polling in 2020. However, it’s imperative to note that those are essentially two incumbents, most people don’t want either of them to run, and thus I doubt there will be the same turnout as in 2020. And that favors Democrats for the same reasons listed above. It might be a silver lining here.
The spending category is why I have a hard time stomaching full democratic control. Biden’s proposed spending increases are just insane in the current circumstances. Democrats continue to keep pushing to normalize the incredibly expensive expanded child tax credit. Tax policy will be better under Democratic control, but as your multi-time guest Jason Furman has pointed out, Democrats won’t be able to make any significant deficit headway by holding the line at 400k. Obviously just about everything looks worse if Trump is in the White House. And republicans sure aren’t making a pivot towards sanity on any front.
Good article, albeit depressing.
Yep. On so many other things, seems like I’m in the camp with centrist Dems, but for us green eye shade types, it seems like a choice of 16oz of poison or 32oz
I don't want to oversell this, but the evidence there is *does* suggest that would-be retirees treat the Social Security full retirement age as a meaningful indication of when they ought to retire. So it's not nothing.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.4.4.41
A 2nd Trump presidency will gravely injure the USA, economically and socially, but the USA will survive and Trump will be done playing the American dictator after four years. The more serious harm will be to the entire world, as he helps Putin defeat Ukraine and with that encourages him to embark on further aggression against other parts of Europe. China will also see a Trump presidency as the best time to invade Taiwan. In other words, a world in flames, just like the 1940’s. If you don’t think it could happen again, watch this about the Hitler supporters, both in the public and in Congress, in the late 1930’s.
This is not the world I want my three grandchildren to live in.
Rachel Maddow on “Prequel” and fascism in America
https://youtu.be/uocsL3kfvAg?si=srvKcpO4K0CnJb5F
Josh, would you consider a regular podcast discussing the concrete repercussions of a 2nd Trump term? As you say, it is more likely than not to occur. Personally, I think the odds are in the 60-70% range. We have 9 months to prepare and I would love to hear what you have to say. Maybe you can bring on some other ‘tell it straight’ type guys like Matthew Iglesias to get in the weeds and help us understand what to expect.
Josh, I generally like your takes, but you lost me the moment that you suggested that Trump would make decisions regarding the federal budget based on political implications or long-term fiscal implications for the United States. If Trump is elected, all of his actions will be predicated on two things, first, what is best financially for him and second, what gets him the most applause and adulation from his group of ignorant worshipers. Those are the only things that motivate him.
insightful
"...blunder our way into a nuclear war or some similarly awful foreign policy catastrophe."
I would argue that shoveling money and arms to Ukraine has risked that nuclear war, for a place Barak Obama himself said was of no strategic interest to the U.S. The blob poses a bigger potential foreign policy catastrophe than The Donald
You don’t think Russia’s expansionary goals that then lead to Poland (NATO country) are in our strategic interest?
The problem with this thinking is that it implies a policy that is tantamount to letting Russia engage in aggression with or otherwise invade any non-NATO member - at any time, however they see fit. People like to point to "the blob" as a convenient bogeyman, but it's clear that a majority of Americans find the invasion to be morally abhorrent, even if we quibble on the specifics. And 58% still support both maintaining a flow of arms and aid to the country.
Meanwhile, I find the prospect of Trump blundering himself into a larger conflict with China, or some other grave misstep, to be much more likely than any escalation by Putin in the existing conflict. I also think our stance on Ukraine, with a clear red-line against any further U.S. involvement (i.e. troops on the ground), to be a very effective deterrent at keeping him contained. Much more so than doing nothing would.
*barack