Bernie Sanders is completely wrong (as usual)

Fun fact: Kamala Harris received more votes in Vermont (64.4 %) than Sanders (63.3 %)

The votes have not even yet finished being counted, and re-elected independent-socialist Bernie Sanders already came out with a hot take on a party to which he does not even belong:

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.” He adds “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.”

To begin with, based on actual policy positions, the Kamala Harris campaign and the Democratic Party are wholeheartedly with the working class and the middle class.

According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Harris’ tax proposals would lower taxes on 99 % of the population; and it would increase it ONLY for the top 1 %. In contrast, mainly due to his tariff proposals (which are effectively a regressive sales tax), Trump’s proposals would INCREASE taxes for 95 % of the population, while lowering it significantly for the top 5 %, and massively for the top 1 % of the population. Trump is introducing a new term to political science, billionaire-ocracy (as this goes way beyond oligarchy).

Kamala Harris proposed increasing the minimum wage (the Democrats in Congress have proposed to increase it to $15 per hour); Trump and the Republicans have opposed any increase, and Trump, while cosplaying as a McDonald’s worker, refused to answer a question on this topic.

Yes, people were angry that there was a 21 % accumulated inflation over the Biden years; but wages increased by 25 %, so real wages were actually UP. Now, the tariffs and the mass deportation of immigrants will drive inflation up, so expect real wages to start falling.

All other economic indicators were positive: higher real net worth (real means adjusted for inflation); higher real GDP per capita; higher real net income per capita; stock market at record highs; houses prices (which are the main asset for the vast majority of people) up. While under Trump 2.7 million jobs were destroyed, under Biden and Harris 16.1 million jobs were created.

John Burn-Murdoch, from the Financial Times, published a chart which shows that ALL incumbent parties in government in developed countries lost the elections in 2024, which was the first time this has happened since data have been recorded in 1905. In fact, the Democratic Party was one which suffered the least losses.

But the main focus should be on what the future portends for the economy: there was a widespread consensus, from Nobel laureates in Economics to business economists on Wall Street, that Trump’s plans will imply higher inflation, lower employment, lower economic growth, higher fiscal deficit, higher national debt (see chart below).

If he carries out a fraction of the massive deportation that he promised, there will likely be an economic recession (people estimate a fall in GDP of between 4 and 8 %); while at the same time there will probably be higher inflation, due to the sudden reduction of the workforce for agriculture, the food industry, construction, and service industries. So, we will have stagflation, the inglorious situation that harkens back to Carter and the early Reagan years.

Trump’s proposals on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare, as outlined in Project 2025, and even in his demagogic proposal to eliminate taxes on social security benefits, will accelerate the bankruptcy of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds by six years; if the Affordable Care Act is overturned, people with pre-existing conditions will see their health insurance costs skyrocket, or they will simply be denied coverage.

Poverty and inequality will likely spike, as the obvious consequence of a pro-billionaire economic policy. Trump proposed extending his tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporation (and even suggested further cutting the corporate tax rate). Independent budget analysts have forecast the national debt to grow by another $8 trillion (on top of the $8 trillion he already piled on in his first administration).

So, given all these forecasts and factual information, how could it be that half of the people actually voted for these proposals? The basic and simple answer is misinformation.

People who read newspapers or see newscasts on TV were more likely to vote for the Democrats; people who get “information” primarily from social networks (like Twitter or Tik-Tok) were more likely to vote for Trump.

People who had the INCORRECT answer on key economic questions (violent crime rates, inflation rates, stock market level, number of unauthorized border crossings) were more likely to vote for Trump; those who gave the CORRECT answer were more likely to vote for Kamala Harris (see graph below).

While podcasters, tik-tokers, influencers, etc. were spewing out disinformation (some of them paid by the Russian government), mainstream media somehow abdicated its role to present information about the dangers associated with a Trump candidacy (including both his longest serving Chief of Staff and the head of the Armed Forces that served under Trump saying, unambiguously, that Trump was a fascist and a danger to the country). Jeff Bezos ordered The Washington Post to not endorse Harris.

Did the Israel-Hamas war (which is really an Israel-Iran war) have an effect? Likely yes, especially in Michigan. But, as many of us warned, the situation for Gaza, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and immigrants in general will become MUCH WORSE under Trump. Trump has said he will reimpose a Muslim ban and deport pro-Palestine protestors.

The Harris campaign focused, appropriately, in the seven swing states. The shift towards Trump was much higher in the non-swing states (for example, in California, New York by 12 points, Florida by 10 and Texas by 8), whereas in the swing states it was about 2 %. If 250,000 votes had changed in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, we would now be congratulating Madam President Harris.

So, Kamala Harris had good policies (in blind tests, a majority of respondents liked most of Harris’ policies, and disliked most of Trump’s policies), had a good economic record (although many voters thought the opposite), and had a good electoral campaign infrastructure.

The remaining issues, on which most of the Republican ads focused, are the so-called “woke” “progressive” issues (that Sanders and the other “democratic socialists” tend to espouse). Kamala Harris never called to “defund the police” (she had been previously a prosecutor, District Attorney and California’s Attorney General); she never chanted “from the River to the Sea”, and instead advocated a two-State solution for Israel and Palestine; she never used the term “LatinX”; as far as I know never expressed a position on sex change operations for minors (Biden came out against them) or transgender athletic participation; and she was not in favor of “open borders”.  Final statistics are not yet out, but it appears that the Biden administration will have deported more people (2 million) than Trump did in his first period (1.5 million); Obama deported 4.8 million in his two periods. The Biden administration toughened the border policy this year, and unauthorized border crossings fell, but perhaps it was too little too late.

Perhaps Kamala Harris failed in not speaking out more forcefully about her proposal to increase the minimum wage; the strong bipartisan border bill that Trump ordered Republicans to kill; the efforts being made to reduce illegal border crossings. I would imagine that future Democratic Presidential candidates will advocate more CENTRIST positions on cultural wedge issues (and definitely not more leftist positions, as Sanders and the Squad advocate).

The two main long-term negative impacts of Trump’s election will be:

a)      Supreme Court (he will likely replace Thomas and Alito, giving the 6-3 Republican majority another 30 years of life); and if Justice Sotomayor were to become ill, could even reach a 7-2 majority (many of us begged Sotomayor to step down earlier this year).

b)      Climate Change. He may pull out of the Paris Agreement again (unless his new BFF Musk convinces him otherwise). He will likely end subsidies for electric vehicles (unless Musk convinces him otherwise). He will probably reduce incentives for renewable energy generation (although the falling costs make solar and wind energy the most cost-effective).

The vast majority of the American people will be negatively affected by Trump’s policies, so I would expect the House to strongly go back in the Democrats direction in 2026 (and possibly the Senate too); and the Democrats will win the Presidency in 2028, assuming Trump doesn’t fulfill his dictatorial dreams.

Many people will suffer, especially immigrants, the LGBTQ community, women, seniors, low-income people, people with pre-existing conditions, Muslims, other minorities. But we will survive.

Source: John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times

Source: Reuters/Ipsos

Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy