It’s (Not) the Economy, Stupid | Ms. Magazine
It's (Not) the Economy, Stupid
It has become something of a bipartisan mantra that the state of our economy is the key factor in the 2020 election. Nestled inside this economic determinism is another set of assumptions: that those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and who support him now are not “really” racist or sexist, but simply motivated by his rhetoric about lower taxes and better jobs.
This idea—that the economy narrowly construed is fundamentally determinative of electoral chances—has a long history. Bill Clinton, with the help of strategist James Carville, most famously utilized this in his 1992 campaign against George H.W. Bush. But versions of a sort of economic fundamentalism crop up in theories as various as orthodox Marxism and classical, conservative, “invisible hand” supply and demand models. In recent weeks, Trump’s trade war with China combined with other indicators such as a wildly fluctuating stock market have put this discussion back in the headlines, with both Republicans and Democrats converging in agreement that the state of the economy is the canary in the electoral coal mine.