The 2022 midterms are supposedly going to turn on the economy. If that was actually the case, the midterms would be trending Democrat.
The U.S. economy has rebounded from the pandemic, after a dip resembling a crater from an end-times asteroid strike in the second quarter of 2020 that had nearly erased all of the GDP growth of the Trump years.
Per-capita income is also higher than it was at any point in the Trump years, so there’s also that.
And yet, the perception for some (read: the MAGA-lites) is that the economy was somehow better in the Trump years, which is clearly just a rationalization from those who don’t want to consider themselves hardcore MAGAs and want to think that it’s OK to vote for Trump-backed candidates.
You’re not going to be able to dissuade somebody who is grasping for any reason to justify a vote for a Trumpist, but you don’t have to let them get away with it when they tell you why.
Basically, it’s not the economy, stupid.
Because the fact is, Trump undid the economic growth of his first three years with his abhorrent response to COVID.
And the cause of the inflation that is pushing prices up everywhere – in the U.S., in Europe, the rest of the globe – is the fallout from the measures that we all had to undergo to try to gird the world economy from the pandemic.
Don’t let yourself be persuaded by your MAGA-lite friends that what we’re experiencing with respect to inflation is unique to the U.S. Just look over across the pond at the UK, which just sacked its second prime minister in six weeks because the Conservatives there can’t shoot straight with their response to high gas and energy prices at the root of their inflationary pressures.
And, yes, the Conservatives there are like our conservatives here, the only difference being the lack of a cult of personality pledging fealty to a failed reality-TV huckster.
This isn’t to say that our MAGA-lite friends aren’t still going to fill in the oval for their favorite Trumpist in early voting or on Election Day.
But if you’re one of those who have already done this, or are about to do so, just know that it’s not because the economy was actually better under Trump, so whatever your other reasons are for voting Trumpist, that’s for you to have to deal with when you lay your head down to sleep at night.
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Chris Graham
