It's the workers, stupid! (but not only)

1. The facts are: Donald Trump will be President of the US for the second time, after winning the electoral vote and this time also the popular vote, although by a narrow majority. The risk for democracy, human rights and the economy is enormous. A similar number of voters have opted for him than the last time, but the Democrats have obtained under Kamala Harris less votes than under Joe Biden in 2020. The memory of recent inflation, anti-incumbency bias after the cost of living crisis, and the rhetoric of populism have been stronger than appeals to common sense. To people like me, academics with a PhD, this is an aberration. We knew that things were bad, but when we woke up on Wednesday November 6th in Europe, things were around 5% worse than we expected when we went to bed the night before. When I say we, I should include The Economist, the economists, Nate Silver and most commentators in Western media.

2. People as diverse as Economics Nobel prize winner Daron Acemoglu and Senator Bernie Sanders blame the Democratic Party for not having an agenda that is pro-worker enough, in spite of the Biden administration being the most pro-worker of the last 50 years. Asked about this on CNN, Sanders said that Biden's agenda was great, but that much more needs to be done. Others (Nancy Pelosi) blame Biden for not withdrawing earlier from the race. I've also read comments saying that Harris took the vote of women for granted, or that Democrats did not pay enough attention to the immigration issue, but paid too much attention to identity issues (these two points sometimes raised by the same people, like Fareed Zacharia, somehow paradoxically). It is impossible, of course, to prove that by following one or several of these recipes, the Democrats would have won. History only happens once and it is impossible to run pure experiments with it. The fact is that Trump (probably, a worse Trump than the first time) won, and a majority of voters has rejected the opinion of economists, scientists or celebrities.

3. What can be done? Everybody seems to have an answer. I don't. I would like to believe that by avoiding the bad populism (there is a good populism), reducing the volume of identity politics and of culture wars, and addressing cost of living and real wages issues with both pre-distribution and re-distribution, Trumpism and related national-populisms will be defeated. But that's what Biden was trying to do...

4. As political scientist Larry Bartels argues, the supply side of politics also matters. Progressive organizations have to fight against a formidable enemy. But is has been defeated before, in Poland, England, Spain, also in the US in 2020. Appealing to the prejudices of alienated voters is not a solution in the long run, and is not even a progressive solution in the short run. We need to sophisticate our instruments to make our narratives, based on science and common sense, winning ones (now they are not). Workers need high capacity governments at all levels to fight climate change at the same time that prosperity is created and shared. This is possible, there are many examples. But it is not easy.