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It's been a bit since we've check in the election. How are things going?
You might not know it, but Donald Trump's chances have had a bit of a resurgence lately. Nate Silver's model has him at a 61% chance to win the election. Polymarket has him at 51%.
I think the error bars are pretty wide here. A lot of things are going to come into play. Small decisions in swing states (such as absentee ballot policies) could decide the election. Another factor is how much the "Shy Tory" effect still matters. Exactly who are the people that answer for the phone for pollsters anyway?
The economy appears to be crashing at exactly the wrong time for Kamala. Prices have been increasing faster than wages, and the customer is "tapped out". The stock prices of many consumer-facing companies like DollarTree, Starbucks, Lululemon, and Nike have cratered along with sales projections.
All of this might force Kamala Harris to actually say or do something. For those following along she has made only one unscripted appearance since becoming the heir-apparent. It was an 18 minute interview (cut from 41 minutes) with a friendly interviewer and her running mate present as a chaperone. For comparison, here is the same interviewer with J.D. Vance.
But maybe staying hidden is still a good policy. The one time the Harris campaign did propose something, it was an appalling series of tax increases including an unrealized capital gains tax. If the polls stay close, Harris will probably stay hidden.
On the other hand, the Trump campaign seems to be very different than previous ones. He's not gotten nearly as much media coverage, either because he's not saying outrageous things anymore, or everyone is bored with it. He's done some decent long-form interviews with podcasts such as Lex Friedman, Theo Von, and All-in. But these are just reaching his core audience of bros. Meanwhile, and uncharacteristic for him, he's spent a lot of time playing defense, having to counter the lie that he will ban abortion nationwide. Perhaps it is ironic that a politician who built his political career on a vicious lie (birthergate) will ultimately be undone by one.
As for myself, I will be voting for Trump even though I think he's a bad person. I prefer a bad person to bad policies. And I think Harris represents everything I hate about the Democratic party: racial grievances, suppression of speech, strident militarism abroad, and increased regulation and taxation. But in the end, I'm not sure how much this election will matter. Both candidates are so unpopular the backlash may outweigh the value of having the Presidency.
So... who are you voting for?
The economy has been soft for quite a while, though the same people who were trying to sell Joe Biden's competency were (and are) trying to convince people otherwise. We had a LOT of inflation, which has gone down but remains at levels significantly higher than under Trump, and the job market is generally weak. There was recently a huge correction in the government "jobs created" figure, and just this week a private report claimed 99,000 new private jobs for August, which is quite low. It's not a matter of timing; the economy has never completely recovered from government reaction to COVID.
Real wages are essentially flat, though it feels worse because food-at-home and energy (some of the most visible and volatile expenses) have been higher than general inflation.
I will be voting for Trump, though New Jersey is solid (D) unless Kamala does something galactically stupid like go full Hamas. His policies this time seem worse than last time, but the bar set by Kamala is subterranean. And of course there's the whole identity politics thing.
The “official” numbers came out around 140k though the last two months were revised down heavily basically resulting in the ADP number. But yes, the labor market has been shitty for some time. The “official” numbers are catching up after they were manipulated.
Inflation is probably understated. Industry data on grocery store prices are about 75% higher than the CPI figure.
I too will be voting in our not quite fair state for Trump.
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