I very much appreciate the effort you put into this article, and I love the links to external resources. As an older retired person, I may have too much time on my hands, but in following some of your links, I found a few very good resources I didn’t know about. You are a very hard-working human and I’m glad to benefit from your passion. I very much hope you too are benefiting from your efforts.
I think there is a problem with creators/influencers/pundits etc trying too hard to flatter their audiences and validate their feelings, even when those feelings are ultimately grounded in ignorance or misconceptions. The Founders were quite explicit that a democratic system of government can only function when the public is “virtuous” in some way, and I think that requires a willingness to be a bit more judgmental of the public when they are wrong.
This was a good post overall, but I think even you felt the need to front-load the discussion with a bit too much talk about why the public *might* have a point if you squint hard enough, before getting to all the data showing the reasons why the public is actually quite substantially misinformed about a lot of stuff. That’s the wrong order of operations, in my opinion.
I feel like such an anomaly as a 27 year old white dude. No matter how broke I am (and still am), I would never trust this man to fix America's problems.
But I do believe that inequality drives populism, and maybe this was predetermined by cycles under capitalism.
“But they want to cut the deficit by about $2T (and are looking to raise about $50 million to do so) - which is very much needed if Trump imposes tariffs and extends tax cuts. They will need to cut social security and medicare. That will be unpopular.
And of course, if they can achieve it, it would be spectacular.” Do I misunderstand? Of course cutting the deficit is good but why at the expense of Medicare and SSI? How will that help a struggling middle and lower middle class?
Yes I understand the young carry a much heavier burden now concerning SSI than they did when the program started. I for one, as a baby boomer, am happy to retire my life sooner rather than later. As someone said the medical profession has done a marvelous job extending life, but we have not kept pace economically. Many are overextended; debt is rampant. Values totally askew imo.
Having that event called "spectacular" doesn't mean necessarily good, but generally as earth-shattering. Like how an earthquake is spectacular. And yeah this certainly won't be good in the near term.
That said, Scott Galloway has talked of the generational transfer in that such a heavy thumb on the social-security scale bankrupts the young to favour the large, old voting block. Having three working-age citizens (and falling) for every retiree does not forecast well if status quo continues.
Side note, messing with the 2nd amendment is also career suicide so if the guy who had three attempts on his life (this election year) chose to mess with that, he is probably the person who'd experience the least blowback in such a move. Spectacular as well, but for better or worse remains to be determined.
"The vibecession isn't just about feeling bad when the data looks good - it's about the gap between policy promises and daily reality."
I find it interesting that "vibes", a term popularized in the 60s, is being used as shorthand to describe the rational vs. emotional analysis described by Mackay almost two centuries ago. The author seems to be suggesting that we have "bad vibes" or a vibecession due to inaccurate emotional assessments of the current situtation. But as any 60s hippie would tell you, you can't explain away bad vibes and inauthenticity is a big vibe killer. Labeling a huge deficit spending bill the "inflation reduction act"? Inauthentic. Pretending the obvious decline of the President was not happening? Inauthentic. Pretending that the back room deals that pushed Joe out and substituted Kamala in without any input from the voters was "democracy"? Inauthentic. And then pretending that Harris/Walz were not connected to the policies of the Biden/Harris administration? Very inauthentic.
Inauthencic = bad vibes = vibecession. Just ask any 60s hippie.
Public relations / mass communications guy here. 🙋♂️ This is an absolutely wonderful piece on the state of communications and the important parts of what good communications is. I teach a course in advanced public relations writing, and I just used this article in class to direct students on the current state of media.
I appreciate this article. I think it was well written and provides a lot of context as most of your content does. I would like to add that it's not just about agenda and messaging but also capiagning as well. Until I saw Northern Virginia drops, I had thought Harris had a better chance than a coin flip to win. I largely agree with James Carville and People's Pundit, elections, particularly in the United States, are a cultural game. The Republicans just had a better ground game. Registering voters was/is the key to winning elections. Trump campaign focusing on Pennsylvania and getting male students (as you said), Amish, German/Irish/Polish Catholics (The reason why Trump kept posting about Mary and the rest of the Saints) out to register was a strategic gamble that paid off for them. Might have to write something coherent about this myself instead of a jumbled comment. Just thought I'd add that GOP was much better run. On the economics side this was very good. Thanks!
Again, and respectfully: I must stress that traditional economic indicators are simply not the right metrics to gauge how well average people are doing today. The assumption was always that a strong economy benefited everyone; but today, thanks to reduces wages, weakened workers' rights, and soaring prices, a strong economy only serves the wealthy; everyone else is doing worse because their wages haven't kept up with inflation. And that really is the chief takeaway economists need, here: wages have to keep up with inflation, or the strength of the economy doesn't matter. It's not just vibes; workers have been squeezed into lower compensation, higher healthcare costs, higher housing costs, and more expensive groceries. If a strong economy doesn't address that, it isn't going to matter.
I donated to Harris' campaign, but the voices of workers were resounding: no matter how strong you say the economy is, it isn't strong for us.
Elan bought this election obviously, we need to forget about the idea of free and fare elections, hasn’t been a thing for years now. The republicans have been stealing the elections since Al Gore. The main issue they are missing, is that when they crash the economy they will lose their customer base. No one can buy a car if they can’t afford food.
I also think you're being a bit too charitable to voters. The voters made a dumb decision. All of the information was available, but stupidity carried the day
I’m a little bemused that “vibes” and “post-truth” describe the same phenomenon as the word “truthiness”. That’s the old Colbert fan in me talking, I guess.
As for priorities going forward, will the next kind of progressivism the Dems will embrace be Ezra Klein’s “supply-side progressivism” or Kate Aronoff’s “pool party progressivism”? Will it be Matt Stoller’s “deliverism” or the IFP/FAI/Niskanen crowd’s take on “abundance”? I lean toward Stoller and Aronoff, but it’s an open question we might not see answered by 2028.
In any case, fully agreed on the social media ecosystem, though I would add that local media still needs to be urgently revived, and corporate media needs to lean into the norm of moral clarity and ‘the stakes, not the odds’, as a way of establishing communal ground truth. I would not leave that to technologists who think Ground News and the like to be a good solution, or even a useful heuristic
I miss the days of discovery/animal planet and our media had accountability to bad information. No one talks about the defamation of Fox news losing to dominion and the deposition findings. Until we all are in the same reality i see no way of working together. One is playing on a chess board while the other person is in another dimension playing darts.
I very much appreciate the effort you put into this article, and I love the links to external resources. As an older retired person, I may have too much time on my hands, but in following some of your links, I found a few very good resources I didn’t know about. You are a very hard-working human and I’m glad to benefit from your passion. I very much hope you too are benefiting from your efforts.
Phenomenal. I am in general already over retrospectives, but this one pretty much put a bow on the last while for me.
This is a fantastic summary. I appreciate your efforts here.
I think there is a problem with creators/influencers/pundits etc trying too hard to flatter their audiences and validate their feelings, even when those feelings are ultimately grounded in ignorance or misconceptions. The Founders were quite explicit that a democratic system of government can only function when the public is “virtuous” in some way, and I think that requires a willingness to be a bit more judgmental of the public when they are wrong.
This was a good post overall, but I think even you felt the need to front-load the discussion with a bit too much talk about why the public *might* have a point if you squint hard enough, before getting to all the data showing the reasons why the public is actually quite substantially misinformed about a lot of stuff. That’s the wrong order of operations, in my opinion.
I cried so much over the results.
I feel like such an anomaly as a 27 year old white dude. No matter how broke I am (and still am), I would never trust this man to fix America's problems.
But I do believe that inequality drives populism, and maybe this was predetermined by cycles under capitalism.
Very small tweak: the Fed decreased rates 25 basis points, not increased :)
yes, thanks. Stuck in the past. Did that on my last piece too.
No worries! :)
“But they want to cut the deficit by about $2T (and are looking to raise about $50 million to do so) - which is very much needed if Trump imposes tariffs and extends tax cuts. They will need to cut social security and medicare. That will be unpopular.
And of course, if they can achieve it, it would be spectacular.” Do I misunderstand? Of course cutting the deficit is good but why at the expense of Medicare and SSI? How will that help a struggling middle and lower middle class?
Yes I understand the young carry a much heavier burden now concerning SSI than they did when the program started. I for one, as a baby boomer, am happy to retire my life sooner rather than later. As someone said the medical profession has done a marvelous job extending life, but we have not kept pace economically. Many are overextended; debt is rampant. Values totally askew imo.
Having that event called "spectacular" doesn't mean necessarily good, but generally as earth-shattering. Like how an earthquake is spectacular. And yeah this certainly won't be good in the near term.
That said, Scott Galloway has talked of the generational transfer in that such a heavy thumb on the social-security scale bankrupts the young to favour the large, old voting block. Having three working-age citizens (and falling) for every retiree does not forecast well if status quo continues.
Side note, messing with the 2nd amendment is also career suicide so if the guy who had three attempts on his life (this election year) chose to mess with that, he is probably the person who'd experience the least blowback in such a move. Spectacular as well, but for better or worse remains to be determined.
"The vibecession isn't just about feeling bad when the data looks good - it's about the gap between policy promises and daily reality."
I find it interesting that "vibes", a term popularized in the 60s, is being used as shorthand to describe the rational vs. emotional analysis described by Mackay almost two centuries ago. The author seems to be suggesting that we have "bad vibes" or a vibecession due to inaccurate emotional assessments of the current situtation. But as any 60s hippie would tell you, you can't explain away bad vibes and inauthenticity is a big vibe killer. Labeling a huge deficit spending bill the "inflation reduction act"? Inauthentic. Pretending the obvious decline of the President was not happening? Inauthentic. Pretending that the back room deals that pushed Joe out and substituted Kamala in without any input from the voters was "democracy"? Inauthentic. And then pretending that Harris/Walz were not connected to the policies of the Biden/Harris administration? Very inauthentic.
Inauthencic = bad vibes = vibecession. Just ask any 60s hippie.
Public relations / mass communications guy here. 🙋♂️ This is an absolutely wonderful piece on the state of communications and the important parts of what good communications is. I teach a course in advanced public relations writing, and I just used this article in class to direct students on the current state of media.
I appreciate this article. I think it was well written and provides a lot of context as most of your content does. I would like to add that it's not just about agenda and messaging but also capiagning as well. Until I saw Northern Virginia drops, I had thought Harris had a better chance than a coin flip to win. I largely agree with James Carville and People's Pundit, elections, particularly in the United States, are a cultural game. The Republicans just had a better ground game. Registering voters was/is the key to winning elections. Trump campaign focusing on Pennsylvania and getting male students (as you said), Amish, German/Irish/Polish Catholics (The reason why Trump kept posting about Mary and the rest of the Saints) out to register was a strategic gamble that paid off for them. Might have to write something coherent about this myself instead of a jumbled comment. Just thought I'd add that GOP was much better run. On the economics side this was very good. Thanks!
As in, I don't think Democrats just lost because of popular sentiment but because they failed to utilize popular sentiment that went for them.
Again, and respectfully: I must stress that traditional economic indicators are simply not the right metrics to gauge how well average people are doing today. The assumption was always that a strong economy benefited everyone; but today, thanks to reduces wages, weakened workers' rights, and soaring prices, a strong economy only serves the wealthy; everyone else is doing worse because their wages haven't kept up with inflation. And that really is the chief takeaway economists need, here: wages have to keep up with inflation, or the strength of the economy doesn't matter. It's not just vibes; workers have been squeezed into lower compensation, higher healthcare costs, higher housing costs, and more expensive groceries. If a strong economy doesn't address that, it isn't going to matter.
I donated to Harris' campaign, but the voices of workers were resounding: no matter how strong you say the economy is, it isn't strong for us.
This is exactly what I write about in this piece. Did you read this piece?
I heartily agree with it. Sorry if my comment sounds like it's addressing you; I just want people to know your voice is not an outlier.
Probably because it's a near-copy of a comment I left on a forum for Democrats lol.
Elan bought this election obviously, we need to forget about the idea of free and fare elections, hasn’t been a thing for years now. The republicans have been stealing the elections since Al Gore. The main issue they are missing, is that when they crash the economy they will lose their customer base. No one can buy a car if they can’t afford food.
Good post.
I also think you're being a bit too charitable to voters. The voters made a dumb decision. All of the information was available, but stupidity carried the day
It really is the case that we have gotten stupider over time as a nation
I’m a little bemused that “vibes” and “post-truth” describe the same phenomenon as the word “truthiness”. That’s the old Colbert fan in me talking, I guess.
As for priorities going forward, will the next kind of progressivism the Dems will embrace be Ezra Klein’s “supply-side progressivism” or Kate Aronoff’s “pool party progressivism”? Will it be Matt Stoller’s “deliverism” or the IFP/FAI/Niskanen crowd’s take on “abundance”? I lean toward Stoller and Aronoff, but it’s an open question we might not see answered by 2028.
In any case, fully agreed on the social media ecosystem, though I would add that local media still needs to be urgently revived, and corporate media needs to lean into the norm of moral clarity and ‘the stakes, not the odds’, as a way of establishing communal ground truth. I would not leave that to technologists who think Ground News and the like to be a good solution, or even a useful heuristic
I miss the days of discovery/animal planet and our media had accountability to bad information. No one talks about the defamation of Fox news losing to dominion and the deposition findings. Until we all are in the same reality i see no way of working together. One is playing on a chess board while the other person is in another dimension playing darts.
Short term and brutally maybe