Democrats Still Don’t Get It. Here’s Why They Lost.


Published November 14, 2024

U.S. News & World Report

If the Democratic Party wants to revive its appeal to working-class voters in the wake of its decisive defeat last week, it will have to come to grips with the root causes of its collapse.

One key problem wasn’t just that Democrats ignored inflation, which many on the left are acknowledging, but they failed to understand what caused that inflation – which too many on the left are not admitting.

The fact is that Democrats’ go-to economic playbook failed not just in style but in substance. The inflation that ate away at President Joe Biden’s approval ratings was at least in part the result of the party’s own economic prescriptions: higher levels of government spending, which contributed to higher interest rates, making it harder for the Federal Reserve to bring down inflation. This put home mortgages, car loans and other borrowing out of reach for too many people.

Biden has been criticized for not dropping out of the race sooner. But his self-aggrandizement started much earlier, in those first heady moments when Democrats won an unexpected Senate majority in 2021. Think back to the two-hour meeting Biden held with presidential historians in which he suggested FDR and the New Deal as antecedents to his plans for a sweeping economic remaking of America.

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Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work with the Life and Family Initiative focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.

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