It’s US election year, and the first Republican primaries are today,
What can we say at this stage about how the race is going?
First, it’s not the economy, stupid.
At least not at the moment.
Not that either side will say that. Or even mean it. And not that it’s even true that it isn’t the economy.
The great unasked question of this election is: what is the economy?
By most official metrics, the people of the USA have grounds for that hackneyed phrase – cautious optimism.
Inflation’s down, job creation is ticking over, overall GDP numbers are strong – among the strongest in the Western world, and the US dollar, though beggared in general over the past few years hasn’t had such a bad run lately.
That’s the good news.
The questionable news is: how much are Americans really feeling it?
First off, not all the data is as benign as it seems. Jobs, for example, can seem more numerous because more people are having to take more than one job to make ends meet.
While the inflation rate may have dropped back significantly, the prices that rose haven’t fallen, or at least most of them haven’t. The evidence that Americans are being paid more to compensate for last year’s heavy increase in expenses is scant – and see the previous point.
Nevertheless, Joe Biden can plausibly say the economy is improving, or in better shape, or whatever other euphemism you want to use, stupid.
The problem isn’t so much that. It’s the messaging.
What a few years ago were called news bubbles can now fairly be called culture bubbles. The US, bizarrely, is becoming its own version of China and Taiwan – one country, two cultures.
Which brings us back to the Iowa primary today, and American Republicanism.
Do Republicans recognise any aspect of Joe Biden’s economic prognosis?
The answer to that question is that in general they probably don’t even know about them. In Conservative media, the economy is a non-stop disaster. The right-wing ecosystem often recycles tik-tok and twitter videos of young people explaining how impossible it is to make ends meet. And no one who lives in any economy in the west could argue with the proposition that young people have it tough when getting started.
More tellingly, though, there’s never any mention of GDP growth or how the still extant US-dollar hegemony has allowed the US to plough itself out of the COVID catastrophe, at least economically speaking, faster and more comprehensively than most other western nations.
That, as all sides now say of each other, “doesn’t fit the narrative.”
Instead, there are wars and oil price shocks, and cultural battles to be fought, and so far in 2024, this looks to be where the real fight will be.
A major issue will be whether Donald Trump can get on the ballot generally – and, associated with that, a battle over whether January 6th was an insurrection or just a riot of incompetents. Could it have been both? This battle for historical memory will be important because in Conservative circles the implications are starkly clear: If their candidate is denied a place on the ballot, then democracy is over. How can you argue otherwise?
Yes, there is lawfare, and with the written constitution still holding surprising force in an electronic world, the lawfare may do it. But there is also the more general question of legitimacy.
Other candidates who follow the Trump line, and who are in no way tainted with January 6th allegations are coming up.
Still in the running in the Iowa primary is a Hindu. Those who don’t pay attention to Conservative media should mark this well. His name is Vivek Ramaswamy, and he’s not running on the economy, and he’s not running on a diversity ticket, he’s running on his Hindu values.
You may not like it. You may not care.
But if you think this year’s Presidential race will be won and lost on economic issues, think again. On the economy, the two sides now have different datasets, and given that that’s the case, it’s not even a real argument. The real battle now is about values and meaning.