You’d like to think Kamala Harris, a career prosecutor, has a fighting chance of defeating a four-times indicted convicted felon in this year’s US presidential election.
Particularly considering that during the felon’s first try playing president, he managed to get himself impeached not once, but twice, the second time for summoning a Cracker Barrel parking lot to the Capitol in a botched coup.
Or who knows, maybe you wouldn’t like to think that. Maybe you’re stoked for another four years of cartoon madness — hell, sometimes even I think it’d be fun to see what Donald Trump might do and say during a second term. Minus the mass deportations, the civil service purges and the “blood baths,” maybe. None of that sounds like much fun.
One problem for Harris — maybe even the biggest problem — is that if you blame 80s Joe Biden for America’s worst bout of inflation since Joe Biden was in his 40s in the 80s (see what I did there?), Harris is guilty by association.
You probably shouldn’t blame Biden for inflation. Or if you do, you should recognize that there were two sides to the inflation story, a demand side and a supply side. Biden can only be blamed for one of them.
That nuance is likely lost on a lot of voters, though, and not just the dedicated MAGA faithful. When you’re at the grocery store shopping for a family of five and everything’s 30% to 50% more expensive than it was before Biden took office, you’re likely to blame Biden. Maybe, in the back of your mind, you’re aware the pandemic and the war played a role. But in the moment, “the buck stops here.” Or “there.” Where “there” means the Oval Office.
Outside of the grocery aisle, the housing market’s the biggest sore spot for American voters when it comes to inflation. On that score, the figure below doesn’t bode especially well for Harris.
The data’s from Redfin, and it shows, in the simplest possible terms, that the monthly cost of homeownership in swing states has nearly doubled since the last election.
In an article published a few days ago, Dana Anderson detailed the numbers — and spelled out what they mean for families in battleground states.
Median prices are up 40% since Biden was elected, while mortgage rates have more than doubled, as has the annual income a swing-state family would need to earn to own a median-priced home and stay below the industry standard affordability threshold.
The bottom line, Anderson wrote, is that “the typical swing-state home has gone from affordable to unaffordable for the average family since the 2020 election.”
That’s an albatross for Harris’s nascent White House bid, as is another alarming statistic highlighted by Anderson in a separate article: In only 10 of the 50 largest US metro areas can the typical Black family afford a starter home.
After she’s elected, President Harris will fix the housing affordability problem in a week.
That’s maybe — ummm — a little optimistic.
Just having a little fun at the expense of the GOP platform.
Step 1) Make Oprah the ‘Hiusing Czar’
Step 2) You get a house! And you get a house! And you get a house! Everyone gets a house!!!
*housing, obviously
I don’t understand why this is so hard to solve. You don’t even need to give people houses. Just give them cars to live in. It looks like that’s what I’m going to be doing.
Rate cuts! Rate cuts!
It’s game on. The electorate is cranky worldwide. That’s true in France, Canada, Germany and already changed a party governing in the uk (although admittedly the Tories were a long time train wreck).
Yes housing is a problem. But I believe it is bigger than that. It’s down to real incomes which have only started to turn around in the last 6-12 months. It’s other things too, but on the economic side, it is real incomes. Housing is a symptom of that.
If Trump were president during a bout of inflation he would have spent every available opportunity blaming it on the prior president, saying how the mishandling of covid, supply side problems, etc. caused the problem until finally his followers accepted it as gospel. Trying to take the responsible high road and not shift the blame has left it solidly on Biden.
Don’t forget when housing cost exceed 30% of income there is a dramatic rise in homelessness that the voters in those swing states will physically see all around them like I’ve witnessed over the last twenty years here in California.
Yep. I wrote all about it: https://heisenbergreport.com/2023/11/03/ghost-town/
Here’s the chart: https://i0.wp.com/heisenbergreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/HomelessnessThresholdChartOct2023.png?ssl=1
This was published two months ago.
Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden
I assume it must have something to do with that… uh… “food” people are eating.
Obviously anecdote isn’t singular for data, but from where I sit As a 20+ year IT professional who has now been unemployed for over 15 months, it’s less about the food and more about all the professionals going 12 months, 18 months, 24 months without work and losing their homes. Or even among those who haven’t lost their jobs and homes yet, the married couples having to live hundreds of miles apart because they can’t find work in the same city. Hop on LinkedIn and ask a recruiter who’s been out of work for two years and says they’ve never seen a job market this bad in 20 or 30 years in the business—go ahead and look, they’re not hard to find anymore—whether they think it’s the “food” That’s making people question how good the economy actually is.
You sure did and this reader some pretty important information you covey. I appreciate it.
Buyers pay prices; owners have value. “Home values increase”, is always a welcome statement.
Looks like if the 2016-2018 pace had been maintained, we’d still be at the same place.
I dont think swing state voters would feel better about anything if prices/values were to decline by 20 or 30%.
“‘Home values increase,’ is always a welcome statement.”
I understand where you’re coming from, and I sympathize with the sentiment, but there are millions upon millions of people (and not just in America, by the way) who don’t agree. And I gotta tell you, after moving back to the city and seeing people living on the streets in person again, I’m no longer of the mind that “home values increase” is everywhere and always a “welcome statement.” We can’t keep putting people out on the streets. We just can’t. Eventually, those people will kill us for it. And I won’t blame them.
“Equity increase”, not “home values increase”. I sympathize with the Gen-Z/millenial cohort, despite being from the tail end of the boomer cohort because even if I wanted to downsize (and another health issue might require that), it would be very financially painful.
H-Man, you can always go back to the island and forego the ills of the city.
No, I can’t. Because it’s 110 degrees there and it’s now tornado prone, too. An island prone to tornados. Most of my neighbors down there told me climate change was a hoax. They’ll be screaming that when they’re whisked away to Oz in a twister or floating out to sea on the roof of their unmoored house.
Barring that, demanding that taxpayers make them whole if their home is washed away.
Exactly. One thing (among many) I’ve learned from being around wealthy people is that the old adage about the rich only despising socialism when it applies to the poor is absolutely true. Rich people will take all the handouts and de facto taxpayer subsidies they can get their hands on, while preaching about meritocracies and begrudging lower-income households food vouchers. It’d be maddening if it weren’t so comical. And they (rich people) are almost completely oblivious to the hypocrisy and irony. In some cases, they’ll even try to turn the tables: “I succeeded, so I deserve handouts.”
I might be late to this one, but I recently learned a new phrase: “just-world hypothesis”. It’s a keeper.