I’m reading a lot of snarky elitism out today where people are in effect writing “oh well this is what Americans voted for. sucks to suck” “reap what you sow” or “let them suffer and they’ll learn” etc. and I do not think this is correctly grounded in voter psychology. People did not vote *for* taxes on goods to rise 20%. They voted *against* inflation and other cost-of-living issues (housing) and *for* abstract narratives to “fix” these problems. We know that most people do not watch/read news or know about policy promises of candidates, let alone know the real-world outcomes of various gov outputs. From various survey work in the 90s we know only half of people can name the vice president, for example. That should give us a lot of doubts about the ability of voters to rationalize about info and policy output. So what info are they bringing to the table when voting? Poli sci says 80-90% of voters are either defaulting to voting with their group, reacting to the state of things (inflation), or have no policy or political awareness at all (that alone is 1/5th of voters). Basically nothing of what we know about the American voter suggests they are digesting specific policy info, especially forward-looking forecasts of outputs and outcomes, and basing voting decisions on that. For better or worse, most people are reacting to conditions of voting with their group. Now, sure, people are going to get the same outcome whether they voted “for” it or not, but generally speaking aside from devoted partisan intellectuals, they didn’t and that’s worth noting. I think this warrants some empathy and introspection on behalf of the analyst class. Also a lot of the takes are just mean-spirited, which I guess is to be expected but still sad to see.

Someone should run up to the front and yank this self-serving conductor out of there. She’s ruining it! It’s not all about the conductor; it’s about the music. Let the music take center stage

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