Nobel economist says voters catching on that Trump 'didn’t have a plan' for economy

05 November

Economist Paul Krugman in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 25, 2023 (A. Paes/Shutterstock.com)

Noted economist Paul Krugman says “everything pointed to big Dem gains” this week with a “steady drumbeat of warnings” that Republicans and their leader, President Donald Trump, were in trouble — primarily due to the economics they’re ignoring.

Krugman said Biden lost his election last year because of voters’ perception of the Biden economy and Trump’s promise to “not just to reduce inflation but to bring prices way back down. And many of them believed him.”

“Of course, Trump didn’t have a plan [for the economy], or even a concept of a plan, about how to accomplish this,” said Krugman. “Instead he imposed tariffs and began deporting immigrant workers, both of which raised prices.”

Prices haven’t come down and inflation has accelerated. And the job market has gotten worse with ordinary Americans also perceiving a very tough job market.

“Pretty clearly, many Americans now believe that they were lied to,” Krugman said. “My guess (we’ll know more in a few days) is that this is especially true for Hispanic voters, who swung to Trump believing that he would deliver prosperity and are swinging hard back to Democrats now that he hasn’t.

Krugman added that it also “surely doesn’t help that Trump and his minions keep insisting that everything is great, that there is no inflation and the economy is booming.”

“This doesn’t persuade anyone not in the cult and just makes them look out of touch. Which they are,” said Krugman, adding that the GOP is increasingly out of touch and riddled with extremists.

“If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning, it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t matter much to ordinary Americans,” argued Krugman. “Republicans may be obsessed with trans athletes, but most people aren’t. Polls and yesterday’s elections suggest that rants about the menace of illegal aliens have a lot less traction with the public than G.O.P. apparatchiks imagine — and that Americans don’t like the spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street.”

Compared to Republicans’ complaints of Democratic “wokeness,” the disconnect between Republican party priorities and what matters to ordinary people appears “a much bigger deal.”

“And if we’re talking about extremists within the party, well, Democrats have people like Mamdani, a mild-mannered guy who says he’s a socialist but really isn’t. The Republican Party, by contrast, has been largely taken over by outright fascists, and is facing a major outbreak of old-fashioned antisemitism.”

Read Krugman’s report at his substack here.

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