James Carville: It Was, It Is and It Forever Shall Be the Economy, Stupid

Opinion|James Carville: It Was, It Is and It Forever Shall Be the Economy, Stupid

I thought Kamala Harris would win. I was wrong. While I’m sure we Democrats can argue that the loss wasn’t a landslide or take a little solace in our House performance, the most important thing for us now is to face that we were wrong and take action on the prevailing “why.”

I’ve been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden’s re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might have worked against Donald Trump. I keep coming back to the same thing. We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid. We have to begin 2025 with that truth as our political north star and not get distracted by anything else.

Although the U.S. economy remains the strongest in the world, with G.D.P. soaring and inflation subsiding, the American people did not settle for us being better than the rest or take that as good enough. Mr. Trump, for the first time in his political career, decisively won by seizing a swath of middle-class and low-income voters focused on the economy. Democrats have flat-out lost the economic narrative. The only path to electoral salvation is to take it back. Perception is everything in politics, and a lot of Americans perceive us as out to lunch on the economy — not feeling their pain, or else caring too much about other things instead.

To win back the economic narrative, we must focus on revving up a transformed messaging machine for the new political paradigm we now find ourselves living in. It’s about finding ways to talk to Americans about the economy that are persuasive. Repetitive. Memorable. And entirely focused on the issues that affect Americans’ everyday lives.

This starts with how we form our opposition. First of all, we have got to stop making Mr. Trump himself our main focus — he can’t be elected again. Furthermore, it’s clear many Americans do not give a rat’s tail about Mr. Trump’s indictments — even if they are justified — or about his anti-democratic impulses or about social issues if they cannot provide for themselves or their families.

Mr. Trump won the popular vote by putting the economic anger of Americans front and center. If we focus on anything else, we risk falling farther into the abyss. Our messaging machine must sharply focus on opposing the unpopular Republican economic agenda that will live on past him. Vocally oppose the party, not the person or the extremism of his movement. I don’t always agree with Wall Street, but Jamie Dimon was right when he said that Democrats railing against “ultra-MAGA” was insulting and politically tone-deaf. Denouncing other Americans or their leader as miscreants is not going to win elections; focusing on their economic pain will, as will contesting the Republican economic agenda.