Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
The Starving Hordes on Twitter, Yes the Economy Matters

Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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In the months since the election everyone, including me, has given their story on why Harris lost. Mine is a simple one, most people thought the economy sucked, and when people think the economy is bad, the incumbent party is going to lose. As a practical matter, I would have loved to see Harris push a more populist agenda, break with Biden on Gaza, and do many other things, but I can’t say with a straight face that these would have won the election for her or even necessarily been net vote gainers.
My story on the economy is different. We saw the best recovery from the pandemic of any major wealthy nation. In spite of the hit from the pandemic, real wages were above their pre-pandemic levels, especially for low-paid workers. We also saw the longest stretch of low unemployment in 70 years. This included record lows for Black unemployment, Black teen unemployment, and Hispanic unemployment.
The Biden administration had extended health care coverage to millions of workers through more generous subsidies in the exchanges. It also increased SNAP benefits, which was a big benefit for moderate-income households.
We also saw record rates of new business formation. And an additional 20 million people were able to work from home, saving them hundreds of hours in commuting time and thousands of dollars a year in commuting-related costs.
This should have been a lot to brag about, but the media turned the economy into a negative for Harris. They endlessly harped on the bad news, which was primarily the worldwide inflation caused by the pandemic. Often, they literally made stuff up, such as highlighting an atypical low-wage worker on July 4th weekend to tell readers that lower paid workers were not benefiting from the Biden-Harris economy (they gained the most). They also told readers that recent college grads couldn’t find jobs when their unemployment rate was near a 20-year low.
Part of this story was a social media campaign where people endlessly posted saying things like they have two jobs and still can’t pay for their groceries, or their son or daughter was unable to find work and was about to be evicted. I saw this constantly on Twitter, especially since these complainers often engaged my posts highlighting the progress of the Biden-Harris economy.
Interestingly, virtually all the complainers disappeared after the election. I have tried repeatedly to bait them with lines about how everyone is now doing great since Trump won the election. I get no response.
Perhaps the complainers just lost interest after the election. To be clear, I know there are tens of millions of people who are literally at the edge in paying for their groceries and rent, but they weren’t present on Twitter in 2019, when this was also true, and they don’t seem to be there now.
I will speculate here that the complainers were paid by someone, perhaps our host at Twitter, Elon Musk. The money could also have come from any number of other right-wing billionaires or maybe even the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.
In any case, it seems that someone with money felt it was important for the election to convince the public that the economy was awful. I don’t know how much difference the Twitter campaign, and presumably comparable campaigns on other social media sites made, but it is clear what they were trying to do.
For better or worse, these Trumpers seem to agree with me. If people think the economy is in the tank, the incumbent party loses. And it still looks to me like that story is right.