The pocket decides the vote

This article should be titled with that recurring and now boring slogan of “it's the economy, stupid!” You already know the phrase coined by James Carville, advisor to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in the 1982 elections and which helped him unseat his Republican rival George H.W. Bush, who put all his emphasis on international politics. The particular state of his portfolio weighed more in the minds of ordinary voters than the war exploits abroad that the Republican leader boasted about.

It seems incredible how Donald Trump, who benefited two years ago from the discontent of the average American over how inflation had skyrocketed under the Democratic administration, has not only been unable to solve this problem, but has aggravated it. If you read the magnificent series that Francesc Peirón published in La Vanguardia on his tour of Route 66, it will not have been new to you that the rise in prices was the main complaint of Americans. You can be left or right, Democrat or Republican, but in the end things about eating are decisive. And the testimonies from ordinary people that Peirón collected were all along the same lines: the most important thing is to make it to the end of the month well.

It is pathetic to remember now how Trump baptized April 2, 2025 as “liberation day” because “it will be remembered forever as the day when American industry was reborn and when we made the country prosperous again.” It was the day where he announced a drastic list of tariffs like someone reading a restaurant menu. His proposals caused the markets to fall, he had to retract many of these measures some time later and finally justice stopped his plan. The cherry on top was the war with Iran, which further damaged fuel prices.

In short, a great mistake. He has been from the first day of his mandate, when he pardoned 1,500 people involved in the assault on the Capitol, until the last day of this campaign, in which he spent 20 minutes of his final rally in Washington talking about algae and pipes. Trump has been forgiven everything and the proof is that he won the elections again in 2024. But if his follies affect people's pockets, then he no longer likes it so much.