On this theme, the party’s friends were harder on it than its opponents were. The study tagged 309 quotes to economic messaging, from 58 voices across 88 videos that drew 51M views. Pod Save America and MSNBC contributed more of those quotes than anyone else. Among quotes with a known political leaning, 54% came from Far Left and Left voices and 17% from Right and Far Right voices.
The complaint is consistent. Democrats pointed to strong economic data while voters were paying more for groceries, gas and rent. Talk of “Bidenomics” and a vibecession told those voters that what they were feeling wasn’t real, and commentators say voters heard it that way.
Center voices make the same case. The UChicago Institute of Politics, Duke’s political science department and other Center voices contributed 86 quotes, second only to the Left.
Audiences paid attention. Videos on this theme drew about 1.4 million likes and comments, the most of any theme and nearly nine times as many as videos on policy design.
The credibility problem
Few commentators said Democrats had no record to run on. They said the party kept defending the record when voters wanted it to acknowledge what things cost. Each new round of charts and economic figures looked like more evidence that the party didn’t believe voters about their own lives.
Commentators in this theme don’t think a better surrogate or a sharper line would have fixed this. They say the party’s case on the economy was out of step with how most people were living it, and that complaint comes from every political leaning.
That is why Democrats underperformed. They did not own the economic reality of paying at the gas, grocery, rent and mortgage counter… and you played down people's pain.
The Chris Cuomo Project
