Everyone was surprised by the magnitude of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the electoral college and popular vote landslide over Vice President Kamala Harris. This was despite the Harris campaign outspending Trump two-to-one. Now, the chorus of accusatory post-mortems dominates among Democrats and their supporters. The finger-pointing has surfaced a realization offered long ago by opinion researchers Frank Luntz and Diane Hessan—that the focus on cultural issues has diverted the Democrats from addressing the specifics of the economic message voters wanted.
Shockingly, a New York Times report this weekend cited populist advocates from the left as blaming the business community for throwing off the Harris campaign by focusing on economic issues, which was actually the missing ingredient in the campaign. And yet, economic pain was precisely the top issue for Trump voters.
