When we look back on it, I suspect we’ll see the seeds of Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in her presidential debate with then- candidate Donald Trump. Yes, Trump came across as angry and was hardly coherent. But Harris, while trying to buttress her economic bona fides, cited investment bank Goldman Sachs’ support for her financial plans as a reason to vote for her and not Trump.
Goldman Sachs? The investment bank described by journalist Matt Taibbi as ‘a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity?’
Goldman Sachs? The investment bank described by journalist Matt Taibbi as “a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” because of how it profited royally off the housing and financial crisis of the late aughts? Ten million Americans lost their homes to foreclosure, the banks and their executives were infamously bailed out, but Harris cited Goldman Sachs’ support of her (as well as Trump’s alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania) in an attempt to allay the public’s economic worries.
Everyone who wants to explain how Trump won a second term in the White House and lost the presidential election will bring their priors to this conversation. I am no exception. And it seems obvious to me that many Americans think something is terribly amiss with our government and politics and have felt that way since the housing and financial crisis that began — depending on how you are counting things — in 2006, 2007 or 2008.
In almost every national election since then, Americans have seesawed back and forth between the parties. Voters are clearly seeking something they are not getting and that neither party seems capable of addressing — to say nothing of putting it to rest — in any meaningful way. Yes, there is always an excuse: Covid fatigue, inflation, anger over the Affordable Care Act, Gaza, online misinformation, her emails. But the bottom line is voters don’t feel economically stable or secure and, the pattern is clear, will vote against whichever party’s in power when given the chance.
According to an NBC exit poll conducted in 10 key states Tuesday, only 31% of those polled believe the nation’s economy to be excellent or good, and 91% of them voted for Harris. Of the 68% who believe the economy to be not so good or poor, 70% voted for Trump.
Only 25% of those polled were enthusiastic or satisfied with how things in the country are going, and 83% of them voted for Harris and 16% for Trump. Of the 73% who were dissatisfied or angry with the way things are going, 62% voted for Trump and 36% for Harris.
A friend said Wednesday, “There is a divide in American life. There are those who have money and those who do not.” That’s true, but it is more than that. Wealth inequality is at near-record levels. And the thing about inequality is that, as history tells us, it makes societies increasingly unstable over time. Harris, according to the exit poll mentioned above, won voters whose family incomes are either below $30,000 or above $100,000. Trump won the voters in between.
The irony, of course, is that Trump is of the oligarch class, the billionaires who are an increasing threat to our democracy. The studies show that when it comes to policy, they almost always get their way, while the rest of us are frequently ignored.
Since the day in 2015 he descended Trump Tower’s escalator to announce he was throwing his hat into the presidential ring, Trump has been running a neat trick, claiming to be a man of the people, even as he’s ludicrously, obviously corrupt.
The answer to Trump’s billionaire Silicon Valley enablers like Elon Musk is not to trot out your own.
But Harris was mostly unable to capitalize on that. She rarely called out business interests, and she surrounded herself with some of the beneficiaries of our rampant inequality. The answer to Trump’s billionaire Silicon Valley enablers like Elon Musk is not to trot out your own. (Hello, Reid Hoffman and Mark Cuban!) It’s to call them all out.
Instead, even as Trump went about promising to cut corporate honchos a break if they supported his candidacy, Harris couldn’t even bring herself to say whether she would reappoint Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan — who delivered the popular (if now threatened) ban on noncompete employment contracts.
During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt explicitly flagged monopolists, financial speculators and bankers as enemies of democracy and said he welcomed their hatred. He was easily elected president — four times. Democrats today need to take a lesson from this. So far, they haven’t. No major banker went to jail for the financial crisis. Corporate impunity grows with each C-suite denizen who flagrantly breaks the law and receives nothing but a wrist-slap of a fine and a walk-of-shame appearance in front of a congressional hearing. It’s not just that the Democratic Party is abandoning the working class, as Bernie Sanders put it in a statement Wednesday. But as seen in the exit poll that shows Trump winning voters whose household incomes are between $30,000 and $100,000, they’ve abandoned the middle class too. Democrats talk about identity and prejudice and other concerns derisively referred to as “woke,” and they are not wrong to do so, but they all too often ignore the most powerful identity of them all: class. Trump, who (like me) grew up in outer-borough New York City, understands this powerfully. No matter how much money he possesses, in his head he can still hear the contempt of supposedly sophisticated Manhattanites toward their outer-borough brethren. Harris, the child of two Berkeley academics, couldn’t convincingly speak to voters across the country who’ve felt a similar contempt from people higher on the class rung. Everyone is going to turn to their priors to explain what happened and I am no exception. But it seems obvious that since the 2008 financial crisis, voters are reacting like they are on a see-saw or tilt-a-whirl, going from one party to the other, seeking help that never arrives. That Trump’s a corrupt phony doesn’t seem to matter, at least not when he’s up against a perceived incumbent. When he was the one challenged when in office in 2020, he too went down to defeat. I fully expect the pattern to repeat in 2026 and 2028. Trump is what he is, after all, and the Republican Party too. This is hardly an optimistic take. Democratic and Republican pols alike need to break this cycle. Otherwise, like almost all other ages of vast inequality throughout history, ours will end badly. The United States, born of a great Democratic experiment and one of the wealthiest nations ever known, deserves better than that.
Helaine Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has also appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. 
