Influencers are the tail that thinks they’re wagging the dog. When they aren’t shilling garbage products and cryptoscams they’re spending all their time trying to find the next trend to chase. Besides the shilling, at their worst they’re merely a sounding board for ideas and issues that are already out there (and have been for a long time).

The biggest mistake the Democrat campaign made was to ignore the plight of working class, non-college educated people. To a group that’s been reeling from inflation and the major setback of COVID lockdowns, the Democrats promised more of the same. That’s not good enough! What good is student loan forgiveness to people who never went to college?

That’s been the problem for the Democrats for decades now. A party that used to call labour unions its base now focuses pretty much exclusively on college-educated middle class and up.

I just had a look at the exit polls. Of the people who said the economy was the most important use, 79% voted for Trump. Of those who think the US’s economy is doing not so good/poor (67% of voters), 69% voted for Trump.

I know lots of people here will sneer at that and Trump seems pretty unlikely to right the ship but he actually promised change whereas the Democrats did not. Promising to keep things the same when 2/3 of voters believe the economy is poor is not going to get the job done.