In retrospect, the most important incident leading up to this election day may not have been the Democratic Party’s decision to push aside President Joe Biden or the unprecedented (and undemocratic) elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket. It wasn’t the Republican Party’s inability to break out of Donald Trump’s grip on it, or the two assassination attempts targeting him.

The thing that most shaped this election happened long before all of that. It was a decision made in the early days of the Biden administration. With the last election just in the rearview window, Biden pushed through a major stimulus bill through Congress — a bill that spent $1.9 trillion, almost entirely borrowed — despite warning signs that the already recovering economy might not be able to handle the maximum infusion of more dollars.

“Now is the time for big, bold action to turn the tide of the pandemic and start the economic recovery,” Biden promised. Bloomberg called her a “big bet on a bottom-line economy” and noted that the White House “ignored warnings that the economy may overheat as a result.”

It was a gamble that didn’t pay off the way the White House had hoped.

A year later, inflation rose to over 9%, the highest level in 40 years. That I have written beforethis fact underscores the historical context: prior to 2021, the last full year in which America experienced an average inflation rate above 4% was 1991. There was only one year (2008) between then and 2020 when the annual inflation rate exceeded 3 percent. In other words, the maximum value of inflation in the first half of 2022 was two or three times worse than the worst inflationary crisis that most Americans could easily remember.

For those of us who follow political and economic news for a living — or even as a serious hobby — this all probably feels like, well, old news. Prices have been rising at a much more normal rate for the past year or more. In September, the annualized rate of inflation it was 2.4 percent. Higher than the pre-pandemic norm, but nothing to cause an electoral crisis.

But the average voter is not a political or economic junkie, and much of America sees 2024 as the inflationary election: a referendum on the federal policies that caused that brief and horrific spike in prices. (That cause is well established so far: A study of the Federal Reserve of St. Louis finder that “domestic stimulus” played a “considerable role” in driving inflation to 40-year highs.)

A Plaster POLL in August found that 50 percent of voters said inflation was their top concern ahead of the election. In October, Gallup finder that 90 percent of voters rated the “economy” as “extremely important” or “very important” to their vote — the highest score since the 2008 election at the height of the subprime crisis. Polling guru Nate Silver dug into the numbers further and found a startling correlation: “Each additional $100 of inflation in a state since January 2021 predicts a further 1.6 swing from Harris in our polling average from the Biden-Trump margin in 2020,” he said. posted on X last week.

It was impossible for the Biden and then Harris ticket to escape the inflation problem for two reasons. First, Harris was unwilling or unable to distance himself from the Biden administration. And second, because the Biden White House has made economic policy so central to his message for three years — even coming up with the counterproductive slogan “Bidenomics.”

“Bidenomics was essentially a philosophy of throwing money at favored programs, people, political allies and constituencies. This spending directly and significantly contributed to the rapid rise in inflation, which helped fuel voter dissatisfaction with the state of affairs.” ReasonPeter Suderman summed it up in a March 2024 cover story. “Due to misallocation, poor implementation, and self-contradictory regulatory requirements, substantial public payments for those expenditures have been tenuous at best and counterproductive at worst.”

Of course, there are logical counterpoints to voters’ feelings about inflation before Election Day. For example, wages have risen faster than prices. Moody’s appraisal that the average American household now spends $1,120 more per month to buy the same goods and services as in January 2021, but also earns $1,192 more per month. Some products have even defied inflation: plane tickets are cheaper now than they were before the pandemic, said liberal commentator Matt Yglesias pointed out this week.

It is also true that former President Donald Trump’s economic agenda seems likely to drive prices higher. Mass deportations and huge new rates will cause all kinds of economic disturbances and it will make Americans poorer. It seems bizarre that voters looking for a stable economy after the last four years would put their faith in an erratic populist, but if this election season has proven anything, it’s that people are getting pretty irrational about inflation. In part, this is because our brains attribute economic gains to our own achievements, but look for someone (or something) to fall back on when things go wrong. In other words, your paycheck got fatter because you worked harder, but your groceries got more expensive because Biden (or big corporations) are out to get you.

Of course, that’s not true – both things happened for the same reason – but inflation is breaking our brains and election day is not a time for deep thinking about political science or psychology. Elections are decided by how people feel, and many Americans still feel pretty grumpy about how much it costs to go to the grocery store these days. It’s really that simple.