by Barbara Nevins Taylor
My rookie student reporters in a journalism class at The City College of New York (CCNY) predicted Trump’s win. Looking back, I don’t understand why the Democrats failed to see what the students saw. Their friends, neighbors and family members worried about the cost of groceries and their ability to afford to put food on the table.
The first story came in at the beginning of October. I was surprised by the tale of disaffection and the support for then-former president Donald Trump. Most of our students come from immigrant working class families and they are the first to attend college. It seemed like they should fit in naturally with the Democrats’ world view. But that wasn’t true.
A CCNY junior majoring in computer science told the student reporter, “I’ve had to switch grocery stores multiple times to get cheaper meat to cook for my younger sister and brothers.” Others he interviewed talked about rising rents, something presidents don’t control, and the fear that they would never be able to afford an apartment of their own.
In his story and others, the people interviewed returned to grocery prices over and over. A CCNY student athlete said that he’d cut back on healthy food and thought his nutrition might suffer. “Every time I go grocery shopping, it feels like prices have gone up again, and it’s hard to keep up, even as a student. I’m not sure if either candidate really has a plan to fix this,” he said.
As the stories flowed in, young women echoed the men. “I feel like I’m working harder just to keep my head above water because prices are skyrocketing. I’m concerned that my salary won’t go far enough to pay for necessities,” a 25-year-old spa manager from Queens told the reporter. In Brooklyn, a 27-year-old woman helping to support her parents said, “I worry about how my family will pay for basics every day.”
On Election Day, the students continued reporting. One talked to a woman who voted for Trump in North Carolina but came home to Harlem to take her parents to vote. She said, “As a single women trying to make ends meet, it’s difficult in today’s economy.”
That directly contracted what Vice President Harris and the Biden Administration had been touting. The U.S. Economy has grown faster than the economy of any other major country. It grew by 2.8 % from July through September. But this didn’t seem to mean anything to people struggling. An AP/NORC poll in late October found voters unhappy with the economy and feeling that the U.S. was going in the wrong direction. They were split about whether Harris or Trump could handle the economy better.
We now know how that turned out. And still as Democrats review their losses, we don’t hear enough about the very basic problem that people can’t afford hamburger meat, or a loaf of bread.
Grocery prices were up 1.3 % from a year ago in September. Although prices increases are declining, according to the the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people feel the impact of what happened during the pandemic and the following year. Grocery prices rose a spectacular 25 % from 2019 to 2023, mostly because of supply chain price gouging.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a home-cook, could have made a dramatic moment out of the price of eggs, milk and cereal. In August, she did offer a plan to propose a federal ban on price gouging. But that didn’t seem to resonate with people struggling to pay the bill at the grocery store check-out. They couldn’t embrace the joy Harris offered because of the pain they feel right now.
If the Democrats want to woo back those who left them, they need to take a seat at the kitchen table and really listen. My students at CCNY will take you in to homes where people will give you the straight story.
