Bigger than inflation: Trump burst open Miamians’ dissatisfaction with ‘rigged’ system | Opinion
If the results of Tuesday's elections in Miami-Dade County are truly about "the economy, stupid" — as the old political slogan goes — it's not very hard to see why.
When Donald Trump won the county, he flipped it from blue to red for the first time in a presidential election since 1988 and led a countywide wave for Republicans. That's a big shift in a place where Hillary Clinton won by nearly 30 percentage points in 2016 and Joe Biden by seven in 2020.
Viewed through an economic lens, though, it makes sense.
South Florida has been struggling under the weight of skyrocketing housing costs and an extreme shortage of affordable homes. That's a real life obstacle for many in South Florida who feel stuck — or sliding backwards — on the economic ladder.
Yes, the crisis has slightly abated, with rents down by a mere 2.1% in June . Some condo prices have dropped a lot, but that's because of safety-related special assessments after the Surfside condo collapse. Single-family home sales slowed a bit recently but median prices still rose . Along the way, home ownership has become simply unattainable for too many, including the middle class.
At the same time, wages haven't kept up. Income inequality, in a town where glittering high-rises soar and billionaires keep moving in, is an inescapable fact of life.
One recent report by GOBankingRates ranked Miami as the city with the fifth-highest income inequality in the country, with the bottom 20% of workers in Miami earning an average of about $10,000 a year and the top 20% earning almost $264,000 a year.
A Census Bureau survey found that more than three-quarters of South Floridians reported difficulty paying for normal household expenses in 2023, making greater Miami one of the most cost burdened metropolitan areas in the country.
Add inflation to the financial squeeze, and it's no wonder South Florida voters may feel the system doesn't work for them — or, to borrow Trump's terminology, the whole thing is "rigged."
The Democratic Party used to be known for looking out for "everyday people" but Trump is now donning that mantle, even if some of his policies — such as tariffs on imports — could create more inflation and chaos.
So when voters in majority-Hispanic Miami-Dade chose Trump and Republicans this year, it seems apparent they were voting for economic relief. As Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer noted this week , about 85% of Latino voters said their top election priority was the economy, according to a Pew Research Center Poll.
This economic emphasis in the election is not a fluke. Nor is it a single issue. It's a complicated stew — astronomical housing costs, terrible insurance rates, wages that don't keep up with costs, inflation at the grocery store — that leaves a lot of South Floridians out in the cold when it comes to the American dream.
It's not a new phenomenon. Both parties are to blame for the deepening of income inequalities over the past decades. Most Americans know that, as big business became more profitable and politicians enriched themselves, their own financial security diminished.
Pull yourself up by the bootstraps? Middle class families used to be able to save money and buy a home or send their kids to college. They could retire with corporate pensions. Today those kinds of goals seem to be moving farther away, leaving the middle class without a clear upward path.
That safer, more stable life of their parents and grandparents is what many Trump voters envision when they embrace "Make America Great Again." As much as critics dismiss that slogan as bigoted — after all, women, Black people and other minorities didn't have the same rights for much of America's history — that's an oversimplification.
Trump understood something when he promised that he would bring America back to its period of greatness, whenever that may be. When you lose the middle class, as the Democrats clearly did in this election cycle, you'll see it in the ballot box.
