Thirty-two years ago, Bill Clinton’s strategist James Carville declared, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Carville was, of course, merely stating a truism about American elections: concern about the pocketbook almost always tops any other issues.

So it was in the Nov. 5 voting which is returning former President Donald Trump to the White House. This time, it is inflation and its effect on household budgets, such as grocery cost, even though the data has been showing that the overall economy is in good shape.

Thirty percent of African American men aged 45 and below voted for Trump or “roughly double” the number in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, a survey created by the Associated Press (AP) and the University of Chicago‘s National Opinion Research Center (NORC). “A clear majority of young Black voters” described it as ‘not so good’ or ‘poor,’ compared with about half of older Black voters.”

So, too, with Latino American men – of all ages – about 50 percent of whom voted for Trump, compared to about 60 percent who chose President Joe Biden in 2020. They “certainly responded to the populist message of the [former] president and focused primarily on economic issues, inflation, wages and even support of immigration reform,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the oldest and largest Latino American civil rights organization.

But, the AP noted, “Though the shift of votes from Black and Latino men was impactful, Trump could not have won without the support of a majority of white voters.” That was no surprise because European Americans form the base of not just Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement but have generally been the bulwark of the Republican Party which it now dominates.

What is surprising is that African Americans and Latino Americans chose to give Trump the all-important edge over his opponent, Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice president, despite his habit of persistently denigrating members of those communities, even before his formal entry into national politics in the 2016 presidential campaign. He and his surrogates know what their slogan “Take America Back” really means: back to the time before affirmative action, diversity programs, critical race theory and discussion of the legacy of slavery past, and street protests against injustices, back before the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, back to era of restricted access to refugees.

Trump labeled African nations and Haiti as “shitholes” while expressing a preference for migrants from overwhelmingly “white” countries such as Norway. He made it a point to give national exposure, in a debate with Harris, to the lie that Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Trump has pledged to deport all estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, claiming, among other things, that migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country. Most of them are Latinos – from Mexico and countries in Central and South America. He falsely claimed that Venezuelan gangs were overwhelming some cities, such as Aurora, Colo.

As for the economy, BBC reported two months before the election that the rate of inflation rose to 9.1 percent on June 2022 and grocery prices surged to 13.5 percent in the fiscal year ending in August 2022. However, by this September, the rate had dropped to about 3 percent, which was just slightly higher than when Trump left office in 2020, and prices rose by just 1.1 percent from July 2023 to July this year.

As for economic growth, after factoring in the problems created by COVID-19, the economy grew annually by 2.3 percent under Trump and just slightly less, at 2.2 percent, under Biden.

In employment, the Trump administration, while still battling the impact of the pandemic, created 6.7 million jobs in its first three years but almost 16 million were created by Biden. The jobless rate under Trump was 3.5 percent and, after a steep climb it fell back to 7 percent.

The rate fell to 3.4 percent in January 2023 under Biden, “the lowest rate in more than 50 years,” but it has since risen to 4.3 percent.

With regard to wages, the BBC reported that the rate “increased rapidly” under Trump at the start of the pandemic. However, that “was linked to lower paid workers being more likely to be laid off, which raised the average wage of people who were still employed.” Inflation has caused wages under Biden to struggle to keep up, and as a result, “average weekly wages are less than when Mr. Biden came into office.”

Trump has promised substantial improvement in the economy but whether he can do so remains to be seen. One indicator of what a president plans to accomplish is the personnel tapped for the Cabinet and as heads of federal departments. In the case of Trump, a multi-billionaire, his proposed team would represent what ABC News described as “the wealthiest presidential administration in modern history.”

They include Elon Musk, co-head of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), worth $439 billion; Linda McMahon, education secretary, $3 billion; Howard Lutnick, Commerce secretary, $2.2 billion; Frank Bisignano, Social Security Administration commissioner, $1 billion; Scott Bessent, Treasury secretary, “reported billionaire;” Vivek Ramaswamy, co-head with Musk of DOGE; $1 billion; David Sacks, AI and Crypto czar, “net worth unknown;” Kelly Loeffler, Small Business Administration administrator, $800 million; Doug Burgun, Interior secretary, $100 million; and Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, $100 million.

Several other men and women in Trump’s inner circle are also very rich and others, especially in the technology industry, are rushing to embrace him so they can benefit from the largesse that is sure to come from the public coffers.

Forbes reported that Biden’s Cabinet included 13 millionaires with a net worth of $118 million.

Additionally, Trump has described his election victory as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” a “landslide,” “resounding” and “sweeping.”

But while his Electoral College count is impressive – 312 to 226 for Harris – in the popular vote he fell short of a majority, garnering 77,297,721 or 49.9 percent, compared to 75,009,338 or 48.4 percent for Harris – a margin of 2,288,383 or 1.5 percent.

Further, the total number of eligible voters was 244,666,800 but only 152,307,059 voted for Trump and Harris, combined. That means twice as many registered voters did not vote compared to those who voted for either Trump or Harris. The figures underline the fact that the nation is not only almost evenly divided between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party but also that tens of millions of Americans, for whatever reason, did not bother to show up at the polls. The result should inspire policies aimed at uniting the nation but that will not happen.

The very rich tend to be less interested in improving the lot of ordinary Americans and more in maximizing and protecting their wealth. And, as The Nation’s Tim Murphy pointed out, “The money sloshing around in pursuit of tax cuts and government contracts and something called ‘pronatalism’ has real consequences for real people.”

Pronatalism describes efforts to encourage people to have more children, which, of course, is linked to declining birthrates among European Americans, who are on the verge of losing their “majority” status.

Harris, too, benefited from the obscene flow of money which the Supreme Court unleashed on the political system in its Citizens United ruling in 2010.

But it is Trump who won and it is he who has been stocking his incoming administration with oligarchs, some motivated by greed and grift, some who reject science, not principle and a call to genuine public service. Musk and Ramaswamy want to cut $500 billion from the federal budget. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may be scaled back or privatized.

They are the ones who will be seated at the table and, as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has said, “If you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”