It's not just that people are struggling under the current economic conditions.
It's that the Democrats responded to it by telling voters that inflation has gone down and the economy is great and anyone trying to convince them times are hard are actually just lying. It was infuriating to be talked down to that way and people rejected it.
Yep, while it's technically true that inflation is down, people still struggle with grocery prices having basically doubled, so unless you caused everyone's wages to rise at least as much, you're just going to piss people off when you say their lived experience is wrong.
It's like the people running the campaigns don't know any regular people.
Trump is similarly out of touch, but he somehow managed to say things that resonate, mostly because his schtick was always that 'America isn't what it used to be'.
Ive noticed an income divide on election reactions from Democrat voters. The ones making more are the most surprised, they have no idea why the economy messaging didn't work, then theres the rest of us.