@aarondwoods You’ve already identified your problem.
localhost means the computer of the person visiting the site.
So if I visit the site, it’s trying to connect to localhost:8080 on my computer and obviously I’m not running your API at that location.
You’ll need to host your API somewhere so that it’s accessible to all.
As you can’t run a “node server” with Netlify, (see: https://answers.netlify.com/t/support-guide-can-i-run-a-web-server-http-listener-and-or-database-at-netlify/3078 ), you would create it with a Serverless Function or host it with another provider.