Opinion | Voters punished Biden for problems he didn’t cause and effectively addressed
Summary
President Joe Biden’s economic achievements—lowering inflation, reducing gas prices, creating jobs, and boosting manufacturing—are largely unrecognized by the public, despite his successes.
His tenure saw landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, and major infrastructure investments.
However, Biden's approval ratings remain low, attributed to inflation backlash, weak communication, and a media landscape prone to misinformation.
Democrats face a “propaganda problem” rather than a policy failure, with many voters likely to credit incoming President Trump for Biden’s accomplishments due to partisan messaging and social media dynamics.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-trump-presidency-accomplishments-rcna179235Open linkView original on lemmy.world903
Comments374
Because Americans are some of the stupidest people in the world.
What, the country with all the resources but still ranks 36th in literacy and 54% of their adults can’t even read above a 6th grade level?
Literacy info.
And we thought the internet would solve or at least help this. Little did we know...
I feel like it’s simply widened the divide that was already present. There have always been people that care and people that don’t but now the people that care have the resources to do something about it and the people that don’t have easy access to that which reinforces their lack of caring.
Excellent summary of the internet's potential for both help and harm. At this point, I'm not convinced the net result isn't negative.
Hey man, we can post slurs online while taking a shit or look at porn any time. What else would we use the internet for?
Yep. I remember those days. I remember hearing Douglas Rushkoff [1] on a podcast or something about how he and others around his same age were seeing the dawn of the (privatized) Internet along with the flourishing of the rave scene, and so on and thought it had all this promise and it gave me such a huge amount of nostalgia.
Instead, we have things like Youtube influencers peddling some of the very worst things you'd want kids to watch and algorithms that push it to them.
[1] Jaron Lanier has written pretty well about some of the same aspects.
That's why emojis are so popular.
As someone who turned off autocorrect fifteen years ago and cares about things like spelling, grammar, and compostion I can pretty confidently say that emojis have many valid uses. Text, especially quick text, is not very good at conveying subtle meaning in a clear way. Emojis though? They do amazingly, especially when it’s a face, because in normal conversations we have body language and even over the phone we can clearly convey a tone of voice. Body language is the emoji library of face-to-face communication.
TL;DR: emojis are popular because they’re highly effective.
::: spoiler ¯_(ツ)_/¯
But honestly, I admire the fact that you care about grammar, spelling, and such. This seems not very rare on Lemmy, but is otherwise a rare sight :::
i need this information to start being treated as the act of oppression it is rather than the “americans dumb lol” framing i see even in leftist spaces.
americans, and disproportionately minority americans, are being intentionally refused education in the same way they are refused medical care—in service of cost cutting and privatization interests rather than public wellbeing and economic wellness.
Lee Atwater full interview told the real reason for the dumbing down of America. Two younger family members went through four years of prestigious private universities, and neither had ever read classic literature, let alone discuss main themes and philosophical implications, which is sad, since Shakespeare still addresses basic and timeless western human conditions, and I daresay the reach may be broader than that.
i think there’s a bit more to the story than that but sure haha
edit: looked him up and he was an adviser to reagan? ew.
Idk if this is the same guy, but iirc someone did an interview tell-all where they basically came clean and admitted to all the fucked up shit they helped their administration do.
So yeah, undoubtedly ew, but I'm guessing that's what they're talking about.
54%?? Yikes.
By design. About a century ago, Rockefeller turned the public school system into a mindless factory worker production machine. Republicans have been reducing funding for decades since.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines. College tuition paywalls real education. As AI improves, the bar lowers further. Public schools will be continually defunded or converted to a voucher system in order to exclude even more citizens.
Republicans decided back in the late 70s and early 80s that the public was too educated (and too hard to control) so they decided to do something about it. 45y of slashed education funding and standards later here we are.
Can you elaborate on what Rockefeller did? Never heard that before
Rockefeller worked with the General Education Board to reshape education to be vocational. He also pushed for the duration of the school day to be extended to eight hours, for early exposure and adoption of the standard work day.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED349475.pdf
Very interesting. Surely we can trust our current crop of billionaires to do better for society!
Nothing new. Jim & Jesse even did a song about it years ago.
The company owned the houses And the company owned the grammar school You'll never see an educated cotton mill man They figure you don't need to learn Anything but how to earn
The money that you pay upon demand To the general store they own Or else they'll take away your home And give it to some other homeless Cotton mill man
Fun fact, the average American public school education doesn't include critical thinking skills in the language curriculum. You either get your introduction to this in AP English (if you're a high scoring highschooler) or during your first year of college/university.
It's mind blowing how many people can't pick apart a given piece of media and think about what message it conveys and why it conveys it.
So yeah, Americans are ripe for manipulation.
I think not stressing critical thinking skills is not a bug, but a feature, of schools that were designed to crank out factory workers.
It's sheer lunacy in today's world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
Redundant statements are redundant.
That's the result of the Republicans fucking over education in this country for the past 50 years.
I'm sorry to have to upvote that.
I’m American and have to agree with it; it might be because I’m stupid though.
'am I actually stupid?'
and like 90% of our media is owned or controlled by republicans.
The media that they choose to consume is the problem. It plays down the accomplishments of "the enemy" and plays up the hardships and failures like "rampant illegals" and constantly rising food prices. I blame "stupid Americans" less than I blame manipulative billionaires that control media consumption.
I hate to hear this myself but there's a global rebuke against incumbents of all shapes and sizes literally everywhere, in response to inflation.
So by definition, everyone is stupid in countries that have rebounded well because they're doing the same.
That's an understatement. Source: Live in America.
Stupid and proud of it.
The issue with politics is that you don't just have to address a problem, you also need to publicize what you did.
Maybe the dems did effectively address some problems, but they did a poor PR jobs out of it.
Outrageous lies are what make the news.
Yeah, somehow trump doesn’t have a credibility problem despite being a pathological liar and I don’t think it was possible for the democrats to effectively counter that when he’s not being held accountable. We need live fact checking in debates and he needs to be publicly called out every time he lies, but then he just won’t agree to the debate and will go hold a town hall on Fox News.
He does have a credibility problem, AND is a liar. His base doesn't care. People idolize celebrities, musicians, even models. I feel like this is the first time I've seen people swoon this hard over a politician, and it blows other fandoms away in fealty and dedication.
I agree that he has no credibility, but can it really be considered a problem for him if his base outright refuses to hold him accountable for lying through his teeth whenever he opens his mouth? They don’t care what he does, so his credibility is not a problem for them (it certainly is for me though).
It's high time the Dems stooped to this level. That and promote ragebait podcasts pushing their agenda. It's sad, but you can't argue with the results.
So many of the problems Dems want to address are so easy to sell too. It's like they don't actually want to win or achieve anything, they're content to be a permanent minority opposition party that continues fundraising and campaigning ad infinitum.
Sadly yes..
Dems quietly fix things, Repubs loudly claim credit, even when they actively obstructed the fixes. There are uncountable examples of Republican legislators patting themselves on the back for getting legislation passed that actively helps their constituents, when in fact they voted against it. It passed despite them, not because of them, but they still campaign on it and win because of it. Meanwhile Democrats are generally helpful and honest and get the shaft because they don't call out that bullshit and claim their wins as they should.
It's also true in many tertiary jobs too, communication of what you made matters at least as much as what you made.
For sure, this is a hard lesson learned for me - it doesn't matter if you're doing good work if no one knows about it, so if you want to be rewarded for your work you'll have to spend less time actually doing it and more time doing marketing for what you've done.
They can't really trumpet their victories because they are far short of what their base actually wanted. Dems leadership would be out there celebrating the crumbs they acquired from the oligarchy while the base wanted a full meal. The Democratic party positioned itself in a lose lose situation. Either they go all in one what the base wants and win elections, but the Bidens and Nancy Pelosi's of the party won't get fat paydays from the donors. So they went with winning some elections by just being marginally better than the dumb nazi party. Not a both sides argument just a fact. If the Democrat leadership actually put a full left-facing platform and candidate they would actually have to achieve some outcomes they fundamentally don't agree with. Dem leadership doesn't believe in less war, less imprisonment, less pollution, or more education, more health care, more compassion. They just don't. So they've just stopped even lying about wanting those things that way they aren't even expected to bring about change.
Messaging has always been a big problem for the Democratic Party. Unlike the GOP, they are a "big tent", so many points of view abound. There's just no comparison to the organized, disciplined, well-funded messaging of right-wing media...
If they had actually fixed any problems, they wouldn't need to "publicize" it.
Inflation is really one of these things where people find out much later that the problem is fixed. For instance, Biden inherited a high inflation regime which baked in about 10-15 percent price increases before he could do anything to stop it. By the time he brought inflation down, prices had increased by something like 20 percent. Inflation has now been brought down to 2-3 percent, but most people will simply observe that prices are 20 percent higher than when he started.
Another big issue is counterfactual reasoning. US inflation was lower than in other developed countries, but people only notice that it was higher than they were used to.
In a nutshell, policy is really complicated. You do not feel the consequences of good policy in your bones.
Yes indeed call me a skeptic, but I do not trust my bones (or any other body part that’s not my brain). Bones and their feelings are the target of charlatans and populist (like Trump).
What other problems would you have liked them to solve?
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren't that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn't expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don't think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn't take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn't drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I've tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn't want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I'd say "be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn't acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers."
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I'm worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don't matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
Apparently, America's economy seems to be driven only by fear or greed
Link
All due respect, you are literally brainwashed by the deep state. Universities are institutions of the wealthy; of the status quo. They exist to train the managerial class of capitalist society. The ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers. You specifically took as your major the mainline ideology of that ruling class. The only way you could have done yourself a worse service in that regard is if you took economics.
With all due respect youre simping or even more brainwashed than the people you are trying to argue with. You're either paid or played, and have enough time to respond to everyone here.
Why is it that the "deep state elite" universities always have such liberal voters? Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs? Doesn't seem very "wealthy brainwashing".
Most rulers didn't take polysci, they got law degrees. Or bankrupted casinos.
Because liberalism is the governing ideology of capitalism and has been since the 1700's. The problem you're having is that your definitions of words is mush.
Can you please observe reality? When since LBJ has that been the case? When, since the Soviet Union was a rising threat, has the capitalist state done anything but austerity, union busting, and violently suppressing popular movements?
"I'm immune to propaganda"
Oh heavens, I'm sorry. I didn't think about the law, which is completely free of the entrenched governing ideology.
Perhaps you'd like to go to bat for Sociology next? Just because I didn't mention a major by name doesn't mean it's exempt from institutional indoctrination.
Idk if any of this will help, but you're very actively involved in the discussions and I encourage that. So, as a friendly commenter who sides with your disgruntlement of the situation, I thought I would at least point out the things that I understand but don't 100% agree with.
When it comes to degrees, I agree that it is a "machine" (education as a whole) that produces desired individuals to fulfill the roles it has established as "important/valuable". Everyone can disagree on the opinion of what a "valuable" society is, but I digress. You have to understand that knowledge comes from experience and research though (just like you've probably done, just as an individual and not mandated by a course). The most succulent of critiques can come from someone deeply established in a field, kinda like how Bernie Sanders made comments about the DNC after the election and it forced the media and all of us to discuss it and the message.
The truly dangerous ones are those who can fully understand how flawed a system is, but realize they must play it to their advantage to get what they "want" out of life. I just can't demonize the whole entire system when the people I've learned and read from were birthed from that experience. A lot of people realize after or during pursuing a degree, just how bad it is so it's some kind of awareness for a certain %. Now if they've fully embraced the system, you just have to find the examples they choose to ignore in their flawed beliefs.
I also don't know how effective the "per quote response" is. I've been guilty of it in the past, but honestly I think people just dont really read the "tit-for-tat" style comment replies (I find myself scrolling past if it's too long). If they see one thing they disagree with then they downvote the entire comment. I try to hit the points I want but change the length and style of response in regards to how effective I can actually communicate to the person.
I'm just happy that a little bit of sanity has returned to Lemmy (obvious from the changes in what got downvoted/upvoted or discussed heavily). It felt like everyone just completely drank the kool-aid so we could "save Democracy^tm^!!" Unfortunately, I think people sold all the common-sense realty in their head for the Blue Superhero fallacy that could save us all from all the boogeymen. It will take time for some to let their head critique things effectively, some will never come back to reality. It's one of the reasons I just asked a simple question instead of critiquing their entire argument (I think his entire premise is flawed, and happily skewed so Biden is still a hero in their eyes). It's mostly there so other readers can see it and makes them pause for a second instead of just "believing" it's true. If the OP comes back with a sane comment I'll engage in a discussion, but we see from the response to me they don't want to discuss facts so I'm not engaging further.
If we're going to have the superheroes, they're going to be us, so I guess it depends how badly we want them.
I'm ootl, what monopolies got broken up? I tried looking it up but it's not returning results.
Oh so you lied.
He sued a monopoly
And (after reading) not even over being a monopoly
The user you replied to asked what monopoly got broken up. You deliberately talked past that question. You're still lying.
"Your specific points don't matter to me because I can't read"
He could have ran on it more. Trump understands the art of putting his name on the checks.
Call Americans stupid, and we are, but I wish the party that was helping people was a bit more grandious and better about messaging then they are.
It's also pretty hard to point to things and go "see? remember the thing we did 10 years ago? this is the effect it had!"
Many of Biden's policies will come to fruition during the next term and Trump will falsely claim responsibility because he can point to it right away.
The election is over you can stop lying
Oh fuck yeah an unsubscribe link on spam emails! America is back, baby!
O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES
I said you could stop lying. Fucking infuriating how cynical liberals are when constructing their fantasy world.
You're taking credit for the bad bill that was supposed to be passed along with the good bill.
Except the point of separating them was to only pass the bad bill. (remember when Elizabeth "Redface" Warren RAN on pulling this shit on you?)
So now you take the full price tag of the bad bill and pretend it was for good things. Remember what we called it when we called the other bill (again, the fucking ghouls, with maximum cynicism) 'the green new deal'? We called it the 'toll road bill'.
You're warping reality and history.
Love when liberals take credit for not doing good things, Remember when they "tried" to raise the minimum wage but were stonewalled by an instantly fire-able employee?
Again, as was said to you thousands of times but you were too obstinate to acknowledge: he didn't need congress. He could have literally thrown away the paperwork if he wanted to. Somehow the previous president had the authority to halt the loans but when the senator from MBNA took office that power suddenly didn't exist?
You know better and you're pretending not to.
Because you want to live in a fantasy world that would shatter upon literally a single fact being thrown into it
You seem.... stable.......
This by the way is a perfect example of how the democratic party never learns from its mistakes. Because the adults are no longer in the room and the children believe all the lies they were told growing up
Same thing happened with the republicans, just 20 years ago
And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
You forgot deporting people
Actually no, Trump deported and convicted less than Obama and Biden. Trump's removal of holding time limitations for women and children and his removal of ICE's criminal only focus meant resources were used up and almost always wasted.
Trump is ineffective at everything he claims to be good for.
Are we talking about what he did last time or what he said he's going to do this time?
His plans supposedly haven't changed, just a repeat of last time but more and worse.
He even already tried to overturn the election once before when he sent 84 fake electors to 7 states in 2020.
He has repeatedly told us he is going to do everything he did before, again.
Would you be willing to donate $10 to Amazon?
I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
Thank you, your $10/week subscription has been confirmed. Please call 10AM-3PM Eastern to upgrade or cancel your payment. We apologize in advance for the unusually long wait times.
I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people's financial experience. Listen to this shit:
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let's check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but "real wage," means, "wage adjusted for inflation," so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden's policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let's not even worry about that. Let's see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what's really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn't been raised since 2009. So it's not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I'm not an economist, and I don't have hours to research this shit, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that's not the point. The point is that I've already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I'll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Young people have no hope of buying a house in my area.
In my neighborhood all the drug store shelves are bare (Rite Aid) and there's soon to be only one grocery store to choose from (Kroger).
When I'm getting groceries the checkers are talking about how the store is going to close if the merger happens and they'll all lose their jobs.
No 'media' lied to me and convinced me that the economy is wack. I see it every day.
What I'm not hearing in the media is recognition of working folks' struggles. Failure to address this kept Dems home.
I'm really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
The DNC wants to know your location and give you a strategic voter outreach job.
paul krugman did exactly that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV6kHBwT7bg
Huh. I'm generally wary of any group that has an Eye of Providence in their logo or uses the term, "New World Order," but that was cathartic to watch.
unfortunately something like this is not posted by any other channel popular enough to come up on shitty youtube search.
the guy in the video is jose vega, he ran for congress as lrp candidate in nyd 15 and got about 2.5% vote.
here is more detailed video on a more apt channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK0FivR_B1A
Oh, haha, that's much more reassuring. I assumed it was someone affiliated in the channel, and I was like, "Uh-oh, how long before this guy launches into an antisemitic conspiracy theory about lizard people?"
Whatever happened to Jerome, anyway?
this made me realise how depressing it is when even lunatic channels have more relevant content for working class than our msm with 24/7 peddling of gaslighting bs.
Jon Stewart just discussed some of this on The Weekly Show podcast with Heather Cox Richardson as guest. Discussing whether the metrics that define economic success are outdated and also how poorly any of Biden's "successes" were shared by his White House and the media. It was all framed much better than this article.
I once heard some comedian or podcaster say something to the effect of, "The media keeps telling people that the economy is doing well because of the stock market, but for most of us you could replace the words, "stock market," with, "rich people's feelings graph," and it would mean about the same thing." I think that a lot. Also, I didn't know John Stewart had a podcast for the Daily Show, thanks for the heads up on that!
The stock market is 80% owned by 10% of people... Better stock market= more profits for rich... Those profits come from our labor... The better "the economy" is doing, the worse the workers are doing. The markets went through the roof for Trump because the rich know he's going to let them rape and pillage without constraints of any kind.
Yeah, and here's the trick no one talks about; since the 80s, businesses (with the help of the government) started killing off pensions in favor of 401Ks. That effectively meant the middle and lower class, who are by far minority holders in the stock market, still need it to perform well, otherwise their retirement savings will be wiped out. So they've basically created a system where an entire generation is incentivized to allow the 1% to be as opportunistic and greedy as they like, because the crumbs they're going to retire on are directly tied to the success of the wealthiest Americans.
Well said
401k is superior in almost every way though. The big downside is there isn't a mandatory contribution. Pensions forced an employee to work in the same company for 20-30 years and hope they never got acquired or went bankrupt. Then they could retire and still hope the company never went bankrupt, because the pension funds were universally underfunded. Lots of people faced their pension being reduced by a significant amount after they've been retired for a decade or so.
A 401k gives the worker the power to move without jeopardizing their retirement. It allows the default death benefit to be 100% transferable to another. It's not a surprise when a 401k runs out of money. All you have to do is fill out a form when you start a job to put a reasonable percentage into it.
Huh, I didn't think about how the 401K is transferable, but it makes sense that it's a plus; it's how everyone wishes health insurance worked. But does it matter if you move companies if your next employer offers a similar pension? Wouldn't that mean you just had two smaller monthly payments vs. one larger one? And weren't pensions protected from bankruptcy by Employee Retirement Income Security Act? I thought it was because of that Act that companies justified phasing out their pensions for 401Ks.
Sorry for all the questions. Pensions are sort of an artifact of a lost time for folks my age, but most folks that I know that are my parents' age seem to prefer the stability of their pensions to 401Ks.
Pensions are protected from bankruptcy, but they aren't guaranteed the same payment. There are maximum payments and it's complicated to give an accurate number, because it depends on the type of pension plan, the age of retirement, years of service, and generally doesn't honor bonuses like early buyouts.
Pensions have a number of multipliers that make job hopping less ideal. The formula is roughly percentVested x accrualRate x yearsOfService x maxSalary. Vesting hits 100% at 5-7 years, accrual is roughly 1.5% depending on employer. By leaving early you take big hits on the vesting and max salary multipliers that cause it to be a lot less money. One job for 30 year with 100k mak salary would be a 45k pension. 3 jobs, 10 years each with 50k, 75k, and 100k max salaries is only a 33,750 pension.
As soon as something is adopted as a metric it's divorced from the reality of the market. It's the nature of the modern soothsaying we call economics.
I don't want to listen to what a union buster has to say about people's economic situation
I was just watching an interview last night. Maybe it was 60 Minutes, but they were talking to a woman about this. They told basically all this same info - inflation going down, gas going down, jobs increased, wages increased. The woman said, "I didn't see any of that. My wage didn't go up." No idea what she does, if her job is eligible for a wage increase, but basically she was saying none of that impacted her personally or positively, so she voted for Trump.
Exactly. Democrats think that if they just tell people positive metrics enough times, these feelings will go away. They won't. You have to look at them and say, "You're right, things still suck for you. Things got better for a lot of people, but people like you didn't see much of that because of [X] and [Y]. Here's how we're going to fix it." Otherwise, they're going to listen to anyone who tells them their problem is real, even a racist xenophobe that blames migrants for everything.
I think to some extent, Kamala said exactly how she planned on making things better. Trump didn't say anything, and as usual had no plans. He still got elected. I saw an article last week about Trump saying not saying what his plans were helped him. What sense does that make, when a guy like Trump, who's never had a plan or a rational suggestion to anything ("let's nuke the hurricanes!"), can not say a damn thing about what his policies would be and still get elected? That tells me the Dems were drastically out of touch.
Dem technocrats are drastically out of touch and don't realize how much aggrivement towards the status quo and desire for change there really is. Trump doesn't do policy and it doesn't matter because the people don't care about policy either. We live in turbulent times, and there's a groundswell of support for a nebulous 'change'. Trump positioned himself as anti-establishment, persecuted, and radical in a way that was appealing enough to retain his voter base. Meanwhile, Harris' institutionalism, focus on incrementalist policy, and boring rhetoric failed to galvanize support.
Spot on. When times are bad (whether actually true, or simply perceived that way) it should come as no surprise that the people voted for a change. Trump is the embodiment of "anti-establishment". Progressives must take back the party from Neoliberals.
To some extent, yes, but it wasn't the forefront of her campaign. She talked about greedflation and had a plan for price-capping groceries, but they should have been attacking this point from 2022, not the tail end of the campaign. She was far more focused on middle-class issues and an, "opportunity economy," than the dire financial conditions of the working class.
As you rightfully note the relationship between federal economic policy and economic outcomes is complex and it’s not easy to tease apart cause and effect. Having said that Democrats have through history presided over MUCH better economic outcomes than Republicans, and Biden is no exception. Yet, voters consistently believe that (generic) Republicans are better for the economy than generic Democrats.
Democrats are broadly better, but they've created a lot of the conditions that are killing the working class now. Bill Clinton was the one who passed NAFTA, which was the biggest blow to manufacturing jobs in American history. Obama had a similar trade deal, the TPP, which most likely would have been equally devastating had Trump not killed it (which probably had more to do with his obsession with tearing down the achievements of the first black President than helping workers, but I doubt that mattered to the TPP's opponents).
Even when Democrats aren't directly the result of harm, their solutions are no longer the grand, ambitious plans from their New Deal glory days. Take Obama's promises to create a foreclosure prevention fund, which got whittled down to HAMP, a mostly impotent refinance scheme that seems to have been designed more for banks than borrowers (despite large Democratic majorities). I'm sure it was better than whatever the Republicans would have come up with, but I doubt that mattered to people who were two months behind on an underwater mortgage.
Biden and Harris started with a strong vision, but they couldn't get it through Congress and instead pivoted to telling people that actually, they were doing great, and the economy was good again. That will always be a losing message with people who aren't doing well. The Democrats need to double down on a progressive message that does not compromise, with bold plans like a $20 minimum wage indexed to inflation, Medicare for All, and UBI. If they keep tinkering around the margins and giving people statistics when they say they're doing poorly financially they will never be relevant again.
I agree with you that the Biden/Harris approach to economics is dead. There are virtually no voters left in the middle, so shifting to the right doesn’t help the Democrats like it used to. I also think the policies you propose will help a significant share of voters.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
Another worry I have is that the Trump government will be more evil and less like a shitshow than his previous stint. Unfortunately, I think many voters will get behind evil stuff like rounding up migrants if it’s done in an organised manner.
I think you're right about Trump. I think he was a shit-show last time because he didn't expect to (or, in my opinion, want to) win, and now he has an apparatus that is set up to enable him. I'm very afraid of what a competent fascist movement looks like.
Communication is certainly a problem for Democrats; Trump was able to talk for 3 hours on Rogan, while Harris went on Call Her Daddy for less than s full episode and told a well rehearsed anecdote I'd heard twice before. They're too obsessed with legacy media and polish to sound authentic. But the platform has to come first. If they fix every problem with this campaign's communication in 2028 but run another middle-class opportunity platform with Mark Cuban, they will lose.
I think a big part of this comes down to the messenger here. The Democrats need a charismatic individual who is credible to voters. Unfortunately, they've only got Bernie to fit the bill for someone who had half a chance at being electable, and the DNC did everything they could to sideline him whenever they had the chance. Instead, they trot out establishment, corporatist party members and policy wonks to get the messaging out, or do absolutely baffling stuff, like sending Ritchie Torres to campaign for them in Michigan. It's bad enough to send out bland candidates who may have a less than stellar recording for really fighting for the working class and holding the line to get them what they need, but for a key swing state with a huge Muslim population that has signalled many times they may not vote for Harris because she hasn't indicated any shift in her policy on Gaza, you send the most rabidly Zionist, anti-Palestinian Rep you could pull from the Democratic bench? That's an absolute own goal. It's like sending a rep named Che Castro that tweets constantly on ending the embargo on Cuba to stump for you in Miami, then wondering why Cuban voters went to the other guy.
Unfortunately, I think it will really take a while for the Democrats to dig themselves out of this hole and have someone with a record long enough for people to find them credible when they say they're going to fight for the working class as the rule, rather than the pleasantly surprising exception.
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we're talking about real wages?
Your point is taken that Biden is not primarily responsible for the wage increases during his time in office, but he doesn't have the power as president to unilaterally increase the federal minimum wage. He did sign an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors which, while not having a significant impact on the wage growth nationally, is a step in the right direction.
I realize your point is more that the author of this piece is a prick and he didn't spend enough time trying to understand the bad economic vibes coming from the working class, but it seems like the Biden administration did a relatively good job guiding the economy through post COVID turmoil, which he (... And Harris by proxy) did not get any credit for. Would you agree with that?
I'm a huge fan of "sneering chud" by the way. Will be forcing that into a conversation soon.
Mostly so I could point out in the second to last paragraph that if you weren't on the receiving end of that 13% wage increase (as I strongly suspect is the case for many people in GA, PA, WI and NC), then you took a 20% price increase to the face.
I think the Biden administration did its best to push through the progressive platform that he ran on, and I think that they probably don't get enough credit for that. I think Biden should have been more aggressive with Congress, especially in calling for the abolition of the filibuster early on, but I appreciate how much he did (or tried to do) through executive action. He was especially good on student loans, I honestly expected him to give up on that, but he didn't.
However, I think both Harris and Biden lost sight of the left-wing populist message that won them the White House in 2020. Harris especially pivoted towards a centrist, "economic opportunity," platform instead of a, "here's how government will help you," message. I think small business tax credits and first-time homebuyer's assistance are pretty out of touch when you're trying to win over people who can't afford groceries. She had some policies that were more targeted at the working class, but they were not the centerpiece of the campaign like these middle-class focused proposals.
That being said, yeah, most of my rage here is being directed at the author of this piece. Glad you liked, "sneering chud," I'm a little proud of that one.
Newspaper and politicians are never going to challenge capitalism.
Biden tells the sad paid for truth, Trump sells paid for lies.
Both won't change that most American wages aren't going up, prices are. Certainly won't with tariff going to 60%.
Biden didn't really do much for the average American. He could demanded higher wages, pushed for healthcare coverage, and investigated price hiking. And arrested Trump. He did some, but for a man who is currently a sitting duck who is above the law, he's choosing the safest/"easiest for the rich" option as a presidential RBG.
Trump won't do much, but will loudly shit out that he did, and his followers will eat it up and ask for more.
I will give Biden credit for trying. I expect him to pull an Obama and pivot to centrist policy the second he got into office, but he really tried to pass all the progressive things he ran it. He was just incredibly ineffective at it and basically wound up with a pretty standard (though very large) infrastructure bill that he wanted everyone to pretend was a huge progressive victory.
Honestly Democrat are absolutely horrible at talking to people.
I'll be the first to admit, Biden did actually do a lot for workers but just like the leader of the painters union said, y'all fucking suck at telling people that.
I mean look at the rail workers strike, Biden stopped the rail workers strike and didn't address one of the biggest things they were looking for, just to be treated like humans and have sick leave.
There was lots of talk about "doing this for the best of the nation", which okay I could get behind, sure they got a wage increase but I did as shit could understand why rank and file would feel betrayed when they were asking additional to be treated as humans that get sick.
What I didn't hear him or anyone say to them directly, that he was still going to work with the unions afterwards to get sick leave in. Why would you not say that at the same time as you announce your blocking the strike? Cost you nothing to say you have their back.
So then months later, with Biden administration support finally got the workers PTO but no one really knew about it because the moment was gone and honestly union leadership also did a shit job of getting that word out too.
It's not the only thing but it certainly is a big factor in things.
Biden and the Dems saved the teamsters' pensions against the GOP's best efforts and it didn't even earn them an endorsement from the teamsters' union.
This was highly publicized, especially if you yourself were in the union
Internal polling of Teamsters members showed:
In an electronic poll conducted after the Republican National Convention, 59.6% of rank-and-file Teamsters favored endorsing Trump, while 34% supported Harris.
A more recent poll indicated a similar trend, with Teamsters backing Trump 58% to 31%
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
Bingo.
Or scrolling their feeds. Or swiping. Depending on the age. Every single Democrat leader needs to see that statistic, so they can stop whining about how policy was their problem.
Democrats are messaging like it's 1950. And hot take, but the only thing that elected Biden was COVID-19, only because it wedged itself into people's lives like absolutely nothing else can.
Hence, Democrats suck a propaganda.
They should field and finance their own radio jockeys and be flooding the airways with their own counter messages, but instead they've abandoned that terrain to the right and now are paying for it.
Something that piece of shit David Frum said on his Twitter once regarding the rightwing/leftwing media system was 'the left is awash with talent but has no funding while thr right is awash with funding but has no talent'.
Kamala had a billion dollars. Progressives have a deep ecosystem of independent media that establishment Democrats undermine at every opportunity. Democrats were hand in hand with Republicans in pushing social media "reforms" that today promote media like FOX News as trustworthy over progressive media sources. The Democrats create their own weakness.
Conservative messaging wins propaganda battles because it's simple. Democrats can't use the same tactics, because they'll be less effective no matter what. Preventing consolidation of media and monopolization of media would be more effective, since it's a centrally coordinated effort. Or just preventing anybody from having enough money that they'd even have the ability to do that.
But I was told that Dems lose because they don't have the backs of labor and the working class, and that if they just fixed that, they'd win elections???
I agree with you for the most part. That being said I have tried to explain this point to multiple people and they don't care that the Biden admin got the rail workers what they asked for. They insist that stopping the strike means Biden was anti union full stop even after the IBEW put out releases thanking the Biden admin. they also said it was just propaganda. It's just as much about people not wanting to listen.
Workers were asking for 15 days of sick leave, Congress and Biden gave them 1 with the act that ended the strike. Later, the railroads continued negotiating with some of the unions and gave them four days of sick leave. People from the Biden administration were present for those conversations and take credit for that.
So, no, the Biden administration did not give the unions what they asked for, and yes they likely did do material harm to them by stopping that strike.
If they did nothing then why did the IBEW thank them for the effort? Yea they didn't get everything they asked for, that's how negotions work. The people that were effected thanked the Biden admin, why don't you believe them? Also according to Reuters, most get 5 paid sick days + 2 convertibles.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
Because placating the egos of the people in power make sense, same reason Zelensky congratulated Trump on winning
I got my numbers on sick days from here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute?wprov=sfla1
Yeah. It's called negotiating. You start at a number higher than what you'd be happy with, expecting to meet somewhere in the middle.
When a third party swoops into a negotiation and steals your leverage it has a significant impact on what that middle ends up being
They didn't get what they wanted though. The points system still is in place that limits the ability to use leaves. The "sick leave" still required notice, so all it did was allow doctor visits to not take PTO, provided the worker could afford the points.
I can't find a solid confirmation but it looks like as part of the law killing the strike and enacting the recommendations of the emergency board, the attendance rules creating points was vacated without further agreements from the unions. So from what I can tell, your statement is incorrect. I looked up the emergency board's recommendations but I didn't do a deep dive into the law to confirm. Link to the recommendations below.
https://nmb.gov/NMB_Application/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PEB-250-Report-and-Recommendations.pdf
Yeah, hence why I say that union leadership has to do some work here too.
I've worked with the machinists union during a statewide right to work ballot initiative to overturn the legislatures recently passed right to work bill.
So much conversation about how "we have to strike out down!" But at the same breath talk about voting Republican. Well that's what they did, killed right to work, elected more Republicans to the state legislature.
Cue shocked Pikachu face when the people they voted in immediately submitted a bill to enact right to work.
I mean what the fuck is union leadership doing at that point when you can't get your own members to not fuck themselves over?
One angle that might explain the lack of media coverage on a win for the working class against the interest of capital owners is that the media itself, at least the mainstream slice of it, is owned by the capitalist class.
MSM will cover things if they think it'll bring in more ratings. You see it with how many news outlets are treating the upcoming Trump administration. For Cons, they're banking on a viewer base that'll be more interested in Trump coverage. For Dems, they're banking on a viewer base that'll be more hateful and agree of Trump coverage.
So when you have wins for the working class that Biden's administration directly helped with, and when you have a media industry that just won't cover it out of their own self-interest, you have to wonder if the administration will spend Americans' on advertising or just keep it and move on.
One might say that the best time to do that advertising is during an election campaign though. And that begs the question as to why Biden nor Harris brought this up in their campaigns.
Might it be that those groups are also subject to the capitalist class?
Oh yeah, that was s give amount of PTO. 😶
Voters are pretty stupid. Seriously, the misinformation and willful ignorance on display is breathtaking.
…no.
The DNC brain trust thought they could get away with ignoring an absolutely fucking HUGE part of their base. And they were fucking WRECKED for it.
Trump got just about the same number of votes as he did in the last election. Harris got 11M less votes than Biden got. ELEVEN. MILLION. PEOPLE. STAYED THE FUCK HOME. BECAUSE THEY SAW THE ESTABLISHMENT CIRCLEJERK. AND HARRIS FUCKING LEANED INTO IT. AND IGNORED THE VERY FUCKING REAL LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS GETTING HOLLOWED OUT, AND THE LOWER CLASS CONTINUING TO GET CRUSHED TO DEATH.
And now we get to listen to pundits and DNC leadership and Biden admin people and Harris campaign people circlejerk themselves about how it wasn’t their fault, it was those goddamn progressives and the stupid Arab Americans who cared about Gaza too much.
Genuinely: fuck all the way off with that narrative. the Democratic Party snatched this defeat from the jaws of victory. There was a path to victory. They simply didn’t fucking take it.
The DNC is working for their rich donors and doing a pretty decent job for them. They shouldn't act so surprised that people who aren't benefiting from the economy don't come out to support them.
Exactly, who thought it was a good idea to campaign with the fucking Cheneys???????
The same people who thought it was a good idea to run Biden again
The same party that thought Biden, whose career goals were the mass proliferation of student loans AND the legislation around making them forgiveable/dischargeable almost impossible, was a great symbol of student loan forgiveness.
Yes they tried but i mean how long can you campaign on tried? Doesn't matter because this election they didn't and it showed.
I think the bigger picture to look at, rather than who doesn't vote Dem, is to look at who didn't vote period and ask why. Why are almost 200 million people choosing not to vote. Why did 280 million people either not vote/not vote Dem?
The GOP/Republican party have abandoned any attempts to govern decades ago and now simply want to rule. Until things like citizens United are repealed there's no real way to fight through this because the waters are so muddy.
they raised over a billion dollars to make it happen.. that's just bad management
That too - how in the fuck is the campaign 20M in debt?
Nailed it
thank fuck there’s at least one other angry & correct person online
you don’t get to capitulate to donald trump’s racist violent classist framing on everything for years and be held blameless after the fact.
I dunno been a republican and democrat voter throughout my life. The dnc did the right thing time by pointing democracy itself was on the line
Apparently we have enough people in this country who simply cannot appreciate the rights we have.
A bunch of really dumb Americanare about to realize what truly was on the line this time around.
You’re kinda missing the point of what I’m trying to say.
The total number of Trump voters barely moved. As a fraction of the total populace, it actually probably slightly decreased.
The total number of Democratic voters decreased by like 12%.
The DNC alienated their own base. People stayed home, and it made a difference.
Democraticy is on the line, so vote for the ruling party only. Or else you will get worse.
You see how maaaaaybe that was not a super stable platform? You might get an clue that people are angry and feel abandoned by the nation so that when running a campaign you should not TELL EVERYONE HOW GREAT IT IS!.
By forcing a candidate down our throats that no one voted for
Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren't boomers, we're basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with "gut" feeling.
Let voters get what they deserve.
Republican voters are the biggest simps for big business that I’ve ever seen. It’s like if slaves in America cheered on the confederacy during the Civil War.
Democrats need to be louder in blaming the people at fault. Harris should have been screaming about the economy Obama left Trump vs the economy Trump left Biden. She should have been screaming that from day 1!
They wouldn't trust the messenger. We need to come to terms with the fact that a not so small group of people need fear to be motivated to believe anything.
We need a rage baiting group of influencers pushing the Left's agenda. It's sad, but it's needed.
The DNC isn't allowed to bite the hand that feeds them their funding
So then more fascism it is. And Dem's would rather stand by than stop it because even stopping it isn't very profitable for their owners.
Oh ya, the old addage that if conservatives can't win elections they will abandon democracy not conservatism has an inverse.
If capital won't support the means for a liberal to win elections they will abandon victory before capital.
Dems are not standing by, they just ran a whole goddamn election. That they were/are bad at that is not in question. You can be mad at them all you want for losing but don't act like they didn't try to warn us and do something about it
They should have been screaming about it four years ago. Biden chose to take the high road and not talk about the previous administration.
And Obama tried to take the high road too. And for 8 years republicans grew a huge population of people that learned to blame democrats for everything. Now it’s just second nature to most people to hate democrats.
We've had like 25y of limp dick Dem moral high road at this point and it should be clear that this approach doesn't sell to anyone except the educated minority. Guess what? The educated are a minority and you need a majority to win elections.
It's also trepidation at setting the precedent of holding representatives accountable.
It's not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren't obsessively following the news and economic reports.
It's how they feel about money.
That was the biggest single issue.
People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.
It doesn't matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we're doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.
We need more political literacy in this country.
Yeah, because Americans are dumb and willfully ignorant.
Tell this to my landlord.
Your landlord is a republican.
Or more specifically, your landlord is a property management company employed by venture capitalists who you just emboldened to get even shittier. And those VCs are conservatives.
Enjoy your perceived victory against bad old uncle Joe...
This sentiment is the most painful shit to read on here. Lots of "maybe they'll learn" or "so sorry your party lost /s". Do these people think Biden and Harris will suffer through the Trump presidency? They're rich as fuck. It's WE who will suffer, probably minorities getting the worst of it.
Good job guys, you really showed 'em...
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn't Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
Same shit as always, the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises but no on hears about it because the right wing own 90% of the media.
I swear for every positive story about something Biden did, there were 3 or 4 about Trump just being Trump: saying some outrageous lie, gaffes, and of course all the crimes. He's sucked all the air out of the room for 10 years and now we're going to have another 4. All news, positive or negative, is publicity.
99.9%
If you didn't learn the lesson that this isn't true in the last 4 years then all hope is lost
Effectively addressed? Like the housing crisis and the visibly homeless?
Well their next candidate, Newsom, certainly has done a lot in regards to the visibly homeless. The future looks bleak no matter how you slice it. I hope to God the neolibs can't make that shithead stick as the anointed candidate.
Isn't that true for just about any democratic president? The bushes ruined the economy, Clinton and Obama fixed it. Republicans receive an awesome country, take credit for it, ruin it, then blame a democrat president for the mess they left behind.
Since the formation of the Democratic Party there haven't ever been two Democrats elected subsequently without the first one dying in office. The pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth, getting further to the right with each swing.
Hell, that might have been the Dems' original plan: get Biden elected a second time, have him retire during his second term, then Harris gets all the goodwill and she might have been able to keep a D in the White House until 2032. It would have been a shitty plan, doomed to fail even worse, but it would explain why they waited so damn long for Biden to step aside.
This has been the cycle. But now the cycle will change from ruining the economy to ruining the economy and democracy itself. Once trump is done ratfucking the country for 4 years, the dems will get blamed.
None of them fixed the economy, they just made the lines go up again.
And he'll stay in office because someone dared to pretend to hold him responsible. People really need to get over the idea that it's only 4 more years.
Yeah well after the shit that been happening for the past few weeks, I don't think there will be a democracy or maybe even a coup left in 4 years for the Democrats to inherit.
When they do though, I doubt anyone will say that the shit it will be is their fault. Trump has made very sure to leave his stamp on this shit
Opinion: trying to teach tens of millions of people enough basic statistics and economics so that they understand that Joe Biden wasn’t actually as bad as they think is not actually a serious strategy for defeating conservative populism in elections
I don't think this is trying to teach tens of millions, I think this is a scaled equivalent of me just standing in my kitchen, looking around and saying to nobody, "God damnit... What the fuck!" Before I take a moment to figure out what's next.
It's very human. Many had a lot invested in the idea of a better future, that this all might be salvageable. Takes a minute to reckon with the reality here. We're going to have to replace presidential debates with slap fights and primaries with Jello wrestling. For someone relatively younger with a family that they pictured hopefully supporting to grow to be good people doing good things in the world, just sucks to realize the "support" now means we need to start slapping them in the face as early as possible so that they have the most red and calloused cheeks possible to survive in the world we selfishly forced them into.
Raising someone to be decent today feels like he would be as valuable as raising them to be the best VCR repair person in 2024. You have a severely limited and likely permanently outdated skill set. You might be able to enter a few small rooms where your talent is appreciated and useful, but more often than not you'll walk around in a broader humanity that has no use for you or those like you.
"Am I out of touch? No, it's the voters who are wrong"
Voters have shifted right because they're hurting, and the Dems promised 4 more years of the same. Trump promised to remove the elites and actively tear the country they created apart. That's why they voted for him. The fact that's it's a lie and they're stupid to believe it doesn't matter. Telling people the economy is doing great while they are poorer than they were 4 years ago pushes them away.
Liberals lost ~15 million former voters and handed America to a fascist dictator, and all they've done is blame the left and stick their head in the sand, as though the population didn't just vote to tear the status quo apart. They did the same thing in 2016. They won't get another chance, and they still don't understand that.
This is not a messaging problem it's a measurement problem. The metrics we use to gauge economic progress and/or health are not effective indicators of anyone's experience but the wealthy. When Dems tell me wages have gone up so income inequality is getting better what they mean is that new jobs are on average offering slightly higher pay to new hires.
They don't say that slightly higher pay is 5 cents an hour which is practically useless. They don't acknowledge that this tiny wage increase is dwarfed by the impacts of inflation over the last 4 years. Worst of all, they don't say that because this wage increase only applies to new hires, anyone working the same job for more than a couple of years hasn't seen a wage increase at all, but that price gouging has definitely impacted them. That last one is important because it applies to a huge chunk of people.
This is just the way it works out with wages but basically everything these pundits are saying is great under Biden could be described the same way. They're talking about averages which when applied to 330 million people produce numbers that sound significant, but when you look at almost any individual it doesn't make a practical difference in their lives. Sure, you may have slowed the rate at which things are getting worse, but are you honestly surprised at this reaction? You're telling people you solved their problems and they're responding "no, you absolutely did not and fuck you for saying that"
Yeah this shit is insane. We fixed inflation! Great, that's great, but where are our, meaning the working class, 25% raises to offset the inflation that already happened? I'll be up for my second raise in three years in 6 months. It's already promised to be 7% which will beat inflation (and I plan to fight for more), but I would need 25% to get my pay to be worth the same as it was three years ago before my first raise.
Absolutely, and to be clear, this does not imply that Trump has a good solution to this problem. He'll probably make it significantly worse. But at least he's talking about it in a way that resonates with people. Don't tell me my problem is that I don't understand my own financial situation. Show me how you plan to improve it in ways that I actually care about.
No, voters punished Biden for his inability to effectively communicate what he’s done to help them. This has been a consistent problem with the democrats, and with corporate media. Democrats need better spokespeople and better messaging.
They also need to stop catering to the ultra rich and moderate republicans because that shit turns off the base faster than crap messaging. There is no “liz cheney, nikki hayley” constituency as we saw last Tuesday.
You’re right that Dems need better messaging and to stop catering to the ultra rich. At the same time, we can’t discount the propaganda messaging that the article mentions. Not being in their echo chambers means not being exposed to the bulk of it, and that is great. At the same time, it means being disconnected from what a lot of people are basing their opinions on.
For a few years, up until the start of this year, I had a job that required interacting with families in people’s homes. If I had a choice, I would’ve preferred to avoid the right-wingers… but gotta do what you gotta do.
Some households were pure poison: hate-driven parents who constantly belched up Fox news topics. These parents normally communicated with their kids through complaining and screaming. But if a kid made some quip about “Biden sucks,” they got a brief moment where their parents would actually laugh. The reinforcing power of that toxic dynamic cannot be understated.
It’s no wonder that a lot of kids in those circumstances end up eager to repeat the same crap their parents say. In the time that I worked that job, a lot of the commentary was Biden-centric, making him a convenient punching bag that even the smallest fists could reach (even if they had no idea what they were doing/saying.)
Dems have a lot of improvements to make, but it would take a lot more than “improved messaging” to overcome the sheer power of this propaganda culture.
The right has unlimited money and resources when it comes to corporate media messaging. The media will not save us. The revolution will not be televised; it's not in the papers, it's on the walls.
thank goodness the democrats don't have a media apparatus and what we all consume is news and truth instead of propaganda.
it's so comforting to be in a community of people who are immune to propaganda
Joe Biden is the best president we've ever had and Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign. That just doesn't mean anything.
For how much you complain about people just downvoting instead of replying, you sure don't like to interact in good faith once they do reply. Maybe learn how to have a serious discussion before demanding that people have serious discussions with you?
Who replied to me in this thread before you?
In what faith would you describe your response, wherein you made no statement, argument, or claim that has anything to do with anything besides you being upset with my tone?
You are exactly the type of person I'm speaking about and to. You should listen.
Why "no"? You're basically saying the same as the summary.
The article headline reads like voters don’t want the things Biden did. Which is a lie, and part of my gripe about messaging and the media. A better headline is “Voters don’t understand what Biden did for them, and that needs to change”.
True, headlines matter.
No, they're basically saying the same as the summary.
They didn't promise unicorns like the Republicans did, and voters still got mad that only some people got unicorns.
Republicans have promised to eat all the unicorns.
He literally said he would cure cancer
Yeah, the U.S. pushed for global adoption of the HPV vaccination that literally vaccinates against that cancer. That's what he was referring to. And if people get it instead of drinking horse dewormer, it'll stop that cancer from spreading.
"Moonshot"
One of his first acts as president was to deliberately double child poverty
Seeing a lot of silent downvotes for an objective fact recited in a value neutral manner.
That in itself says more than I could hope to about the topic of this thread
Okay, I'll bite and take a few minutes to refute yet another of your seemingly patently false statements that you provide no evidence for.
Are you talking about the expanded child tax credit that the senate didn't pass(the house did)? If so, that's not on the president.
I downvoted you at almost every opportunity bc it seems like you're just talking out of your ass, which isn't helpful. If I missed something that you're referring to for poverty, feel free to share and support your argument.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-is-the-child-tax-credit-and-how-much-of-it-is-refundable/#how-did-congress-expand-the-child-tax-credit
It's the unified government under one party of which the president is the head
You're being a dishonest weasel
biden getting flak over inflation is fucking hilarious.
The fed is literally irrelevant to the president, the president does not control inflation. Sure maybe his spending increased inflation. But the entire global economy was at a practical stand still. If you think getting a seized ICE working again is hard, try it with a global economy.
You can bitch all you want about inflation, but at the end of the day, nobody really knows what the right solution here was. We could've gone through another great depression event if not for global stimulus. And a few years of bad inflation and high costs will beat literally starving.
Not a surprise. The majority of Americans are dumber than a bag of rocks. Zero ability to do proper research. Believe superstition over science. Oblivious to other cultures and languages. The list goes on.
And this has all been done on purpose. American children can’t get a proper meal at school. Low paid teachers buying their own school supplies. Kids bombarded with reactionary media trash, tracking, and behaviour manipulation from their phones. College students saddled with debt and not being able to afford homes. Homelessness criminalized. Prisoners turned into slave labor.
Damn, kinda sounds dystopian already huh?
prices have doubled, megacorps profit have “atleast” doubled. genocide with our tax money way more than doubled. 1 of 3 people i know in tech got laid off while there company spent billions in stock buybacks
the list goes on. but hey there were bills which achieved nothing but gave billions to dnc donors firms and stats show economy is great.
on top of all that harris was a terrible candidate whose campaign was all about ignoring anything that was evenly remotely negative to her megadonors agenda. her getting picked over warren as vp was a spit on the dnc voter base to begin with.
but i am sure dnc consultants will come with the same smug research as you and will be paid millions for it by the elite trash like pelosi and schumer to keep their corrupt hold on “democratic” party.
Uneducated (more like miseducated tbh) people make much better subjects
Marginally addressed. Like I get it. He's better than Trump, but so is 50% of the average person I see outside. There is no effectively addressed, when we know the tested, studied, and actually implemented solutions.
For example: The ACA. Yes an improvement from what came before but a quarter baked bandaid on the bullet wound of a health care system. We know universal health care system is the answer. It's a fact. The Democratic party never once made that a core part of their platform. Even if you know you won't get everything when working in a democracy you still have to argue from a far left position so when you compromise it's a stronger shift. The middle ground between universal health care coverage and 100% free market is the public option. Where Americans can decide between government coverage or private. But the ACA essentially forced everyone above the poverty line into private insurance held up by government subsidies.
Another example: instead of being 100% anti genicide the Democrat leadership landed on reducing the sizes of bombs given to Isreal?! What's the middle ground between the 100% pro genicide party and the 75% genicide party? Ya ones better but if we land on a compromise of 87% genicide, did we really achieve anything?
Income inequality: Republicans 100% pro oligarchy Democratic party leadership is 75% pro oligarchy. The party of facts and science knows our economy with collapse every 20 to 30 years to keep the jinga Tower from crumbling to the foundation so what do they do? Bail out the companies that destroyed the economy in the first place and reset the lopsided tower. If we bail out a company why shouldn't it also be nationalized?!
I can keep going on. Every issue the Democratic party's solutions are little more than the queen saying, "let them eat cake."
I live in a solid blue state and surround myself with far left people because we've realized, expecting the federal government to improve your life is a fools errand. We're building our own bubble of compassion, science, and facts. Yes we vote blue but know the only change we can truly make starts by getting involved in our community and surrounding ourselves with those that will fight from a strong position and not a already right leaning position. If we're going to die it'll be with a Molotov cocktails in one hand and surround by those that actually care about each other. Opposed to at the feet of the oligarchy begging for crumbs.
It's funny you mention the ACA, since what we have now came from Republicans absolutely gutting the original ACA proposal which should surprise absolutely no one since the GOP is bought and paid for by insurance companies.
Yup the ACA was little more than a hand out to the insurance companies. The original version off set the government subsidies to insurance companies with a tax penalty to the uninsured or under insured. Republicans removed that so now insurance companies can double dip while the middle class has to essentially pay for their insurance twice. Once in deductibles and premiums, and another time in taxes to cover the insurance companies losses. The ACA privatizes the profits while subsidizing the losses.
They handled the post-covid period better than virtually any other major nation in the world. With no inflation, with a low unemployment rate, without a recession. But people voted for a guy who aims to impose tariffs. You can't make this shit up.
Yuppy, they got 1 out of 10000 issues right. But did they continue using that as a springboard to get other things right? Nope.
No inflation? Yes, but did they investigate companies that price gouged during the pandemic? Very little to none.
Low unemployment? But are those high quality jobs that would lift people out of poverty? Nope.
Recession? Not for those at the top. Us normal people have been in a 30 year recession.
Everyone knows that if the Democratic party was just as ravenous as Republicans but for left policies our country would be better off.
I don't know what people expect from US presidents. Do they think they are watching Harry Potter or something? Do they expect him to wave his wand and solve all their problems? Go read about the other political branches and their roles. It's ridiculous.
Uhhhhhh no. But people are mad that the democrats are starting on the 50 yard line and meeting the Republicans on their 25 yard line.
No one thinks their political wishes will be granted automatically if they win an election. The problem is One party is willing to do anything and everything in their power to achieve what their base wants, while the other won't even give their base a seat at the table. It's even more of a problem when the democrats demand loyalty and then cry when the people most likely to vote for them just stay home one election day. Look at all the popular policies that the democrats won't even put on their platform. It's crazy to think people are naive and dumb when they are going to lose regardless.
This is shaping up to be "why didn't they do everything, everywhere, all at once".
Your argument would actually make sense if the president had to do things by themselves and didn't have access to millions of people and Trillions of dollars. Once again they never even put left ideals in their platform let alone tried to get any of them done. Grow up dude. Like I said no one is neive to think they'll get everything they want when it comes to politics. But when your party is already standing on the middle line and meeting the other party on 3/4th of the way, it's a problem.
It's more that Congress passes laws, and legislation takes time to write. You have to figure out what each individual congressman will pass and write it out in excruciating detail.
Ya and what have the democrats accomplished over the past 30 to 50 years? It doesn't matter which branch they are in. At every level and field the Democratic party has grossly under delivered. Even their most left and progressive policies have been water downed to the point that they are unrecognizable as left policies. What truly left policy has been signed into law at the federal level? I honestly can't think of one.
Now you're shifting gears, which we can address. Ok the Dems need all 3 of presidency, house of reps, and senate to pass pretty much anything. That's how it works. And they've had all 3 for, drumroll please, 4 of the last 24 years. Or 6 of the last 32 years. Or 6 of the last 44 fucking years. And you wonder why progress is slow? It's because Dems basically never have power. If they don't have all 3 they are forced to reach across the aisle. If you want things to progress you need to give them overwhelming and consistent victories.
Remember when he first got elected and people blamed covid on him as a joke (it happened before he was in office)
...then now people actually believe it
Edit: point proven.
His adminstration may have not created them. But the neoliberal Democrats that he represents did going all the way back to Clinton.
He also only deployed half measures or dragged his feet all the way until the last minute.
Biden (and the rest of us) is being punished for the mistake of not making prosecuting trump and overturning his last 4 years the #1 priority.
Yes and no. I agree they solved the problems, but there was no fixing high prices even if inflation rate was brought down.
It's like when Kamala was asked "was there anything you'd do differently?" The problem was she actually answered the question. The administration made the right choices, so there was little different she would have done. She should have done the politician thing and answered adjacently how she's going to solve high prices.
No shit! Say it with me:
Conservatives control the media. Conservatives control the narrative. Reality does not reflect what people see.
When overnight the Joe Rogan interview with Trump had over 40 million views, the issue becomes clear.
No, he did not bring down inflation. If prices were to go back to where they were in 2020, that would be deflation. What they did was disinflation. The inflation stayed. It's just not going up by as much as it was. That's a whole different story to things going down in price.
Inflation was like 9% in 2022. It's like 2.5% now. How is that not bringing down inflation?
Inflation is the rate of change of prices. It's not the prices themselves. I got skewered in another thread for pointing this out, but I still think it's an important distinction.
There is a big difference between inflation and the inflation rate. The inflation rate was officially 9%, but considering groceries went up by 30%, and housing went up by 30% and other things went up 30% or 40%. Most people would say that that 9% was a lie. As I said, that 9% official rate was the rate of change of inflation, not inflation itself. The rate of change has definitely dropped, but that does not mean that the inflation that resulted from those high numbers went away as it never did and never will.
The way I understand it is:
Prices are like position. Inflation is like speed, which is rate of change of position. The rate of change of inflation would be like acceleration, which is the rate of change of speed. I don't know if there is a term for rate of change of inflation.
Anyway, I think you might be confused about the terminology, but we're agreeing on other concepts. The inflated prices are here to stay. If prices generally fell (deflation), we would have other economic issues.
A slow deflation would not be a big issue. It's rapid deflation that causes major problems. Inflation itself is actually a tax on the poor because people who actually are wise with their money and attempt to save it see it losing its purchasing power over time and therefore have to take more risk than they otherwise would with it in order to just keep up a standard of living. People closer to the inflation spicot, such as government workers and companies run by billionaires, get the benefits of the dollars before the rest of us do, and therefore can use them at their full purchasing power while the rest of us get diluted. Sure, you may decide you don't really need that flat screen TV if your money is gaining purchasing power at like 0.5% per year because it would be cheaper next year than it is right now. But you are still going to buy toilet paper and spaghetti and other types of food unless you want to starve to death, which I don't think most people do.
I'm not an economist, but your point on slow deflation seems to make sense. I wonder what deflation to prepandemic prices would do to the economy if it occurred over a couple years.
Very slow deflation actually makes the rich less rich over time because they would receive less and less money coming in because people would want to hold the money rather than their products. Sure, at some point, somebody is going to say, you know what? I want this flat screen TV more than I want the money, even though the money is getting more valuable over time. I will get more use out of the big screen TV so I will go ahead and buy it.
Historically, presidents take credit and the blame for things they didn't do. Economic policy is one example. They actual economic changes take time to really be felt on main street. Very often those changes occur just before they take office or after they leave.
And despite presidential elections being the SB and WS all tied into one competition, the real path to controlling the government is through the house and senate. But THOSE elections aren't as cool.
Historically, President Trump has never taken blame for anything - only credit.
His 34% approval rating when he left office disagrees.
No president ever stands up and says "I take the blame for what my predecessor did." But they are all quite whiling to take credit for things that they had no hand in.
You understand that under that logic all the 'good' you want to attribute to Biden is actually because of Trump, right?
You can't argue "economic effects lag behind," and then claim Biden did good during his term.
Democracy fails when most people, rather than being informed are stuck in their social network bubble ruts. Democracy fails when nothing is done to fight disinformation in social networks. Democracy fails when the most popular social networks can be bought up by the richest man to be used for electoral interference without any repercussions. Democracy fails when it elects convicted felons. The US is too far gone, and is too powerful and influential for any peaceful transition from those countries that didn't want to be enshittified.
Opinion: nobody cares wall street made more profits. Democrats are lying when they play their economy card. Real people lost purchasing power.
Lowering inflation doesn't lower prices, and prices are what voters actually care about.
Prices won't be going down under Trump either, though, so I'm not sure how much credit Trump will get.
Biden and Co talked down to the working class like Obama did black men and kept insisting we are not financially struggling. We are doing well and there's no reason to be concerned. He lied, we saw through the lie and his party lost
I completely agree. One of the things with the debate is I was like hey he should be pushing inflation right back in trumps face but jeez its also stupidity with folks. I mean we got a guy here saying he did nothing to fight price gouging.
People will never understand that if a president only gets 4 years, they are mainly working with the economy that the previous administration left them. So Trump's shit policies become Biden's failures. Biden's decent policies become Trump's wins. And if there is another election, all the ravages of these next four years will be blamed on the person who wins it.
yeah its just so hard for someone like me. every time I look at the inflation numbers and see it was april 2020 where it jumped. when I look at the fed interest rate numbers. its like how can people just not look at the numbers a little. no math. just date and whats larger or smaller.
The article doesn't mention any issues related to policy, which made a lot of people not vote for the democrats.
What he did do was miniscule. The only good thing that I can think of is some of the student loan forgiveness.
Well given that nobody is entitled to our votes I’m not sure if it makes sense to refer to withholding votes as a punishment.
As is historically the case in this country
Did Biden take on the illegal price gouging that Walmart and Target participated in during Covid? The thing that is directly causing Americans so much financial stress?
No it did not.
This is just another lie from the DNC blue dog propaganda machine trying to blame anything but itself for the loss.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20220119/114345/HHRG-117-JU05-Wstate-NeedlerM-20220119.pdf
To be fair, Trump is a complete disaster, but to claim that Biden did a decent job is a compete fabrication.
As the link i posted points out, there is already a law on the books to stop exactly what Walmart and Target are doing in the US.
It has just never been enforced against them and the Biden administration joins the list that did nothing to stop them using laws they already had
I for one am tired of the smoke and mirrors.
Queue up meaningful change but then "oops, new term, " Obama didn't investigate Dubya's fucking Torture Camps, nor into the subprime mortgage.
They did the same shit with Net Neutrality under Obama. Left it with a massive and meaningless "ramp up" time that coincidentally meant it would be a year into the next president's term. Oops Ajit Pall is parachuted in and cancels the whole thing before the "ramp up" is done.
To be fair, she had little more than a weekend to come up with her campaign messaging. She was made candidate like 3 months before election day.
If we'd had a proper primary Harris wouldnt even have been the nominee at all. I agree with you, Bidens self serving hubris is a key part of the loss and potentially the end of our republic. Obama did warn us all several times that Biden is an idiot.
Hmm... I've dealt with elderly relatives, and it can be hard to tell when someone's no longer capable of doing something... so I have a bit of sympathy for him there. It's possible that a year ago Biden was up to the job and really was the best chance at defeating Trump. And he gets credit for stepping down when he did. However I'm a little more skeptical of his sticking VP Harris with the job of solving the border crisis, which is a notoriously unsolvable problem.
I suspect that given 3 months to jump-start a campaign, NOBODY could have won this election against Trump. Biden was headed towards Dukakis and Mondale levels of defeat, and Harris at least brought it to a couple hundred thousand in 3 states. (I wish I could post my argument to "unpopular opinion", but apparently they prohibit political posts.)
I hate to say it but , I told you so
I'm happy the left is being introspective for a change even though they are super late
The big money donors don’t even want to hear pretend populist messages with a left bent.
Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They're no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They're no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
The inflation reduction act was such a great achievement they didn't even mention it by name in the campaign. All it did was make inflation worse now, and hopefully get some environmental benefits in the medium to long term. That's not a winning message.
How did it make inflation worse now?
Directly from Wikipedia
More directly it essentially printed 900 billion more dollars at a time when spending should decrease. There's forecasted payback eventually, but no significant amount has happened yet, but the money is already gone.
I'd argue that its name was somewhat deceptive (like most congressional acts) but that the money largely went to projects that are beneficial for the country. Also, the next section on Wikipedia talks about how the overall deficit reduction would lower medium-term and long-term inflation. I think in general, when money is allocated to things like this, it takes a long time to payback since the money has to first be disbursed and then the projects completed for the results to actually be felt.
Beneficial on a 20 year timescale, arguing a benefit of future savings is economical fiction.
I mean it's not great, but inflation did come way down right? As I said above it doesn't make up for the inflation that already happened which makes our dollars worth so much less.
Yes inflation eventually came down, thanks largely to the Fed finally having interest rates. Even then it's only come down to the high side of acceptable.
Opinion: discarded.
Except the genocide
Inviting further genocide is not punishing him for the genocide. He didn't play the strong man and step on a country America went and deeply intertwined itself in. So, instead, y'all held your smug, self-satisfied, fart sniffing noses high and let someonw who has championed the genocide take the reigns once more because yoh wrongly believe not touching the switch gets you out of the trolly problem.
Holy strawman Batman!
Jesus you lot are so fucking tribal
You know the democrats were going to kill them all too right?
We weren't inviting further genocide. We were begging the Democrats to change their stance and begging the public to choose another option if they didn't.
We get it, Biden supported a genocide. As fucking if Trump would have done jack shit to prevent it.
Yeah perhaps that's why I didn't make that claim
i hate how people cram words into your mouth like this. thanks for being sane and normal. :)
i get and agree with the sentiment that donald trump will be worse in relation to the unbridled support of genocidal israel
but framing 40,000+ murders as “you haven’t seen shit yet” is inappropriately dismissive. we have fucking seen shit. have some empathy when you use other people’s suffering to justify your internet argument.
oops! you put words in my mouth :) common mistake.
because trump and putin ran a very loud and constant disinformation campaign aimed at the rural/retired/inflation weary people that were the most vulnerable to it
Biden wasn’t running
No hes not. Hes going to have the legacy of silent Cal, except instead of not doing enough to prevent the great depression, its going to be that he didnt do enough to fight fascism. We have laws that should have already punished Trump and Biden is the chief executor of those laws. Trumps freedom is a reflection of Bidens inaction.
Yep, exactly this. People kept acting like this was the worst economy ever, and, seriously....wtaf.