Opinion | Voters punished Biden for problems he didn’t cause and effectively addressed
Opinion | Voters punished Biden for problems he didn’t cause and effectively addressed
The fight against rising prices has essentially been won. But few in the electorate seem aware.
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.
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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.
If they had actually fixed any problems, they wouldn't need to "publicize" it.
Yeah this "dems bad at messaging" line of excuses is really tired to me. If things are going good in your life you don't need to be told by someone that it is, you just know it in your bones.
Conversely all the "messaging" in the world won't convince us things are going fine when our daily life experience is the opposite.
Dems aren't bad at messaging because they are bad at getting the word out, it's that decades of messaging without follow-through with measurable, noticeable increase in quality of our daily lives means we don't believe the message anymore
If you're someone's boss and all they ever do when they fuck up is blame others for their failures and when you bring em in your office they hand you a 10 page document explaining all the work they tried to do, pedantically explaining how you're and idiot that "just doesn't see all the work they've looked into." ?? You'd fuckin fire em right?
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.
You do not feel the consequences of good policy in your bones.
I am certain this bit here is where we may just have to disagree my friend. It has been so long since we have had bones-deep good policy we have forgotten what that might feel like.
Regardless, this is a lesson the DNC must learn, not you or i. All the 10 page excuses are meaningless if you first aren't elected to push em, and that's where they are right now
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).
If things are going good in your life you don't need to be told by someone that it is, you just know it in your bones.
That simply isn't true. The right propagandizes doom and gloom to their base every chance they get. Many conservatives live very privileged lives and still convince themselves that the country and their way of life is on the edge of oblivion. The wider that propaganda spreads, the harder it is to get anyone to see any of the actual progress in the world.
That simply isn’t true.
It is. All the "doom and gloom" rings hollow on satisfied ears. There must be a real problems people see daily. False reasons for those very real problems are where right wing propaganda does its work
What other problems would you have liked them to solve?
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...