So if they notice that inflation is down. there’s hope. But whether the candidate wants the chairman of the joints chiefs of staff dead isn’t on the list of election-deciding issues — nor is the candidate’s criminal record, nor is democracy. And I’m afraid that they will focused less on the inflation rate next year, and more on absolute price levels changes under Biden’s watch.
I did just pay $1.39 for 18 large eggs. That’s 93 cents a dozen! Swing voter lurkers, please notice!
I think that’s a different but related question. People with a very traditional horse race view of American politics seem not to want to take either question seriously.
That article is about people who have almost no party affiliation, are constantly dissatisfied with the state of politics, and don’t consistently vote along the primary ideological lines drawn by the parties. DC and partisan types generally view this group of people as a lost cause because they aren’t reliable, and I think as a result there’s a sort of popular (media-driven) belief that they don’t exist at all. People of that description were likely to “swing” from Obama to Trump because Obama seemed new, and then Trump seemed new after Obama wasn’t what they decided they wanted after all. And it’s all relative – Obama seemed good to them after Bush, and Clinton did not seem good to them after Obama. It’s not like a lot of those people felt like they were changing their political beliefs, they just picked a guy.
But that wouldn’t necessarily be the description of a person who still hangs on to Trump; as that interview says, those people are likely to be looking to turn the page on all of these guys and look to someone younger. They are a reason Biden’s incumbency isn’t safe, but not directly a reason Trump would still be a strong candidate.
In fact, demand went so low, at one point, the price of oil was actually negative. Anyone who tries to use the price of gas at that point of history as any kind of a guide for what a President should be able to accomplish is just an idiot.
But the pandemic doesn’t completely explain the relatively low price of gas during all of the Trump years, as well as the last couple of Obama years. In fact, according to this chart, the average price of gas was cheaper in 2016 than in 2020.
This again emphasizes the fact that a President has just about zero control over the price of gasoline, regardless of what a large percentage of Americans believe.
I’m not positive of this, but I think I had heard that the Saudis kept their oil production somewhat higher than normal during the trump admin to keep the price of gas low, because they saw the trump admin as being favorable to their interests and wanted a second term.
The fact that the trump admin looked the other way when the Saudi Crown Prince had Khashoggi murdered is pure coincidence I’m sure, nothing to do with quid pro quo.
Team, the answer is literally in the chart - that was the period of the shale oil boom which boosted output to the point where prices dropped so much that producing shale oil became unprofitable within 4 years.
In addition, remember that at the end of Obama’s terms and during Trump’s term, there was a lot of fracking going on.
When you frack an oil well, it produces a lot of petroleum at first, then slows down to a predictable amount. Part of what occurs in the initial surge is they measure the output vs time to predict the capacity of the deposit. This put a lot of domestic oil on the market in those years. Those wells are still producing, just not at those initial rates.
Fracking has died down. Partly because of political backlash, but mainly because most of the fields that were judged suitable for fracking have already been fracked. That is, governmental policy may have had a little influence on the decline of fracking, but I doubt it was much. The corporations that own the rights to those wells have a lot a money, so, in general, they get to do what they want to do.
Sure, the factors that affect oil prices and eventually costs at the pump are many and complicated. And like I said, I don’t know for sure that at any point the Saudis actively boosted oil production specifically to aid the trump admin with low gas prices. Did Saudis actively try to curry favor with the trump admin in any way at all? Who knows?
Ultimately, the group that @PhillyGuy’s cite is discussing are ordinary working class folks generally struggling economically.
What they want is for some White Knight president to make their lives obviously significantly better. Mostly by boosting their negligible disposable income so they too can live the dream they see being lived around them.
As each new president wannabe pitches some new ideas, they think “yeah, he’s the ticket”. So they vote for the guy, who duly fails to deliver the miracle of sustained prosperity for the bottom 20% of the US SES. So next time it’s gonna be time to vote for somebody else.
It’s a combo of “hope springs eternal” and continuously raised then dashed expectations.
My mother posted some stuff on Facebook supporting Trump and when I pointed out the impending dissolution of his businesses in New York because he was liable for fraud she went on a tirade about Hillary and Biden. Didn’t offer any defense of Trump but simply attacked other people. That’s the mindset of the hardcore Trump supporters. I replied back, but I don’t think it’ll make a difference. I should really just ignore her Facebook posts and stick to liking pictures of my niece. I’m sure some of her yahoo Trump supporting friends will be along to support her.
My Mom turned into a raging Limbaugh Hannity supporter. Had she lived longer or been younger enough to have seen trump’s rise I have no doubt she’d have given your Mom a run for her money.
Despite being, as you said of your Mom, a paragon of goodness and kindness back in the day. That professional propaganda cuts through good sense and morals like, well, a chainsaw through brain matter.
Note I say this as someone whose (late) mother also got sucked in by these bastards.
When I first caught a broadcast of Limbaugh, it was immediately obvious that he was a snake oil salesman. My gut feeling there, note, was completely independent of whatever he was saying specifically.
It isn’t “professional” at all, it’s crass, obvious, and transparently odious. Did the classic journalists like Cronkite use such tactics? No, they did not. So why/how could someone who spent most of their lives listening to professional journalists of that stripe NOT notice the yawning gap between them and the snake oil peddlers?
They notice the yawning gap. It’s how they interpret it: finally! Someone who isn’t polished and fake and controlled by [Conspiracy Theory X]. Someone who tells it like it is! If they weren’t telling the truth, how could such a crass and transparently odious person get on the air?
That might not be the precise reason, but whatever it is, it’s not that they don’t see what we see, it’s that the interpret it differently, and I would think usually because they’re already primed to dislike more authoritative sources of information.