‘The weekly circular from my supermarket is clearly FAKE NEWS!!!’
Sure, you do, but Trump and others on his side have quoted some outrageous prices like saying gas is $8 a gallon. Because he hasn’t pumped gas in decades if he ever did, and relies on whatever some toady told him, then probably exaggerated on top of whatever that was. And people hear it and might think, well I’m paying less than half that when I fill up, but if Trump said it then it’s probably true at other gas stations and the economy is garbage which is all Biden’s fault.
I’ve come to believe this is the right read. “BLM is burning down our cities!” “It costs $80 for a turkey!” “They’re putting litter boxes in schools for kids who identify as cats!”
Um, no, none of that is happening. Have you tried looking out the window, or visiting a supermarket? Asking your kids if there are litter boxes in their classrooms?
“Maybe not here—yet! But it’s sure to come if the woke, socialist democrats get their way.”
Yes, we’re talking about members of a political party, Republicans, who believed that Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile operation out of a pizza joint.
They really, actually, seriously believed that.
With the economy, it always seems like the changes that presidents and Congress can effect (with an e) takes a couple of years to get going, so presidents are often getting associated with the previous term’s policies.
The onset and sunset of covid is a new wrinkle this last go-round, of course.
And properly so.
The exaggerations are effective because food prices have increased by 25% while Biden has been in office. That’s just facts. The reasons behind that are more complex than “It was Biden” but people vote with their wallet not their brain. If things are worse for the average voter while you are in office it’s a hard obstacle to overcome. They don’t care about economic statistics. They care about what their bank account looks like. You can talk about Covid and Ukraine and avian flu all you want voters will look at their food costs and who is in charge. That’s how they will feel about the economy. Statistics don’t matter.
That is, more or less, what I am paying. 14.09 DKK per litre. It is according to Google $7,74.
But a lot of them do believe it’s “here”, even without evidence. I heard the “cat boxes in schools” bit last year from a guy I know in a relatively small city in my province. Even though there were no pictures of them or anything, he was sure this was happening right in his own city. The will to believe is strong in many.
That’s the reason why the exaggerations are completely ludicrous. Yes, a 25% increase and an order of magnitude increase are both increases, but they’re very, very different increases. Only an absolute idiot would think that the two are even remotely similar. The key part there is the absolute idiocy: The exaggerations are effective because a lot of people are absolute idiots.
I hope that’s comforting on November 6th. It’s an election. How you feel about how people think is irrelevant. I hope the Biden campaign doesn’t have the same attitude.
How Biden feels about it is completely irrelevant. Anyone who believes that food prices are up by an order of magnitude when they’re actually only up 25% would also believe that if Biden somehow magically reduced food prices. What, exactly, do you think Biden should try to do to reach people who are completely divorced from reality?
Biden almost tripped going up the stairs to board Air Force One the other day, so by definition he’s doing a terrible job.
The party of [mostly-facts] is really struggling with how to defeat the party of [there are no facts, but we do have a large coherent propaganda machine that is profitably self-funding, not relying on political contributions].
You’re quite right it’s a problem. Solutions seem elusive. Even pushing equally false narratives the other way would be ineffective due to the lack of the profit-driven BS machine to amplify them.
I haven’t seen much discussion on the president’s decisions related to:
- choice of cabinet-level appointments
- appointment of Associate Justice Jackson
- actions taken (or not taken) affecting the southern border
- federal action regarding natural disasters (wildfires, hurricanes)
- AUKUS, that drone thing for the pacific, aid to Taiwan, etc.
- crime in Washington D.C.
- the student debt situation
- seeking a second term
For instance, his science advisor turned out to be a sexist bully, and after a prompt White House investigation he was forced to resign… by Politico. But that seems to be an outlier in a field of competent appointments. People with money have their opinions on Secretary Yellen but she hasn’t brought the Treasury Department into disrepute yet. I noticed his unusual pick to run the VA, a non-veteran who served as chief of staff for Obama, but he seems to have turned out quite competent too. But competent isn’t “really good”. While I haven’t been seeking out news of President Biden’s cabinet, I haven’t heard anything extraordinarily good (or bad).
~Max
I think that a sufficient amount of competence does qualify as “really good”. An administration that isn’t making headlines is one that’s doing a great job.
Agreed. One occasionally gets a cabinet member who’s outstanding, and leads major initiatives for the administration. But, by and large, when a cabinet official is prominently in the news, it’s not for good stuff: it’s for incompetence and/or corruption.
Nah. Like it or not, one of the primary goals of any Administration is to find ways to sell its own accomplishments. The Administration is certainly always trying to make headlines – the White House and executive departments put out dozens of press releases every day on matters large and small and are always working the press corps to try to get their preferred stories coverage.
There’s a certain kind of Democrat that sees this as a vulgar exercise, that good policy should stand on its own and that yelling like a carnival barker about your efforts demeans them. I think Obama had this attitude (at least at first). It’s an attitude that annoys me to no end.
Whereas on this side of the Atlantic, cabinet ministers (and their juniors) are only too keen to get themselves bigged up in the endless competition to get to the top (or as far as they can), while the PM/Cabinet Office are desperate to control the overall (=the PM’s) news image through forward planning of news releases (and of course civil servants are no less keen to get their departments’ achievements and projects recognised). Woe betide the minister who finds themself distracting attention from the PM’s major speech/photo opp visit.
But the cabinet is constantly making headlines. Blinken, Yellen, Garland, Mayorkas (finally impeached, soon to be acquitted), etc. I’m not a political news junkie. I pass over most articles about the administration but they are there, every day. Just not on the front page quite as often as the last administration.
Most of my opinions about President Biden are… not based on much. That’s one reason I’m subscribed to this discussion. I don’t really have an opinion of him. He reminds me of a nice old man who was a patient at the clinic I used to work at.
~Max