How are you going to stop misinformation?
Have you got any other solution other than downplaying it and/or ignoring it? The problem is that Biden doesn’t have dedicated news networks to support him, and the ones that claim to be neutral try to create a fake balance in the interest of ratings by giving bullshit and reality equal air time. I am not sure if there is anything Biden can say or do to counteract the right wing propaganda machine at this point, but at least I realize that any so-called solution that depends on Biden just reaching out to The People with facts and reassurances is doomed to fail. Ignore reality all you want and put the blame solely on Biden’s shoulders, though.
Hey, me too but I guess I’m the only one with an onus to turn that into a solution, huh?
Not like bitching about MAGA misinformation with nothing else to show for it. That’s a great use of the next five months.
As Velocity pointed out, complaining about how unfair it is won’t help. If you want to say the primary reason Biden isn’t getting traction is misinformation then Biden was outflanked and now is time to triage. That means dealing with people’s immediate concerns and dealing with the root comes later if you want any chance of dealing with it at all.
I am not the only one here without a realistic solution. It is going to take a hell of an effort to both counteract the deliberate misinformation and put out the positive message of how the country is really doing. You cannot do the latter without doing the former.
In order to combat misinformation, you have to acknowledge it exists, and you have to understand how much of a factor it is.
So, the Guardian survey linked somewhere above (don’t remember the post #) kind of rattled me. It showed that the disinformation is even worse than I thought. Literally half the country thinks we’re in record high unemployment conditions, which is shocking. More than half the country thinks we’re in an effin’ recession.
I now think Biden & team needs a 3-pronged strategy:
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Massive Anti-MAGA: Guns a-blazing with an anti-Trump message. Hit him with everything they’ve got on reproductive rights, January 6, Putin’s butt boy, Trump’s lies on covid, anything they can come up with. Include an anti-MAGA Social Media strategy that floods the zone with TruthBots. Correct the record on stuff like unemployment, and remind people that Trump presided over a net job loss during his term.
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An empathy tour - Hey, let’s admit that some people have been hurt by high prices. Biden is naturally an empathetic person when he’s out on the stump. Let this be part of what he’s talking about. “I understand your pain, and here’s what I will do to deal with this crap in the future.”
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A Biden economic record tour - When he’s on the empathy tour, for God sake, please don’t act like you’re presiding over a weak economy. Tout your own accomplishments, and bring forward examples of people and areas that have benefitted from your policies.
Of the 3, unfortunately, #1 is likely the most important.
So when at a town hall somebody gets up and asks he why he hasn’t done anything to deal with the record high unemployment what should he say?
…that he hasn’t already said?
He should answer the question? We’re talking about where Biden’s team should be concentrating their messaging, not whether Biden is under a witch’s curse to never mention macroeconomics.
The point was, if a questioner asserts something on the economy that is flat out untrue, should Biden correct them or not?
And the answer was “Yes”. What’s with the dumb gotcha questions? Was I supposed to answer “No! Biden should run away and hide under the podium because a mere mention of macroeconomics or defending his record is Doom! DOOOOM”?
Biden should probably act like a normal human person. Concentrating your messaging on A doesn’t mean you’re never ever going to do B, even when B is the obvious immediate choice. There’s a… well, I’d say obvious but right now I’m doubting how obvious it is to some… difference between “Answers a question at a town hall” and “Develops a $250mil ad and surrogate blitz around around a topic”
It’s not about the well off, it’s about objective reality. Beliefs like that unemployment is at a record high, or the country is in recession are just outright false, yet believed by half of the people in those polls.
That’s a big problem, and here at the straight dope, yeah, we’re supposed to care about the actual facts.
But when people are asked in polls how are you doing, or how is your district doing, the majority of people are saying good or better; that’s an “all things considered” question.
The negative answers come when they are asked how is America doing, which also happens to be the thing they hold false beliefs about.
So again this is not about trying to tell people about their own lived experience, because on the whole they give positive answers to that.
It’s about trying to fight disinformation about the big picture.
I genuinely find this framing fascinating, because of my own circumstances. I’m in the last year of a four-year contract, during which the CPI-W for my area has increased 17%. Our union president sent out a happy e-mail noting that the contract we had negotiated had raised our wages 18.4% in that same period. Everybody I know at work is fucking thrilled to have outpaced inflation (or at least the restrictive CPI-W that our contracts are based on) over four years. Thrilled, because we see other folks not keeping pace all the time.
Now this has nothing to do with Biden, since this was a negotiated contract based on local COLA. But I find it interesting that anyone can be legitimately upset at outpacing inflation at all. Maybe people who don’t have negotiated contracts don’t think about COLA. But I always do, because it is always there. It is the cost of living in a modern economy, like it our not. If you got a 5% merit raise from a promotion and the COLA was 6% that year, the person you should be pissed at is your employer for shafting you. Not the somewhat semi-irrelevant president (in terms of inflation, which they have a limited ability to affect).
Note: I personally also got an additional small raise with a change in job title, so I’m doing even better than that over the last couple of years. But if I hadn’t gotten that bump, yes I’d still be pleased at keeping my head above water over the last four years. Maybe I’m just a glass half-full guy.
I just got back from the grocery store. Prices were noticeably high. I’ve never had to think in terms of staple item purchases. I just bough them. But I left a bunch of them on the shelf this time. This is going to impact anyone who has to budget their basic purchases and food is high on that list. Everybody has to eat.
I’d like to see a reply to these points.
Glad you’re keeping your head above water and then some. We need more unions in this country, as that would be a help to workers at all levels.
For the broader group, here’s the paper from Arin Dube on wage compression that has occurred in recent years. This phenomenon has gotten very little publicity. But it’s real. There has been an increase in relative pay for workers at the lower end of the scale, which is a very good development, and likely the first time this has happened in decades. This has helped non-college-educated workers, which is a demographic that has been hammered for roughly 4 decades.
Now, Biden will of course get no credit for this, or very little. And many people, especially on the right, will act like it’s not happening.
Forty plus years of wages being decoupled from productivity while the gap between the C-suite and the workers who actually made the company succeed got absolutely monstrous and people are supposed to be happy that that gap got a little smaller. Yeah, that’s an argument that’s going nowhere.
Well, like I said, “Biden will of course get no credit for this, or very little,” and your post is exhibit A of what I was saying.
I guess since Biden hasn’t completely reversed labor’s 40 years of wage losses, hasn’t implemented permanent world peace, and hasn’t completely reversed global warming, he’s a failure after all.
I bet Biden can’t even swim walk on water!
Get rid of the bum! 
Here’s another accomplishment that Biden can point to. In the Inflation Reduction Act, the ability for Medicare to bargain for prescriptions with drugmakers will save a ton of money over time. See the below link:
Main talking points that Biden can point to:
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Drug Price Negotiation - they will pick common drugs where people in the US pay far more than other countries, and negotiate those prices down. This will start to take effect in 2026.
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Cap on Out-of-Pocket Drug spending - Starting in 2025, this will save millions of Part D recipients an average of $400.
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Insulin is now capped at $35/month for Medicare recipients. This will save millions for elderly with Diabetes.
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Free Vaccines for any vaccine recommended by the CDC, for anyone on Mediare Part D.
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Inflation penalty for drug manufacturers who increase prices faster than inflation.
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An Income-based subsidy for poor recipients of Medicare - you do have to actively opt-in.
Biden should be campaigning hard on all of the above, as it will save enrollees a lot of money in the future, and some of it has already kicked in now.