Huh. Another 'joe the plumber type" Just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, who will certainly make it big in two weeks, I think this defines more than a few Trumpers.
Yeah, and if he ends up losing his house due to crypto trading losses, it’ll be Biden’s fault.
I don’t think a Democrat can get to 65%, but I think one can get to 45% and the difference between 35% and 45% can very well be the difference between winning and losing. If Biden was polling as well as the democrat Senate candidates in most swing states he would be in much shape.
And yet he has a poor approval rating. You can’t seem to link high prices as a factor to Biden’s ratings. It’s a factor that’s reinforced weekly. Credit card debt is rising.. That’s a Federal Reserve link.
We live in two realities now. This is stronger than ever before.
There is no such thing as objective reality for the MAGAts, and this is bleeding over into other people as well (actual remaining consevatives and the mythical “independent”).
Their “reality” is that the unemployment rate is skyrocketing, we’re in a recession, crime is higher than it’s ever been, and millions of criminals are flocking over the border to kill them. This is absolutely their reality, and nothing, nothing anyone says can shift them from this world.
It’s a cult. You don’t get someone away from a cult by citing factual information.
“You can’t reason someone out of a position that they did not use reason to get into”
I agree. But I think the difference between 35 and 45 is just because Biden is old.
There isn’t anything significant to be done on the economy – in terms of the high-level benchmarks if the economy grows any faster, the markets would worry it was unsustainable and a crash is coming. In terms of making the US more equitable; he’s done a lot for that, yet gets little credit, and it’s politically dangerous in a country that still looks down on all forms of welfare (well, not payouts to the rich).
So I see countering misinformation about the economy as one of the few remaining levers.
Who, me? I’ve said over and over again that inflation is a big deal and may well swamp other factors. How many ways can I say it?
The question is, can you acknowledge that misinformation might be the largest factor in why people are misinformed on things like jobs, energy and GDP?
Poor people are more sensitive to higher prices. Which party has a higher percentage of poor people? There’s your reality. Trying to come up with a maga boogeyman when the real reason is staring you in the face may be cathartic but it’s not reality.
People getting a new job also have to pay higher prices and nobody gives a crap about statistics.
Maybe the answer is as simple as stuff coming to a head now. Or came to a head quicker in the Post-Covid era when you go into a poorly staffed store with significantly higher prices than you remember to buy a box of cereal 12% smaller than before.
Not really an answer to the question is it? (I’ll address this new statement, but I’m getting tired of the deflections)
Then why do people who identify as Democrats have a better opinion of the economy? Your arguments are so full of contradictions and holes, they might as well be air.
I think these have been general trends across administrations for a long time. or maybe technology amplifies our perception of how bad things are and accelerates everything so it feels like one massive event after another and each one seems more massive and exposes more of a “systematic problem” with the economy.
I think by and large, people aren’t hopeful about their economic future. Or at the very least, I think it’s something that people feel forced to think about more than people had to when I was growing up.
And I think the reason Liberals and Democrats get blamed for this is because Conservatives feel like things just worked better when they were growing up.
I think the average American conservative thinks something like this - Back in the day, our parents worked hard and some were better educated than others and some got paid better than others, but it was generally accepted that if you worked hard, got educated, and basically lived a decent life (but you could still have fun) you could expect to be able to buy a decent home and raise some kids in a nice neighborhood full of decent God-ferring people.
But for some reason everything seems harder and more expensive and more uncertain now and we see all these news stories about collapsing banks and billionaires who turn out to be frauds and no one seems to want to do real work but we see all these kids making a fortune as influencers or vloggers or whatever. And all Democrats seem to want to talk about is “diversity” and “transgender equality” and forgiving student loans for kids who went to expensive fancy colleges who somehow still can’t manage to find a job because they are too busy protesting or whatever kids do in college these days.
So yeah, I think for the average conservative-ish America, Biden and Democrats don’t really resonate with them, regardless of how the economy is doing.
I don’t think you even have to be all that conservative to feel a lot of that. I’m pretty sure the Old Economy Steven meme being spread a dozen years ago by frustrated Millennials wasn’t seen as a conservative complaint.
Even the Wall Street Journal is starting to come around.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs-report-may-unemployment-economy-2aee1a4f
It’s undoubtedly true that the benefits of the economy accrue first to the wealthiest class, so I can imagine that it’s taking a bit longer to get down to the middle class.
But gains are occurring.
So, unemployment is stated at 4% and we just added 272,000 jobs in May…
Here’s the typical American’s reaction: “Those 272,000 jobs are mostly people needing a third job just to get by. Hey, I just bought Captain Crunch cereal at 5 times the price it was back in 2013. No wonder no one can get a decent job, and the economy is collapsing into recession all around me. I miss the Trump days when everything was so much better. Biden can take his 272K part-time minimum wage jobs and shove it. He has dementia anyway, which my uncle showed videos of on facebook…”…
I of course am joking, but maybe it’s closer to the truth than I wish it was…
To be fair, killing a whole bunch of people is one way to decrease unemployment!
That’s pretty much the actual narrative, yes.
You’re overthinking it. The typical American’s reaction is nothing because the typical American doesn’t follow job reports and is barely tied into the news. The typical American probably couldn’t tell you what “full employment” looks like or what a good jobs number looks like. The typical American is employed and thus the jobs report is just background noise and, for those who got a job, the typical American is telling themselves that they got the job they deserved on their own merits rather than blessing a fruitful economy for creating them a job.
Interesting comment to the most recent Simon Rosenberg piece:
Janet | 20 hrs ago
Biden reminds me of the proverbial guy who speaks softly but carries a big stick. He gets the job done. Just look at how he played the oil cartel. Sell high, bye low. They couldn’t get what they wanted from him but have caved and are now drilling more oil again. We should start seeing our gas prices coming down over the summer when it usually goes up.
Chris Hayes had a recent segment on MSNBC laying out how Biden did it.
Chris Hayes, MSNBC interviewing NYME energy markets analyst and author Dan Dicker, Friday June 7, 2024
The end of Hayes’ intro (0:58): American presidents have been bedeviled by OPEC ever since, until now. Because to quote a former congressional adviser, “Joe Biden just broke OPEC”. And he did that through a truly incredible bit of oil market trading.
Here is how The Economist (May 16, 2024 issue - b) describes it: In 2022, when he released 180 million barrels of crude [from the U.S. Strategic reserve], he sold it at an average of $95 a barrel. In July of last year, when oil was $67 a barrel, he began to refill the reserve. He has replaced about 1/5 of what he sold, posting a profit of $582 million. He has managed to time the market to perfection.
And Biden’s streak is still going.
Dicker (6:25): " … At this point [Biden] has such a fear from traders of what the U.S. will do next that all he really has to do is threaten one way or the other to make oil market move. This wasn’t done before, this was an innovation in using the [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] to basically put a guard rail on oil prices and to wildly diminish the cartels."
…
Local to where I live, gas has already dropped about $0.20/gal over the last two weeks. That’s the local average dropping from about $3.30 to $3.10. It’s now pretty easy to find sub-$3.00/gal gasoline. Looks like it’s starting.