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.
No shit! Say it with me:
Conservatives control the media. Conservatives control the narrative. Reality does not reflect what people see.
When overnight the Joe Rogan interview with Trump had over 40 million views, the issue becomes clear.
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
biden getting flak over inflation is fucking hilarious.
The fed is literally irrelevant to the president, the president does not control inflation. Sure maybe his spending increased inflation. But the entire global economy was at a practical stand still. If you think getting a seized ICE working again is hard, try it with a global economy.
You can bitch all you want about inflation, but at the end of the day, nobody really knows what the right solution here was. We could’ve gone through another great depression event if not for global stimulus. And a few years of bad inflation and high costs will beat literally starving.
Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren’t boomers, we’re basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
It’s not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren’t obsessively following the news and economic reports.
It’s how they feel about money.
That was the biggest single issue.
People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.
It doesn’t matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we’re doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.
Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with “gut” feeling.
His adminstration may have not created them. But the neoliberal Democrats that he represents did going all the way back to Clinton.
He also only deployed half measures or dragged his feet all the way until the last minute.
Same shit as always, the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises but no on hears about it because the right wing own 90% of the media.
I swear for every positive story about something Biden did, there were 3 or 4 about Trump just being Trump: saying some outrageous lie, gaffes, and of course all the crimes. He’s sucked all the air out of the room for 10 years and now we’re going to have another 4. All news, positive or negative, is publicity.
the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises
If you didn’t learn the lesson that this isn’t true in the last 4 years then all hope is lost
99.9%
Remember when he first got elected and people blamed covid on him as a joke (it happened before he was in office)
…then now people actually believe itEdit: point proven.
Remember 8+y of “Thanks Obama” when the dude passed a healthcare act that got tens of millions affordable coverage?
When he first got into office he wasn’t responsible for what happened.
Now he’s been in office for four years and is responsible for what happened.
More people died of covid under his watch. The meager covid response we had was dismantled by him.
Not only is he responsible, he is more responsible. Not only was his covid policy bad, it was worse. And not by a little.
One guy told people they could try to cure COVID by shoving light bulbs up to their asses and inject disinfectants whilst their staff was eye rolling in the background.
All this whilst abusing people wearing masks
That dumbass also helped the anti vax movement
Trump was not only responsible for deaths in America, but also internationally. He also helped bring back mostly extinct diseases to the US and intentionally
He has every opportunity to attempt to control the virus but he chose instead to use it as an opportunity to gain more power
And yet with all of that being true his response to covid was objectively better than Biden’s for the reasons that were already written down when you decided to reply to this post and not that one
He has every opportunity to attempt to control the virus but he chose instead to use it as an opportunity to gain more power
The cynicism of the liberal cannot be measured by earthy tools for its scale is greater than the earth itself
Did Biden stop using the covid state of emergency at the border or did he use more than Trump? The answer is that he deported as many as Trump’s entire term in his first two years.
Which reasons? It objectively wasn’t better at all lol
Trump was in office for only 1 year of covid. During which he did nothing except increase shares of horse medication companies and sabotage pandemic measures. The entirety of Bidens presidency was with covid
What covid response did you want Biden to continue with long term specifically?
The idea was to get vaccinated which made it safer to reopen and vaccines were released shortly before Biden became president, and they were effective at reducing deaths.
Many people who died were people who listened to Trump and chose to deworm themselves instead of vaccination
It ends up on Bidens tally sure. But if king dumbass spent his time telling people they were safe and encouraging his dumbass followers to wear masks and vaccinate, we possibly could have delayed some variants too
But his followers only seem to want to stick baby diapers on their ears apparently, not wear masks thanks to Trump
Trump was more interested in sabotaging his opponent after he lost. Just like he spent Bidens presidency trying to sabotage the economy
Which reasons? It objectively wasn’t better at all lol
I was accused of engaging in bad faith before anyone had even replied to me and this shit is getting upvoted despite objectively being in bad faith.
I listed a half dozen things in the comment you chose not to reply to. I mentioned his opportunistic use of the pandemic to expand Trump’s (Obama’s) fascist policies on the border IN THE COMMENT YOU REPLIED TO. There were no other replies at that time. It was literally on your screen just below where you clicked to reply. Now you’re choosing to pretend they don’t exist while making a counter argument supported by nothing but the ‘lol’ at the end of your sentence.
Is this the best your community has to offer? Because the level of debate here is dogshit no matter how many ‘no u’ throwaways I get as a reply.
Umm.
Some of your list is nonsense like ending the state of emergency. It ended in 2023. That was 1.5 years after the vaccines were readily available and nearly 3 years after the first detections. Most people dying at that point were people making that choice. It was bad, but not an emergency anymore. That’s normal. RAT tests were also available by that time
And stuff like the 5 day quarantine period was done worldwide. That’s the minimum period. When that change was made everyone who wanted a vaccine was already vaccinated. You’ll note that diseases like influenza which can also kill don’t and didn’t have a minimum quarantine period. This doesn’t mean the period can’t be longer
Or do you propose the full 10 days even in 2024? I’m sure Trump followers will certainly follow that
In fact, trump has all but eliminated the chances of eliminating many diseases in many countries now because he’s spread distrust
What part do you think Trump did well? When Trump gave Rat tests to Putin, that was really useful. I bet the first thing Putin did was share them to people in need on a non partisan basis and not boast what a great leader he was
For a moment I’d like to step away from directly replying to your comment because every revision I write ends up being all caps screaming at you. Instead I’d like to ask you a question:
Do homeless people deserve to die? They have the option of getting a job and finding a place to live. They’re choosing not to. They chose to live how they are, right? And the disease and crime that affects the community around them because they’re cut off from government services like plumbing and mail… that’s not an emergency, right? It’s just normal.
Transitioning back to your covid denialism… let’s step away from the people you explicitly write off and talk about the people you implicitly wish death upon:
Do disabled people deserve to die because you have an axe to grind with Trump supporters?
There’s so goddamned much in your comment that it feels irresponsible to let even a single line go without direct confrontation. You repeat the covid denialist lies about “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” You ignore the effects of the virus in total. You ignore the scale of the pandemic today.
One last question: Do you even wear a mask in public anymore? Do you deserve to die if the answer is no? Do you deserve to be disabled for the rest of your life? Do the people in the grocery store deserve to die just because you walk past them?
And yet with all of that being true his response to covid was objectively better than Biden’s for the reasons that were already written down when you decided to reply to this post and not that one
You realize that the entire reason COVID spread so fast and sickened so many is that Trump gutted the CDC (and more specifically gutted the CDC’s pandemic task force) then aggressively pushed misinformation during the opening phase of the pandemic right? The few folks remaining at the CDC were under politically motivated orders to play down the pandemic the entire time Trump was in office so that Trump could try and pretend his economy (which he inherited from Obama) wasn’t shitting the bed while he ran for reelection.
Remember the bit where Trump thought a big pandemic would be good for his voting numbers because it was supposed to hit the blue cities harder than his red state supporters? Remember how we needed freezer trucks as temporary morgues for a year as a result?
You realize that the entire reason COVID spread so fast and sickened so many is that Trump gutted the CDC (and more specifically gutted the CDC’s pandemic task force) then aggressively pushed misinformation during the opening phase of the pandemic right?
No, not the entire reason. Not even the entire reason for the first year before Biden did all the same things but with liberal complacency. The main reason was because we never had a shutdown. We never payed people to stay home sick. The way to address a pandemic is fundamentally at odds with the basis of our economic system. The only reason there was a reaction besides the trillions of dollars of bailouts during Trump was because capital was genuinely panicked. Once they realized it was something that would just slowly kill us off with disability and repeat infections, they had to slowly remove that reaction which happened under Biden. That’s why Biden was objectively worse than Trump. They’re not better or worse than each other they’re flipping figureheads in the first place.
The few folks remaining at the CDC were under politically motivated orders to play down the pandemic the entire time Trump was in office so that Trump could try and pretend his economy (which he inherited from Obama) wasn’t shitting the bed while he ran for reelection.
And what did you think happened after Biden appointed a damned venture capitalist to run the agency? I already laid out just one example of Biden’s CDC warping their presentation of evidence to falsely downplay the pandemic. And look at the reaction in this thread! Liberals honestly believe the pandemic is over! Despite all measurable evidence to the contrary!
Remember the bit where Trump thought a big pandemic would be good for his voting numbers because it was supposed to hit the blue cities harder than his red state supporters?
Okay?? Remember when Democrats pretended to care about the pandemic purely as a way to beat Trump? And then started their Op-ed mill about sending kids back to school before the vaccine was even out??
oh of course the .ml user is entirely uneducated on this topic, surprising frankly.
Another liberal another thought terminating cliche
Man, I thought I escaped comments this dumb when I left Reddit.
You joined .world and you think you left reddit?
Vapid self satisfied smug reply that can literally be copypasted under any comment you disagree with. You are reddit.
Ironically, your response is classic Reddit troll fare.
Sorry, kiddo. But I’ve been here for a week now and I can tell you it is noticably different than Reddit, although with a small percentage of very Reddit commenters, such as yourself.
I’m sure as the user base increases the percentage of commenters like yourself will remain the same, but the total number will increase. So, basically the story of Reddit all over again. But until then, I think I’ll enjoy this platform more.
you just joined in an argument between two other people just to thump your chest about how much you agree with one of the people arguing, to the other person arguing
you’re the load more comments guy
“kiddo” = automatic downvote.
Feel free to disagree with people but that sort of toxic disrespect just promotes slapfighting and we all need less of that.
Were you not following the court’s impact on public health policy at all? Every sane state passed a mask mandate and other public health measures to combat COVID spread, then the courts (appointed by Republicans no less) crushed those efforts
Hello moral and intellectual coward. You’ve just downvoted this comment without replying. I’m sorry you’re upset.
But it wasn’t me that manipulated the covid map by changing what it measured from “People getting infected” to “how many hospital beds are available” in order turn it blue. And neither was it Trump. It was Biden.
And it wasn’t me that took a meeting with the CEO of Delta Airlines and changed the quarantine period from what scientists said was nesssesary (14 days) to what monopoly capitalists said (5 days). And neither was it Trump. It was Biden.
I wasn’t the one who gutted unemployment insurance. I wasn’t the one who manufactured consent for the end of masking. I wasn’t the one who ended the state of emergency. And neither was it Trump. It was Biden.
Stop taking your anger out on me.
Sometimes I downvote something when I’m annoyed by the time I spent reading it, and I’m merely trying to signal to the good folks here that they can spend their time a better way. Not every dumb take deserves an actual reply. In fact almost none of them do. I just want to help people who value their time, as they have done for me. That is pretty much the purpose of the voting system. We’re helping each other out.
If I’m wrong about something you don’t need a downvote because someone would have come in and made my position untenable in the face of their replies. Downvotes are for toxic losers who want to express their disapproval without either spending the time thinking to formulate why, or exposing their position to criticism in return.
My man, do you hear yourself? You’re on tirades flying off the handle all over the forum. Bent out of shape over Internet points, meanwhile other folks are actually replying to you. Get over yourself. Hug a family member or something.
I’m scolding people for not engaging. Stop projecting your reddit brain internet point obsession onto me. You’re the one who decided to interject. And now you’re overreacting to me replying to you? I guess you felt entitled to talk down to me without my having an opportunity to explain myself? Get over yourself. Go back to hiding behind your downvotes if this is how you react to a back and forth.
I have been downvoted and it caused me to introspect.
It doesn’t necessarily change my values or even my position but it is a signal for me to think about the way I’m thinking about stuff. It means I’m clearly missing a perspective.
In the case of you, I think there are enough people trying to reply with reasoning that the up votes and downvotes are just other people supporting positions and expressing their rejection of a position which is already being refuted. They’re adding signal without noise.
At risk of being downvoted into oblivion: People are hyper polarized and unable to have nuanced discussions as a broad generalization any longer. And that, is the core of the problem.
But where does it stem from? Misdirection - it might not seem relevant, but, I assure you: It is. We have to talk - as a recent video reminded me, and taught me something very important, Beoing. And maybe Intel - but mostly Boeing.
Back in the Early 60’s - Boeing was Successful, very successful, it was THE MOST SUCCESSFUL airplane company - and it was, surprise surprise: ran by engineers. Then we have Douglas - ran by Finance bean counters. In 67, Douglas was facing bankruptcy, and - as a defence contractor, the US government in it’s infinite wisdom forced Boeing to merge with it, and - to put the cream on the top followed by the crowning toxic jewel on top: The executives that caused the problems at Douglas were put in charge, and - Boeing has gone downhill since. At one point an executive at the new Boeing said something along the lines of: “I don’t want to be distracted by the details of building airplanes” - like, I’m sorry: THAT IS WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES, those aren’t the distractions - that is your core needed responsibility to make sure it’s done right.
We good with why the above is a problem?
So lets look at Covid: Finance people want the economy to keep going - so drag their feet on doing what is necessary. Finance people don’t want to be inconvienienced, so… push for changes that are beneficial to them IN THE SHORT TERM. And finally, we see the idea that a Stage 4 Cancer Patient who passes away being labeled as a Covid Death… Why? I think it serves 2 reasons: 1, it makes the hospital numbers look more paletable for awhile - Covid death is “new scary virus” not, “Something we have been dealing with for forever” and 2. It justifies massive inflationary spend by the government - enabling them to effecitvely pick winners (big business), and losers (small business).
The thing is: This shift - this Financiers over Engineers and people in their field running the show, is both the Republicans AND Democrats. That is: Democrat Social Justice types use inflationary spending to shove money at the cost of EVERYONE at whatever group they are “fighting for” and, Republican types love to shove tax benefits in the hands of their prefered businesses. And what are the fixes? It’s really simple: End Inflationary Monetary Policy.
Thing is: Sick people masking? Makes sense. Properly cleaning high contact often terribly dirty things like debit pin pads - makes sense. More frequent cleaning of public bathrooms: Makes sense. This isn’t exactly rocket science. But forcing an untested thing onto people, after hiding the details from the public is disgusting. And the fact that people don’t get it - that is a huge problem.
People are avoiding him because to do otherwise is to feed the troll.
No one who uses the argument that there are more covid deaths under Biden than Trump is arguing in good faith. If you don’t understand the reason for that you are not capable of a discussion.
If you are arguing that Biden made Covid policy decisions for the economy over safety and somehow believe Trump would not, you are not arguing in good faith. The difference is Biden has advisors and weighs the nuanced effects, like any rational intelligent human being, whereas Trump would do Trump things.
There is no need to dissect the policy for this guy.
Everything you just said about me can be discredited by simply reading what I wrote. You aren’t capable of a discussion; you can’t read. You’re a profoundly unserious person who speaks on things they have not looked into.
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
-
Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
-
Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
You forgot deporting people
Actually no, Trump deported and convicted less than Obama and Biden. Trump’s removal of holding time limitations for women and children and his removal of ICE’s criminal only focus meant resources were used up and almost always wasted.
Trump is ineffective at everything he claims to be good for.
Are we talking about what he did last time or what he said he’s going to do this time?
His plans supposedly haven’t changed, just a repeat of last time but more and worse.
He even already tried to overturn the election once before when he sent 84 fake electors to 7 states in 2020.
He has repeatedly told us he is going to do everything he did before, again.
-
Would you be willing to donate $10 to Amazon?
I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
Thank you, your $10/week subscription has been confirmed. Please call 10AM-3PM Eastern to upgrade or cancel your payment. We apologize in advance for the unusually long wait times.
Because Americans are some of the stupidest people in the world.
What, the country with all the resources but still ranks 36th in literacy and 54% of their adults can’t even read above a 6th grade level?
i need this information to start being treated as the act of oppression it is rather than the “americans dumb lol” framing i see even in leftist spaces.
americans, and disproportionately minority americans, are being intentionally refused education in the same way they are refused medical care—in service of cost cutting and privatization interests rather than public wellbeing and economic wellness.
Lee Atwater full interview told the real reason for the dumbing down of America. Two younger family members went through four years of prestigious private universities, and neither had ever read classic literature, let alone discuss main themes and philosophical implications, which is sad, since Shakespeare still addresses basic and timeless western human conditions, and I daresay the reach may be broader than that.
i think there’s a bit more to the story than that but sure haha
edit: looked him up and he was an adviser to reagan? ew.
Idk if this is the same guy, but iirc someone did an interview tell-all where they basically came clean and admitted to all the fucked up shit they helped their administration do.
So yeah, undoubtedly ew, but I’m guessing that’s what they’re talking about.
And we thought the internet would solve or at least help this. Little did we know…
I feel like it’s simply widened the divide that was already present. There have always been people that care and people that don’t but now the people that care have the resources to do something about it and the people that don’t have easy access to that which reinforces their lack of caring.
Excellent summary of the internet’s potential for both help and harm. At this point, I’m not convinced the net result isn’t negative.
Hey man, we can post slurs online while taking a shit or look at porn any time. What else would we use the internet for?
Yep. I remember those days. I remember hearing Douglas Rushkoff [1] on a podcast or something about how he and others around his same age were seeing the dawn of the (privatized) Internet along with the flourishing of the rave scene, and so on and thought it had all this promise and it gave me such a huge amount of nostalgia.
Instead, we have things like Youtube influencers peddling some of the very worst things you’d want kids to watch and algorithms that push it to them.
[1] Jaron Lanier has written pretty well about some of the same aspects.
That’s why emojis are so popular.
As someone who turned off autocorrect fifteen years ago and cares about things like spelling, grammar, and compostion I can pretty confidently say that emojis have many valid uses. Text, especially quick text, is not very good at conveying subtle meaning in a clear way. Emojis though? They do amazingly, especially when it’s a face, because in normal conversations we have body language and even over the phone we can clearly convey a tone of voice. Body language is the emoji library of face-to-face communication.
TL;DR: emojis are popular because they’re highly effective.
¯\(ツ)/¯
But honestly, I admire the fact that you care about grammar, spelling, and such. This seems not very rare on Lemmy, but is otherwise a rare sight
54%?? Yikes.
By design. About a century ago, Rockefeller turned the public school system into a mindless factory worker production machine. Republicans have been reducing funding for decades since.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines. College tuition paywalls real education. As AI improves, the bar lowers further. Public schools will be continually defunded or converted to a voucher system in order to exclude even more citizens.
Republicans decided back in the late 70s and early 80s that the public was too educated (and too hard to control) so they decided to do something about it. 45y of slashed education funding and standards later here we are.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines.
Nothing new. Jim & Jesse even did a song about it years ago.
The company owned the houses And the company owned the grammar school You’ll never see an educated cotton mill man They figure you don’t need to learn Anything but how to earn
The money that you pay upon demand To the general store they own Or else they’ll take away your home And give it to some other homeless Cotton mill man
Can you elaborate on what Rockefeller did? Never heard that before
Rockefeller worked with the General Education Board to reshape education to be vocational. He also pushed for the duration of the school day to be extended to eight hours, for early exposure and adoption of the standard work day.
Very interesting. Surely we can trust our current crop of billionaires to do better for society!
Fun fact, the average American public school education doesn’t include critical thinking skills in the language curriculum. You either get your introduction to this in AP English (if you’re a high scoring highschooler) or during your first year of college/university.
It’s mind blowing how many people can’t pick apart a given piece of media and think about what message it conveys and why it conveys it.
So yeah, Americans are ripe for manipulation.
I think not stressing critical thinking skills is not a bug, but a feature, of schools that were designed to crank out factory workers.
It’s sheer lunacy in today’s world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
It’s sheer lunacy in today’s world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
Redundant statements are redundant.
That’s the result of the Republicans fucking over education in this country for the past 50 years.
I’m sorry to have to upvote that.
I’m American and have to agree with it; it might be because I’m stupid though.
‘am I actually stupid?’
and like 90% of our media is owned or controlled by republicans.
I hate to hear this myself but there’s a global rebuke against incumbents of all shapes and sizes literally everywhere, in response to inflation.
So by definition, everyone is stupid in countries that have rebounded well because they’re doing the same.
The media that they choose to consume is the problem. It plays down the accomplishments of “the enemy” and plays up the hardships and failures like “rampant illegals” and constantly rising food prices. I blame “stupid Americans” less than I blame manipulative billionaires that control media consumption.
That’s an understatement. Source: Live in America.
Stupid and proud of it.
No, voters punished Biden for his inability to effectively communicate what he’s done to help them. This has been a consistent problem with the democrats, and with corporate media. Democrats need better spokespeople and better messaging.
They also need to stop catering to the ultra rich and moderate republicans because that shit turns off the base faster than crap messaging. There is no “liz cheney, nikki hayley” constituency as we saw last Tuesday.
You’re right that Dems need better messaging and to stop catering to the ultra rich. At the same time, we can’t discount the propaganda messaging that the article mentions. Not being in their echo chambers means not being exposed to the bulk of it, and that is great. At the same time, it means being disconnected from what a lot of people are basing their opinions on.
For a few years, up until the start of this year, I had a job that required interacting with families in people’s homes. If I had a choice, I would’ve preferred to avoid the right-wingers… but gotta do what you gotta do.
Some households were pure poison: hate-driven parents who constantly belched up Fox news topics. These parents normally communicated with their kids through complaining and screaming. But if a kid made some quip about “Biden sucks,” they got a brief moment where their parents would actually laugh. The reinforcing power of that toxic dynamic cannot be understated.
It’s no wonder that a lot of kids in those circumstances end up eager to repeat the same crap their parents say. In the time that I worked that job, a lot of the commentary was Biden-centric, making him a convenient punching bag that even the smallest fists could reach (even if they had no idea what they were doing/saying.)
Dems have a lot of improvements to make, but it would take a lot more than “improved messaging” to overcome the sheer power of this propaganda culture.
The right has unlimited money and resources when it comes to corporate media messaging. The media will not save us. The revolution will not be televised; it’s not in the papers, it’s on the walls.
thank goodness the democrats don’t have a media apparatus and what we all consume is news and truth instead of propaganda.
it’s so comforting to be in a community of people who are immune to propaganda
Joe Biden is the best president we’ve ever had and Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign. That just doesn’t mean anything.
For how much you complain about people just downvoting instead of replying, you sure don’t like to interact in good faith once they do reply. Maybe learn how to have a serious discussion before demanding that people have serious discussions with you?
Who replied to me in this thread before you?
In what faith would you describe your response, wherein you made no statement, argument, or claim that has anything to do with anything besides you being upset with my tone?
You are exactly the type of person I’m speaking about and to. You should listen.
deleted by creator
Why “no”? You’re basically saying the same as the summary.
The article headline reads like voters don’t want the things Biden did. Which is a lie, and part of my gripe about messaging and the media. A better headline is “Voters don’t understand what Biden did for them, and that needs to change”.
True, headlines matter.
No, they’re basically saying the same as the summary.
They didn’t promise unicorns like the Republicans did, and voters still got mad that only some people got unicorns.
Republicans have promised to eat all the unicorns.
He literally said he would cure cancer
Yeah, the U.S. pushed for global adoption of the HPV vaccination that literally vaccinates against that cancer. That’s what he was referring to. And if people get it instead of drinking horse dewormer, it’ll stop that cancer from spreading.
“Moonshot”
One of his first acts as president was to deliberately double child poverty
Seeing a lot of silent downvotes for an objective fact recited in a value neutral manner.
That in itself says more than I could hope to about the topic of this thread
Okay, I’ll bite and take a few minutes to refute yet another of your seemingly patently false statements that you provide no evidence for.
Are you talking about the expanded child tax credit that the senate didn’t pass(the house did)? If so, that’s not on the president.
I downvoted you at almost every opportunity bc it seems like you’re just talking out of your ass, which isn’t helpful. If I missed something that you’re referring to for poverty, feel free to share and support your argument.
Are you talking about the expanded child tax credit that the senate didn’t pass(the house did)? If so, that’s not on the president.
It’s the unified government under one party of which the president is the head
You’re being a dishonest weasel
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people’s financial experience. Listen to this shit:
America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.
But few in the electorate seem aware…
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let’s check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but “real wage,” means, “wage adjusted for inflation,” so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden’s policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let’s not even worry about that. Let’s see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what’s really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn’t been raised since 2009. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I’m not an economist, and I don’t have hours to research this shit, so it’s entirely possible that I’m missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I’ll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
Biden tells the sad paid for truth, Trump sells paid for lies.
Both won’t change that most American wages aren’t going up, prices are. Certainly won’t with tariff going to 60%.
Biden didn’t really do much for the average American. He could demanded higher wages, pushed for healthcare coverage, and investigated price hiking. And arrested Trump. He did some, but for a man who is currently a sitting duck who is above the law, he’s choosing the safest/“easiest for the rich” option as a presidential RBG.
Trump won’t do much, but will loudly shit out that he did, and his followers will eat it up and ask for more.
I will give Biden credit for trying. I expect him to pull an Obama and pivot to centrist policy the second he got into office, but he really tried to pass all the progressive things he ran it. He was just incredibly ineffective at it and basically wound up with a pretty standard (though very large) infrastructure bill that he wanted everyone to pretend was a huge progressive victory.
Young people have no hope of buying a house in my area.
In my neighborhood all the drug store shelves are bare (Rite Aid) and there’s soon to be only one grocery store to choose from (Kroger).
When I’m getting groceries the checkers are talking about how the store is going to close if the merger happens and they’ll all lose their jobs.
No ‘media’ lied to me and convinced me that the economy is wack. I see it every day.
What I’m not hearing in the media is recognition of working folks’ struggles. Failure to address this kept Dems home.
I’m really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
The DNC wants to know your location and give you a strategic voter outreach job.
paul krugman did exactly that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV6kHBwT7bg
Huh. I’m generally wary of any group that has an Eye of Providence in their logo or uses the term, “New World Order,” but that was cathartic to watch.
unfortunately something like this is not posted by any other channel popular enough to come up on shitty youtube search.
the guy in the video is jose vega, he ran for congress as lrp candidate in nyd 15 and got about 2.5% vote.
here is more detailed video on a more apt channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK0FivR_B1A
Oh, haha, that’s much more reassuring. I assumed it was someone affiliated in the channel, and I was like, “Uh-oh, how long before this guy launches into an antisemitic conspiracy theory about lizard people?”
this made me realise how depressing it is when even lunatic channels have more relevant content for working class than our msm with 24/7 peddling of gaslighting bs.
Whatever happened to Jerome, anyway?
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we’re talking about real wages?
Your point is taken that Biden is not primarily responsible for the wage increases during his time in office, but he doesn’t have the power as president to unilaterally increase the federal minimum wage. He did sign an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors which, while not having a significant impact on the wage growth nationally, is a step in the right direction.
I realize your point is more that the author of this piece is a prick and he didn’t spend enough time trying to understand the bad economic vibes coming from the working class, but it seems like the Biden administration did a relatively good job guiding the economy through post COVID turmoil, which he (… And Harris by proxy) did not get any credit for. Would you agree with that?
I’m a huge fan of “sneering chud” by the way. Will be forcing that into a conversation soon.
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we’re talking about real wages?
Mostly so I could point out in the second to last paragraph that if you weren’t on the receiving end of that 13% wage increase (as I strongly suspect is the case for many people in GA, PA, WI and NC), then you took a 20% price increase to the face.
I think the Biden administration did its best to push through the progressive platform that he ran on, and I think that they probably don’t get enough credit for that. I think Biden should have been more aggressive with Congress, especially in calling for the abolition of the filibuster early on, but I appreciate how much he did (or tried to do) through executive action. He was especially good on student loans, I honestly expected him to give up on that, but he didn’t.
However, I think both Harris and Biden lost sight of the left-wing populist message that won them the White House in 2020. Harris especially pivoted towards a centrist, “economic opportunity,” platform instead of a, “here’s how government will help you,” message. I think small business tax credits and first-time homebuyer’s assistance are pretty out of touch when you’re trying to win over people who can’t afford groceries. She had some policies that were more targeted at the working class, but they were not the centerpiece of the campaign like these middle-class focused proposals.
That being said, yeah, most of my rage here is being directed at the author of this piece. Glad you liked, “sneering chud,” I’m a little proud of that one.
Jon Stewart just discussed some of this on The Weekly Show podcast with Heather Cox Richardson as guest. Discussing whether the metrics that define economic success are outdated and also how poorly any of Biden’s “successes” were shared by his White House and the media. It was all framed much better than this article.
I once heard some comedian or podcaster say something to the effect of, “The media keeps telling people that the economy is doing well because of the stock market, but for most of us you could replace the words, “stock market,” with, “rich people’s feelings graph,” and it would mean about the same thing.” I think that a lot. Also, I didn’t know John Stewart had a podcast for the Daily Show, thanks for the heads up on that!
The stock market is 80% owned by 10% of people… Better stock market= more profits for rich… Those profits come from our labor… The better “the economy” is doing, the worse the workers are doing. The markets went through the roof for Trump because the rich know he’s going to let them rape and pillage without constraints of any kind.
Yeah, and here’s the trick no one talks about; since the 80s, businesses (with the help of the government) started killing off pensions in favor of 401Ks. That effectively meant the middle and lower class, who are by far minority holders in the stock market, still need it to perform well, otherwise their retirement savings will be wiped out. So they’ve basically created a system where an entire generation is incentivized to allow the 1% to be as opportunistic and greedy as they like, because the crumbs they’re going to retire on are directly tied to the success of the wealthiest Americans.
401k is superior in almost every way though. The big downside is there isn’t a mandatory contribution. Pensions forced an employee to work in the same company for 20-30 years and hope they never got acquired or went bankrupt. Then they could retire and still hope the company never went bankrupt, because the pension funds were universally underfunded. Lots of people faced their pension being reduced by a significant amount after they’ve been retired for a decade or so.
A 401k gives the worker the power to move without jeopardizing their retirement. It allows the default death benefit to be 100% transferable to another. It’s not a surprise when a 401k runs out of money. All you have to do is fill out a form when you start a job to put a reasonable percentage into it.
Huh, I didn’t think about how the 401K is transferable, but it makes sense that it’s a plus; it’s how everyone wishes health insurance worked. But does it matter if you move companies if your next employer offers a similar pension? Wouldn’t that mean you just had two smaller monthly payments vs. one larger one? And weren’t pensions protected from bankruptcy by Employee Retirement Income Security Act? I thought it was because of that Act that companies justified phasing out their pensions for 401Ks.
Sorry for all the questions. Pensions are sort of an artifact of a lost time for folks my age, but most folks that I know that are my parents’ age seem to prefer the stability of their pensions to 401Ks.
Pensions are protected from bankruptcy, but they aren’t guaranteed the same payment. There are maximum payments and it’s complicated to give an accurate number, because it depends on the type of pension plan, the age of retirement, years of service, and generally doesn’t honor bonuses like early buyouts.
Pensions have a number of multipliers that make job hopping less ideal. The formula is roughly percentVested x accrualRate x yearsOfService x maxSalary. Vesting hits 100% at 5-7 years, accrual is roughly 1.5% depending on employer. By leaving early you take big hits on the vesting and max salary multipliers that cause it to be a lot less money. One job for 30 year with 100k mak salary would be a 45k pension. 3 jobs, 10 years each with 50k, 75k, and 100k max salaries is only a 33,750 pension.
Well said
As soon as something is adopted as a metric it’s divorced from the reality of the market. It’s the nature of the modern soothsaying we call economics.
I don’t want to listen to what a union buster has to say about people’s economic situation
I was just watching an interview last night. Maybe it was 60 Minutes, but they were talking to a woman about this. They told basically all this same info - inflation going down, gas going down, jobs increased, wages increased. The woman said, “I didn’t see any of that. My wage didn’t go up.” No idea what she does, if her job is eligible for a wage increase, but basically she was saying none of that impacted her personally or positively, so she voted for Trump.
Exactly. Democrats think that if they just tell people positive metrics enough times, these feelings will go away. They won’t. You have to look at them and say, “You’re right, things still suck for you. Things got better for a lot of people, but people like you didn’t see much of that because of [X] and [Y]. Here’s how we’re going to fix it.” Otherwise, they’re going to listen to anyone who tells them their problem is real, even a racist xenophobe that blames migrants for everything.
I think to some extent, Kamala said exactly how she planned on making things better. Trump didn’t say anything, and as usual had no plans. He still got elected. I saw an article last week about Trump saying not saying what his plans were helped him. What sense does that make, when a guy like Trump, who’s never had a plan or a rational suggestion to anything (“let’s nuke the hurricanes!”), can not say a damn thing about what his policies would be and still get elected? That tells me the Dems were drastically out of touch.
Dem technocrats are drastically out of touch and don’t realize how much aggrivement towards the status quo and desire for change there really is. Trump doesn’t do policy and it doesn’t matter because the people don’t care about policy either. We live in turbulent times, and there’s a groundswell of support for a nebulous ‘change’. Trump positioned himself as anti-establishment, persecuted, and radical in a way that was appealing enough to retain his voter base. Meanwhile, Harris’ institutionalism, focus on incrementalist policy, and boring rhetoric failed to galvanize support.
Spot on. When times are bad (whether actually true, or simply perceived that way) it should come as no surprise that the people voted for a change. Trump is the embodiment of “anti-establishment”. Progressives must take back the party from Neoliberals.
To some extent, yes, but it wasn’t the forefront of her campaign. She talked about greedflation and had a plan for price-capping groceries, but they should have been attacking this point from 2022, not the tail end of the campaign. She was far more focused on middle-class issues and an, “opportunity economy,” than the dire financial conditions of the working class.
As you rightfully note the relationship between federal economic policy and economic outcomes is complex and it’s not easy to tease apart cause and effect. Having said that Democrats have through history presided over MUCH better economic outcomes than Republicans, and Biden is no exception. Yet, voters consistently believe that (generic) Republicans are better for the economy than generic Democrats.
Democrats are broadly better, but they’ve created a lot of the conditions that are killing the working class now. Bill Clinton was the one who passed NAFTA, which was the biggest blow to manufacturing jobs in American history. Obama had a similar trade deal, the TPP, which most likely would have been equally devastating had Trump not killed it (which probably had more to do with his obsession with tearing down the achievements of the first black President than helping workers, but I doubt that mattered to the TPP’s opponents).
Even when Democrats aren’t directly the result of harm, their solutions are no longer the grand, ambitious plans from their New Deal glory days. Take Obama’s promises to create a foreclosure prevention fund, which got whittled down to HAMP, a mostly impotent refinance scheme that seems to have been designed more for banks than borrowers (despite large Democratic majorities). I’m sure it was better than whatever the Republicans would have come up with, but I doubt that mattered to people who were two months behind on an underwater mortgage.
Biden and Harris started with a strong vision, but they couldn’t get it through Congress and instead pivoted to telling people that actually, they were doing great, and the economy was good again. That will always be a losing message with people who aren’t doing well. The Democrats need to double down on a progressive message that does not compromise, with bold plans like a $20 minimum wage indexed to inflation, Medicare for All, and UBI. If they keep tinkering around the margins and giving people statistics when they say they’re doing poorly financially they will never be relevant again.
I agree with you that the Biden/Harris approach to economics is dead. There are virtually no voters left in the middle, so shifting to the right doesn’t help the Democrats like it used to. I also think the policies you propose will help a significant share of voters.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
Another worry I have is that the Trump government will be more evil and less like a shitshow than his previous stint. Unfortunately, I think many voters will get behind evil stuff like rounding up migrants if it’s done in an organised manner.
I think you’re right about Trump. I think he was a shit-show last time because he didn’t expect to (or, in my opinion, want to) win, and now he has an apparatus that is set up to enable him. I’m very afraid of what a competent fascist movement looks like.
Communication is certainly a problem for Democrats; Trump was able to talk for 3 hours on Rogan, while Harris went on Call Her Daddy for less than s full episode and told a well rehearsed anecdote I’d heard twice before. They’re too obsessed with legacy media and polish to sound authentic. But the platform has to come first. If they fix every problem with this campaign’s communication in 2028 but run another middle-class opportunity platform with Mark Cuban, they will lose.
The bigger issue is communication. If these policies aid a significant part of voters, how can we convince them of this in the face of the right wing propaganda machine? That battle is as important as the policy platform, and it’s a very tricky challenge to overcome.
I think a big part of this comes down to the messenger here. The Democrats need a charismatic individual who is credible to voters. Unfortunately, they’ve only got Bernie to fit the bill for someone who had half a chance at being electable, and the DNC did everything they could to sideline him whenever they had the chance. Instead, they trot out establishment, corporatist party members and policy wonks to get the messaging out, or do absolutely baffling stuff, like sending Ritchie Torres to campaign for them in Michigan. It’s bad enough to send out bland candidates who may have a less than stellar recording for really fighting for the working class and holding the line to get them what they need, but for a key swing state with a huge Muslim population that has signalled many times they may not vote for Harris because she hasn’t indicated any shift in her policy on Gaza, you send the most rabidly Zionist, anti-Palestinian Rep you could pull from the Democratic bench? That’s an absolute own goal. It’s like sending a rep named Che Castro that tweets constantly on ending the embargo on Cuba to stump for you in Miami, then wondering why Cuban voters went to the other guy.
Unfortunately, I think it will really take a while for the Democrats to dig themselves out of this hole and have someone with a record long enough for people to find them credible when they say they’re going to fight for the working class as the rule, rather than the pleasantly surprising exception.
Newspaper and politicians are never going to challenge capitalism.
Let voters get what they deserve.
Republican voters are the biggest simps for big business that I’ve ever seen. It’s like if slaves in America cheered on the confederacy during the Civil War.
