How to Make People Care About Democratic Achievements
Senator Charles Schumer escorts President Joe Biden through the US Capital. Photo by The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Democrats are having a particularly successful term in the White House. For the first two years of the Joe Biden presidency, they passed a considerable number of social programs. Biden enacted a large spending bill to help alleviate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic early in his presidency. He then passed a law to reduce the impact of climate change and inflation the next year. Biden has taken substantial steps to regulate various industries and reduce student loan payments.
However, it seems as though no one cares about these Democratic accomplishments. Joe Biden still has a dismal approval rating. The generic ballot, a valuable indicator for congressional races, gives Republicans a one-point advantage. A large majority of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track economically and that Joe Biden is doing nothing to fix it. Most notably, a poll last month showed Americans disapproving of Biden’s handling of unemployment, a statistic that is at its lowest point in years.
Every liberal pundit has their own opinion for what Democrats should be doing differently. Some believe the party needs to lean heavily on culture war topics to counteract the mean-spirited authoritarianism of the other party. Others believe Democrats need to focus more on issues that improve the perceived standard of living among Americans, such as housing prices and inefficient government services.
These suggestions, along with continued economic prosperity, may be helpful to improve Joe Biden’s poll numbers. But it is clear that there is another way that may be needed to help spread the word about Democratic successes over the past two years.
Ever since the ascendancy of Donald Trump, Republicans have complained about the cultural power of Democrats. They have expanded the term “elite” to mean anyone with a job in the arts or important educational institutions. This idea vastly overestimates the strength of cultural leaders as opposed to the many millionaires and billionaires who call the Republican Party home.
But it is naïve to think that Democrats have no power whatsoever by being overrepresented in cultural fields. Indeed, these men and women have strength in the political field. When Taylor Swift talks, her fans listen. When the makers of famed television shows and movies craft a message, it can be disseminated to millions of people who discuss it endlessly in tweets and TikTok videos.
The power of culture is further bolstered by the affluent nature of new Democratic and swing voters. Upper-middle-class suburban voters were in many cases recent Republicans. They need to be convinced to keep turning out again and again for Democratic policies. These men and women need reasons to vote against their economic interest in lower taxes and more policies to help their 401(k)s. They also can only be so interested in culture war issues, since Joe Biden has proven himself to be a reluctant force on issues of race, policing, or gender identity.
What Democrats like Joe Biden need is a full-scale buy-in from Hollywood and new media companies for their accomplishments. They need advertisements, videos with YouTube personalities, and documentaries highlighting Democratic achievements. They must form groups that push back against political nihilism and third party spoilers. Most importantly, these groups need to emphasize the likelihood of Donald Trump’s election in 2024. People need to start paying attention, organizing, and working for the party now. The conventions are too late to build momentum for the kind of effort that will be needed to carry Biden over the finish line.
Democrats hate the disingenuous rhetoric Republicans have used over the past seven years to paint believers in liberal causes as “elites.” But a few Democrats are actually elites. They can influence millions of people with a song or a short video. Democrats need these people to use their power to tout the accomplishments of Democrats and make a second Biden term possible. He will need all the help he can get.
One thing that I’ve seen over and over and over and over again is “why do Americans think that the economy is bad? Look at this green line! IT’S GOING UP!”
The dishonest people making this argument just explain stuff about propaganda. The somewhat more honest ones acknowledge that, yes, inflation did go up a while back and, while the inflation was transitory, it’s back down again. The ones who are a little more honest than that also acknowledge that, yes, inflation didn’t reverse at all. The prices went up and stayed up.
BUT!!! THEY’VE STOPPED GOING UP SO QUICKLY!, they point out.
I’m not sure that not acknowledging this won’t change a whole lot of minds.
But maybe we could dig up Will.I.Am to do a Biden video. Is the cast of West Wing doing anything? Where’s Lena Dunham?Report
I thought this was just a clever Jaybird comment and then I actually read the article:
“What Democrats like Joe Biden need is a full-scale buy-in from Hollywood and new media companies for their accomplishments.”
How can anyone who lived through 2016 even think this?? Are you legitimately nuts? The Democrats’ constant appeal to celebrity cost Hillary the election. “Vote for us, because the celebrities you hate like us” is not a campaign strategy.Report
Here’s Gal Gadot and a handful of other notable celebrities singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
They were singing it for Covid, but “imagine” if they were singing it for Joe Biden!
Report
Well the rub here is that prices going down across the board, aka deflation, is typically an economic catastrophe. People (and businesses) put off buying and investing until later hoping prices will continue to decline. Unemployment skyrockets. Economies contract and generally everyone has a bad time.
So you can’t very well make the prices go back down.Report
Sure, okay, fine.
But something like “Look, I know that prices have gone up and most people haven’t had their wages go up the same amount and that is causing a lot of consternation and resulting in people thinking that the economy isn’t doing great” would be better than “Why do people think that the economy is bad? Look at this green line!”Report
Well… ok… maybe… but… a lot of people have had their wages go up by the same amount, or more. Especially in the lower income quintiles. For example, one of the lowest tiers of earners — people making an average of $12.50 per hour nationally — saw their pay grow nearly 6 percent from 2020 to 2022, even after factoring in inflation.
The people who got the inflation oar across their faces were more the higher earners who happen to also be a lot noisier.Report
Here’s the numbers that I got. Last month. July.
So we look at that and we can say: “Wow! 2.2% year-over-year gain in real average hourly earnings!”
Or we can say “before that had been in negative territory for nearly two years, as workers’ raises were not enough to keep up with sky-high inflation.”
It seems quite likely to me that people who had been in negative territory for nearly two years are probably not quite ready to say “well, hey, now I’m 2.2% better off!”
“But they’ve been better off since *MAY*!” is a decent enough argument, I guess. But I see it having a lot in common with the whole “look at this green line!” argument.
(And among the people who understand green lines, you have to deal with the whole issue of people who remember the “this inflation is transitory” argument. “Pent-up demand!”)Report
Yes, well the “this inflation is transitory” people have the same egg on their face that the “this inflation will require double digit unemployment to whip” inflation hawks have on theirs. And when one factors in that most inflation hawks also have a tractor trailer load of eggs that should be applied to their faces for saying “Hyperinflation will happen any minute” every since 2008 or so I know who I respect more among the prognosticator green line studying crew.Report
There’s certainly a larger context here where the failure to do adequate stimulus after the financial crisis resulted in something close to a lost decade (obviously experiences vary across generational and economic cohorts). It’s also IMO the soil from which many of today’s eh… counter productive political movements sprang.
It’s clear now that we overshot the mark during covid but I think it was understandable in context. I also think that the generally good macroeconomic news is a sign that this has been managed reasonably well with the powers available to policy makers. Inflation seems to be dying down, and we may even correct without a recession, or without much of one.
The problem (and where I would dispute Chip below) is that sh*t is legitimately way more expensive than it was 2 years ago when we had both massive stimulus on historic low interest rates. People are going to be feeling the adjustment for a while and their experience of it is going to be colored by the weird blip in the middle of the pandemic. That just plain sucks for Biden and there’s no way to get around it, but for the keep on keeping on you recommend above. From a purely policy standpoint the alternative where Trump takes power, cuts taxes again without doing anything on spending thereby exploding the deficit probably brings back massive inflation. It just sucks that there isn’t a catchy message in there to run on.Report
Yes, as usual you and I don’t disagree on much. I feel a certain gratification in that I predicted that Biden would be hands off regarding interest rates, that sharp Fed rate increases would sort inflation out and that matters then proceeded as I had assumed they would.Report
Since 2016 we’ve had about a million thinkpieces and Cletus safaris probing why people vote for Trump/ DeSantis/ Abbot and none of them have ever shown that the economy was a driving factor.
The issues that bring the GOP faithful to their feet and to the polls are culture war issues.
We can see it right here: How many pieces and comments have been written heree at OT by Jaybird, Pinky, Marchmaine or any of the other conservatives, about the economy and how the proposals by the GOP will make it better?
Versus all the comments about book bans, drag queens, or San Francisco crime?
If even-the-reasonable conservatives aren’t interested in economic issues, why would we think the MAGA types are?Report
Dude, I don’t think the Republican Party has *any* good economic proposals.
Leave me out of it.Report
Electoral success does not depend on converting those that cannot be converted, and for voters of that nature I do not think there is any economic news that would result in them voting differently.Report
Chip, I do not vote GOP.
When it comes to the economy, I mostly stick to Econ 101 stuff and you wouldn’t believe who argues against that sort of thing by appealing to morality.
I’m not a “You should vote GOP!” guy.
I’m a “You should understand why other people vote GOP” and “You should vote 3rd Party” guy.
LEGALIZE POT!Report
They’re not going to remember “We’re this close to hyperinflation!” arguments when they see the numbers on the grocery checkout.
But they are going to remember the numbers on the grocery checkout when they encounter the “you’re 2.2% better off!” guy.Report
We were talking about the green line tracking people, Jay me lad, and the only reason they would “not remember” it is because they would prefer not to remember how astronomically and consistently wrong they were.Report
We were talking about them in the context of explaining to people who are still reeling from inflation over the last two years why the economy is actually quite awesome and not understanding why they don’t agree and assuming that it must be because of secret Trumpism. 2.2%!
And you have to dig fairly deep to get to the Austrians. You have to wander past the Monetarists to get to them first and the overwhelming number of people who don’t understand how awesome the economy will never, eeeeeeeever get past the Chicago school.Report
And your alternative given the last three years would have been?Report
Not trying to spin it would probably be the first thing.
Not coming up with new and novel definitions.Report
No, your policy preferences. Because you keep trying to tell us why the policies of the last three years haven’t worked without actually telling us you don’t think they worked.Report
Well, the policy of telling people “inflation is transitory, we’re not in a recession, you’re better off, what are ‘definitions’ anyway?” instead of acknowledging stuff like, yes, things might just be bad is a bad policy.
I would have adopted a policy that would have acknowledged realities instead of denying them.
Hell, maybe doing that while doing the exact same stuff would have helped avoid “they’re lying now as well” sensations at the base of the back of the neck.Report
“a lot of people have had their wages go up by the same amount, or more. Especially in the lower income quintiles.”
welcome to the Republican Party, your complimentary racism is on the table to the leftReport
That’s amusingly incoherent even by the high bar you set for yourself DD.Report
As far as I can tell, this is just folk economics, and the actual reason deflation is associated with recessions that nowadays it’s almost always demand-side deflation, i.e. caused by a contraction in nominal spending. A contraction in nominal spending is bad because it leads to falling nominal incomes, which means that a lot of people won’t be able to meet relatively fixed financial obligations like rent and payroll. This leads to some businesses having to do layoffs, cut wages, or shut down, which exacerbates the decline in nominal spending.
While we rarely see it at an economy-wide in modern times, I believe that historical evidence points to supply-side deflation—where productivity grows so fast that prices fall despite increases in nominal spending—being fairly benign. At a microeconomic level, we don’t generally see rapidly falling prices for particular classes of goods and services—e.g. with computers and electronics—being particularly damaging to those industries.Report
Heh, yeah if someone had a magic wand they could wave to make broad scale productive based deflation occur it’d be a fascinating exercise for economists to study. Barring someone rolling out a cheap effective android laborer or fusion or something I don’t see it happening.Report
I think it’s happened in Singapore a couple of times, and it was much more common under the gold standard, since money supply growth was slow and irregular. But my main point was just that people being unwilling to spend due to anticipation of lower prices in the future is not the actual reason that deflation is associated with recessions.Report
Yes I suppose you have a point that, despite the fact that deflation most commonly occurs as a handmaiden of major economic contractions, it’s far from assured that deflation and economic contractions are inextricably paired.Report
Considering that a lot of recent price hikes were just ‘prices were raised under covid, both for good reasons of manufacturing and shipping cost increasing, and bad reasons just because everyone else was raising prices so others could get away with it and pretend it was due to that (Looking at you, egg people.), and the people who raised prices never lowered them even after those costs have dropped back down’, there’s no reason supply-side ‘deflation’ (Aka, just adjusting things back down where they were) couldn’t happen in theory. And it wouldn’t hurt anything.
It’s not going to happen, but it certainly could, somewhere where the market was not concentrated in so few hands.Report
Haven’t egg prices come back down? I remember eggs being almost $4 a dozen at the grocery store and now they are back down to almost $1 per dozen.Report
Remember $5.00 a gallon gas, which Sarah Hucksterbee Sanders was going on about in her response to the SOTU address when it was already gone?
To be fair, food and fuel prices are more volatile than most, and can go either up or down, largely for reasons having little to do with policy. So people can experience “deflation,” rather than a mere stopping of inflation, in these commodities, though they are commonly slow on the uptake about what they are experiencing in real time. As a result, people can easily be wrong not only about larger trends, but about their own experiences as well.Report
The huge spike in egg prices was caused by avian flu outbreaks at several very large producers. Here in Colorado it was exasperated by a new state law requiring minimum space for layers and reductions in production while facilities were modified. In addition to much higher prices, the egg cases at the supermarket were largely empty except for premium brands.Report
We switched to buying cartons of 18. We also switched away from “just throwing stuff in the cart” to “maybe we should get the other kind”.
I’m told that I should, instead, look at the green line.Report
The huge spike in egg prices was _started_ by avian flu outbreaks.
Fun fact: We had basically the same size avian flu outbreak in 2015. About the same number in total chickens died (50.5 million back then, about 52 million this time)…which is actually less, proportionally.
The link is down below, if if anyone wants to look at what happened then. You’ll notice it not only was a lot smaller spike, but a lot shorter.
And, in fact, what happened in 2015 _was_ shorter. That flu was killed off by summer back in 2015, whereas it continued in 2022.
Which…makes things even weirder, when you think about it. Because surely losing 50 million chickens from May to August should produce a higher price spike than staggering that loss over an entire year. Shouldn’t it?
Yes, yes, egg demand goes up for the holidays (And plummet after), but I also remind people it only take about five months to _grow new egg laying chickens_. Chickens were already being replaced during this.Report
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111Report
Is it “have any”Report
I love your writing in general Eric but I fear you have missed the mark here. I cannot imaging many things less helpful than for the media/cultural elites to try and focus group a large media push to promote Bidens’ candidacy.
I wish I had some better alternatives to offer but I don’t think ol’ Joe is young or nimble enough to try and take on the politically unpopular and right wing signal boosted left wing tropes the keep getting strapped onto his administration. Likewise I don’t see any way that the mainstream medias’ incessant need for false equivalency or a close race can be tempered. The worse the right looks and the more under water their candidate ends up being the harder the “liberal” media will pump them up.
I think Joe just has to soldier through- focus on the productive things he’s been focusing on, by and large, for the last two years and hope that the same adults in the room portion of the electorate that nominated and then elected him in 2016 are paying attention and are appreciative.Report
This is the issue in a nutshell. And with most legacy media in the pockets of bigger corporations requiring ever increasing quarter over quarte profits, this won’t change.Report
I don’t know if I’d blame it predominantly on the profit motive directly. Assuredly clicks/eyeballs do equal both attention and revenue (though I hesitate to use the word profit when talking about the dessicated husk that make up our current mainstream media businesses). I think it’s just as easily cultural, part of the very self serious mental image of themselves that mainstream media organizations have and also part of the ridiculous defensive crouch they assume in the face of perennial right wing claims of bias.Report
Warner Brothers owns CNN. Paramount owns CBS. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Tell me again why quarter over quarter profit growth isn’t a thing for legacy media?Report
I’m very dubious those entities consider their media organ branches major profit centers. Bezos most assuredly didn’t buy the Wapo in pursuit of lucre- he was after prestige.Report
” I cannot imaging many things less helpful than for the media/cultural elites to try and focus group a large media push to promote Bidens’ candidacy.”
I am old enough to remember “vote for the crook, it’s important.” The simplest way to defeat Trump at the Ballot Box is if everyone stopped pompously pontificating and said “Vote for Biden, it’s important.” Stop publishing pieces on Warnock-Whitner in 2024 (today on the Bulwark) or Shapiro in 2024. Or Newsom in 2024. Just stop it. Stop looking doe-eyed at reactionary fascists like Sohab Ahrami and thinking that there can be a red-brown alliance on economic welfare issues (Michelle Goldberg a week or so ago and Sean Illing in Vox today). Just stop it.
But I agree that Joe Biden is the Columbo of PoliticsReport
I remember “Vote for the Crook, its Important” – One of my early elections as a voter in Louisiana. Good times.Report
Nope. Can’t work. “Vote for the crook, it’s important” was on a state level rather than national level. Also the choice was between a generally recognized crook and a generally recognized racist. The racist label has been too degraded both by overuse by the identarian left and by constant attack by the right to have a uniform nationally agreed upon definition.
And for media elites to create something like the example you give they’d need to be able to understand the gettable right wing/leaning voters enough to do so. I see no reason to believe they do/can. Far more likely we’d get some focus grouped mishmash of a media campaign that’d, at best, do nothing and, at worst, would energize Trumpkins while embarrassing leftists and turning off right leaners.Report
” the choice was between a generally recognized crook and a generally recognized racist.”
which one of those was Bernie Sanders?Report
As far as I recall, though I’m not perfect on American history, the Bern never ran for Governor of Louisiana.Report
https://www.newstribune.com/news/2021/jul/18/In-viral-bumper-sticker-man-summed-up-1991-governo/Report
Bernie was the sexist. Probably racist, but definitely sexist.Report
Barring some sort of event, 2024 is going to be Biden-Trump and this seems to upset many elite level people.Report
And yet for all the caterwauling, they either won’t or can’t do anything to change this outcome.Report
Republicans have complained about the cultural power of Democrats for decades.
Good of you to finally notice in the last 7 years.Report
Well maybe if Republicans offered us something other then nihilistic fascism with a healthy does of billionaire worship they might get traction again. Sadly, yammering on about “freedom” and “Liberty” while actually curtailing those things for half of America is no longer the selling point it used to be apparently.Report
I’ve always found this to be an odd complaint from a group that’s held a fair bit of political power for the past 30 years. Does it really matter if conservative views get made fun of by Hollywood movies?Report
Well, if you are a conservative snowflake, apparently it does.Report
You were just whining about the mainstream press being too favorable to conservatives like five comments ago.Report
UM nope. Try again.Report
August 31, 2023 at 9:30 am
Was that too long ago?Report
You really don’t so nuance much do you? My main complaint is about the false equivalency the MSM tends to demonstrate. That doesn’t make them too favorable to conservatives. It makes them cowards. Say what you will about Fox News, OAN and the like, but they aren’t trying to make false equivalencies. Of course they also don’t seem to deal in observable facts much either, but I digress.Report
I appreciate the nuance within the argument you were making. Do you appreciate the blunt partisanship within it? Let’s be real about the context here. North and Eric were debating optimal strategy for the Democrats.Report
Yes, and none of their optimal strategies will work in the modern media environment because the legacy media won’t tell the actual truth.Report
Liberal control of Hollywood isn’t an insurmountable barrier for conservatives, but it’s a barrier. I mean, since 1994 (so there’s your 30 years, just about), both parties have been at near parity.Report
The big story for me over those 30 years is how close the two parties have been over that time despite an enormous geographic change. 30 years ago the Midwest was a Democratic stronghold and the Republicans dominated the West. Today, that situation has largely reversed. Not completely, at least not yet.Report
We need to start acknowledging what polls really measure. “How satisfied are you with President Biden’s handling of unemployment?” isn’t what it looks like. It’s more like a combination of:
how satisfied are you?
how satisfied are you with the economy?
how satisfied are you with unemployment?
how satisfied are you with your employment status?
how satisfied are you with Biden?
how satisfied are you with Biden’s handling of the economy?
how satisfied you you with Biden’s handling of unemployment?
how angry are you?Report
Yeah, there is a phenomenon out there that reads the question “Do you support Biden’s policy on Kidney Dialysis Machines?” and automatically answers “YES!” or “NO!” because they see the question as “Do you support Biden?”
Is Biden’s position on Kidney Dialysis Machines good? Darned if I know! I have no idea whether he even has one (let alone what it is).
I think it’s kind of interesting that, for a few cycles at least, the question “Do you think your neighbors support Biden’s policy on Kidney Dialysis Machines?” got something closer to an “honest” result for the question of “Do you support Biden’s KDM policy?”Report
That’s been a known thing forever. I recall learning in a Sociology class about four decades ago that in the early days of TV commercials, surveys were done asking people if their purchases were influenced by the commercials they saw, and they largely responded No. However, it was clear from the actual sales bumps after a TV ad campaign that there was plenty of influence. When the surveys asked if people thought their friends and neighbors were influenced by the ads, the results were much more inline with the sales numbers.Report
Heh. “One poll respondent always tells the truth, and one always lies, but you don’t know which. How do you frame the poll question to get a correct answer?”Report
Now that you mention it, this is a difference I’ve noted with polling here vs the US (we’re six weeks out from our election so there’s a lot of polling going on right now). We basically don’t have the polls that ask about specific aspects of policy quite so much. The polls tend to focus on just which party you support and preferred Prime Minister.
I wonder if that’s due to our smaller size making polling more expensive, or whether those other types of polls are seen as less useful.Report
I think that “Do you support (politician’s) stance on (policy)?” questions are pretty much useless.
I think that “Do you think we should legalize pot?” kinda questions might hint toward usefulness.Report
The irony is, actual polling on people’s economics own well-being is very positive. They just think the economy in general is somehow bad, which gets in the way of the “it’s all about higher grocery costs” argument.Report
Maybe its not the economy, stupid.
If economic issues were driving people to the polls, we would expect to see clever politicians reaping electoral success with stump speeches about prosperity and bullet pointed plans similar to Reagan’s appeal in 1980.
But, when was the last time any of the leading opposition figures made the economy part of their campaign messaging?
Its all Woke beer, Drag Queens, Woke Corporations, CRT, and Woke Abortion nonstop 24/7.
What seems noteworthy is not just the low amount of popular support Biden and Trump have, but how rock-steady the numbers are, how unaffected they are by events.
Impeachment, indictment, inflation rising or falling, unemployment rising or falling, a global pandemic arriving then departing….None of these events have change the level of support significantly for either candidate.
And in fact, they haven’t changed the political landscape much at all, for any candidates at any level.
Since 2016, Congress is still balanced on a knife edge, the statehouses have shifted only slightly and neither party can command an overwhelming lead on any issue.
The only factor to break this pattern is abortion, which is shaping up to be the only issue which has the power to shift votes.Report
Yes, and we also should keep in mind that Biden doesn’t win or lose in a vacuum. It won’t be Biden vs Johnny Unbeatable. It’ll be Biden vs whomever the GOP nominates (seemingly Trump at the moment).Report
A good number of liberals or left-leaning voters think that it is too depressing that someone can see socially reactionary views and/or white, Christian nationalism as being in their economic self-interest, so they don’t think about it.Report
This is very true.Report
Here’s an article from July 26th of this year: As inflation falls, GOP may have to rethink attacks on Biden economy.
Here’s an article from August 13th of this year: GOP candidates attack Biden’s economic policies but offer few details on how they’d do better.
I don’t know whether it’d be cheating to include stuff from Vox or The New Republic or those guys. Mainstream will have to do.
“Why aren’t they attacking him on the economy?”
“Um. They are attacking him on the economy. They’ve adopted Biden’s phrase ‘Bidenomics’ and they’re using it to talk about the price of Cheez-its.”Report
Yep, my point exactly.
They mutter and mumble vague whinging about how bad things are, but even the base isn’t motivated by the economic non-message. They don’t care, and the base doesn’t care.
But Woke Drag Queens barging into little girls’bathrooms?
OH HELL YEAH!! They are all-in on that.
For that matter, how many times in the Open threads have you posted something about the economy, versus San Francisco crime or immigration or Bud Light?Report
Biden’s approval is at 42%.
My posts about San Francisco are about stuff like San Francisco’s economic problems which include corporations moving out. I can provide links to those discussions, if you want. I talk about stuff like “Doom Loops”.
As for Bud Light, it mentions stuff like “Bud Light selling less” and “Bud Light having layoffs”.
Culture war stuff? It ain’t measurable.
Numbers? Ah… now *THOSE* can be measured and compared from week to week and month to month.Report
I’m just saying that almost no one cares about the economy, even right here at OT.
And even when people talk about it, there really isn’t a partisan divide.
Do the conservatives here at OT, or anywhere else, have a different idea about what to do about inflation, than the lliberals?
Not so’ as I can see.
But count the comments about culture war stuff, and see the divide…Report
Do you want me to link to our arguments over whether or not we were in a recession and watch what some people did to argue against the whole “two consecutive quarters with negative growth” thing?
Because that happened.
Do you want some posts that talk about making good meals for not a whole lot of money? I’ve got a couple.
How’s about comment threads discussing how transitory the inflation is? We’ve got those too.Report
“Are we in a recession” is just a high toned version of “Does Joe Brandon’s economy suck”?
Do you and Saul disagree over how to avoid a recession?
Do Pinky and I disagree over how to curb inflation?
Yes, but only in slight and petty ways.
The Cold War battles over economic theory are over and done with.Report
No, it’s not.
I mean, if the only thing that you can see is “culture war” and you don’t remember anything that is not “culture war”, it’s probably confusing to see something that is asking a measurable question about things that could be measured.
“They only want to measure these things because of culture war!”, I could see someone like that concluding.Report
Again, not confusing in the slightest. I remember the discussion very well.
You never in those discussions articulated any position on economic theory which was any different than Phillip’s or for that matter, Joe Biden’s.
Disagreeing over where we are in a recession or not is, as I said, a petty and wonkish dispute.
Seriously, no one here disagrees very much on how best to manage the economy.Report
We were not only disagreeing over whether we were in a recession but over how recessions were measured and whether the measurement that had been in use for years and years shouldn’t be abandoned now that it was inconvenient.
Which is a significantly different discussion than the one you remember.
But, again, if the only thing that you can see is “culture war” and you don’t remember anything that is not “culture war”, it’s probably confusing to see something that is asking a measurable question about things that could be measured.Report
The disagreement was over whether the one measure commonly used to show a recession could be considered accurate when all the other measures of the economy were showing the opposite of recession. So it was very much about what could be measured and how to interpret those measures.
Now, the disagreement is over messaging, and feelings and qualitative things not quantitative things. And here we do see differences in policy across OT and in meat space.
Some of that messaging is indeed built on culture war issues – things like Democrats are out to destroy America, and Inflation was transitory (which it turns out it was) even though prices are not coming down. A lot of what passes for conservative thought here, however, seems to be people looking at corporate profit taking, looking at the loss of their perceived social and economic status, and being afraid.
Democrats can and should totally help out with that – I’ve said for years that Democrats are not perceived as “fighters” because they don’t bring passion or any other emotion to these type of discussions. But when all the measures of the economy are aligned – as they are now – and they are all positive, expecting people to just ignore that news and coddle fearful people is a bit much don’t ya think?Report
You can find economists even with the same political party having that exact sort of discussion.
That’s “wonkery”.Report
I mean, the base isn’t. Republicans think they are, and the elected officials managed to create a lot of noise there, but it’s simply not playing.
You can find polls that voters on average slightly agree with the Republican position, and Republican voters are like 70% in favor or something, I’m not going to bother to find actual polls, but those very same polls indicate it is of almost no important to those voters at all, they simply don’t care despite the incredible PR push by basically the entire Republican machine…and meanwhile it’s often incredibly important to voters who hold the opposite position (Because, you know, it’s an open assault on them or their friends and family), so all those laws actually does is increase turnout of people who hate you.
Everyone sees Republicans massively and quickly pivoting to some issue, and think that issue must be a great idea for them, but there’s literally no evidence at all that the base is caring about this, and plenty of evidence they aren’t. Just look at the Iowa thing recently…now, admittedly, that was a _fake_ trans issue that actually existed to try to help ban abortion, but…it didn’t play. Even with their base.
And the thing is, Republicans have done this so quickly and overwhelmingly that there hasn’t really been an election cycle, or at least, there hasn’t actually been one after the impact has really been felt and people started caring about it, and it’s just sort ‘incumbents that voted for it get reelected to state legislator’ stuff that doesn’t really prove anything, especially with the jerrymandering that tends to happen at that level. (And honestly, so much of it got struck down, so quickly, it’ not going to ever have an impact.)
I mean, I guess the closest test we’ve got in DeSantis, but…there’s a bunch of reasons we can point to that caused his burn-out as a candidate. But being anti-trans sure as hell didn’t save him.
So why do Republicans think it’s a winning issue? I…don’t really have an answer besides the hypothetical that there’s some consultant, some entity out there, that has given Republicans some advice that would be hilarious bad if it wasn’t so harmful.Report
Since all of those pivots are about establishing and normalizing minority control of the population, the politicians don’t actually care about the base.Report
“Most notably, a poll last month showed Americans disapproving of Biden’s handling of unemployment, a statistic that is at its lowest point in years.”
One of the simple truisms of modernity(tm) is that we’re very, very slow to update our metrics. So, employment is a ‘good’ metric in that it’s better to be employed rather than un-employed. But what it fails to measure is whether people are satisfied with their compensation.
People on this very site will point out how gains from productivity are shifting upwards at rates not commensurate with past metrics (and I agree!) — but that’s a big part of how you can see employment as a metric no longer tracking with satisfaction with the economy.
Increasingly, employment is seen more as a lottery system and not as what we might call meritocratic solidarity. There is a very real phenomenon where people slide ‘backwards’ in their employment prospects even as they become more skilled and experienced. We used to chalk it up to outsourcing, but three or four decades later? It’s not simply outsourcing. And it’s honestly kinda terrifying to a lot of people. A lot of employed people.
A real Bidenomics would look at this and build a message/program/plan around it… instead it’s easier to cobble together [old] metrics in new graphs in a .ppt and have shiny happy lottery winners tell us how its all good.
[Bracketing the other aspects pointed out above about any question is simply a referendum on the name Biden, and not necessarily a well reasoned Economic Theory about Wealth and Labor].Report
Here’s a fun thread from the perspective of “everything is great, people feel bad about the economy because of media narratives!”
Click through and read the whole thing.
For my part, I find this spectacularly unpersuasive and quite deserving of a “check your privilege”. But you should read it yourself to see a full-throated defense of Bidenomics. Who knows? You might find an angle that hadn’t occurred to you yet.Report
I can’t read the whole thing because I don’t X or Tweet or whatever the word is this week.
I’ll just refer you back to this quote above:
People internalize media messages that fly in the face of measurable trends all the time. Fox News practically lives in this arena. So I’m not sure what you are s=really showing us, other then your priors that you don’t believe the sociology.Report
I don’t want you to miss out.
Here’s the whole thing:
It’s the third one there that gets me.
I’m not sure about “gradual” and I’m not sure that “went up and then leveled off” will result in “adjusting your view of Biden” the way he wants it adjusted in. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure it won’t and I find it kind of baffling that he thinks that it’s obvious that people will appreciate Biden for the price of groceries going up and then leveling off.Report
You are so missing the forest for the trees. What he’s saying (which Chip and I and Lee and Saul and even Brandon have all said) is that most voters are low information, they are low time available to invest, and thus they ARE NOT tracking these things nor will they ever. So they will default to the heuristics in the memes because that’s all they have time for. He is also noting that the Heuristics will send people to memes that confirm their priors.
As an example:
Few people are as ONLINE as OT people, and even fewer are as ONLINE in the way you are. So trying to push his Tweet (Or X or whatever) through the lens of how Jay would interpret it – where you are focused on the measurable economic indicators – isn’t in the top 500 targets he’s aiming at intellectually.Report
I might even agree with the whole “default to heuristics” thing.
I just also think that the price of groceries are a meme and a heuristic.Report
That’s his point.
People won’t look past tiny slices of data – memes, certain prices – because they have no context for the looking. SO its all noise . . .Report
And I think that the context of “but look how much better CEOs are doing! Look at the green line!” is weighted incorrectly.Report
I agree. Still not his point.Report
Especially Brandon. I’ve been beating the voter ignorance drum since long before it was cool. I’m a hipster for elitism.Report
You are also a hipster (if memory serves) for voting tests, of the kind that used to be used to keep black men out of the voting booth.Report
Kevin Drum offers a curious counterpoint
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-joe-bidens-job-approval-at-the-end-of-august/
Though I suppose we on the left count retort that Bidens’ administration is suffering neither the slow recovery difficulties that Obama suffered or the rampant corruption, scandal and chaos that Trump brought in with him so he should have a higher rating? But I think that Drums’ point is that, at our current level of political polarization, high approval ratings should be considered rather unusual.Report
Not that anyone in the administration should be remotely complacent about the situation but that sounds right to me.Report
Of course not. Their JOB is to be working this.If Biden was polling at 95% I’d want them scrambling for that missing 5%.Report
Earlier, Michael Cain made a comment about how surprising it is that both parties have maintained parity while shifting locations. While parties have principles (no, really), their main priority is to maximize performance of their party. If a modern president had 60% approval rating and he could lose 5 points in exchange for something that would help gain a Senate seat, it’s the right play. If a candidate can ignore Iowa to pick up New Hampshire for an overall gain in delegates, it’s the right play. We have parties and candidates with low popularity winning by one vote or holding a house of Congress by one member because it’s efficient. (It also works against national unity.)Report
Absolutely that’s a significant consideration. It’s not a simple system.Report
There’s an inverse aspect to that though too. Either party would probably trade 5% in name your red or blue lopsided safe state for 5% in Michigan, for example. Regarding the presidency I think how Biden is doing nationally is a lot less important than how he is doing in the upper midwest, the southwest, and Georgia.Report
Yup. And this tells people in 45 or so states that public officials don’t care about them. Everything about the current “game” is sacrificing long-term unity for short-term points.
Also, and this isn’t the important part, but it’s not even effective short-term, because if you play all 48 minutes you’re going to hit some shots you’d never expect. There are no unwinnable states.Report
I think that holds true for Congress and pretty much all state offices. One of the less good developments over the last bunch of years I think has been for Republicans to stop meaningfully contesting urban and/or heavy blue districts. The GOP gubernatorial suicide by primary debacle we just had in Maryland comes to mind (I totally would have voted for Schultz on a 4 more years of Hogan platform btw). The same is true about Democrats running in the midwest or south on the same kinds of platforms they would in cities and suburbs on the coasts. No one is kept honest and we’re governed worse for it.
The presidency I think may be a bit of a different beast, due to the electoral college.Report
I have to admit that there are some unwinnable seats and probably a lot of mayorships. I don’t know about the platforms. I think in a lot of cases it’s just an unqualified, unfunded candidate.
ETA: Also, the kind of person who runs in a heavily-unfavored scenario is probably an ideologue.Report
As math, that’s unexceptionable. But how do you do that?Report