Opinion | Voters punished Biden for problems he didn’t cause and effectively addressed
msnbc.com
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.
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?
Literacy info.
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.
::: spoiler ¯_(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 :::
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.
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.
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.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED349475.pdf
Very interesting. Surely we can trust our current crop of billionaires to do better for society!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's an understatement. Source: Live in America.
The issue with politics is that you don't just have to address a problem, you also need to publicize what you did.
Maybe the dems did effectively address some problems, but they did a poor PR jobs out of it.
Outrageous lies are what make the news.
Yeah, somehow trump doesn’t have a credibility problem despite being a pathological liar and I don’t think it was possible for the democrats to effectively counter that when he’s not being held accountable. We need live fact checking in debates and he needs to be publicly called out every time he lies, but then he just won’t agree to the debate and will go hold a town hall on Fox News.
He does have a credibility problem, AND is a liar. His base doesn't care. People idolize celebrities, musicians, even models. I feel like this is the first time I've seen people swoon this hard over a politician, and it blows other fandoms away in fealty and dedication.
I agree that he has no credibility, but can it really be considered a problem for him if his base outright refuses to hold him accountable for lying through his teeth whenever he opens his mouth? They don’t care what he does, so his credibility is not a problem for them (it certainly is for me though).
It's high time the Dems stooped to this level. That and promote ragebait podcasts pushing their agenda. It's sad, but you can't argue with the results.
So many of the problems Dems want to address are so easy to sell too. It's like they don't actually want to win or achieve anything, they're content to be a permanent minority opposition party that continues fundraising and campaigning ad infinitum.
Sadly yes..
Dems quietly fix things, Repubs loudly claim credit, even when they actively obstructed the fixes. There are uncountable examples of Republican legislators patting themselves on the back for getting legislation passed that actively helps their constituents, when in fact they voted against it. It passed despite them, not because of them, but they still campaign on it and win because of it. Meanwhile Democrats are generally helpful and honest and get the shaft because they don't call out that bullshit and claim their wins as they should.
It's also true in many tertiary jobs too, communication of what you made matters at least as much as what you made.
For sure, this is a hard lesson learned for me - it doesn't matter if you're doing good work if no one knows about it, so if you want to be rewarded for your work you'll have to spend less time actually doing it and more time doing marketing for what you've done.
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies and used the FTC to implement things like click-to-cancel, and invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing. Oh and he also tried to pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and everyone is upset he didn't magically fix everything all at once.
Bidens problem has been one of messaging. He didn't know how to connect with the voters to get them to understand all the things he was doing.
I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren't that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn't expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don't think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn't take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn't drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I've tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn't want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I'd say "be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn't acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers."
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I'm worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don't matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
Apparently, America's economy seems to be driven only by fear or greed
I'm ootl, what monopolies got broken up? I tried looking it up but it's not returning results.
He could have ran on it more. Trump understands the art of putting his name on the checks.
Call Americans stupid, and we are, but I wish the party that was helping people was a bit more grandious and better about messaging then they are.
It's also pretty hard to point to things and go "see? remember the thing we did 10 years ago? this is the effect it had!"
Many of Biden's policies will come to fruition during the next term and Trump will falsely claim responsibility because he can point to it right away.
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.
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:
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:
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:
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?
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.
Well said
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.
...OK, I'm fairly sure I understood...most of that. Thanks for the alternative perspective. I've generally only heard the negatives from people who've had their pensions replaced by 401Ks, so I guess it's good to know what people see as the positives.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Newspaper and politicians are never going to challenge capitalism.
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.
Honestly Democrat are absolutely horrible at talking to people.
I'll be the first to admit, Biden did actually do a lot for workers but just like the leader of the painters union said, y'all fucking suck at telling people that.
I mean look at the rail workers strike, Biden stopped the rail workers strike and didn't address one of the biggest things they were looking for, just to be treated like humans and have sick leave.
There was lots of talk about "doing this for the best of the nation", which okay I could get behind, sure they got a wage increase but I did as shit could understand why rank and file would feel betrayed when they were asking additional to be treated as humans that get sick.
What I didn't hear him or anyone say to them directly, that he was still going to work with the unions afterwards to get sick leave in. Why would you not say that at the same time as you announce your blocking the strike? Cost you nothing to say you have their back.
So then months later, with Biden administration support finally got the workers PTO but no one really knew about it because the moment was gone and honestly union leadership also did a shit job of getting that word out too.
It's not the only thing but it certainly is a big factor in things.
Biden and the Dems saved the teamsters' pensions against the GOP's best efforts and it didn't even earn them an endorsement from the teamsters' union.
This was highly publicized, especially if you yourself were in the union
Internal polling of Teamsters members showed:
In an electronic poll conducted after the Republican National Convention, 59.6% of rank-and-file Teamsters favored endorsing Trump, while 34% supported Harris.
A more recent poll indicated a similar trend, with Teamsters backing Trump 58% to 31%
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
Bingo.
Or scrolling their feeds. Or swiping. Depending on the age. Every single Democrat leader needs to see that statistic, so they can stop whining about how policy was their problem.
Democrats are messaging like it's 1950. And hot take, but the only thing that elected Biden was COVID-19, only because it wedged itself into people's lives like absolutely nothing else can.
Hence, Democrats suck a propaganda.
They should field and finance their own radio jockeys and be flooding the airways with their own counter messages, but instead they've abandoned that terrain to the right and now are paying for it.
Something that piece of shit David Frum said on his Twitter once regarding the rightwing/leftwing media system was 'the left is awash with talent but has no funding while thr right is awash with funding but has no talent'.
Kamala had a billion dollars. Progressives have a deep ecosystem of independent media that establishment Democrats undermine at every opportunity. Democrats were hand in hand with Republicans in pushing social media "reforms" that today promote media like FOX News as trustworthy over progressive media sources. The Democrats create their own weakness.
Conservative messaging wins propaganda battles because it's simple. Democrats can't use the same tactics, because they'll be less effective no matter what. Preventing consolidation of media and monopolization of media would be more effective, since it's a centrally coordinated effort. Or just preventing anybody from having enough money that they'd even have the ability to do that.
I agree with you for the most part. That being said I have tried to explain this point to multiple people and they don't care that the Biden admin got the rail workers what they asked for. They insist that stopping the strike means Biden was anti union full stop even after the IBEW put out releases thanking the Biden admin. they also said it was just propaganda. It's just as much about people not wanting to listen.
Workers were asking for 15 days of sick leave, Congress and Biden gave them 1 with the act that ended the strike. Later, the railroads continued negotiating with some of the unions and gave them four days of sick leave. People from the Biden administration were present for those conversations and take credit for that.
So, no, the Biden administration did not give the unions what they asked for, and yes they likely did do material harm to them by stopping that strike.
They didn't get what they wanted though. The points system still is in place that limits the ability to use leaves. The "sick leave" still required notice, so all it did was allow doctor visits to not take PTO, provided the worker could afford the points.
I can't find a solid confirmation but it looks like as part of the law killing the strike and enacting the recommendations of the emergency board, the attendance rules creating points was vacated without further agreements from the unions. So from what I can tell, your statement is incorrect. I looked up the emergency board's recommendations but I didn't do a deep dive into the law to confirm. Link to the recommendations below.
https://nmb.gov/NMB_Application/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PEB-250-Report-and-Recommendations.pdf
Yeah, hence why I say that union leadership has to do some work here too.
I've worked with the machinists union during a statewide right to work ballot initiative to overturn the legislatures recently passed right to work bill.
So much conversation about how "we have to strike out down!" But at the same breath talk about voting Republican. Well that's what they did, killed right to work, elected more Republicans to the state legislature.
Cue shocked Pikachu face when the people they voted in immediately submitted a bill to enact right to work.
I mean what the fuck is union leadership doing at that point when you can't get your own members to not fuck themselves over?
One angle that might explain the lack of media coverage on a win for the working class against the interest of capital owners is that the media itself, at least the mainstream slice of it, is owned by the capitalist class.
MSM will cover things if they think it'll bring in more ratings. You see it with how many news outlets are treating the upcoming Trump administration. For Cons, they're banking on a viewer base that'll be more interested in Trump coverage. For Dems, they're banking on a viewer base that'll be more hateful and agree of Trump coverage.
So when you have wins for the working class that Biden's administration directly helped with, and when you have a media industry that just won't cover it out of their own self-interest, you have to wonder if the administration will spend Americans' on advertising or just keep it and move on.
One might say that the best time to do that advertising is during an election campaign though. And that begs the question as to why Biden nor Harris brought this up in their campaigns.
Might it be that those groups are also subject to the capitalist class?
Oh yeah, that was s give amount of PTO. 😶
Voters are pretty stupid. Seriously, the misinformation and willful ignorance on display is breathtaking.
…no.
The DNC brain trust thought they could get away with ignoring an absolutely fucking HUGE part of their base. And they were fucking WRECKED for it.
Trump got just about the same number of votes as he did in the last election. Harris got 11M less votes than Biden got. ELEVEN. MILLION. PEOPLE. STAYED THE FUCK HOME. BECAUSE THEY SAW THE ESTABLISHMENT CIRCLEJERK. AND HARRIS FUCKING LEANED INTO IT. AND IGNORED THE VERY FUCKING REAL LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS GETTING HOLLOWED OUT, AND THE LOWER CLASS CONTINUING TO GET CRUSHED TO DEATH.
And now we get to listen to pundits and DNC leadership and Biden admin people and Harris campaign people circlejerk themselves about how it wasn’t their fault, it was those goddamn progressives and the stupid Arab Americans who cared about Gaza too much.
Genuinely: fuck all the way off with that narrative. the Democratic Party snatched this defeat from the jaws of victory. There was a path to victory. They simply didn’t fucking take it.
The DNC is working for their rich donors and doing a pretty decent job for them. They shouldn't act so surprised that people who aren't benefiting from the economy don't come out to support them.
Exactly, who thought it was a good idea to campaign with the fucking Cheneys???????
The same people who thought it was a good idea to run Biden again
The same party that thought Biden, whose career goals were the mass proliferation of student loans AND the legislation around making them forgiveable/dischargeable almost impossible, was a great symbol of student loan forgiveness.
Yes they tried but i mean how long can you campaign on tried? Doesn't matter because this election they didn't and it showed.
I think the bigger picture to look at, rather than who doesn't vote Dem, is to look at who didn't vote period and ask why. Why are almost 200 million people choosing not to vote. Why did 280 million people either not vote/not vote Dem?
The GOP/Republican party have abandoned any attempts to govern decades ago and now simply want to rule. Until things like citizens United are repealed there's no real way to fight through this because the waters are so muddy.
Nailed it
they raised over a billion dollars to make it happen.. that's just bad management
That too - how in the fuck is the campaign 20M in debt?
thank fuck there’s at least one other angry & correct person online
you don’t get to capitulate to donald trump’s racist violent classist framing on everything for years and be held blameless after the fact.
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.
This is how you win an election.
I'm under no obligation to be kind to stupid people that degrade our quality of life with their ignorant decisions.
Don't be. Being an asshole wins elections. They are deplorable and they are making you be this way. It's their fault. If they were just to follow the rules you wouldn't be an awful person. You're a hero.
Holy shit, a true clown-troll account made specifically because of the results of a political election. Get a fucking life or even just a singular hobby to better waste your time with.
The working class didn't come out in droves, it was the same fucking numbers. Republicans are taught at a very young age it was their duty to vote, it's ingrained in a lot of the family structure while the left/progressive stems more from active engagement and a distrust in the political system.
If you think Biden stepped down just because he was "too old", you slept through the past year. It was a valid concern and still is as the sitting administration, it's even more concerning we're about to have the oldest elected person in history in fucking 2024.
Economics hardship was already here, that's probably what pissed me off the greatest about this last election cycle. "They're going to come after us if you don't vote!" removed, hey've been coming for us, everyone is just pretending it's important now.
Lol. I created this account the day after the election because I know the cesspool Reddit is about to become (already kind of was). Your little whiny bitch opinion about why I'm here means jack shit to me, loser.
Millions of people is droves, you dumbfuck. Working class people came out in droves and voted for a guy that's openly anti-worker. That happened.
He was pressured to step down for two reasons. Because he was old and because his handling of the Palestine issue made a lot of young voters uncomfortable. And after the debate, it was mainly the age thing. If you believe otherwise, you are living in an alternate reality. Then we proceeded to replace him with another equally old person. Americans making a lot of sense on that one.
And now it will get worse.
So anyway, go fuck yourself.
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with "gut" feeling.
Always has been.
Problem is their "gut" feelings are now from conservative radio/podcasts and facebook feeds, instead of a mix of papers and friends like before.
Yea. There is a word for that around the world. It's called stupid.
Ignorant is their steady state. Stupid is the application.
"BUSINESS MAN GOOD"
"business man like me, he say it like it is"
Business man: word salad - slur - word salad
Democracy seems to be crumbling pretty hard to shitty education systems combined with heavy propaganda and misinformation. I've been trying to think of a solution that still allows a proper resilient democratic system to thrive, but I'm not sure one exists.
There's likely no 1 magic solution... it'll take multiple fronts: education, community-building, better(less misinformation) social media...
Democrats need to be louder in blaming the people at fault. Harris should have been screaming about the economy Obama left Trump vs the economy Trump left Biden. She should have been screaming that from day 1!
They wouldn't trust the messenger. We need to come to terms with the fact that a not so small group of people need fear to be motivated to believe anything.
We need a rage baiting group of influencers pushing the Left's agenda. It's sad, but it's needed.
Fear was what they used. They used fear of Trump. Fear of democracy ending, etc.
What she needed was outrage at those responsible. Corporations.
The DNC isn't allowed to bite the hand that feeds them their funding
So then more fascism it is. And Dem's would rather stand by than stop it because even stopping it isn't very profitable for their owners.
Oh ya, the old addage that if conservatives can't win elections they will abandon democracy not conservatism has an inverse.
If capital won't support the means for a liberal to win elections they will abandon victory before capital.
She should have been blaming those responsible, corporations. And outlining how she was going to go after them.
But that would have likely cost her campaign funds...
They should have been screaming about it four years ago. Biden chose to take the high road and not talk about the previous administration.
And Obama tried to take the high road too. And for 8 years republicans grew a huge population of people that learned to blame democrats for everything. Now it’s just second nature to most people to hate democrats.
We've had like 25y of limp dick Dem moral high road at this point and it should be clear that this approach doesn't sell to anyone except the educated minority. Guess what? The educated are a minority and you need a majority to win elections.
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.
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.
i HIGHLY disagree with you.
Even if you're a relatively disconnected right winger, who listens to fox news or the daily wire a couple of times of week, the propaganda is so fucking blatant it will still completely indoctrinate you after a few years.
like to be clear, any right winger that obsessively follows the news is literally ben shapiro or alex jones. There is no "moderate" here unfortunately.
I'm not talking about relatively disconnected right wingers; I'm talking about people that are largely centrist, and not paying attention to Fox, NBC, CNN, or any newspapers, and gets all of their 'news' from social media. I guess you'd call them the hoi poloi; they're low-information voters (or no information voters), and mostly apathetic as long as they feel like they're getting by. Policy won't matter to them very much; they're voting on feels.
That depends. There are a number of people that are extremely fiscally conservative that have zero interest in culture wars issues. Most of them have defected from the Republican party entirely though, because they see that the current iteration of the Republican party is deeply harmful to the kind of conservatism that they stand for. But that kind of conservative hasn't really been popular since about the time that Newt Gingritch was trying to stir up the country against a president that didn't keep his dick in his pants.
Social media is where most of the blatantly false propaganda lives. Getting all of your news from it makes you more susceptible to propaganda, not less. These are people who have nothing to form an opinion with except for what the loudest people around them are complaining about most. And propagandists are the loudest ones, complaining about made up bullshit.
Yes, I understand that. But on social media you aren't necessarily getting right-wing propaganda, as there's plenty of left-wing propaganda and misinformation as well. That's why I'm saying that they're low- or no-information voters that are working solely on feels.
Is there, though? I was trying to come up with some examples yesterday and all I can find from my admittedly lefty algo are fears propagated because of Trump's words or incoming cabinet appointments. They are at least based on actual recorded words as opposed to cherry-picked data or "feels". I guess the left could be cherry-picking data to support their arguments also, but the logic seems more sound, at least to me.
It is, yeah. When you look at accounts like Occupy Democrats and start fact checking them, there's a lot of bullshit that they post. Like, pants on fire kind of bullshit. I knew a lot of people that followed them. In order to get engagement, accounts need to stir up emotions and get people to react and comment; it's easier to do that with things that outrage rather than dense policy positions.
I want to believe that the political left is more intellectually honest than the right, but that's because I'm mostly on the political left. (I'm an anarchist at heart, but with a cynical disbelief in the ability of people to work together in a country the size of the US without some degree of authoritarian control.) So I try to fact-check all of the sources that I use for both factual information, as well as ideological biases.
Is it though? Or is it incredibly bad when the system is predicated on infinite growth, measured by quarterly EPS?
We can probably tolerate a little more disinflation, as a treat. Deflation has to be sustained for it to start moving toward a recession, and since companies (see Tech, see Biosciences, see IT) are already pushing for massive layoffs anyway, where is the incentive for workers? Particularly and explicitly on the heels of record profits and while many large companies are sitting on cash surpluses. They're basically just laying off workers so executives can get a fat bonus. So whose interests are being served? Certainly not the greater economy.
Corporate decisions are already breaking the social contract. Reinvestment has been replaced with stock buy-backs, and human capital is crushed to manipulate wages to their lowest point again. As has been happening for nearly 40 years.
No, not really, because deflation (not disinflation) tends to be self-sustaining, much like hyperinflation does. If the dollar I have today will buy two dollars worth of goods next week, then I'm going to hold onto my dollar to make any sort of discretionary purchase until next week. When everyone does that, all at the same time, it's like building a dam; the flow of money just grinds to a halt. Companies don't have money coming in, so they can't pay workers, which leads to layoffs, and the people laid off have no income to buy anything now, which feeds right back into that cycle.
I agree with you that corporations need to be reined in, that executive salaries are out of control, and that things like stock-buybacks are the bane of a functional economy. But that's literally going to take legislation in this country to fix, in the same way that it did when the economy crashed in the 1920's, and I guarantee you that there's going to be zero political interest in that for at least two years.
We need more political literacy in this country.
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn't Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
Yeah, because Americans are dumb and willfully ignorant.
Tell this to my landlord.
Your landlord is a republican.
Or more specifically, your landlord is a property management company employed by venture capitalists who you just emboldened to get even shittier. And those VCs are conservatives.
Enjoy your perceived victory against bad old uncle Joe...
This sentiment is the most painful shit to read on here. Lots of "maybe they'll learn" or "so sorry your party lost /s". Do these people think Biden and Harris will suffer through the Trump presidency? They're rich as fuck. It's WE who will suffer, probably minorities getting the worst of it.
Good job guys, you really showed 'em...
Effectively addressed? Like the housing crisis and the visibly homeless?
Well their next candidate, Newsom, certainly has done a lot in regards to the visibly homeless. The future looks bleak no matter how you slice it. I hope to God the neolibs can't make that shithead stick as the anointed candidate.
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.
99.9%
If you didn't learn the lesson that this isn't true in the last 4 years then all hope is lost
Isn't that true for just about any democratic president? The bushes ruined the economy, Clinton and Obama fixed it. Republicans receive an awesome country, take credit for it, ruin it, then blame a democrat president for the mess they left behind.
Since the formation of the Democratic Party there haven't ever been two Democrats elected subsequently without the first one dying in office. The pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth, getting further to the right with each swing.
Hell, that might have been the Dems' original plan: get Biden elected a second time, have him retire during his second term, then Harris gets all the goodwill and she might have been able to keep a D in the White House until 2032. It would have been a shitty plan, doomed to fail even worse, but it would explain why they waited so damn long for Biden to step aside.
This has been the cycle. But now the cycle will change from ruining the economy to ruining the economy and democracy itself. Once trump is done ratfucking the country for 4 years, the dems will get blamed.
None of them fixed the economy, they just made the lines go up again.
And he'll stay in office because someone dared to pretend to hold him responsible. People really need to get over the idea that it's only 4 more years.
"Am I out of touch? No, it's the voters who are wrong"
Voters have shifted right because they're hurting, and the Dems promised 4 more years of the same. Trump promised to remove the elites and actively tear the country they created apart. That's why they voted for him. The fact that's it's a lie and they're stupid to believe it doesn't matter. Telling people the economy is doing great while they are poorer than they were 4 years ago pushes them away.
Liberals lost ~15 million former voters and handed America to a fascist dictator, and all they've done is blame the left and stick their head in the sand, as though the population didn't just vote to tear the status quo apart. They did the same thing in 2016. They won't get another chance, and they still don't understand that.
I don't believe this is the case.
The Democratic Party took many steps rightward in Harris' campaign (border security, death penalty, cheney).
Trump barely increased his vote count from 2020, like mayyybe 40k more votes?
15 million Dem voters from 2020 didn't vote at all this time rather more people voting R.
Leftist voices within the DNC spoke urgently and stridently about the DNCs need to listen to its left base more or face backlash.
You got it backwards, the DNC misread the people and shifted to the right of its own base
Opinion: trying to teach tens of millions of people enough basic statistics and economics so that they understand that Joe Biden wasn’t actually as bad as they think is not actually a serious strategy for defeating conservative populism in elections
This is not a messaging problem it's a measurement problem. The metrics we use to gauge economic progress and/or health are not effective indicators of anyone's experience but the wealthy. When Dems tell me wages have gone up so income inequality is getting better what they mean is that new jobs are on average offering slightly higher pay to new hires.
They don't say that slightly higher pay is 5 cents an hour which is practically useless. They don't acknowledge that this tiny wage increase is dwarfed by the impacts of inflation over the last 4 years. Worst of all, they don't say that because this wage increase only applies to new hires, anyone working the same job for more than a couple of years hasn't seen a wage increase at all, but that price gouging has definitely impacted them. That last one is important because it applies to a huge chunk of people.
This is just the way it works out with wages but basically everything these pundits are saying is great under Biden could be described the same way. They're talking about averages which when applied to 330 million people produce numbers that sound significant, but when you look at almost any individual it doesn't make a practical difference in their lives. Sure, you may have slowed the rate at which things are getting worse, but are you honestly surprised at this reaction? You're telling people you solved their problems and they're responding "no, you absolutely did not and fuck you for saying that"
Yeah this shit is insane. We fixed inflation! Great, that's great, but where are our, meaning the working class, 25% raises to offset the inflation that already happened? I'll be up for my second raise in three years in 6 months. It's already promised to be 7% which will beat inflation (and I plan to fight for more), but I would need 25% to get my pay to be worth the same as it was three years ago before my first raise.
Absolutely, and to be clear, this does not imply that Trump has a good solution to this problem. He'll probably make it significantly worse. But at least he's talking about it in a way that resonates with people. Don't tell me my problem is that I don't understand my own financial situation. Show me how you plan to improve it in ways that I actually care about.
Opinion: Authors that proclaim voters "need to be more educated" should maybe be forced to buy a book on how politics work... have always worked, since the beginning of time.
Then: as they quite clearly don't know how to use a book properly they should shove that book as far up their asses as it can go.
The only way forward for the people of America is to leave both corrupted corporate parties behind.
Not a surprise. The majority of Americans are dumber than a bag of rocks. Zero ability to do proper research. Believe superstition over science. Oblivious to other cultures and languages. The list goes on.
And this has all been done on purpose. American children can’t get a proper meal at school. Low paid teachers buying their own school supplies. Kids bombarded with reactionary media trash, tracking, and behaviour manipulation from their phones. College students saddled with debt and not being able to afford homes. Homelessness criminalized. Prisoners turned into slave labor.
Damn, kinda sounds dystopian already huh?
prices have doubled, megacorps profit have “atleast” doubled. genocide with our tax money way more than doubled. 1 of 3 people i know in tech got laid off while there company spent billions in stock buybacks
the list goes on. but hey there were bills which achieved nothing but gave billions to dnc donors firms and stats show economy is great.
on top of all that harris was a terrible candidate whose campaign was all about ignoring anything that was evenly remotely negative to her megadonors agenda. her getting picked over warren as vp was a spit on the dnc voter base to begin with.
but i am sure dnc consultants will come with the same smug research as you and will be paid millions for it by the elite trash like pelosi and schumer to keep their corrupt hold on “democratic” party.
Marginally addressed. Like I get it. He's better than Trump, but so is 50% of the average person I see outside. There is no effectively addressed, when we know the tested, studied, and actually implemented solutions.
For example: The ACA. Yes an improvement from what came before but a quarter baked bandaid on the bullet wound of a health care system. We know universal health care system is the answer. It's a fact. The Democratic party never once made that a core part of their platform. Even if you know you won't get everything when working in a democracy you still have to argue from a far left position so when you compromise it's a stronger shift. The middle ground between universal health care coverage and 100% free market is the public option. Where Americans can decide between government coverage or private. But the ACA essentially forced everyone above the poverty line into private insurance held up by government subsidies.
Another example: instead of being 100% anti genicide the Democrat leadership landed on reducing the sizes of bombs given to Isreal?! What's the middle ground between the 100% pro genicide party and the 75% genicide party? Ya ones better but if we land on a compromise of 87% genicide, did we really achieve anything?
Income inequality: Republicans 100% pro oligarchy Democratic party leadership is 75% pro oligarchy. The party of facts and science knows our economy with collapse every 20 to 30 years to keep the jinga Tower from crumbling to the foundation so what do they do? Bail out the companies that destroyed the economy in the first place and reset the lopsided tower. If we bail out a company why shouldn't it also be nationalized?!
I can keep going on. Every issue the Democratic party's solutions are little more than the queen saying, "let them eat cake."
I live in a solid blue state and surround myself with far left people because we've realized, expecting the federal government to improve your life is a fools errand. We're building our own bubble of compassion, science, and facts. Yes we vote blue but know the only change we can truly make starts by getting involved in our community and surrounding ourselves with those that will fight from a strong position and not a already right leaning position. If we're going to die it'll be with a Molotov cocktails in one hand and surround by those that actually care about each other. Opposed to at the feet of the oligarchy begging for crumbs.
It's funny you mention the ACA, since what we have now came from Republicans absolutely gutting the original ACA proposal which should surprise absolutely no one since the GOP is bought and paid for by insurance companies.
Yup the ACA was little more than a hand out to the insurance companies. The original version off set the government subsidies to insurance companies with a tax penalty to the uninsured or under insured. Republicans removed that so now insurance companies can double dip while the middle class has to essentially pay for their insurance twice. Once in deductibles and premiums, and another time in taxes to cover the insurance companies losses. The ACA privatizes the profits while subsidizing the losses.
They handled the post-covid period better than virtually any other major nation in the world. With no inflation, with a low unemployment rate, without a recession. But people voted for a guy who aims to impose tariffs. You can't make this shit up.
Yuppy, they got 1 out of 10000 issues right. But did they continue using that as a springboard to get other things right? Nope.
No inflation? Yes, but did they investigate companies that price gouged during the pandemic? Very little to none.
Low unemployment? But are those high quality jobs that would lift people out of poverty? Nope.
Recession? Not for those at the top. Us normal people have been in a 30 year recession.
Everyone knows that if the Democratic party was just as ravenous as Republicans but for left policies our country would be better off.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 it
Edit: point proven.
Remember 8+y of "Thanks Obama" when the dude passed a healthcare act that got tens of millions affordable coverage?
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.
Biden (and the rest of us) is being punished for the mistake of not making prosecuting trump and overturning his last 4 years the #1 priority.
Yes and no. I agree they solved the problems, but there was no fixing high prices even if inflation rate was brought down.
It's like when Kamala was asked "was there anything you'd do differently?" The problem was she actually answered the question. The administration made the right choices, so there was little different she would have done. She should have done the politician thing and answered adjacently how she's going to solve high prices.
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.
Not overnight, 3 days
Fair. Looks like it was 26 million on Youtube alone in the first 24 hours, not counting Apple, Spotify, and others.
No, he did not bring down inflation. If prices were to go back to where they were in 2020, that would be deflation. What they did was disinflation. The inflation stayed. It's just not going up by as much as it was. That's a whole different story to things going down in price.
Inflation was like 9% in 2022. It's like 2.5% now. How is that not bringing down inflation?
Inflation is the rate of change of prices. It's not the prices themselves. I got skewered in another thread for pointing this out, but I still think it's an important distinction.
There is a big difference between inflation and the inflation rate. The inflation rate was officially 9%, but considering groceries went up by 30%, and housing went up by 30% and other things went up 30% or 40%. Most people would say that that 9% was a lie. As I said, that 9% official rate was the rate of change of inflation, not inflation itself. The rate of change has definitely dropped, but that does not mean that the inflation that resulted from those high numbers went away as it never did and never will.
Historically, presidents take credit and the blame for things they didn't do. Economic policy is one example. They actual economic changes take time to really be felt on main street. Very often those changes occur just before they take office or after they leave.
And despite presidential elections being the SB and WS all tied into one competition, the real path to controlling the government is through the house and senate. But THOSE elections aren't as cool.
Historically, President Trump has never taken blame for anything - only credit.
His 34% approval rating when he left office disagrees.
No president ever stands up and says "I take the blame for what my predecessor did." But they are all quite whiling to take credit for things that they had no hand in.
You understand that under that logic all the 'good' you want to attribute to Biden is actually because of Trump, right?
You can't argue "economic effects lag behind," and then claim Biden did good during his term.
I never said I attributed anything 'good or bad' to Biden or even Trump in my statement. I said presidents take credit or blame by the public for things that were beyond their control.
Opinion: nobody cares wall street made more profits. Democrats are lying when they play their economy card. Real people lost purchasing power.
Americans are gonna swing back and forth between the major parties until elections eventually stop happening. Mark my words.
Democracy fails when most people, rather than being informed are stuck in their social network bubble ruts. Democracy fails when nothing is done to fight disinformation in social networks. Democracy fails when the most popular social networks can be bought up by the richest man to be used for electoral interference without any repercussions. Democracy fails when it elects convicted felons. The US is too far gone, and is too powerful and influential for any peaceful transition from those countries that didn't want to be enshittified.
Lowering inflation doesn't lower prices, and prices are what voters actually care about.
Prices won't be going down under Trump either, though, so I'm not sure how much credit Trump will get.
How can Democrats improve their communication strategies to counter misinformation? Edited by slope game 1 day ago
When the Republicans control the House or Senate plus various major sources of disinformation disguised as news... not easily
rhetorical fascism
aside from this, create a propaganda wing as big as the republicans, and make it accurate. Somehow.
What do you think CNN, The Atlantic, WaPo, ect are?
Corpratist, center right infotainment networks?
JFC. Can we stop being surprised that the electorate is full of fucking mentally defective degenerates? Can we not find our own charismatic person to fool the masses into voting our way (which is, ironically, in their benefit)? We have all the fucking actors, just get one to say populist shit. FFS.
The big money donors don’t even want to hear pretend populist messages with a left bent.
Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They're no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They're no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
I completely agree. One of the things with the debate is I was like hey he should be pushing inflation right back in trumps face but jeez its also stupidity with folks. I mean we got a guy here saying he did nothing to fight price gouging.
Biden and Co talked down to the working class like Obama did black men and kept insisting we are not financially struggling. We are doing well and there's no reason to be concerned. He lied, we saw through the lie and his party lost
Did Biden take on the illegal price gouging that Walmart and Target participated in during Covid? The thing that is directly causing Americans so much financial stress?
No it did not.
This is just another lie from the DNC blue dog propaganda machine trying to blame anything but itself for the loss.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20220119/114345/HHRG-117-JU05-Wstate-NeedlerM-20220119.pdf
To be fair, Trump is a complete disaster, but to claim that Biden did a decent job is a compete fabrication.
They actually have been.
The issue was messaging. Harris made her campaign about fear of Trump. She should have used outrage towards those you just mentioned along with a solid plan of how to regulate that behavior.
As the link i posted points out, there is already a law on the books to stop exactly what Walmart and Target are doing in the US.
It has just never been enforced against them and the Biden administration joins the list that did nothing to stop them using laws they already had
The FTC over the last two years has been going after corporations. But, anti-trust lawsuits take time. And I agree that they could have been more aggressive.
So, the issue wasn't that the democrats weren't doing anything and had no plans to do anything. It was that their messaging was shit. They should have directed more outrage at corporations and used fewer appeals to reason.
The rhetoric that works in a courtroom isn't what wins elections, in other words.
I for one am tired of the smoke and mirrors.
Queue up meaningful change but then "oops, new term, " Obama didn't investigate Dubya's fucking Torture Camps, nor into the subprime mortgage.
They did the same shit with Net Neutrality under Obama. Left it with a massive and meaningless "ramp up" time that coincidentally meant it would be a year into the next president's term. Oops Ajit Pall is parachuted in and cancels the whole thing before the "ramp up" is done.