Biden tries to turn the tables on Trump’s use of a classic political attack line, asks 'are you better off today'

return2ozma@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 191 points –
Biden tries to turn the tables on Trump’s use of a classic political attack line | CNN Politics
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The ironic thing is that anyone really paying attention would know that almost all the negative things about 2024 are due to long term impacts of the trump administration.

For all you inflation heads out there...

US M0 money supply was $3.6T in January 2017 when Trump took office.

It was $5.25T in Jan 2021 when he left office, a 45% increase in the money supply.

As of December 2023 it was $5.83T, an 11% increase under Biden.

So if we're saying increased money supply caused inflation, the Trump admin is about 4x more responsible for it than the Biden admin.

I don't think I've seen anyone saying he caused inflation. Just that he's trying to tell everyone he won the economy and everything is back to normal. There are multiple articles now with his allies and staffers wondering why the people aren't on board with that message.

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone saying he caused inflation.

Literally every republican says this

Well there's your problem. Stop listening to them.

Not entirely fair. They are the result of things that happened under the trump admin. Most of it was done by the fed. And more importantly, many more people would be suffering way worse right now had they not done anything.

Whatever you want to say about reality, the poll from a couple of days ago pointing out how deeply unhappy young adults are makes this a pretty questionable way of trying to engage that demographic.

Are you telling me that Democrats are once again maybe having a hard time connecting to the major demographics they need to win an election?

🥴

It's a pretty bad tactic because while it may let you take credit for improving some people's lives, you're also giving tacit permission for those worse off to blame you for it. This only works if the majority of people are better off than they were four years ago and recognize that they are. That's probably not a safe assumption when we've got record inflation and dipped close to, if not into, a recession. Just think of all the mass layoffs you heard about over the past four years.

I think most people are a little better off. They just don't feel like it, because most people still aren't doing "well." I.e. things aren't getting better fast enough. I looked at real-wage statistics a while back, and that seemed to confirm my beliefs (real wages have been improving across all four quantiles). I have not looked at those living on SSI, SSD, or retirement; and I imagine those people could be worse off.

The current job market is still very tight, unemployment is still very low (despite the Fed). Recent mass layoffs have mostly just been in tech and some white collar jobs, which is a small fraction of the workforce/electorate. The majority of people work "unskilled" jobs and those are still easy to get, and pay a little more in real wages now.

None of this really matters to the electorate though. I'm convinced elections are all vibes-based. And vibes are largely controlled by the media and algorithms. I've recently talked to a few people that want Trump to win, and they still parotted the line, "Trump is a business man, so he knows how to get the economy back on track." They also liked the checks they got during the lockdown. They don't really follow the news or politics, so all the information they get is incidental. One person recently started to get into red-pill content (Fresh + Fit, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, etc), who I think also discuss political issues in a vibes-based way.

The problem is that while wages have been beating inflation this year, they aren't beating the last few years. Despite breathless headlines proclaiming so from left leaning sources.

It appears earnings have been beating inflation since 2014 (with some noise, and a big temporary spike during covid lockdowns). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Really? Because everyone else disagrees. I wonder what numbers magic they used to make that particular line go up.

Oh look. Reagan redefined CPI and we've been getting gaslighted for decades.

But also the median household tells a different story. Just tracking wage doesn't tell the whole economic story unless you want to believe every American Human is working a wage job. I do admit it's my fault for using the word wages. But there's a reason we track median household and not actual wages to get a general look at the health of the Economy.

27 more...

I dunno. This demographic also suffered a lot from the pandemic. It seems like a lifetime ago, but the first lockdowns started almost exactly 4 years ago. I would think that reminding them will be beneficial.

29 more...

Yes, I definitely am. It's just that compared to the shit show of 2020 that's not a very high bar.

But what I'd really prefer he'd focus on is how much better I'll be in another 4 years.

Yet another comment section that boils down to a choice between:

A dottering senile octogenarian whose career has kept him outside of the reality of being an American citizen longer than I've been alive who wants to be President of the United States, or

A dottering senile octogenarian whose career has kept him outside of the reality of being an American citizen longer than I've been alive who wants to be dictator god king of West Russia.

Nope. Going on 14 years with no increase in federal minimum wage, with continuous price inflation. No access to health insurance thanks to an oversight in the Affordable Care Act that has left millions of Americans like me to be deemed too poor to receive financial help, that he promised to address during his term. He has not mentioned it since elected. For some insane reason US emissions standards have a loophole that has led to increasingly large and more polluting vehicles on the roads, with much higher pedestrian deaths. Meanwhile his single largest piece of legislation is spending hundreds of billions on more car infrastructure, so climate change will be accelerating. Housing has gotten more and more expensive as real estate corporations keep buying everything up completely unopposed by him. And all of this is just stuff that directly impacts me. That's not addressing the union neutering he's done, the personally bypassing congress to give Israel more weapons to kill Palestinians, the horrendous performance of his DoJ that still doesnt have Trump in court for the crimes he committed 4 years ago.

I really don't understand in what ways I'm supposed to be better off now.

You okay bro? A Biden headline that isn’t insulting him? That’s not like you

So glad more people are catching on to this person. I would still call this a negative Biden article though. OP might just be trying to be a little more subtle about the Biden hate since people caught on and call them out in every post.

I'm not really sure this line of attack is going to be as persuasive as Biden thinks it is.

While much of the problems stem from Trump-era policies, some of it's not. But that's besides the point. Lets just keep it simple and blame trump for everything.

Biden taking over means somebody is at the reigns that isn't trying to fuck every one over... but that doesn't mean we're "better off" today. Savings are drained, debt is piling up. We can't afford food. can't afford housing. can't afford to shit.

I think his messaging on the issue is just evidence of how out of touch he is with normal people. We're not better. We're barely holding on... and we've barely been holding on since he's been in office. and people are starting to fall into the cracks.

I was just making a joke about OP though?

yes... but I don't think this is all that pro-biden of an article. It makes him look out of touch. so it's not out of line with OP.

I don’t really see anything in the article that makes it sound like they think he’s out of touch

ask a rando in the grocery store check out lane if they feel they're better off compared to 4 years ago.

The virus only started spreading in 2020. (it was detected in Wuhan in november 2019. and didn't get the first person-to-person until jan 30'th.). the economic impacts didn't really start being felt until the lockdowns were hitting in force... so most people were actually better off four years ago than they were today.

Most people haven't even come close to recovering from the covid bullshit. Everything is just making it worse. if he was "in touch" with normal americans, he'd know that.

Four years ago New York City had to resort to refrigerated trucks to hold dead people because their morgues were full.

The "4 years ago" line usually works regardless of circumstances because people don't really remember what 4 years ago was like and they know stuff happening now that they're not happy about. So yeah, asking a rando without context probably does get the answer you expect, but that's exactly why Biden's messaging on this is reminding people what four years ago was actually like.

NYC was an early hotspot, remember. Nationally, the pandemic was still just getting started. I'm not trying to minimize the loss and just how down right fucked the pandemic was.

I am trying to point out that was only just starting, and most americans were still okay at that point. a month or two later? we were all feeling it.

Sure, but the "four years ago" isn't really about a specific day 4 years ago, it's about the state of your life heading into the election. This isn't going to be an ineffective messaging line for the next month and then switch over to being effective because enough days passed to move the reference point.

I had to look at the timeline on Wikipedia to even remember which month things really hit in different locations. By March 21, California was under a stay-at-home order, Florida was looking for alternatives to sending the sick home, and Ohio had shut down daycares and elderly care centers. It was kicking off. Also happy anniversary to Trump promoting Hydroxychloroquine.

Other notable events, 4 years plus 3 days ago Trump told Bob Woodward he was downplaying the seriousness of the virus because he didn't want to create a panic. Bob Woodward then sat on that information for six months so he could put it in his book and make more money.

The pandemic lasted from early 2020 with a public health emergency lasting through into 2023. COVID itself has become a global endemic; similar to the flu.

The economic effects, the death toll. The social unrest. It was all only ramping up.

People stopped dying. That’s about the only way the situation has improved. But dead people are still dead and they’re not going to be coming back. Everything else has continued to degrade.

So yes. I am much worse off now than 4 years ago. Or any other time in 2020.

People stopped dying. That’s about the only way the situation has improved.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

...

This only makes sense if you're completely out of touch with the average American...

Speaking of that, remember when that streaming company Quibi tried to be a thing only on cellphones and mostly in portrait mode?

The guy who came up with that is now one of the people running Biden's campaign.

Dudes great at raising money, but when you start letting him do anything else, everything goes to shit

4 years ago was bodies in trailers, man. Stores were rationing toilet paper, nurses were resorting to dressing up in trash bags, and essential workers were rolling the dice on whether their shitty job was going to kill them. Millions of people lost loved ones and there are a couple hundred thousand COVID orphans. Trump was a big part of why the pandemic was as bad as it was. I agree things aren't awesome, but this is an easy question to answer.

Minimizing how bad 2020 was only makes sense if you're completely out of touch with the average American and driven to one repeated conclusion whenever Biden is brought up.

It's like people just memory holed the pandemic and forgot just how fucking bad it was. I won't forget, it literally killed half my family and it's Trump's shitty handling of it that played a big part. The hospitals were so overloaded that my family members couldn't receive the treatment they needed, in large part because of all the MAGAts refusal to follow basic safety protocols that pumped the numbers way higher than they needed to be.

Soooo, are we expecting that to happen again? Because that's a pretty loaded answer to people who just want to be able to pay rent.

What is this faux populism when poor people were the ones risking their lives for shitty jobs and disproportionately dying?

And yeah, we should expect that pandemics will continue to happen. COVID itself is still mutating and a pandemic kicking off wasn't a surprise. More people living closer together encroaching on nature and traveling more often is the breeding ground for pandemics. Disease safety is not just an economic issue, but a social justice issue. Obama set up a monitoring organization after Ebola and Bird Flu showed worrisome spread but were thankfully contained. SARS was just one of the diseases they were tracking. Trump dismantled it because conservatives are incapable of good governance, and that has deadly consequences for the people at the bottom of the ladder.

And it also fucks up the economy if that's literally the only thing you think matters.

It was on Reddit telling "essential workers" to quit if they could. To never keep doing something if people start calling an entire group of workers "heroes". They're absolving themselves of taking care of you. The plaque to your memory will be very pretty.

And no, you don't go through day to day planning on another pandemic. Unless you're a prepper or FEMA. To bring it up here as the basis of an economic question is incredibly bad faith. The fact is stuff was more affordable when Trump was president. Did that have anything to do with Trump? No. Do most Americans understand that? No. So should Biden campaign on an economic improvement most people are only starting to to see? Lol no way. He should be telling people he's in the trenches with them. He should be breaking apart Kroger, not Apple.

The “Quibi guy” is Jeffrey Katzenberg.

AKA, the financial brain behind Dreamworks and the chair of Disney during some pretty solid years. He’s a money guy.

There are 8 people on that campaign board, and he ain’t there to figure out messages, districts, or any of that. He’s there for fundraising.

Quibi wasn’t famous because it was a silly idea, it was famous because it was a silly idea that Katzenberg raised an ungodly amount of capital for … almost $2 billion. Homie ain’t the ideas guy. Quibi very much confirmed that he’s no Spielberg or Geffen (the creative cofounders for Dreamworks.) But fuck if he isn’t one of the best fundraisers in the business.

Biden’s campaign has had double Trump’s cash on hand.

He’s a money guy.

I said he's good at that....

But that's not all he's doing

It's like you read my comment, ignored what it said, and repeated it back..

Biden’s campaign has had double Trump’s cash on hand.

And it cost Biden twice per vote what it cost trump in 2016... Biden's the first president in the history of the US to spend 1 billion on a campaign, and he was 30k close to losing.

And Biden's polling is worse now

Either we need a lot more money, or we can stop running geriatric candidates no one wants to be president

I guess my main point is that his campaign board has a pile of people. It looks like they’re actually up to a dozen or so. This guy is not the manager, deputy manager, strategist, etc. He’s a “co-chair,” which is the title given to everyone who isn’t driving the campaign. The campaign is being driven by former Biden, Obama, and Warnock folks.

You’re alluding to “Quibi bad = Biden campaign bad,” but that’s kind of a silly argument.

No man no one even knows what the fuck Quibi is. Hell I'm just assuming it's a real thing, I'm taking your word for it because I don't care enough to look it up. The tent pole of your argument here is based on something no one has ever heard of.

Really?

I'm used to Biden supporters not knowing basic shit, but this one surprises me...

No. No I am not.

My food is more expensive. The house I want to buy is further out of reach. My medical care is more expensive and more restricted.

The southern border crisis still rages on.

The difference is my country is now complicit if not instrumental in a genocide and is in more military conflicts globally.

Every single one of those things was catalyzed because of something Trump did.

Handling of COVID. Flooring of interest rates. Tax breaks for the middle class that expired right as terms rolled over and Congress was controlled by morons who wouldn’t renew them (rich still get theirs). Nerfed the ACA’s tax penalty instead of raising subsidies. Moving the fucking embassy to Jerusalem.

Biden sure ain’t great but he can be swayed by public opinion to some degree. Trump will fucking end us if he comes back.

"Hur dur. I wet my pampers at the thought of Trump".

Man it’s almost like state policies have long-term consequences

Rightwingers aren't people.

I agree, which is why I am extremely terrified of the current Right wing Democrat president.

Hilariously, nearly everyone ready to defend you just downvoted you here. That says something. I'm not sure what, but something.

That its a stupid poorly thought out inflammatory response.

I am just too stripped out on the same cordial "lesser evil" conversation that is going nowhere to care.

I am pissing people off. Good.

Trump will be incredibly bad. What is worse is losing a liberal political presence in this country entirely. And we are about there.

Yeah I've been there. Sometimes I walk away from the Internet for a day or two.

Obvious next question: do you believe any of that would change for the better under trump?

I think Trump is human garbage.

Like Biden.

If you vote for human garbage, you get human garbage.

I dont vote for human garbage.

The 2 party system is embarrassingly stupid.

We need to force an alternative.

Lol. Come to Asia. Earn $700/ mo and buy civics at $20,000 and houses at $150k. Otoh we have nearly free healthcare.

Just because Trump risks being the worst thing to happen to democracy in the history of humanity, we cannot excuse genocide.

The funding of the genocide and blocking of UN attempts to address it are real. Trump’s demolition of democracy is, as of now, merely a risk.

Trump’s demolition of democracy is, as of now, merely a risk.

Yeah, a risk because he might not win the election, despite how much you're trying to get him elected. It will also be MUCH worse for palestine under trump.

It will also be MUCH worse for palestine under trump.

Genocide is genocide. The Palestinian people get eradicated by both Biden and Trump. There is no "worse" genocide.

Genocide is genocide

Too bad that's not the only thing that matters

There is no “worse” genocide.

Really? This is a really stupid take. Some genocides are in fact worse than others.

The Palestinian people get eradicated by both Biden and Trump.

Even if this were the case, which it's not because trump would assist FAR more and it would be much worse. But even if it were the case, with trump we ALSO get regressive LGBT laws in the US as well as who knows what else, possibly more supreme court appointments. And 1 of these 2 people WILL be president next year. You don't get to pretend you're making some noble choice by allowing the far worse option to win.

Proponents of genocide, people who think the extermination of some races is ok as long as it isn't theirs, don't deserve an opinion and a platform.

Shame on you.

I think you need to work on your reading comprehension

I think you need to work on your entire brain.

Since when is expecting our current President to do better trying to see another person becomes President?

Is genocide really on the table for you?

Trump’s demolition of democracy is, as of now, merely a risk.

Very well put.

And might I say, while our country is very young, this is not the first time a potential presidency is called the end of democracy on Earth. In fact that is the narrative almost every election cycle. And that man often wins. And here we still are.

Trump wins, we still have Bernie, and AOC, and Katie Porter, and Ro Khanna, and Rashida Tlaib.

What really threatens our democracy is if we lose those people because they aren't "progressive enough" or because they are "too liberal".

Trump winning will be a crucial blow to many people in this country.

Biden cementing genocide as a good thing that Americans support has already occurred, continues to occur, if he wins, will escalate, and that is a mark on America's soul that we can't clean out.

Trump had 4 years and didn't do that. Biden had 4 years and did. Will Trump escalate it now? Sure as shit, and that is Biden's fault.

Trump winning will be a major blow to everyone in this country. Ironically, the hammer will strike hardest on those who most vehemently support him.