This is the summer of our discontent, but Joe Biden didn't start the trouble. Like Taylor Swift sings, it was there when Biden came into office. Attitudes are still stuck in the Covid-era past. That is over. Times are good.
Biden's job is to get people to feel that in their minds and hearts.
Pundits speculate why the negativity. Some point to the successful message tactic of Newt Gingrich, led by the linguist-strategist Frank Luntz. They advised Republicans, don't refer to Democrats as opponents; call them enemies. Don't say they are wrong; say they are disgusting. The tactic worked. It coarsens American politics.
Others point to the failure of bipartisan faith in markets. In this construction, the Clintons, Al Gore, and Obama are approximately equal participants with Reagan, Gingrich, and Romney. They all believed in Wall Street Journal capitalism, the righteous verdict of the bond market, free trade, NAFTA, and open borders. Free markets create a problem for democracy. There are too many losers, too many people squeezed by hard bargains. Angry, frustrated people don't quietly disappear. They suffer, they look for someone to blame, and leaders come along who address that frustration. Leaders on the left point to corporate elites who get wealthy at the expense of the forgotten people. Leaders on the right point to foreigners, immigrants, fake media, and to elections where the wrong candidate wins.
Others blame technology. Everyone can communicate to the world. Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, and blogs like this one means the glue of information curation disappeared. Of course Americans believe wild conspiracies. They are in our news feeds.
Joe Biden won office by being the plausible alternative to Trump. Biden represented a return to "normalcy." In fact -- and this is hard to see amid the fog of political vitriol and misdirection -- Biden is a departure from the Reagan-Clinton-Romney-Obama world. He adopted Trump's economic message, deleting the xenophobia and authoritarianism. Trump talked about an America-first industrial policy but didn't change industrial policy. The CHIPS Act does change it, for real. Against criticism that America is "picking winners and losers," which it is, it is using the government to re-establish a vital industry back in the U.S. and putting it in rustbelt places, Ohio and upstate New York. The U.S. government is rebuilding transportation and broadband infrastructure amid charges of "Socialism!" and "Wasteful spending!" Democrats don't see it and Republican politicians don't admit it, but Biden has largely adopted Trump's border policy as regards sham asylum seekers.
Meanwhile, the economy has rebounded. We are back to pre-Covid normal. Unemployment is low and inflation is abating. The economy is good. Yet discontent remains. Economic confidence is at the level of 2008 when there was, indeed, a profound crisis. Banks were toppling, money funds stopped being reliable storehouse of value, the economy was shrinking. There was good reason to lose confidence. Yet we are back near those levels according to Gallup polling.
By a three-to-one margin people think things are getting worse for America's economy:
Americans aren't generalizing from their own eyes and ears. Look at the disconnect:
Joe Biden does not look or sound like a change agent, but he is one. He is re-steering the economy toward industrial policies intended to return high-value-added manufacturing to the U.S. It is the Trump story, implemented by Biden. But change isn't Biden's brand. One cannot separate the message from the messenger. An old man cannot be cast in the role of Juliet. He wouldn't be believable. Biden will have a hard time communicating to voters that he has already changed American economic policy, but that is his task in the months ahead.
He is an old dog implementing new tricks.
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18 comments:
There has always been a discrepancy between our perceptions and reality. After WWII, White people in the U.S. enjoyed a period of increasing prosperity, but now too much of it is in the hands of too few. Cheerful graphs notwithstanding, the U.S. still has one of the highest poverty rates among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm
My life of discontent does not come from my actual life, which is very good, it comes from the relentless desire of Republican shenanigans to take over by any way possible. How can I be content when so much of Americans still support a man who is so blatantly criminal and who attempted to overthrow democracy? Or how about the MAGA crazies running the House of Representatives with ridiculous investigations? Do I include the Supreme Court that appears corrupt?
All of it feeds the anger of discontent, and yet my life itself is quite good with financial stability, love of wife and family. Hmm.
My situation much the same; the anger and discontent fueled by the blatant corruption being (finally) uncovered at SCOTUS, the Krazy Kaukus running the House of Representatives and the apparent ineptness in Democratic Leadership in the Senate, and DOJ are driving me a little bit crazy myself, yet I have enough to eat, a warm dry place to sleep and should be content with my life, as is. Yet, the possible failure of the Great Experiment , in my lifetime weighs heavy, a possibility not even deemed remotely possible only a few decades ago.
Apparently, it isn’t always “the economy, stupid“ — at least not this time. 🤷♂️
Since the economy is better than the last administration left it, Republicans have to manufacture issues to whine about, like “wokeness.” They can’t even define it, but now they’re targeting the defense bill, as McCarthy explained, to “stop using taxpayer money to do their own wokeism.” That’s why DeSantis’ campaign slogan is “Make America Florida.” Florida is where critical thinking goes to die.
There’s a fundamental question about whether voters care about things intrinsically, or whether they care about things because other people inject those ideas into their heads.
I am more of the opinion that people aren’t actually that malleable. I think that while it may be possible to raise an issue that people weren’t previously thinking about, they will care about that issue or not depending on the personality and feelings they already had.
Case in point: before the pandemic, people weren’t that aware of what was happening in the public schools. Once school became “remote,“ and people got to see what was going on, it turned out that many parents cared a lot, and did not like what they were seeing. Terry McAuliffe learned this to his regret when he said that parents had no right to influence what was going on in the schools. Many voting parents disagreed strongly, and exercised their rights to elect someone else to be governor of Virginia.
So, Republicans are predisposed to care about “wokeness” based on their feelings and personality, even though they have no clue what it means. That’s undoubtedly the same reason they couldn’t care less about climate change, which is estimated to cause some 315,000 deaths per year. I wonder how many deaths they think wokeness causes, to make it so much more important.
There’s a reason why Mr. Natural says, “Unh!”.
It has to do with missing the point so frequently and consistently that one starts to suspect that it’s on purpose. I could try (yet again) to explain, but this is more of a “kick”…
There's also a reason why, when asked what it all means, Mr. Natural says, "Don't mean sheeit."
It has to do with imagining one had a pregnant thought, but having it turn out to be gas.
Has it occurred to you two fellows that it may be impossible to reach the same conclusions, when you are basically in two different realities?
Malcolm,
We could use a translator. Or a diplomat. Or maybe both.
Are you volunteering? 😱😀
Sorry, Michael, but I’m ascared to risk my own, youthful, reality. And I certainly can’t make two others' realities mesh. Maybe a good Buddhist?
Good point, Malcolm. I don't think this country is polarized. What we have here are separate realities, with facts and "alternative facts."
Malcolm,
It is especially difficult to make different realities mesh when one side is unwilling to make an honest attempt to understand what the other side is saying.
I could, for instance, describe what is objectionable about “wokeness“ in specific detail. But long experience has shown that the effort will be rewarded by yet more tricky maneuvering designed to deliberately miss the point.
One of the contributions of the Intellectual Dark Web was the popularization of the concept of “steelmanning“. It’s the opposite of strawmanning, In steelmanning, you try to do the best job you can to make the argument for the other side of the debate. It’s an exercise in good faith. But that takes two…
What can't be explained is why "wokeness," which Republicans can't define but can't quit talking about, matters more than climate change, which they won't talk about at all.
Would it be possible to list a few things you agree on? I know at least one. Maybe that would show that your realities aren’t THAT different?
I can easily define wokeness. One aspect of it is:
The insistence that any “disparity“ affecting a “protected class” can only be the result of illegal discrimination.
No other explanation is permissible to the woke.
So, for instance, if 50% of software engineers are not female, that is taken as definitive proof of sexist discrimination. The fact that there is significant evidence to the contrary is ignored, and those who present that evidence are denounced. The intellectual and ethical character of my field is under attack. These attacks are unjust and inaccurate, so I speak out against them.
Climate change is also a significant concern. There is no reason why we can’t care about more than one thing at a time.
I probably disagree with most liberals about the best way to deal with climate change (more nuclear, less renewables), but I acknowledge the problem.
Woke once meant being alert to the dangers of being Black in a White society. Since being co-opted by conservatives, it now means whatever Ron DeSantis wants.
Most people can care about more than one thing at a time. It’s the Republican Party that refuses to address the issue of climate change. All they can talk about is woke, woke, woke, while fires, floods and heat are literally killing us and costing us billions. What a waste.
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