"I'm pickin' up good vibrations
She's giving me the excitations (oom bop bop)
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (good vibrations, oom bop bop)Ah, ah, my my, what elation."
The Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations," 1966
Republicans are already singing "Happy Days are Here Again." Republicans are feeling the good vibrations of the Trump election. They feel confident again.
We measure two things when we measure "consumer confidence." We measure economic prospects and partisanship.
The graph of consumer confidence shows the two factors. Everyone got nervous in March of 2020. Lost confidence was a leading indicator of the full-on recession. Everyone could see what we faced. Airlines were cancelling flights, businesses were shutting their doors, and every source of authoritative news warned about confined spaces.
We measure two things when we measure "consumer confidence." We measure economic prospects and partisanship.
The graph of consumer confidence shows the two factors. Everyone got nervous in March of 2020. Lost confidence was a leading indicator of the full-on recession. Everyone could see what we faced. Airlines were cancelling flights, businesses were shutting their doors, and every source of authoritative news warned about confined spaces.
Notice the confidence lines after the 2016 and 2020 elections. They changed directions at the point of the election, not at the point when the new president took office. The pattern continued this month:
Our findings can be summarized by analogy: We find that Republicans cheer louder when their party is in control and boo louder when their party is out of control. . . . [This] explains 30 percent of the current gap between observed consumer sentiment and what you would predict using economic fundamentals.
This gives Trump a natural advantage at creating a narrative of Democratic misrule. Trump can persuade. He sells. In his 2020 inauguration, Trump sold the idea that he inherited "carnage." Democrats were silent. No one argued that things were pretty good and getting better. Eight years ago Trump took office with steadily improving trend lines through the Obama era. (This blog had multiple posts showing this.)
"Carnage" seemed plausible to Republicans. Three months later, with essentially the same economy, he said it was the greatest economy of all time. That remains the memory Americans have of the Trump era. Asymmetry was in place. Democrats agreed that the Obama trend had stayed intact and things were better. Republicans saw things were good, finally, as could be expected under a Republican president.
This history and experience leads me to a prescription for Democrats. Narrative matters. Leadership matters.
1. Democrats must not be silent this time while Trump reprises the "carnage-becomes-great" story. Democrats need to provide a vivid counter-narrative based on reality. Take stock of where we are: GDP, inflation, unemployment rate, interest rates, deficits, and the stock market. Make Trump own whatever reality unfolds. Don't let him sell a fairy tale.
2. The next generation of Democratic leadership needs to step up now to audition for leadership and to tell a Democratic story. Trump had a lifetime to become famous and create a brand. Democratic leaders need to become familiar and trusted. Trump will roll over a tentative person concerned about being too forward, too early. The best leader for Democrats may not be the most credentialed one. It will be the one who becomes the familiar, trusted, interesting one. Voters want change and the current American political environment demands a performer.
This will be a struggle for dominance in narrative-creation. The next Democratic president will be someone who says popular things while appearing confident and tough enough to stand up to Trump.
3 comments:
Peter, this is called believing the republican propaganda. republican/low-information voters are easily duped. Democratic/higher educated voters are not. This is why republicans are against education.
Democrats need someone who will step up now and essentially run a shadow government, as Don Old has done for several years.
Forget the rest of the US, and look inward at Oregon.
The Democrats and Progressives have controlled Oregon for decades. The Democratic voters have selected leaders who destroyed good schools. What were once top K-12 public schools are now school outcomes ranked 49th or 50th.
So...just who is responsible for Oregon K-12 education declines?
Now we have Democrats wondering if they focused on the wrong issues this year. I hope that includes Oregon Democrats, too.
I'm excited to see the excuses Republicans will try to come up with when the combination of Trump's tariffs, deporting all the people who pick all our food, and general worldwide panic over Trump upending longstanding things like NATO cause a worldwide economic crash with inflation through the roof to boot. No doubt it will be somehow Biden's fault despite the fact that the Republicans have control of all 3 branches of government.
We're in for a wild ride, and a crash ending is a 100% certainty. I guess we all will get what we deserve cause when you vote for a clown, it shouldn't be surprising when you get a circus. Only the joke will be on all of us.
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