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.
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.