I’m not sure what your point is then. Like Trump’s argument is unsupported because he’s talking overall, not about the specific conditions of the working/middle class.
So you’re saying you’re surprised a financial news network covered the two presidential candidates’ takes on the economy? I don’t think ignoring it is an option for them the same way it is for Fox.
They’ve ignored it for the past year or so.
CN you’re welcome to reply to every single post I make in this thread, free country, but again, I’m not going to engage with you on this subject as I’ve told you:
Yes
I don’t think ignoring it is an option for them the same way it is for Fox.
Why not? And they also had the option to report on the controversy instead of supporting Biden’s position
Because they’re a financial news network and that’s significant financial news. Reporting the controversy would be low-key encouraging a stock market crash. If this is true:
We are a nation whose economy is collapsing into a cesspool of ruin, whose supply chain is broken, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming
Then clearly the stock market is way way way overpriced. I don’t think CNBC is going to do anything to encourage a sell-off, such as covering that Trump attack on Biden as a valid point of view.
Basically in terms of what will matter for the election, Trump is not making a case that the economy is bad under Biden. His message is falling flat with the informed portion of his own base in the face of the data. He is not going to push a populist economic message (even if some of his supporters will somehow project that onto him).
Anyone on the left like yourself who has critiques that Biden is not doing enough for poor people I just don’t see as that important to the election. Whatever you dislike about Biden’s policies, Trump’s are going to be worse in every way.
I pretty much agree with that. Rich people think the economy is good, poor people are either in his cult and believe anything he says or probably voting blue/third party/not voting.
It has the potential to impact turnout for him.
Sure, but you’re expecting everyone who’s left of center who’s currently suffering from bad economic conditions for themselves on the ground to just ignore that, push the emotional response to that aside, and pick Biden because he’s less bad for them than Trump.
I could also make a logical case that four more years of Biden makes a Dem winning in 2028 less likely, which pushes real change out at least another eight years. If Trump wins, one could argue that Dems have a better chance in 2028, and the Dem candidate in 2028 figures to be better than Biden for the working class. There’s also an argument that if you support establishment candidates who don’t help the working class in the general, they’re going to keep winning the primaries, and you’ll never get change.
I’m not sure I actually buy that logical case because there’s a very real chance it ends our democracy, but I could definitely understand a poor left wing voter who’s struggling right now saying, “Fuck all these people, why vote?”
No I’m expecting anyone who votes based on their economic circumstances to actually think about how each candidate might change their economic circumstances. And the bottom 50% aren’t in some horrible straits. Housing, healthcare and childcare cost too much. That’s the problem. Bottom 50% wages have grown in real terms under Biden. Their gripe (at the aggregate level) isn’t (or shouldn’t be) jobs but affordability of those things which are demand inelastic. These are issues Democrats have been talking about for decades and have proposed solutions for.
I could also make a logical case that four more years of Biden makes a Dem winning in 2028 less likely, which pushes real change out at least another eight years.
I doubt you could make that case convincingly
If Trump wins, one could argue that Dems have a better chance in 2028, and the Dem candidate in 2028 figures to be better than Biden for the working class.
Why would a 2028 candidate figure to be better than Biden? I think that’s a crazy assumption
There’s also an argument that if you support establishment candidates who don’t help the working class in the general, they’re going to keep winning the primaries, and you’ll never get change.
This is like the 4d chess thinking. If Democrats lose in 2024 the lesson they’re going to take is they went “too woke” and move to the right. This is the sort of logic that only appeals to the terminally online
I’m not sure I actually buy that logical case because there’s a very real chance it ends our democracy, but I could definitely understand a poor left wing voter who’s struggling right now saying, “Fuck all these people, why vote?”
Respond to this is going to venture way out of the scope of this thread and I’m not willing to take the time to go there right now
Yet another person with the exact same argument as me.
I think you’re ascribing a lot more of a logical process to the average voter than they use in reality. I think most people vote based more on emotion, and a quick/broad assessment of how things are going.
Because Biden hasn’t really done significant things for the working class, and a younger and less moderate future candidate might.
Maybe by my own logic most voters don’t really think about it that deeply, though.
I think this is a good point but then it circles back to thinking Biden has more of a messaging / news media problem than a need to significantly change course on economic policies. He needs to find a message that resonates with people’s emotions.
Well the problem is that for a lot of people, a quick/broad assessment of how things are going for them is: not very good. Something like a quarter to a third of people think the economy is good, a little under half of Democrats. So he’s got to make sure he gets enough of those votes despite their current situation.
Yeah, this - what I think will resonate is talking about helping/growing the middle class.
Right. This whole thing started out of a discussion about whether Biden should heavily campaign on the economy as a massive success.
I definitely do not for reasons I’ve already outlined.
If pressed on it, sure, highlight the successes where they exist, and talk about how the job isn’t done. Just expecting “Bidenomics” to catch on when like 90% of normies are just going to tie that to inflation is not a winning message. And certainly a message of “everything is great” is just going to sound straight up insulting to people who are struggling (and there are a lot of them).
What Biden should be doing is finding out WHY young people who lean Democratic are saying that the economy sucks and get to work fixing it - or at least trying on the things you can. He should have been doing this a year ago.
The young people that he desperately needs to win the election are already unhappy with him on Israel/Gaza; he doesn’t need another reason to piss them off.
This started off because I made the point that things are good and that Biden should point out his successes because they are very much there. Ceding that space to Trump is bad strategy. The argument has been mostly if those successes are there or not.
JFC dude, let it the fuck go.
Yeah but this is pretty much always the case in every election. There’s never been a time when the economy worked for everyone. If there are more jobs than they used to be before Biden was president and they pay more in real terms than they used to before Biden was president then it’s not really a general issue with his economic policies in the way that economic issues have impacted elections in the past.
Something like a quarter to a third of people think the economy is good, a little under half of Democrats. So he’s got to make sure he gets enough of those votes despite their current situation.
But as the surveys up thread showed many of those same people think the economy is good for them and their state and it’s some general sense of economy at the national level is not good despite not feeling it personally.
I don’t know how it is where you live but around where I live restaurants and stores are packed. People certainly aren’t tightening belts like it’s a recession. Airports are full, traffic seems back to pre-pandemic levels. There are plenty of signs that the economy is booming even if there are issues with the affordability of some inelastic things like housing, healthcare, and education.
Biden already does that. Pro middle and working class rhetoric has been a key focus of pretty much every campaign he’s run. And we’re just getting started into campaign mode. If you think Biden is going from here to November without a lot of messaging about helping the middle class of the country I wonder how well you remember past election cycles.
If you think he needs some bold major new economic policy, I’d be interested in what it is. In my opinion something like Bernie’s national rent increase cap would be huge risk and likely a huge flop. I expect his platform to have something for health care reform.
Biden shouldn’t say the economy is a massive success, I don’t think anyone has said that. But the post COVID economy is a success and he shouldn’t apologize for it or change course in terms of policies. He should absolutely highlight the job creation numbers and tie that to specific policies which have helped bolster employment.
IMO the message should be that things are on the right track, we’re employing more people and growing faster than our economic peers. We have specific challenges that are impacting middle class Americans such as the affordability of healthcare, education, and housing. Trump is offering nothing to help with those things. Democrats believe we should do X, Y, and Z.
If Democrats can come up with a winning message regarding how we create more housing in this country and specifically more housing in the areas where people want to live that would be great but the reality is a lot of the issues there are tied to local politics and NIMBYism and economically feasible solutions would be politically unpopular in heavily Democratic areas.
The poll you’re referencing was a cross tab. Here are some other cross tabs from the same poll that tell a bit of a different story.
As for policy proposals I think larger first time homebuyer credits, maybe some sort of rate buydown for first time homebuyers, restoring childcare credits, and a tax increase on people who own more than 5 homes to help pay for it.
I think subsidizing home buyers is a bad idea that will just cause prices to go up further. Any effective solution needs to create more housing supply, there’s no circumventing law of supply and demand.
Taxing people who are buying SFHs to rent them out bad enough might free up some supply for buyers, obviously bad for renters though. The problem with only coming at it from the incentivizing building side is that it takes longer to play out. I also believe subsidizing first home buyers is incentivizing more building of entry level homes, in a big way.