This is fucking delusional
Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema are a feature of the eDems. Not a bug.
We really could have codified Roe had it not been for pesky Joe Manchin! Oh well! Now we get to run on it for the next decade+
Of course it is, because, as has been pointed out here infinite times, the reason why overall approval of the economy is lacking has nothing to do with how things are going for anyone, much less the middle and lower classes. Thinking the economy is bad means youâre most likely to be a republican more than anything else based on the data Iâve seen.
Also, this:
The US media treats republicans as an honest actor in good faith discussion, which automatically makes their coverage biased af and damaged. Our entire political institutions are crumbling in large part because of it imo.
Out of curiosity, Biden has achieved the most progressive agenda since [insert answer here].
I donât know I think Sinema was either an oversight or she straight up just went full traitor and there was nothing that could have been done. No way the dem machinery would go back in time and hope for her again seeing how she acted since senator
Or, hear me out, itâs easy to see the media as covering for Biden when youâre a Republican, and Republicans are just straight up hyperpartisan when it comes to economic assessment? The only objective measure by which we are in a literal recession is the party affiliation of the president.
Republican assessment of the economy jumped about 30 points just 30 days into Trumpâs presidency without literally anything happening, and theyâre still not even saying things are that bad in 2020. Not until Biden takes over is it all that bad.
From where Iâm sitting, if the economy is bad now, for which years since the start of the W administration has it been better? I get that weâre not achieving our hopes and dreams for income equality in the US, but thatâs not a very fair standard to be using here. Most of Obamaâs years were a long, slow recovery from the worst collapse in our lifetimes and were definitely worse than now. But maybe 2015 and 2016? Trump didnât fuck anything up until 2020, so 2017-2019? 2021 and 2022 both seem worse than now, now that inflation is more under control and supply chain issues are not a constant worry. 2001 was pretty good until 9/11, and then it seemed like things just kept getting worse under Bush until the big boom at the end.
So, yeah, I get that the economy isnât doing enough for the poor and middle class, but how often has that actually happened? From where Iâm sitting, if weâre doing better than basically the whole developed world, and also this is one of the top 5-7 years for the economy in the last 24, I donât see how one can be so pessimistic as to call this bad, even if it could yet still be better and more equitable. Weâve all been through much, much worse.
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Kinda wild how everyone was on same page Clinton years
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I mean, it was a 1 vote majority in the senate that included Manchinema. Blaming the median elected democrat for that is silly IMO.
Wow, that was a fast pony.
The craziest part of that chart is where the democrats view of the economy kind of somewhat mirrors actual reality whereas the republican one is just completely detached.
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I thought he already was one. Maybe Iâve got him mixed up with someone else.
Yes, but speaking of those, Black unemployment was much higher then (as high as 14 percent at the start of his first term, only got as low as 7 percent) than now. If the Clinton years or at least his second term are our standard for a good economy, then by a lot of objective measures, the economy today is doing as well or better for people at many strata of society compared with then. If we are concerned only with subjective assessments of how the economy is doing, the main reason itâs bad is because of Republicans resentful about Trump losing, not because of their purchasing power.
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Thereâs always going to be a Sinema or Manchin as long as the establishment Dems are running the show. If it wasnât them, my money would be on Coons and Warner. The reporting was that somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-10 Dems were staunchly against nuking the filibuster, they just let Sinema and Manchin take the credit/blame.
Joe Biden treats Mitch McConnell this way. Congressional Dems often treat the House GOP this way. Theyâre all protecting the wealthy, which is why a TikTok ban can get 385 or whatever it was votes in the House, but trying to get a budget passed is all but impossible.
Weâre doing better than the rest of the developed world in terms of where we are compared to where we were. They have had a rougher time economically since the pandemic.
They also lost a lot fewer citizens to said pandemic and their working class has a substantially better standard of living than ours. If you arenât in the top 10% of wage earners in the US you would pretty much automatically be better off if you had been born in any other wealthy nation. You would have received a better education, had more social mobility, and your cost of living relative to your net pay would be lower. You also wouldnât have any student loan debt and while the houses arenât exactly affordable right now because thatâs a global capitalism problem of the rich having too much money, itâs definitely not 5 times the median family income to buy the median family house⌠and if you rent your rights as a renter would be drastically stronger. You would also work fewer hours and have massively more vacation and semi affordable childcare.
So yeah. As much as I would like to claim weâre doing great the truth is that for the median family things havenât actually improved at all since the 70âs, in fact, because of a large rise in two worker households the actual real rate of compensation for an hour worked outside the home has fallen in terms of purchasing power quite steeply. The fact that this is not causing our econometrics to get waffle crushed, and in fact makes them look stronger is kinda my whole problem.
Itâs not that the slow death of the middle class in this country has gotten especially worse under Biden, especially given the conditions he inherited, itâs that it hasnât stopped and itâs been kinda dire since the financial crisis. No one in politics should be taking any victory laps about the economy until they have actually found a way to actually bend the curve the other way. That will be a major victory, but until that happens as long as we still have the level of inequality we currently have they donât actually have anything to be positive about.
Until we actually do tax rich people and use that money to make meaningful quality of life improvements for the bottom 90% (heck the need in childcare is such a big problem itâs impacting the bottom 95% and lowering the already way too low birth rate) I would greatly appreciate every politician doing the smart thing and shutting the fuck up about what a great job theyâre doing. I donât care if itâs your best, sometimes your best isnât good enough, and since most of the job is winning popularity contests that means being able to read the room and realize that it wasnât good enough.
Real median income as a stat has a significant problem in that it doesnât include the number of labor hours sold as part of the household wide metric. Fluctuations in hours worked cause most of the fluctuations in this stat over time. If you go out and get a second job or work more overtime it causes your income to go up. That doesnât mean youâre actually doing better because youâre doing 25% more work for 10% more money in real terms. This is very important to understand in the current low unemployment environment where many many people are working extremely hard just to not end up homeless.
Speaking of the homeless, I donât want to hear any politicians talking about how great the economy is while the homeless population is growing either. You donât get to take a victory lap when you arenât even doing the bare minimum to keep the people at the bottom from dying of exposure to the elements. Imagine giving any credibility to economic stats that tell you the economy is great while the number of homeless people has grown 12% that year.
The stats donât mean what theyâre telling you they mean. Itâs junk data that isnât correlated to anything any policymaker should actually care about or politician should run on. The federal minimum wage is still 7.25 and there are still a million workers at that wage, which is 1.3% of all hourly paid workers⌠Yeah letâs not take any victory laps for how things are going at the bottom either. More homeless people, the same federal minimum wage, and the same number of people working for that federal minimum wage. Doesnât seem all that great for them.
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This is a great ideal and all, but if youâre a politician, itâs really, really dumb. The party that is diametrically opposed to everything you propose will bleat about how great the economy is when they are in power and will crow about how bad it is when they are not without regard for any metrics at all, and it works! It even works on people not in their party, because enough people repeating the same lie and living like itâs the truth wears people down. And the real rub here is that it works not just to get people to believe the lie, but to get people to vote for them!
Politics is about power first, not perfection. If anything you want to happen is going to happen, then the guys at least kinda-sorta on your side need to win elections, and the people diametrically opposed to you need to lose elections. Expecting sitting politicians who are presiding over one of the best (and most equitable!) economies in a quarter century to not crow about it (so that they can get more power and potentially do better!) is a losing strategy. Itâs a strategy to cede more power to the other guys who are going to take even more power away from workers and give it to the rich and powerful.
Look at what the other guys have done for the last 25 years. Their strategy is to win elections and keep winning them, and then push everyone further and further right. Thatâs a winner. Casting off imperfect centrists is a big time loser when the alternative is Trump. The right goes after Liz Cheney in Wyoming instead.
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Exactly. And my thesis is that spiking the football about the economy will not help with this.
Talk about abortion. FFS, itâs the only reason Democrats have a chance in November.
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Abortion is only hope because Rs have absolutely annihilated Ds on the primary battleground every election is fought on.
We can, and have, go back and forth all day long on how the economy is doing but the absolute catastrophic failure of all us on the economy is that we have allowed Rs to convince people that Ds are the cause of their problems and Rs are the solution.
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That is the story of the last 20 years, Rs roll out policy after policy that most of the country finds abhorrent but they remain competitive because public believes they are better on the economy.
From where I sit, the R strategy of claiming the economy is GOAT whenever they are in charge and WOAT when Ds are in charge seems clearly dominant. Itâs either that or we are all wrong and R economic policy is actually superiorâŚ.
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âItâs the economy, stupid.â
It always is. Thereâs no such thing as running a presidential campaign that doesnât talk about the economy. So talk positively about it! Point out the good things!
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The Republican strategy works because itâs simpler: everyone knows they want to cut taxes and Dems want to raise taxes. So they run on the economy sucks when Dems are in charge and tax cuts will fix it, and more tax cuts when theyâre in charge.
Theyâre always talking about how the middle class needs more tax cuts, so theyâre implying the the middle class needs help - theyâre just not actually giving it.