Yeah honestly so far he’s the best president of my lifetime and still people are acting like he’s senile or something. The guy has definitely lost a step but he was a tier 1 politician to start with clearly. Good enough is good enough and I’m not sold that he’s going to struggle to beat a similarly diminished Trump at all. In fact I don’t buy it. I think he does better against the rest of the GOP field than he does against Trump, that’s the biggest bunch of nobodies I’ve ever seen. Desantis was the initial front runner for a reason, the rest are even less serious.
Biden would crush Desantis. None of these people can stand up to any scrutiny at all.
Why? When has that mattered? I think you underestimate how much of suburban America is itching for someone who passes as a reasonable Republican they can vote for again. Tons of people would be thrilled to vote for Trump policies wrapped in a not-so-uncouth package.
~6 weeks ago give or take, I thought Biden was like a 7-2 favorite, with his main vulnerability being that even with a lot of voters who voted for him, his age was an issue for them, fairly or not, so I thought that if he can mostly keep it tight and not have applesauce on his tie in public, he had a good chance of winning. Around that time, the polling seemed to reflect that his age was like an imminent obstacle now, not just how he’s going to be 12 months from now, and I was like fuck let me slim that down to 3-2ish favorite. And the last ~2 weeks, he’s been polling poorly all over the place, including in swing states, and while we can unskew here and there, inflation is going to hurt him a lot (perhaps more than I thought), so combined with his age, 50-50 sounds fair enough to me.
Do I believe that The Greatest President’s ever is going to win over youngs in mass numbers (which is part of the unskewing rationale for some of the recent polls) because avocado toast is 30 dollars, not really, but not going to consistently look at Biden trailing nationally in the low 40s to orange’s low to mid 40s, with Biden having a 55-60 disapproval, and not be concerned.
The only positive is that nobody is paying attention. The polls don’t actually reflect a preference for Trump, but rather a general dissatisfaction with how the world is right now. Once Trump is more salient during the campaign and inevitably says all kinds of horribly offensive and heinous shit, his numbers will tank again. Which gets us to the coin flip I think this will be.
Because it’s not paying enough. I don’t see how all of these fields with “labor shortages” are different than if a hospital tried to hire a heart surgeon for $20/hour. There wouldn’t be any applicants in that case either.
I agree with this. If the Biden campaign is run competently once people start paying attention, and abortion is front and center, I think we’re a decent favorite. But if the economy is the main issue, we’re probably an underdog or it’s a flip.
I mean childcare is paying like $25/hr, I think, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue to me. You’re acting like it’s impossible to not have enough labor in a given field at a given time, that it’s always the rich assholes refusing to pay enough. Often, yes. Always, no.
According to the Chamber of Commerce (grain of salt, I know), citing BLS data (so assuming they’re not flat out lying about the numbers), there are 9.6M job openings and 6.4M unemployed workers. This makes sense to me, because we’ve had Boomers retiring and lower immigration. I think in some sectors we’re hearing a lot of noise about a shortage that isn’t there because of corporate interests. But I think in others, it’s a thing. I think childcare is an area where it’s real.
Keep in mind, childcare costs aren’t borne by corporations. The people complaining about not being able to find daycare or babysitters are mostly regular people.
Right, and Trump’s narcissism makes it impossible that he doesn’t put himself front and center. Additionally, his refusal to pay bills including his own lawyers might actually make him less attractive to political consultants who are good at using data and micro-targetting and these sorts of modern political campaign activities.
The thing Trump is actually really good at that I don’t see talked about is just repetition. Repeat the lie over and over again until it becomes part of hte back ground environments. Like look at how much he tweets and just repeats witch hunt witch hunt witch hunt, it’s actually really effective at sticking things into the brains of low information low engagement voters.
And it’s much easier to repeat the bald faced lie than to repeatedly explain the actual truth.
I don’t think childcare is paying 25 an hour. It’s 15-20 in Austin, and that’s at the fancy daycare with a linkedin ad. And yeah 15 an hour is roughly what fast food and retail are paying. Some a little more some a little less.
Yeah I’m talking about like babysitters and nannys. Near us they’re making $25/hr for one kid, $28/hr for two, more if the kid is under a certain age, and more for 3+.
I would assume a daycare backs out to be somewhere near the low end of that range actually going to the employees, but I’m sure plenty of them fuck over their employees.
If i were biden’s opposition I would just keep saying “bidenomics” over and over and over but it looks like biden and all of his out of touch establishment cronies are gonna do that for him. Like at my current income level I should basically barely notice the cost of essentials rising and in the last year I’ve had to actually make really strict budgets and start giving up luxuries. This isn’t a whine, but more to point out that if inflation is so bad that middle/upper middle class incomes are starting to have to cut back or make tougher decisions than they’re used to, that also means that the bottom 50% are getting absolutely destroyed, and hearing completely out of touch shit like “bidenomics” is gonna evoke a visceral reaction. You can point the finger solidly at biden for a lot of this and it isn’t even that unfair or untrue, really. He’s going to get slaughtered.
The largest voting bloc (millennials) just got completely rug pulled on student loans, too. Sure that’s gonna help everyone’s budgets this holiday season, LOL. People aren’t gonna just forget those monthly payments because some person in idaho has crappy access to abortion.
Childcare is definitely not paying 25 an hour near me. The economics of child care are really really tough because most people who need child care also can’t afford to pay a ton for child care so child care workers can’t make that much and round and round we go.
Edit: except for the for profit child care corporations. Fuck them. But my kids go to a not for profit child care.
I don’t see Biden getting blamed for the student loan thing ever. He literally forgave the loans and the GOP blocked it in the Supreme Court.
And that was a huge unforced error by them because it puts their finger prints on the economy in a very unhelpful to getting elected president kind of way.
as I’ve said a lot in the past I think the people here make the mistake in thinking the average or even above average voter pays any attention or thought to all of this stuff. they just see the loan payments and who’s holding office and maybe a catchy couple of attack ads. that’s it.
I don’t think the people who are that low information even vote all that often. I think you’re also very strongly underestimating the fact that both sides blame the other side for everything no matter who is in office. The people you’re describing are going to vote for the Democrats again if they voted for Democrats last time. And vice versa.
I’d still say this is a “rich asshole” thing, just not as direct as in other fields.
Right. It’s a downstream effect of the skyrocketing cost of living, lack of raises, and the lack of any social safety net. If people in other industries made more and/or had child care subsidized appropriately by the government, I don’t think this problem exists. Certainly not to the extent it is now.
I find it very very hard to believe that we would have a shortage of child care workers if they made 120k/year. We would have a shortage of cardiac surgeons if they made 40k/year.
All of this is a rich asshole problem. @boredsocial said earlier that pretty much every problem in this country is fundamentally a tax problem. I’m not 100% sold on that, but I definitely think it applies here.
If you only changed what childcare workers make, then paying them $120K/year would squash demand for them and people with kids would have to stop working or change their schedules. Childcare workers have to make > 50% of living wage < 100% of the wages of the people who need childcare.
So the question is, do we have a shortage of childcare workers within those margins for pay? The entire field is not sustainable as a field if people need to be paid more than the parents who need childcare can pay.