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3mo ago

Opinion | Voters punished Biden for problems he didn’t cause and effectively addressed

www.msnbc.com Opinion | Voters punished Biden for problems he didn’t cause and effectively addressed

The fight against rising prices has essentially been won. But few in the electorate seem aware.

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.

379 comments

Because Americans are some of the stupidest people in the world.
- What, the country with all the resources but still ranks 36th in literacy and 54% of their adults can’t even read above a 6th grade level?
  Literacy info.
  
  And we thought the internet would solve or at least help this. Little did we know...
  
  That's why emojis are so popular.
  
  i need this information to start being treated as the act of oppression it is rather than the “americans dumb lol” framing i see even in leftist spaces.
  americans, and disproportionately minority americans, are being intentionally refused education in the same way they are refused medical care—in service of cost cutting and privatization interests rather than public wellbeing and economic wellness.
  
  54%?? Yikes.
- By design. About a century ago, Rockefeller turned the public school system into a mindless factory worker production machine. Republicans have been reducing funding for decades since.
  They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines. College tuition paywalls real education. As AI improves, the bar lowers further. Public schools will be continually defunded or converted to a voucher system in order to exclude even more citizens.
  
  Republicans decided back in the late 70s and early 80s that the public was too educated (and too hard to control) so they decided to do something about it. 45y of slashed education funding and standards later here we are.
  
  Can you elaborate on what Rockefeller did? Never heard that before
  
  They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines.
  Nothing new. Jim & Jesse even did a song about it years ago.
  The company owned the houses And the company owned the grammar school You'll never see an educated cotton mill man They figure you don't need to learn Anything but how to earn
  The money that you pay upon demand To the general store they own Or else they'll take away your home And give it to some other homeless Cotton mill man
- Fun fact, the average American public school education doesn't include critical thinking skills in the language curriculum. You either get your introduction to this in AP English (if you're a high scoring highschooler) or during your first year of college/university.
  It's mind blowing how many people can't pick apart a given piece of media and think about what message it conveys and why it conveys it.
  So yeah, Americans are ripe for manipulation.
  
  I think not stressing critical thinking skills is not a bug, but a feature, of schools that were designed to crank out factory workers.
  It's sheer lunacy in today's world, but it also happens to be a feature for the qon/Republican agenda.
  
  That's the result of the Republicans fucking over education in this country for the past 50 years.
- I'm sorry to have to upvote that.
  
  I’m American and have to agree with it; it might be because I’m stupid though.
- and like 90% of our media is owned or controlled by republicans.
- The media that they choose to consume is the problem. It plays down the accomplishments of "the enemy" and plays up the hardships and failures like "rampant illegals" and constantly rising food prices. I blame "stupid Americans" less than I blame manipulative billionaires that control media consumption.
- I hate to hear this myself but there's a global rebuke against incumbents of all shapes and sizes literally everywhere, in response to inflation.
  So by definition, everyone is stupid in countries that have rebounded well because they're doing the same.
- That's an understatement. Source: Live in America.
- Stupid and proud of it.

The issue with politics is that you don't just have to address a problem, you also need to publicize what you did.
Maybe the dems did effectively address some problems, but they did a poor PR jobs out of it.
- Outrageous lies are what make the news.
  
  Yeah, somehow trump doesn’t have a credibility problem despite being a pathological liar and I don’t think it was possible for the democrats to effectively counter that when he’s not being held accountable. We need live fact checking in debates and he needs to be publicly called out every time he lies, but then he just won’t agree to the debate and will go hold a town hall on Fox News.
  
  It's high time the Dems stooped to this level. That and promote ragebait podcasts pushing their agenda. It's sad, but you can't argue with the results.
  
  Sadly yes..
- Dems quietly fix things, Repubs loudly claim credit, even when they actively obstructed the fixes. There are uncountable examples of Republican legislators patting themselves on the back for getting legislation passed that actively helps their constituents, when in fact they voted against it. It passed despite them, not because of them, but they still campaign on it and win because of it. Meanwhile Democrats are generally helpful and honest and get the shaft because they don't call out that bullshit and claim their wins as they should.
- It's also true in many tertiary jobs too, communication of what you made matters at least as much as what you made.
  
  For sure, this is a hard lesson learned for me - it doesn't matter if you're doing good work if no one knows about it, so if you want to be rewarded for your work you'll have to spend less time actually doing it and more time doing marketing for what you've done.
- They can't really trumpet their victories because they are far short of what their base actually wanted. Dems leadership would be out there celebrating the crumbs they acquired from the oligarchy while the base wanted a full meal. The Democratic party positioned itself in a lose lose situation. Either they go all in one what the base wants and win elections, but the Bidens and Nancy Pelosi's of the party won't get fat paydays from the donors. So they went with winning some elections by just being marginally better than the dumb nazi party. Not a both sides argument just a fact. If the Democrat leadership actually put a full left-facing platform and candidate they would actually have to achieve some outcomes they fundamentally don't agree with. Dem leadership doesn't believe in less war, less imprisonment, less pollution, or more education, more health care, more compassion. They just don't. So they've just stopped even lying about wanting those things that way they aren't even expected to bring about change.
- Messaging has always been a big problem for the Democratic Party. Unlike the GOP, they are a "big tent", so many points of view abound. There's just no comparison to the organized, disciplined, well-funded messaging of right-wing media...
- If they had actually fixed any problems, they wouldn't need to "publicize" it.
  
  What other problems would you have liked them to solve?

Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
- And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
  Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
  Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
  
  You forgot deporting people
- Would you be willing to donate $10 to Amazon?
  
  I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
  Thank you, your $10/week subscription has been confirmed. Please call 10AM-3PM Eastern to upgrade or cancel your payment. We apologize in advance for the unusually long wait times.

I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people's financial experience. Listen to this shit:
America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.
But few in the electorate seem aware...
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let's check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but "real wage," means, "wage adjusted for inflation," so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden's policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let's not even worry about that. Let's see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what's really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn't been raised since 2009. So it's not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I'm not an economist, and I don't have hours to research this shit, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that's not the point. The point is that I've already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I'll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
- Young people have no hope of buying a house in my area.
  In my neighborhood all the drug store shelves are bare (Rite Aid) and there's soon to be only one grocery store to choose from (Kroger).
  When I'm getting groceries the checkers are talking about how the store is going to close if the merger happens and they'll all lose their jobs.
  No 'media' lied to me and convinced me that the economy is wack. I see it every day.
  What I'm not hearing in the media is recognition of working folks' struggles. Failure to address this kept Dems home.
  
  I'm really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
- Jon Stewart just discussed some of this on The Weekly Show podcast with Heather Cox Richardson as guest. Discussing whether the metrics that define economic success are outdated and also how poorly any of Biden's "successes" were shared by his White House and the media. It was all framed much better than this article.
  
  I once heard some comedian or podcaster say something to the effect of, "The media keeps telling people that the economy is doing well because of the stock market, but for most of us you could replace the words, "stock market," with, "rich people's feelings graph," and it would mean about the same thing." I think that a lot. Also, I didn't know John Stewart had a podcast for the Daily Show, thanks for the heads up on that!
  
  As soon as something is adopted as a metric it's divorced from the reality of the market. It's the nature of the modern soothsaying we call economics.
  
  I don't want to listen to what a union buster has to say about people's economic situation
- 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.
- As you rightfully note the relationship between federal economic policy and economic outcomes is complex and it’s not easy to tease apart cause and effect. Having said that Democrats have through history presided over MUCH better economic outcomes than Republicans, and Biden is no exception. Yet, voters consistently believe that (generic) Republicans are better for the economy than generic Democrats.
  
  Democrats are broadly better, but they've created a lot of the conditions that are killing the working class now. Bill Clinton was the one who passed NAFTA, which was the biggest blow to manufacturing jobs in American history. Obama had a similar trade deal, the TPP, which most likely would have been equally devastating had Trump not killed it (which probably had more to do with his obsession with tearing down the achievements of the first black President than helping workers, but I doubt that mattered to the TPP's opponents).
  Even when Democrats aren't directly the result of harm, their solutions are no longer the grand, ambitious plans from their New Deal glory days. Take Obama's promises to create a foreclosure prevention fund, which got whittled down to HAMP, a mostly impotent refinance scheme that seems to have been designed more for banks than borrowers (despite large Democratic majorities). I'm sure it was better than whatever the Republicans would have come up with, but I doubt that mattered to people who were two months behind on an underwater mortgage.
  Biden and Harris started with a strong vision, but they couldn't get it through Congress and instead pivoted to telling people that actually, they were doing great, and the economy was good again. That will always be a losing message with people who aren't doing well. The Democrats need to double down on a progressive message that does not compromise, with bold plans like a $20 minimum wage indexed to inflation, Medicare for All, and UBI. If they keep tinkering around the margins and giving people statistics when they say they're doing poorly financially they will never be relevant again.
- Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we're talking about real wages?
  Your point is taken that Biden is not primarily responsible for the wage increases during his time in office, but he doesn't have the power as president to unilaterally increase the federal minimum wage. He did sign an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors which, while not having a significant impact on the wage growth nationally, is a step in the right direction.
  I realize your point is more that the author of this piece is a prick and he didn't spend enough time trying to understand the bad economic vibes coming from the working class, but it seems like the Biden administration did a relatively good job guiding the economy through post COVID turmoil, which he (... And Harris by proxy) did not get any credit for. Would you agree with that?
  I'm a huge fan of "sneering chud" by the way. Will be forcing that into a conversation soon.
  
  Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we're talking about real wages?
  Mostly so I could point out in the second to last paragraph that if you weren't on the receiving end of that 13% wage increase (as I strongly suspect is the case for many people in GA, PA, WI and NC), then you took a 20% price increase to the face.
  I think the Biden administration did its best to push through the progressive platform that he ran on, and I think that they probably don't get enough credit for that. I think Biden should have been more aggressive with Congress, especially in calling for the abolition of the filibuster early on, but I appreciate how much he did (or tried to do) through executive action. He was especially good on student loans, I honestly expected him to give up on that, but he didn't.
  However, I think both Harris and Biden lost sight of the left-wing populist message that won them the White House in 2020. Harris especially pivoted towards a centrist, "economic opportunity," platform instead of a, "here's how government will help you," message. I think small business tax credits and first-time homebuyer's assistance are pretty out of touch when you're trying to win over people who can't afford groceries. She had some policies that were more targeted at the working class, but they were not the centerpiece of the campaign like these middle-class focused proposals.
  That being said, yeah, most of my rage here is being directed at the author of this piece. Glad you liked, "sneering chud," I'm a little proud of that one.
- Newspaper and politicians are never going to challenge capitalism.
- Biden tells the sad paid for truth, Trump sells paid for lies.
  Both won't change that most American wages aren't going up, prices are. Certainly won't with tariff going to 60%.
  Biden didn't really do much for the average American. He could demanded higher wages, pushed for healthcare coverage, and investigated price hiking. And arrested Trump. He did some, but for a man who is currently a sitting duck who is above the law, he's choosing the safest/"easiest for the rich" option as a presidential RBG.
  Trump won't do much, but will loudly shit out that he did, and his followers will eat it up and ask for more.
  
  I will give Biden credit for trying. I expect him to pull an Obama and pivot to centrist policy the second he got into office, but he really tried to pass all the progressive things he ran it. He was just incredibly ineffective at it and basically wound up with a pretty standard (though very large) infrastructure bill that he wanted everyone to pretend was a huge progressive victory.

Honestly Democrat are absolutely horrible at talking to people.
I'll be the first to admit, Biden did actually do a lot for workers but just like the leader of the painters union said, y'all fucking suck at telling people that.
I mean look at the rail workers strike, Biden stopped the rail workers strike and didn't address one of the biggest things they were looking for, just to be treated like humans and have sick leave.
There was lots of talk about "doing this for the best of the nation", which okay I could get behind, sure they got a wage increase but I did as shit could understand why rank and file would feel betrayed when they were asking additional to be treated as humans that get sick.
What I didn't hear him or anyone say to them directly, that he was still going to work with the unions afterwards to get sick leave in. Why would you not say that at the same time as you announce your blocking the strike? Cost you nothing to say you have their back.
So then months later, with Biden administration support finally got the workers PTO but no one really knew about it because the moment was gone and honestly union leadership also did a shit job of getting that word out too.
It's not the only thing but it certainly is a big factor in things.
- Biden and the Dems saved the teamsters' pensions against the GOP's best efforts and it didn't even earn them an endorsement from the teamsters' union.
  This was highly publicized, especially if you yourself were in the union
  Internal polling of Teamsters members showed:
  In an electronic poll conducted after the Republican National Convention, 59.6% of rank-and-file Teamsters favored endorsing Trump, while 34% supported Harris.
  A more recent poll indicated a similar trend, with Teamsters backing Trump 58% to 31%
  Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
  You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
  
  You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
  Bingo.
  Or scrolling their feeds. Or swiping. Depending on the age. Every single Democrat leader needs to see that statistic, so they can stop whining about how policy was their problem.
  Democrats are messaging like it's 1950. And hot take, but the only thing that elected Biden was COVID-19, only because it wedged itself into people's lives like absolutely nothing else can.
  
  Hence, Democrats suck a propaganda.
  They should field and finance their own radio jockeys and be flooding the airways with their own counter messages, but instead they've abandoned that terrain to the right and now are paying for it.
  
  Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
  But I was told that Dems lose because they don't have the backs of labor and the working class, and that if they just fixed that, they'd win elections???
- I agree with you for the most part. That being said I have tried to explain this point to multiple people and they don't care that the Biden admin got the rail workers what they asked for. They insist that stopping the strike means Biden was anti union full stop even after the IBEW put out releases thanking the Biden admin. they also said it was just propaganda. It's just as much about people not wanting to listen.
  
  Workers were asking for 15 days of sick leave, Congress and Biden gave them 1 with the act that ended the strike. Later, the railroads continued negotiating with some of the unions and gave them four days of sick leave. People from the Biden administration were present for those conversations and take credit for that.
  So, no, the Biden administration did not give the unions what they asked for, and yes they likely did do material harm to them by stopping that strike.
  
  They didn't get what they wanted though. The points system still is in place that limits the ability to use leaves. The "sick leave" still required notice, so all it did was allow doctor visits to not take PTO, provided the worker could afford the points.
  
  Yeah, hence why I say that union leadership has to do some work here too.
  I've worked with the machinists union during a statewide right to work ballot initiative to overturn the legislatures recently passed right to work bill.
  So much conversation about how "we have to strike out down!" But at the same breath talk about voting Republican. Well that's what they did, killed right to work, elected more Republicans to the state legislature.
  Cue shocked Pikachu face when the people they voted in immediately submitted a bill to enact right to work.
  I mean what the fuck is union leadership doing at that point when you can't get your own members to not fuck themselves over?
- One angle that might explain the lack of media coverage on a win for the working class against the interest of capital owners is that the media itself, at least the mainstream slice of it, is owned by the capitalist class.
  MSM will cover things if they think it'll bring in more ratings. You see it with how many news outlets are treating the upcoming Trump administration. For Cons, they're banking on a viewer base that'll be more interested in Trump coverage. For Dems, they're banking on a viewer base that'll be more hateful and agree of Trump coverage.
  So when you have wins for the working class that Biden's administration directly helped with, and when you have a media industry that just won't cover it out of their own self-interest, you have to wonder if the administration will spend Americans' on advertising or just keep it and move on.
  One might say that the best time to do that advertising is during an election campaign though. And that begs the question as to why Biden nor Harris brought this up in their campaigns.
  Might it be that those groups are also subject to the capitalist class?
- Oh yeah, that was s give amount of PTO. 😶

Voters are pretty stupid. Seriously, the misinformation and willful ignorance on display is breathtaking.

…no.
The DNC brain trust thought they could get away with ignoring an absolutely fucking HUGE part of their base. And they were fucking WRECKED for it.
Trump got just about the same number of votes as he did in the last election. Harris got 11M less votes than Biden got. ELEVEN. MILLION. PEOPLE. STAYED THE FUCK HOME. BECAUSE THEY SAW THE ESTABLISHMENT CIRCLEJERK. AND HARRIS FUCKING LEANED INTO IT. AND IGNORED THE VERY FUCKING REAL LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS GETTING HOLLOWED OUT, AND THE LOWER CLASS CONTINUING TO GET CRUSHED TO DEATH.
And now we get to listen to pundits and DNC leadership and Biden admin people and Harris campaign people circlejerk themselves about how it wasn’t their fault, it was those goddamn progressives and the stupid Arab Americans who cared about Gaza too much.
Genuinely: fuck all the way off with that narrative. the Democratic Party snatched this defeat from the jaws of victory. There was a path to victory. They simply didn’t fucking take it.
- The DNC is working for their rich donors and doing a pretty decent job for them. They shouldn't act so surprised that people who aren't benefiting from the economy don't come out to support them.
- Exactly, who thought it was a good idea to campaign with the fucking Cheneys???????
  
  The same people who thought it was a good idea to run Biden again
  
  The same party that thought Biden, whose career goals were the mass proliferation of student loans AND the legislation around making them forgiveable/dischargeable almost impossible, was a great symbol of student loan forgiveness.
  Yes they tried but i mean how long can you campaign on tried? Doesn't matter because this election they didn't and it showed.
  I think the bigger picture to look at, rather than who doesn't vote Dem, is to look at who didn't vote period and ask why. Why are almost 200 million people choosing not to vote. Why did 280 million people either not vote/not vote Dem?
  The GOP/Republican party have abandoned any attempts to govern decades ago and now simply want to rule. Until things like citizens United are repealed there's no real way to fight through this because the waters are so muddy.
- Nailed it
- they raised over a billion dollars to make it happen.. that's just bad management
  
  That too - how in the fuck is the campaign 20M in debt?
- thank fuck there’s at least one other angry & correct person online
  you don’t get to capitulate to donald trump’s racist violent classist framing on everything for years and be held blameless after the fact.
- I dunno been a republican and democrat voter throughout my life. The dnc did the right thing time by pointing democracy itself was on the line
  Apparently we have enough people in this country who simply cannot appreciate the rights we have.
  A bunch of really dumb Americanare about to realize what truly was on the line this time around.
  
  You’re kinda missing the point of what I’m trying to say.
  The total number of Trump voters barely moved. As a fraction of the total populace, it actually probably slightly decreased.
  The total number of Democratic voters decreased by like 12%.
  The DNC alienated their own base. People stayed home, and it made a difference.
  
  Democraticy is on the line, so vote for the ruling party only. Or else you will get worse.
  You see how maaaaaybe that was not a super stable platform? You might get an clue that people are angry and feel abandoned by the nation so that when running a campaign you should not TELL EVERYONE HOW GREAT IT IS!.
  
  I dunno been a republican and democrat voter throughout my life. The dnc did the right thing time by pointing democracy itself was on the line
  By forcing a candidate down our throats that no one voted for

Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren't boomers, we're basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
- This is how you win an election.
  
  I'm under no obligation to be kind to stupid people that degrade our quality of life with their ignorant decisions.
- Holy shit, a true clown-troll account made specifically because of the results of a political election. Get a fucking life or even just a singular hobby to better waste your time with.
  The working class didn't come out in droves, it was the same fucking numbers. Republicans are taught at a very young age it was their duty to vote, it's ingrained in a lot of the family structure while the left/progressive stems more from active engagement and a distrust in the political system.
  If you think Biden stepped down just because he was "too old", you slept through the past year. It was a valid concern and still is as the sitting administration, it's even more concerning we're about to have the oldest elected person in history in fucking 2024.
  Economics hardship was already here, that's probably what pissed me off the greatest about this last election cycle. "They're going to come after us if you don't vote!" removed, hey've been coming for us, everyone is just pretending it's important now.
  
  Holy shit, a true clown-troll account made specifically because of the results of a political election.
  Lol. I created this account the day after the election because I know the cesspool Reddit is about to become (already kind of was). Your little whiny bitch opinion about why I'm here means jack shit to me, loser.
  The working class didn’t come out in droves
  Millions of people is droves, you dumbfuck. Working class people came out in droves and voted for a guy that's openly anti-worker. That happened.
  If you think Biden stepped down just because he was “too old”
  He was pressured to step down for two reasons. Because he was old and because his handling of the Palestine issue made a lot of young voters uncomfortable. And after the debate, it was mainly the age thing. If you believe otherwise, you are living in an alternate reality. Then we proceeded to replace him with another equally old person. Americans making a lot of sense on that one.
  Economics hardship was already here
  And now it will get worse.
  So anyway, go fuck yourself.

Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.

Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with "gut" feeling.
- Always has been.
  Problem is their "gut" feelings are now from conservative radio/podcasts and facebook feeds, instead of a mix of papers and friends like before.
  
  Yea. There is a word for that around the world. It's called stupid.
- "BUSINESS MAN GOOD"
  
  "business man like me, he say it like it is"
  Business man: word salad - slur - word salad
- Democracy seems to be crumbling pretty hard to shitty education systems combined with heavy propaganda and misinformation. I've been trying to think of a solution that still allows a proper resilient democratic system to thrive, but I'm not sure one exists.
  
  There's likely no 1 magic solution... it'll take multiple fronts: education, community-building, better(less misinformation) social media...

Democrats need to be louder in blaming the people at fault. Harris should have been screaming about the economy Obama left Trump vs the economy Trump left Biden. She should have been screaming that from day 1!
- They wouldn't trust the messenger. We need to come to terms with the fact that a not so small group of people need fear to be motivated to believe anything.
  We need a rage baiting group of influencers pushing the Left's agenda. It's sad, but it's needed.
- They should have been screaming about it four years ago. Biden chose to take the high road and not talk about the previous administration.
  
  And Obama tried to take the high road too. And for 8 years republicans grew a huge population of people that learned to blame democrats for everything. Now it’s just second nature to most people to hate democrats.

Let voters get what they deserve.
Republican voters are the biggest simps for big business that I’ve ever seen. It’s like if slaves in America cheered on the confederacy during the Civil War.

It's not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren't obsessively following the news and economic reports.
It's how they feel about money.
That was the biggest single issue.
People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.
It doesn't matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we're doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.
- It’s not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren’t obsessively following the news and economic reports.
  i HIGHLY disagree with you.
  Even if you're a relatively disconnected right winger, who listens to fox news or the daily wire a couple of times of week, the propaganda is so fucking blatant it will still completely indoctrinate you after a few years.
  like to be clear, any right winger that obsessively follows the news is literally ben shapiro or alex jones. There is no "moderate" here unfortunately.
  
  Even if you’re a relatively disconnected right winger
  I'm not talking about relatively disconnected right wingers; I'm talking about people that are largely centrist, and not paying attention to Fox, NBC, CNN, or any newspapers, and gets all of their 'news' from social media. I guess you'd call them the hoi poloi; they're low-information voters (or no information voters), and mostly apathetic as long as they feel like they're getting by. Policy won't matter to them very much; they're voting on feels.
  any right winger that obsessively follows the news is literally ben shapiro or alex jones.
  That depends. There are a number of people that are extremely fiscally conservative that have zero interest in culture wars issues. Most of them have defected from the Republican party entirely though, because they see that the current iteration of the Republican party is deeply harmful to the kind of conservatism that they stand for. But that kind of conservative hasn't really been popular since about the time that Newt Gingritch was trying to stir up the country against a president that didn't keep his dick in his pants.
- Is it though? Or is it incredibly bad when the system is predicated on infinite growth, measured by quarterly EPS?
  We can probably tolerate a little more disinflation, as a treat. Deflation has to be sustained for it to start moving toward a recession, and since companies (see Tech, see Biosciences, see IT) are already pushing for massive layoffs anyway, where is the incentive for workers? Particularly and explicitly on the heels of record profits and while many large companies are sitting on cash surpluses. They're basically just laying off workers so executives can get a fat bonus. So whose interests are being served? Certainly not the greater economy.
  Corporate decisions are already breaking the social contract. Reinvestment has been replaced with stock buy-backs, and human capital is crushed to manipulate wages to their lowest point again. As has been happening for nearly 40 years.
  
  We can probably tolerate a little more disinflation, as a treat.
  No, not really, because deflation (not disinflation) tends to be self-sustaining, much like hyperinflation does. If the dollar I have today will buy two dollars worth of goods next week, then I'm going to hold onto my dollar to make any sort of discretionary purchase until next week. When everyone does that, all at the same time, it's like building a dam; the flow of money just grinds to a halt. Companies don't have money coming in, so they can't pay workers, which leads to layoffs, and the people laid off have no income to buy anything now, which feeds right back into that cycle.
  I agree with you that corporations need to be reined in, that executive salaries are out of control, and that things like stock-buybacks are the bane of a functional economy. But that's literally going to take legislation in this country to fix, in the same way that it did when the economy crashed in the 1920's, and I guarantee you that there's going to be zero political interest in that for at least two years.

We need more political literacy in this country.

Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn't Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn

Yeah, because Americans are dumb and willfully ignorant.

Tell this to my landlord.
- Your landlord is a republican.
  Or more specifically, your landlord is a property management company employed by venture capitalists who you just emboldened to get even shittier. And those VCs are conservatives.
  Enjoy your perceived victory against bad old uncle Joe...
  
  Enjoy your perceived victory against bad old uncle Joe…
  This sentiment is the most painful shit to read on here. Lots of "maybe they'll learn" or "so sorry your party lost /s". Do these people think Biden and Harris will suffer through the Trump presidency? They're rich as fuck. It's WE who will suffer, probably minorities getting the worst of it.
  Good job guys, you really showed 'em...

Effectively addressed? Like the housing crisis and the visibly homeless?
- Well their next candidate, Newsom, certainly has done a lot in regards to the visibly homeless. The future looks bleak no matter how you slice it. I hope to God the neolibs can't make that shithead stick as the anointed candidate.

Same shit as always, the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises but no on hears about it because the right wing own 90% of the media.
- I swear for every positive story about something Biden did, there were 3 or 4 about Trump just being Trump: saying some outrageous lie, gaffes, and of course all the crimes. He's sucked all the air out of the room for 10 years and now we're going to have another 4. All news, positive or negative, is publicity.
- 99.9%
- the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises
  If you didn't learn the lesson that this isn't true in the last 4 years then all hope is lost

Isn't that true for just about any democratic president? The bushes ruined the economy, Clinton and Obama fixed it. Republicans receive an awesome country, take credit for it, ruin it, then blame a democrat president for the mess they left behind.
- Since the formation of the Democratic Party there haven't ever been two Democrats elected subsequently without the first one dying in office. The pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth, getting further to the right with each swing.
  Hell, that might have been the Dems' original plan: get Biden elected a second time, have him retire during his second term, then Harris gets all the goodwill and she might have been able to keep a D in the White House until 2032. It would have been a shitty plan, doomed to fail even worse, but it would explain why they waited so damn long for Biden to step aside.
- This has been the cycle. But now the cycle will change from ruining the economy to ruining the economy and democracy itself. Once trump is done ratfucking the country for 4 years, the dems will get blamed.
  
  None of them fixed the economy, they just made the lines go up again.
  
  Once trump is done ratfucking the country for 4 years, the dems will get blamed.
  And he'll stay in office because someone dared to pretend to hold him responsible. People really need to get over the idea that it's only 4 more years.

"Am I out of touch? No, it's the voters who are wrong"
- Voters have shifted right because they're hurting, and the Dems promised 4 more years of the same. Trump promised to remove the elites and actively tear the country they created apart. That's why they voted for him. The fact that's it's a lie and they're stupid to believe it doesn't matter. Telling people the economy is doing great while they are poorer than they were 4 years ago pushes them away.
  Liberals lost ~15 million former voters and handed America to a fascist dictator, and all they've done is blame the left and stick their head in the sand, as though the population didn't just vote to tear the status quo apart. They did the same thing in 2016. They won't get another chance, and they still don't understand that.

Opinion: trying to teach tens of millions of people enough basic statistics and economics so that they understand that Joe Biden wasn’t actually as bad as they think is not actually a serious strategy for defeating conservative populism in elections
- I don't think this is trying to teach tens of millions, I think this is a scaled equivalent of me just standing in my kitchen, looking around and saying to nobody, "God damnit... What the fuck!" Before I take a moment to figure out what's next.
  It's very human. Many had a lot invested in the idea of a better future, that this all might be salvageable. Takes a minute to reckon with the reality here. We're going to have to replace presidential debates with slap fights and primaries with Jello wrestling. For someone relatively younger with a family that they pictured hopefully supporting to grow to be good people doing good things in the world, just sucks to realize the "support" now means we need to start slapping them in the face as early as possible so that they have the most red and calloused cheeks possible to survive in the world we selfishly forced them into.
  Raising someone to be decent today feels like he would be as valuable as raising them to be the best VCR repair person in 2024. You have a severely limited and likely permanently outdated skill set. You might be able to enter a few small rooms where your talent is appreciated and useful, but more often than not you'll walk around in a broader humanity that has no use for you or those like you.

This is not a messaging problem it's a measurement problem. The metrics we use to gauge economic progress and/or health are not effective indicators of anyone's experience but the wealthy. When Dems tell me wages have gone up so income inequality is getting better what they mean is that new jobs are on average offering slightly higher pay to new hires.
They don't say that slightly higher pay is 5 cents an hour which is practically useless. They don't acknowledge that this tiny wage increase is dwarfed by the impacts of inflation over the last 4 years. Worst of all, they don't say that because this wage increase only applies to new hires, anyone working the same job for more than a couple of years hasn't seen a wage increase at all, but that price gouging has definitely impacted them. That last one is important because it applies to a huge chunk of people.
This is just the way it works out with wages but basically everything these pundits are saying is great under Biden could be described the same way. They're talking about averages which when applied to 330 million people produce numbers that sound significant, but when you look at almost any individual it doesn't make a practical difference in their lives. Sure, you may have slowed the rate at which things are getting worse, but are you honestly surprised at this reaction? You're telling people you solved their problems and they're responding "no, you absolutely did not and fuck you for saying that"
- Yeah this shit is insane. We fixed inflation! Great, that's great, but where are our, meaning the working class, 25% raises to offset the inflation that already happened? I'll be up for my second raise in three years in 6 months. It's already promised to be 7% which will beat inflation (and I plan to fight for more), but I would need 25% to get my pay to be worth the same as it was three years ago before my first raise.
  
  Absolutely, and to be clear, this does not imply that Trump has a good solution to this problem. He'll probably make it significantly worse. But at least he's talking about it in a way that resonates with people. Don't tell me my problem is that I don't understand my own financial situation. Show me how you plan to improve it in ways that I actually care about.

No, voters punished Biden for his inability to effectively communicate what he’s done to help them. This has been a consistent problem with the democrats, and with corporate media. Democrats need better spokespeople and better messaging.
They also need to stop catering to the ultra rich and moderate republicans because that shit turns off the base faster than crap messaging. There is no “liz cheney, nikki hayley” constituency as we saw last Tuesday.
- You’re right that Dems need better messaging and to stop catering to the ultra rich. At the same time, we can’t discount the propaganda messaging that the article mentions. Not being in their echo chambers means not being exposed to the bulk of it, and that is great. At the same time, it means being disconnected from what a lot of people are basing their opinions on.
  For a few years, up until the start of this year, I had a job that required interacting with families in people’s homes. If I had a choice, I would’ve preferred to avoid the right-wingers… but gotta do what you gotta do.
  Some households were pure poison: hate-driven parents who constantly belched up Fox news topics. These parents normally communicated with their kids through complaining and screaming. But if a kid made some quip about “Biden sucks,” they got a brief moment where their parents would actually laugh. The reinforcing power of that toxic dynamic cannot be understated.
  It’s no wonder that a lot of kids in those circumstances end up eager to repeat the same crap their parents say. In the time that I worked that job, a lot of the commentary was Biden-centric, making him a convenient punching bag that even the smallest fists could reach (even if they had no idea what they were doing/saying.)
  Dems have a lot of improvements to make, but it would take a lot more than “improved messaging” to overcome the sheer power of this propaganda culture.
  
  The right has unlimited money and resources when it comes to corporate media messaging. The media will not save us. The revolution will not be televised; it's not in the papers, it's on the walls.
  
  thank goodness the democrats don't have a media apparatus and what we all consume is news and truth instead of propaganda.
  it's so comforting to be in a community of people who are immune to propaganda
  Joe Biden is the best president we've ever had and Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign. That just doesn't mean anything.
- Why "no"? You're basically saying the same as the summary.
  
  The article headline reads like voters don’t want the things Biden did. Which is a lie, and part of my gripe about messaging and the media. A better headline is “Voters don’t understand what Biden did for them, and that needs to change”.
  
  No, they're basically saying the same as the summary.
- They didn't promise unicorns like the Republicans did, and voters still got mad that only some people got unicorns.
  Republicans have promised to eat all the unicorns.
  
  He literally said he would cure cancer
- One of his first acts as president was to deliberately double child poverty
  
  Seeing a lot of silent downvotes for an objective fact recited in a value neutral manner.
  That in itself says more than I could hope to about the topic of this thread

Not a surprise. The majority of Americans are dumber than a bag of rocks. Zero ability to do proper research. Believe superstition over science. Oblivious to other cultures and languages. The list goes on.
- And this has all been done on purpose. American children can’t get a proper meal at school. Low paid teachers buying their own school supplies. Kids bombarded with reactionary media trash, tracking, and behaviour manipulation from their phones. College students saddled with debt and not being able to afford homes. Homelessness criminalized. Prisoners turned into slave labor.
  
  Damn, kinda sounds dystopian already huh?
- prices have doubled, megacorps profit have “atleast” doubled. genocide with our tax money way more than doubled. 1 of 3 people i know in tech got laid off while there company spent billions in stock buybacks
  the list goes on. but hey there were bills which achieved nothing but gave billions to dnc donors firms and stats show economy is great.
  on top of all that harris was a terrible candidate whose campaign was all about ignoring anything that was evenly remotely negative to her megadonors agenda. her getting picked over warren as vp was a spit on the dnc voter base to begin with.
  but i am sure dnc consultants will come with the same smug research as you and will be paid millions for it by the elite trash like pelosi and schumer to keep their corrupt hold on “democratic” party.
- Uneducated (more like miseducated tbh) people make much better subjects

biden getting flak over inflation is fucking hilarious.
The fed is literally irrelevant to the president, the president does not control inflation. Sure maybe his spending increased inflation. But the entire global economy was at a practical stand still. If you think getting a seized ICE working again is hard, try it with a global economy.
You can bitch all you want about inflation, but at the end of the day, nobody really knows what the right solution here was. We could've gone through another great depression event if not for global stimulus. And a few years of bad inflation and high costs will beat literally starving.
- The only reason Biden gets some slack is when the reaction was needed to take place hard and fast was under trump. And we have had the knowledge of how to stop the spread of an epidemic/pandemic for centuries.
  Stop interactions between people.
  People showing signs or symptoms should quarantine.
  If you can avoid contact with people - you do so. In the past this was the wealthy who could go out to the country side and largely avoid contact with masses of people. But there is documentation of towns shutting down interaction with outsiders to avoid risk of disease spreading either into, or out of the town.
  But when every single country fails to take actions - it isn't a single case of ONE bad leader. It's a case of systemic issues - and that is the case throughout the west: The west is infected by economist bean counters who are insistent on "number go up". That is Canada, the US, UK, France, Germany... the list goes on. And that attitude has gutted the western spirit, economy, and more. This idea that we need immigration - when immigration is a bandaid to a much deeper problem that starts in and around 1965, but really has it's first signs in 1967 in the US, and that is spiraled out of control with the end of the gold standard.
  Yes: That is where the problems stem from.
  The fact is: Biden has been in politics, for basically the entire run of problems stemming and bubbling over. And he has been right smack dab in the middle voting basically for every measure that continued the problem forward. Making promises that were inevitably funded with printed money - printed money that created inflation, that required interest rates to go up, that drove people out of home. Economic conditions that enabled and even encouraged manufacturers to offshore US manufacturing to places like China - destroying US jobs in the process.
  Who benefited?
  If there is a politician to blame: It is Biden. He has been there practically every step of the way.
- biden getting flak over inflation is fucking hilarious.
  Why? He did literally nothing to address it.
  The fed is literally irrelevant to the president
  ????????
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chair_of_the_Federal_Reserve
  The chairman serves a four-year term after being nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate; the officeholder serves concurrently as a member of the Board of Governors. The chairman may serve multiple terms, pending a new nomination and confirmation at the end of each term; William McChesney Martin (1951-1970) was the longest serving chair, with Alan Greenspan (1987-2006) a close second. The president may not have the legal authority to dismiss a chairman before the end of a term, although this assumption has never been tested in court.[3]
  ??????
  You can removed all you want about inflation, but at the end of the day, nobody really knows what the right solution here was.
  Price controls? Ronald Reagan?
  
  Why? He did literally nothing to address it.
  What the fuck are you supposed to do? Unprint money???
  ???
  the fed is an independent agency, just look at trumps previous term. He couldn't get them to do what he wanted, even with appointing a guy he liked.
  The president may not have the legal authority to dismiss a chairman before the end of a term, although this assumption has never been tested in court.
  also this.
  Price controls? Ronald Reagan?
  price controls may have worked. It's hard to say unless you look at the revenue streams and accounting directly. But then you wouldn't need price controls either so...
  Ronald Reagan had some pretty stupid economic policy. Notably removing legislation that would've prevented the 2008 financial crisis. But that doesn't count apparently.

Marginally addressed. Like I get it. He's better than Trump, but so is 50% of the average person I see outside. There is no effectively addressed, when we know the tested, studied, and actually implemented solutions.
For example: The ACA. Yes an improvement from what came before but a quarter baked bandaid on the bullet wound of a health care system. We know universal health care system is the answer. It's a fact. The Democratic party never once made that a core part of their platform. Even if you know you won't get everything when working in a democracy you still have to argue from a far left position so when you compromise it's a stronger shift. The middle ground between universal health care coverage and 100% free market is the public option. Where Americans can decide between government coverage or private. But the ACA essentially forced everyone above the poverty line into private insurance held up by government subsidies.
Another example: instead of being 100% anti genicide the Democrat leadership landed on reducing the sizes of bombs given to Isreal?! What's the middle ground between the 100% pro genicide party and the 75% genicide party? Ya ones better but if we land on a compromise of 87% genicide, did we really achieve anything?
Income inequality: Republicans 100% pro oligarchy Democratic party leadership is 75% pro oligarchy. The party of facts and science knows our economy with collapse every 20 to 30 years to keep the jinga Tower from crumbling to the foundation so what do they do? Bail out the companies that destroyed the economy in the first place and reset the lopsided tower. If we bail out a company why shouldn't it also be nationalized?!
I can keep going on. Every issue the Democratic party's solutions are little more than the queen saying, "let them eat cake."
I live in a solid blue state and surround myself with far left people because we've realized, expecting the federal government to improve your life is a fools errand. We're building our own bubble of compassion, science, and facts. Yes we vote blue but know the only change we can truly make starts by getting involved in our community and surrounding ourselves with those that will fight from a strong position and not a already right leaning position. If we're going to die it'll be with a Molotov cocktails in one hand and surround by those that actually care about each other. Opposed to at the feet of the oligarchy begging for crumbs.
- It's funny you mention the ACA, since what we have now came from Republicans absolutely gutting the original ACA proposal which should surprise absolutely no one since the GOP is bought and paid for by insurance companies.
  
  Yup the ACA was little more than a hand out to the insurance companies. The original version off set the government subsidies to insurance companies with a tax penalty to the uninsured or under insured. Republicans removed that so now insurance companies can double dip while the middle class has to essentially pay for their insurance twice. Once in deductibles and premiums, and another time in taxes to cover the insurance companies losses. The ACA privatizes the profits while subsidizing the losses.
- There is no effectively addressed, when we know the tested, studied, and actually implemented solutions.
  They handled the post-covid period better than virtually any other major nation in the world. With no inflation, with a low unemployment rate, without a recession. But people voted for a guy who aims to impose tariffs. You can't make this shit up.
  
  Yuppy, they got 1 out of 10000 issues right. But did they continue using that as a springboard to get other things right? Nope.
  No inflation? Yes, but did they investigate companies that price gouged during the pandemic? Very little to none.
  Low unemployment? But are those high quality jobs that would lift people out of poverty? Nope.
  Recession? Not for those at the top. Us normal people have been in a 30 year recession.
  Everyone knows that if the Democratic party was just as ravenous as Republicans but for left policies our country would be better off.

Remember when he first got elected and people blamed covid on him as a joke (it happened before he was in office)
...then now people actually believe it
Edit: point proven.
- Remember 8+y of "Thanks Obama" when the dude passed a healthcare act that got tens of millions affordable coverage?
- When he first got into office he wasn't responsible for what happened.
  Now he's been in office for four years and is responsible for what happened.
  More people died of covid under his watch. The meager covid response we had was dismantled by him.
  Not only is he responsible, he is more responsible. Not only was his covid policy bad, it was worse. And not by a little.
  
  One guy told people they could try to cure COVID by shoving light bulbs up to their asses and inject disinfectants whilst their staff was eye rolling in the background.
  All this whilst abusing people wearing masks
  That dumbass also helped the anti vax movement
  Trump was not only responsible for deaths in America, but also internationally. He also helped bring back mostly extinct diseases to the US and intentionally
  He has every opportunity to attempt to control the virus but he chose instead to use it as an opportunity to gain more power
  
  Man, I thought I escaped comments this dumb when I left Reddit.
  
  Were you not following the court's impact on public health policy at all? Every sane state passed a mask mandate and other public health measures to combat COVID spread, then the courts (appointed by Republicans no less) crushed those efforts
  
  Hello moral and intellectual coward. You've just downvoted this comment without replying. I'm sorry you're upset.
  But it wasn't me that manipulated the covid map by changing what it measured from "People getting infected" to "how many hospital beds are available" in order turn it blue. And neither was it Trump. It was Biden.
  And it wasn't me that took a meeting with the CEO of Delta Airlines and changed the quarantine period from what scientists said was nesssesary (14 days) to what monopoly capitalists said (5 days). And neither was it Trump. It was Biden.
  I wasn't the one who gutted unemployment insurance. I wasn't the one who manufactured consent for the end of masking. I wasn't the one who ended the state of emergency. And neither was it Trump. It was Biden.
  Stop taking your anger out on me.

His adminstration may have not created them. But the neoliberal Democrats that he represents did going all the way back to Clinton.
He also only deployed half measures or dragged his feet all the way until the last minute.

Biden (and the rest of us) is being punished for the mistake of not making prosecuting trump and overturning his last 4 years the #1 priority.

Yes and no. I agree they solved the problems, but there was no fixing high prices even if inflation rate was brought down.
It's like when Kamala was asked "was there anything you'd do differently?" The problem was she actually answered the question. The administration made the right choices, so there was little different she would have done. She should have done the politician thing and answered adjacently how she's going to solve high prices.

No shit! Say it with me:
Conservatives control the media. Conservatives control the narrative. Reality does not reflect what people see.
When overnight the Joe Rogan interview with Trump had over 40 million views, the issue becomes clear.
- overnight
  Not overnight, 3 days
  
  Fair. Looks like it was 26 million on Youtube alone in the first 24 hours, not counting Apple, Spotify, and others.

No, he did not bring down inflation. If prices were to go back to where they were in 2020, that would be deflation. What they did was disinflation. The inflation stayed. It's just not going up by as much as it was. That's a whole different story to things going down in price.
- Inflation was like 9% in 2022. It's like 2.5% now. How is that not bringing down inflation?
  Inflation is the rate of change of prices. It's not the prices themselves. I got skewered in another thread for pointing this out, but I still think it's an important distinction.
  
  There is a big difference between inflation and the inflation rate. The inflation rate was officially 9%, but considering groceries went up by 30%, and housing went up by 30% and other things went up 30% or 40%. Most people would say that that 9% was a lie. As I said, that 9% official rate was the rate of change of inflation, not inflation itself. The rate of change has definitely dropped, but that does not mean that the inflation that resulted from those high numbers went away as it never did and never will.

Democracy fails when most people, rather than being informed are stuck in their social network bubble ruts. Democracy fails when nothing is done to fight disinformation in social networks. Democracy fails when the most popular social networks can be bought up by the richest man to be used for electoral interference without any repercussions. Democracy fails when it elects convicted felons. The US is too far gone, and is too powerful and influential for any peaceful transition from those countries that didn't want to be enshittified.

Americans are gonna swing back and forth between the major parties until elections eventually stop happening. Mark my words.

Historically, presidents take credit and the blame for things they didn't do. Economic policy is one example. They actual economic changes take time to really be felt on main street. Very often those changes occur just before they take office or after they leave.
And despite presidential elections being the SB and WS all tied into one competition, the real path to controlling the government is through the house and senate. But THOSE elections aren't as cool.
- Historically, President Trump has never taken blame for anything - only credit.
  
  His 34% approval rating when he left office disagrees.
  
  No president ever stands up and says "I take the blame for what my predecessor did." But they are all quite whiling to take credit for things that they had no hand in.
- You understand that under that logic all the 'good' you want to attribute to Biden is actually because of Trump, right?
  You can't argue "economic effects lag behind," and then claim Biden did good during his term.
  
  I never said I attributed anything 'good or bad' to Biden or even Trump in my statement. I said presidents take credit or blame by the public for things that were beyond their control.

Opinion: nobody cares wall street made more profits. Democrats are lying when they play their economy card. Real people lost purchasing power.

Lowering inflation doesn't lower prices, and prices are what voters actually care about.
Prices won't be going down under Trump either, though, so I'm not sure how much credit Trump will get.

I completely agree. One of the things with the debate is I was like hey he should be pushing inflation right back in trumps face but jeez its also stupidity with folks. I mean we got a guy here saying he did nothing to fight price gouging.
- People will never understand that if a president only gets 4 years, they are mainly working with the economy that the previous administration left them. So Trump's shit policies become Biden's failures. Biden's decent policies become Trump's wins. And if there is another election, all the ravages of these next four years will be blamed on the person who wins it.
  
  yeah its just so hard for someone like me. every time I look at the inflation numbers and see it was april 2020 where it jumped. when I look at the fed interest rate numbers. its like how can people just not look at the numbers a little. no math. just date and whats larger or smaller.

Biden and Co talked down to the working class like Obama did black men and kept insisting we are not financially struggling. We are doing well and there's no reason to be concerned. He lied, we saw through the lie and his party lost

The article doesn't mention any issues related to policy, which made a lot of people not vote for the democrats.
What he did do was miniscule. The only good thing that I can think of is some of the student loan forgiveness.

JFC. Can we stop being surprised that the electorate is full of fucking mentally defective degenerates? Can we not find our own charismatic person to fool the masses into voting our way (which is, ironically, in their benefit)? We have all the fucking actors, just get one to say populist shit. FFS.
- The big money donors don’t even want to hear pretend populist messages with a left bent.
  
  Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They're no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
  
  Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They're no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.

As is historically the case in this country

I hate to say it but , I told you so
I'm happy the left is being introspective for a change even though they are super late
- What introspection there is only doubling down in this thread
  The dominant take seems to be that it was a propaganda failure and people are just too dumb to understand how great the economy is and how Biden did everything everyone wanted
  And apparently a lot of covid denial

Well given that nobody is entitled to our votes I’m not sure if it makes sense to refer to withholding votes as a punishment.

Did Biden take on the illegal price gouging that Walmart and Target participated in during Covid? The thing that is directly causing Americans so much financial stress?
No it did not.
This is just another lie from the DNC blue dog propaganda machine trying to blame anything but itself for the loss.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20220119/114345/HHRG-117-JU05-Wstate-NeedlerM-20220119.pdf
To be fair, Trump is a complete disaster, but to claim that Biden did a decent job is a compete fabrication.

The inflation reduction act was such a great achievement they didn't even mention it by name in the campaign. All it did was make inflation worse now, and hopefully get some environmental benefits in the medium to long term. That's not a winning message.
- How did it make inflation worse now?
  
  The Act is not generally believed to have reduced inflation in 2022 and 2023,[13][14]
  Directly from Wikipedia
  More directly it essentially printed 900 billion more dollars at a time when spending should decrease. There's forecasted payback eventually, but no significant amount has happened yet, but the money is already gone.
- I mean it's not great, but inflation did come way down right? As I said above it doesn't make up for the inflation that already happened which makes our dollars worth so much less.
  
  Yes inflation eventually came down, thanks largely to the Fed finally having interest rates. Even then it's only come down to the high side of acceptable.

Opinion: discarded.

Except the genocide
- Inviting further genocide is not punishing him for the genocide. He didn't play the strong man and step on a country America went and deeply intertwined itself in. So, instead, y'all held your smug, self-satisfied, fart sniffing noses high and let someonw who has championed the genocide take the reigns once more because yoh wrongly believe not touching the switch gets you out of the trolly problem.
  
  Holy strawman Batman!
  Jesus you lot are so fucking tribal
  
  You know the democrats were going to kill them all too right?
  We weren't inviting further genocide. We were begging the Democrats to change their stance and begging the public to choose another option if they didn't.
- We get it, Biden supported a genocide. As fucking if Trump would have done jack shit to prevent it.
  
  Yeah perhaps that's why I didn't make that claim
- You haven’t seen shit yet.
  
  i get and agree with the sentiment that donald trump will be worse in relation to the unbridled support of genocidal israel
  but framing 40,000+ murders as “you haven’t seen shit yet” is inappropriately dismissive. we have fucking seen shit. have some empathy when you use other people’s suffering to justify your internet argument.

because trump and putin ran a very loud and constant disinformation campaign aimed at the rural/retired/inflation weary people that were the most vulnerable to it

Biden wasn’t running

Biden is going to be looked back upon extra fondly after the upcoming shit show we're about to go through.
- No hes not. Hes going to have the legacy of silent Cal, except instead of not doing enough to prevent the great depression, its going to be that he didnt do enough to fight fascism. We have laws that should have already punished Trump and Biden is the chief executor of those laws. Trumps freedom is a reflection of Bidens inaction.

Yep, exactly this. People kept acting like this was the worst economy ever, and, seriously....wtaf.

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