Sometimes the Economy Is Not The Economy
An explanation for why Joe Biden's polling numbers and the electorate's view of rthe economy are so negative.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
The Movember Special continues — and I appreciate everyone who signed up this month. But, as I’ve noted before, independent journalism like this newsletter relies on your support. So, if you haven’t already, please click below for a 20% discount on a subscription to Truth and Consequences.
Usually, I send around a subscriber-only piece on Monday, including the audio from the Friday Zoom Chat, but I really liked today’s piece and want to get as many eyeballs on it as possible. So I’m sending it to the whole subscriber list. I’ll shoot out a subscriber-only piece tomorrow, along with Zoom Chat audio.
From Bad To Worse
The poll numbers for Democrats keep getting worse. According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll:
Republican congressional candidates currently hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 40 years … the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include soaring economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points underwater in job approval and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans -- 62% say so.
As bad as these numbers are, people’s views on the economy suggest even more dire straits for Biden:
70% say the economy is in bad shape, up from 58% last spring. While just half blame Biden directly for inflation -- its worst in 31 years -- his approval for handling the economy overall is down to 39%, off 6 points just since early September and 13 points from last spring.
It’s important to note that there’s a significant disconnect at play here. These overwhelmingly negative views stand in sharp contrast to the fact that unemployment is at 4.6 percent — and has been declining. In fact, the job market is so strong that people are willingly not taking jobs, which has led to a major labor shortage. So, quantitatively, the economy is almost certainly in better shape than it was last spring.
So how does one explain this disconnect?
The clearest explanation for people’s negative views on the economy is rising inflation and, in particular, higher gas prices. If you’re paying more to fill your car or for weekly groceries, it has a significant impact on how you might view the economy — even if you’re getting more money for the government via a monthly child tax credit. Indeed, the gasoline prices often serve as a stand-in for how people view the economy as a whole.
I wonder if another phenomenon is at play here: that “the economy” reflects a more extensive set of political, social, and cultural considerations. In other words, if people think things are going badly in the country, they may not connect their economic situation and the state of the economy, writ large. Instead, they may view the economy as bad because they think things, overall, are bad.
“How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?
There’s an interesting historical antecedent to this. In the 1992 presidential debate, a black woman asked the three candidates, President George H.W. Bush, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, this question:
“How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives? And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them?”
Bush was completely perplexed by the question because, in part, it didn’t make much sense. The national debt is, generally speaking, not an issue that affects people personally. Bush even complained that he didn’t understand what the woman was asking. But the woman wasn’t asking about the debt, per se — she was talking about the state of the economy. The national debt and the budget deficit were merely stand-in issues.
Clinton got that point and delivered a brilliant political answer:
Well, I've been governor of a small state for 12 years. I'll tell you how it's affected me. Every year Congress and the president sign laws that make us do more things and gives us less money to do it with. I see people in my state, middle-class people -- their taxes have gone up in Washington and their services have gone down while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts.
I have seen what's happened in this last four years when -- in my state, when people lose their jobs there's a good chance I'll know them by their names. When a factory closes, I know the people who ran it. When the businesses go bankrupt, I know them.
And I've been out here for 13 months meeting in meetings just like this ever since October, with people like you all over America, people that have lost their jobs, lost their livelihood, lost their health insurance.
What I want you to understand is the national debt is not the only cause of that. It is because America has not invested in its people. It is because we have not grown. It is because we've had 12 years of trickle-down economics. We've gone from first to twelfth in the world in wages. We've had four years where we've produced no private-sector jobs. Most people are working harder for less money than they were making 10 years ago.
It is because we are in the grip of a failed economic theory. And this decision you're about to make better be about what kind of economic theory you want, not just people saying I'm going to go fix it but what are we going to do? I think we have to do is invest in American jobs, American education, control American health care costs and bring the American people together again.
You can watch the whole thing below: it’s a master class in empathetic politics.
It’s important to keep in mind that as American politics has become more polarized, views on the economy are closely correlated with their views about the person who lives in the White House. So during the Trump years, Democrats generally said the economy was bad, even though it was empirically quite good for the first three years of his presidency. The same thing is likely happening now. So even if Republican voters think the economy is doing well, they won’t say so because they don’t want to give Biden credit.
But there may be some Democrats who view the economy as bad simply because they think the country is on the wrong track. They could be angry over COVID and not being able to return to the office or still having to wear a mask. They could be dismayed over Democrats faring poorly in elections earlier this month or the anti-democratic trend in GOP politics. Maybe they’re closely following the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and they are outraged about that. In other words, the economy — like the national debt for that woman 30 years ago — is about something much bigger and more complicated than the economy. The same goes for Joe Biden’s approval ratings. Voters are taking their frustration over the state of the country out on the president.
The Danger of Outrage Politics
This dynamic creates an unusual and troubling paradox for Democrats. On the one hand, you could argue that we probably shouldn’t take the economic numbers or even Biden’s falling approval ratings too literally. Just because Democratic voters are troubled by the country's direction, it doesn’t mean they won’t be voting for Democratic candidates next Fall.
But the impact of, for lack of a better term, “thinking everything is going to shit” has more corrosive political implications. It saps enthusiasm and leads to political fatalism. It also undercuts Democrats’ legislative successes. How excited are voters supposed to be about a paid family leave program going into effect in 2024 when there is so much bitterness and recrimination in modern politics today? In 2020, many Americans went to the polls to be rid not just of Trump but of his nihilistic politics. But now, in 2021, things are just as bad as before. I suspect that it’s the reason why the ABC poll finds that just 31% of voters say Biden is “keeping most of his major campaign promises” and only “35% think he’s accomplished much overall.” Voters are not focusing on Biden’s specific policy promises but instead his pledge to return the country to the way things used to be — pre-pandemic and pre-Trump, which clearly hasn’t happened.
For partisan Democratic voters, fears of the GOP provide a strong incentive to cast a ballot in 2022. But for those who pay only fleeting attention to politics, it’s as likely to disincentivize political participation and create the belief that voting doesn’t lead to real and lasting political change. Indeed, Republicans, by playing “burn it all down” politics, not only cater to their supporters but likely push some Democratic voters to view politics and voting as a waste of time.
I also wonder whether Democrats are sometimes their own worst enemy on this. By so consistently focusing on social, political, and cultural outrages, do they chill the inclinations of those who sympathize with them? I’ve been thinking about this in particular regarding COVID.
I’ve been a big believer in public health mitigation policies, but at this point, with COVID cases on the decline and more than 70 percent of Americans vaccinated, are keeping these policies in place, giving voters a false sense of anxiety about COVID? And is that infecting their political views? The reality is that for most vaccinated Americans (and they are disproportionately more likely to be Democrats), the risk of illness or death is infinitesimally small. Yet, it is many blue states where mitigation policies remain in place. Do requirements that people still have to wear masks lead Democrats to conclude that we haven’t gotten past COVID, even though for the vaccinated, the virus is probably no more deadly right now than the flu? Does press coverage of rising case numbers lead them to believe we will never get past COVID, even though we are well on the way to doing so?
The lack of return to normalcy is one of the best explanations for Biden’s faltering poll numbers and the electorate’s pessimistic views on the state of the country and the economy. People desperately want to return to pre-pandemic life, and it hasn’t happened. Americans are still living in fear of COVID, even though the vast majority are vaccinated. So by pushing continued mitigation strategies, Democrats may be subtly undercutting themselves and their president.
There is, of course, no easy solution to this problem for Democrats. In general, I think people should spend less time being outraged, though, in their defense, there is plenty to be outraged about these days. I also think we need to do everything we can to prevent people from getting sick from COVID. Still, from a political perspective, mitigation strategies likely make things worse for Democrats. Perhaps this is all just the storm before the calm. Biden’s numbers are going to remain lousy until not just COVID numbers improve but until we’re back to some semblance of normalcy. As long as gas prices and inflation remain high, it’s going to be ugly politically for Democrats. Maybe six months now, inflation and COVID cases will be down, optimism will be on the rise, and Biden will be doing better. For Democrats, it better be: because if the party and the president’s poll numbers don’t improve, there’s going to be a shellacking next November.
What’s Going On?
New emails and documents revealed by Congress show that the Trump Administration went to enormous lengths to censor the CDC’s COVID messaging, seeking to protect Americans from COVID-19. We may never know how many Americans died as a result, but it likely wasn’t a small number.
Humans may have arrived in North America ever sooner than previously believed.
Air travel in 2021 is pretty miserable.
Read Jonathan Karl’s piece on the disastrous Trump rally in Tulsa in the spring of 2020.
Reuters has investigated the individuals who are issuing death threats against election officials around the country. What I found most distressing about the article is that nearly all the folks interviewed by Reuters were happy to speak on the record about their hateful actions.
Musical Interlude
Today’s musical choice is a bit random. But this album showed up randomly on my Spotify today, and I had forgotten how much I loved this record - Lambchop’s “Is A Woman.” It’s simply a beautiful album from beginning to end. The title cut is my favorite, but the whole album is great.
Rising international tensions won't help Biden's numbers either. Increased saber rattling by China over Taiwan, Russia's increasing troop strength next to Ukraine, Belarus's importing and then transporting immigrants to the border with Poland, and other world issues where the U.S., regardless of who is president, has less influence and ability to "look strong" is bound to add to the notion that Biden is weak and affect his poll numbers because after all, this is all happening "under his watch". Opponents will shout and scream about his weakness even though they would have, if in power, no more ability to influence those same events. Criticizing is easy, governing is hard. I would like to think that voters would seriously think about which politicians would exercise better judgment in crisis situations but in our tribalist country "good judgment" is far down the list of a candidate's qualifications.