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.
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.
99.9%
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.
“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.
Voters have shifted right because they’re hurting
I don’t believe this is the case.
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The Democratic Party took many steps rightward in Harris’ campaign (border security, death penalty, cheney).
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Trump barely increased his vote count from 2020, like mayyybe 40k more votes?
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15 million Dem voters from 2020 didn’t vote at all this time rather more people voting R.
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Leftist voices within the DNC spoke urgently and stridently about the DNCs need to listen to its left base more or face backlash.
You got it backwards, the DNC misread the people and shifted to the right of its own base
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Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
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
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.
Yeah, because Americans are dumb and willfully ignorant.
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.
Yep, exactly this. People kept acting like this was the worst economy ever, and, seriously…wtaf.
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies and used the FTC to implement things like click-to-cancel, and invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing. Oh and he also tried to pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and everyone is upset he didn’t magically fix everything all at once.
Bidens problem has been one of messaging. He didn’t know how to connect with the voters to get them to understand all the things he was doing.
He could have ran on it more. Trump understands the art of putting his name on the checks.
Call Americans stupid, and we are, but I wish the party that was helping people was a bit more grandious and better about messaging then they are.
It’s also pretty hard to point to things and go “see? remember the thing we did 10 years ago? this is the effect it had!”
Many of Biden’s policies will come to fruition during the next term and Trump will falsely claim responsibility because he can point to it right away.
I’m ootl, what monopolies got broken up? I tried looking it up but it’s not returning results.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
The DOJ filed another suit against them for advertising practices also.
I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren’t that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn’t expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don’t think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn’t take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn’t drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I’ve tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn’t want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I’d say “be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn’t acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers.”
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I’m worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don’t matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
Apparently, America’s economy seems to be driven only by fear or greed
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I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
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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.
Don’t be. Being an asshole wins elections. They are deplorable and they are making you be this way. It’s their fault. If they were just to follow the rules you wouldn’t be an awful person. You’re a hero.
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.
Voters are pretty stupid. Seriously, the misinformation and willful ignorance on display is breathtaking.
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.
Americans are gonna swing back and forth between the major parties until elections eventually stop happening. Mark my words.
As is historically the case in this country
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.
The way I understand it is:
Prices are like position. Inflation is like speed, which is rate of change of position. The rate of change of inflation would be like acceleration, which is the rate of change of speed. I don’t know if there is a term for rate of change of inflation.
Anyway, I think you might be confused about the terminology, but we’re agreeing on other concepts. The inflated prices are here to stay. If prices generally fell (deflation), we would have other economic issues.
A slow deflation would not be a big issue. It’s rapid deflation that causes major problems. Inflation itself is actually a tax on the poor because people who actually are wise with their money and attempt to save it see it losing its purchasing power over time and therefore have to take more risk than they otherwise would with it in order to just keep up a standard of living. People closer to the inflation spicot, such as government workers and companies run by billionaires, get the benefits of the dollars before the rest of us do, and therefore can use them at their full purchasing power while the rest of us get diluted. Sure, you may decide you don’t really need that flat screen TV if your money is gaining purchasing power at like 0.5% per year because it would be cheaper next year than it is right now. But you are still going to buy toilet paper and spaghetti and other types of food unless you want to starve to death, which I don’t think most people do.
I’m not an economist, but your point on slow deflation seems to make sense. I wonder what deflation to prepandemic prices would do to the economy if it occurred over a couple years.
Very slow deflation actually makes the rich less rich over time because they would receive less and less money coming in because people would want to hold the money rather than their products. Sure, at some point, somebody is going to say, you know what? I want this flat screen TV more than I want the money, even though the money is getting more valuable over time. I will get more use out of the big screen TV so I will go ahead and buy it.
