The United States now has low unemployment, higher wages, and inflation has moderated significantly… yet there no major polls where there is a majority of subjects who believe that the economy is anything but horrible. Interest rates, which haven’t been higher in decades, and which are not subject to change by Congress or the President, may well be the underlying cause… even as consumers are spending like there’s no tomorrow. Perhaps, they believe, there isn’t.
The Republicans have made a holy crusade that blames government spending, and higher rates are clearly pressuring the non-discretionary interest elements of the federal budget. But it’s the Federal Reserve that controls those, and higher rates were their tool to combat inflation. Nevertheless, the one GOP tone that resonates with voters is higher prices purportedly due to government spending… never once mentioning that not taxing the wealth of billionaires has been a catastrophic contribution to our deficit. That latter message seems to have been lost.
The most tangible evidence of economic failure, thus, is higher prices and the affordability of basics. Like food and housing. The real estate market is basically frozen with mortgage rates that have tripled. Residential rental rates are soaring, even as downtown major city office space is plunging due to vacancy rates we haven’t seen in years. Gridlock in Congress also tells the electorate that our system of government just plain does not work. We are subject to the toxic values of relatively small groups of extreme special interests that seem to get their way.
Joe Biden gets the arrows, exacerbated by an increasing belief that he is way too old to survive a second term, and currently, he is behind Trump (per the 11/5 NY Times) in six swing states he needs to win in 2024: Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Despite his campaigning for the working class and their unions, he even trails in strong union states. Polls also show that his former strength among Black women has also faded (particularly over social justice and equality) so much, the surveys suggest that an increasing number of these determinative constituents, essential to his 2020 victory, will not vote at all.
But much of the disillusionment over the economy is very specifically laid at Biden’s doorstep. Writing for the November 5th Los Angeles Times, David Lauter looks that the conflict between data and feelings: “Voters are mad about the economy. All the polls say so… The U.S. economy has seldom been stronger. The numbers say so… Those two statements are hard to square. Common sense says so… What’s going on, and how might it affect the presidential election, now a year away?
“As the campaign heats up, economists, political scientists and all sorts of media types have been arguing over the disconnect between economic data and poll data. Is the economy worse than the numbers show, or is something misleading going on with the polls?.. Here’s the economic picture: …The economist Justin Wolfers puts it this way: Suppose you had fallen asleep in August 2019 and didn’t wake up for four years. On awakening, if you were an economist, the first thing you’d want to know is what the latest data show.
“You’d be happily surprised: Unemployment, which was at a historic low when you fell asleep, has remained near that point — 3.8% in September. The economy has grown significantly, even adjusting for inflation, meaning the country has gotten richer. And perhaps most surprisingly, for the first time since before the Great Recession, income distribution has become a bit more equal, as the biggest gains have gone to low-wage workers…
“‘In all, you would find that the economy was doing better than most of your colleagues in 2019 had predicted… ‘You would wonder what really good thing had happened while you were sleeping,’ says Wolfers, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy… In fact, of course, you would have slept through a vast social trauma brought on by a worldwide plague, accompanied by a short, but very steep, recession. That makes the good economic numbers all the more impressive.
“That’s not the entire picture, of course: A wave of price increases has washed through the economy since 2021, peaking in the summer of 2022, and leading the Federal Reserve to sharply increase interest rates. At this point, however, inflation has subsided. The rate the Fed watches most closely now sits just slightly above 3% — higher than the central bank’s 2% target, but not alarmingly so… ‘The economy is good. Full stop,’ Wolfers says. ‘That’s the story.’… That’s not the story the polls tell…
“Over the last year, more than half of registered voters polled have consistently said the U.S. economy was getting worse, according to weekly surveys by YouGov… The White House has spent the last year touting economic growth and seeking credit, hoping voters will see Bidenomics as a synonym for success… So far, that effort has landed with a thud…
“What’s going on?... Several theories try to explain the radical gap between the polls and the economic statistics… One focuses on time lags. Perhaps in a few more months, as Americans adjust to lower inflation and higher wages, polls will start pointing upward, that theory suggests… A second notes that although inflation has slowed, prices remain higher than people were used to. Perhaps it’s the price level, not the rate of increase, that’s weighing down opinions.
“‘The price of groceries and gas and other things people see and buy day to day is still a shock, even if inflation has slowed. Obviously it hasn’t reversed the increases or even completely stopped them, just slowed their growth,’ noted Lanae Erickson, senior vice president of Third Way, a Washington-based Democratic think tank… Another line of thinking, heard from many Democrats, is that news organizations have colored public opinion by focusing on bad news…
“Once again, as in so many cases, partisanship is changing how people see the world… That doesn’t mean Biden’s suddenly in the clear: Whether people are down on the president because they dislike the economy, or down on the economy because they dislike the president, it’s potential trouble for the incumbent… But for everyone else, it requires a shift: If we really want to know what Americans think about the economy, we may need to start asking different questions.” And doddering Biden, only slightly older than Trump, doesn’t show the needed vigor.
Whatever the reason, it would seem that if the presidential election were to happen now, despite the indictments and a trial for fraud that are not going well for Mr Trump, he would win that election handily. His MAGA extreme politics of retribution, the promise to dismantle any vestiges of liberalism from every corner of the federal bureaucracy and his seeming dedication to becoming the “unitary executive” with near autocratic power… are falling behind his veil of “Only I can fix it.” He can’t, but his poll numbers tell us that a majority of Americans believe him.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the Democrats’ belief that mere facts will turn the tide is not working out… and victim Donald Trump is counting on that vector continuing all the way to next November.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment