Biden tries to turn the tables on Trump’s use of a classic political attack line, asks 'are you better off today'
Biden tries to turn the tables on Trump’s use of a classic political attack line | CNN Politics
Whatever you want to say about reality, the poll from a couple of days ago pointing out how deeply unhappy young adults are makes this a pretty questionable way of trying to engage that demographic.
Are you telling me that Democrats are once again maybe having a hard time connecting to the major demographics they need to win an election?
🥴
It's a pretty bad tactic because while it may let you take credit for improving some people's lives, you're also giving tacit permission for those worse off to blame you for it. This only works if the majority of people are better off than they were four years ago and recognize that they are. That's probably not a safe assumption when we've got record inflation and dipped close to, if not into, a recession. Just think of all the mass layoffs you heard about over the past four years.
I think most people are a little better off. They just don't feel like it, because most people still aren't doing "well." I.e. things aren't getting better fast enough. I looked at real-wage statistics a while back, and that seemed to confirm my beliefs (real wages have been improving across all four quantiles). I have not looked at those living on SSI, SSD, or retirement; and I imagine those people could be worse off.
The current job market is still very tight, unemployment is still very low (despite the Fed). Recent mass layoffs have mostly just been in tech and some white collar jobs, which is a small fraction of the workforce/electorate. The majority of people work "unskilled" jobs and those are still easy to get, and pay a little more in real wages now.
None of this really matters to the electorate though. I'm convinced elections are all vibes-based. And vibes are largely controlled by the media and algorithms. I've recently talked to a few people that want Trump to win, and they still parotted the line, "Trump is a business man, so he knows how to get the economy back on track." They also liked the checks they got during the lockdown. They don't really follow the news or politics, so all the information they get is incidental. One person recently started to get into red-pill content (Fresh + Fit, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, etc), who I think also discuss political issues in a vibes-based way.
Good thing they changed the definition of a recession, so we definitely aren't in one lol. 😒
I dunno. This demographic also suffered a lot from the pandemic. It seems like a lifetime ago, but the first lockdowns started almost exactly 4 years ago. I would think that reminding them will be beneficial.
What’s your age cutoff for young adult? Voters under 49 make up about half the electorate. Voters under 29 are comparable in number to those over 65. It makes about as much sense to court the youth vote as it does the elderly, but I’ve seen no one imply that it’s a waste to appeal to the latter.
Yes, I definitely am. It's just that compared to the shit show of 2020 that's not a very high bar.
But what I'd really prefer he'd focus on is how much better I'll be in another 4 years.
Yet another comment section that boils down to a choice between:
A dottering senile octogenarian whose career has kept him outside of the reality of being an American citizen longer than I've been alive who wants to be President of the United States, or
A dottering senile octogenarian whose career has kept him outside of the reality of being an American citizen longer than I've been alive who wants to be dictator god king of West Russia.
Nope. Going on 14 years with no increase in federal minimum wage, with continuous price inflation. No access to health insurance thanks to an oversight in the Affordable Care Act that has left millions of Americans like me to be deemed too poor to receive financial help, that he promised to address during his term. He has not mentioned it since elected. For some insane reason US emissions standards have a loophole that has led to increasingly large and more polluting vehicles on the roads, with much higher pedestrian deaths. Meanwhile his single largest piece of legislation is spending hundreds of billions on more car infrastructure, so climate change will be accelerating. Housing has gotten more and more expensive as real estate corporations keep buying everything up completely unopposed by him. And all of this is just stuff that directly impacts me. That's not addressing the union neutering he's done, the personally bypassing congress to give Israel more weapons to kill Palestinians, the horrendous performance of his DoJ that still doesnt have Trump in court for the crimes he committed 4 years ago.
I really don't understand in what ways I'm supposed to be better off now.
Are you sure? Lol
You okay bro? A Biden headline that isn’t insulting him? That’s not like you
So glad more people are catching on to this person. I would still call this a negative Biden article though. OP might just be trying to be a little more subtle about the Biden hate since people caught on and call them out in every post.
I'm not really sure this line of attack is going to be as persuasive as Biden thinks it is.
While much of the problems stem from Trump-era policies, some of it's not. But that's besides the point. Lets just keep it simple and blame trump for everything.
Biden taking over means somebody is at the reigns that isn't trying to fuck every one over... but that doesn't mean we're "better off" today. Savings are drained, debt is piling up. We can't afford food. can't afford housing. can't afford to shit.
I think his messaging on the issue is just evidence of how out of touch he is with normal people. We're not better. We're barely holding on... and we've barely been holding on since he's been in office. and people are starting to fall into the cracks.
...
This only makes sense if you're completely out of touch with the average American...
Speaking of that, remember when that streaming company Quibi tried to be a thing only on cellphones and mostly in portrait mode?
The guy who came up with that is now one of the people running Biden's campaign.
Dudes great at raising money, but when you start letting him do anything else, everything goes to shit
4 years ago was bodies in trailers, man. Stores were rationing toilet paper, nurses were resorting to dressing up in trash bags, and essential workers were rolling the dice on whether their shitty job was going to kill them. Millions of people lost loved ones and there are a couple hundred thousand COVID orphans. Trump was a big part of why the pandemic was as bad as it was. I agree things aren't awesome, but this is an easy question to answer.
Minimizing how bad 2020 was only makes sense if you're completely out of touch with the average American and driven to one repeated conclusion whenever Biden is brought up.
It's like people just memory holed the pandemic and forgot just how fucking bad it was. I won't forget, it literally killed half my family and it's Trump's shitty handling of it that played a big part. The hospitals were so overloaded that my family members couldn't receive the treatment they needed, in large part because of all the MAGAts refusal to follow basic safety protocols that pumped the numbers way higher than they needed to be.
Soooo, are we expecting that to happen again? Because that's a pretty loaded answer to people who just want to be able to pay rent.
The “Quibi guy” is Jeffrey Katzenberg.
AKA, the financial brain behind Dreamworks and the chair of Disney during some pretty solid years. He’s a money guy.
There are 8 people on that campaign board, and he ain’t there to figure out messages, districts, or any of that. He’s there for fundraising.
Quibi wasn’t famous because it was a silly idea, it was famous because it was a silly idea that Katzenberg raised an ungodly amount of capital for … almost $2 billion. Homie ain’t the ideas guy. Quibi very much confirmed that he’s no Spielberg or Geffen (the creative cofounders for Dreamworks.) But fuck if he isn’t one of the best fundraisers in the business.
Biden’s campaign has had double Trump’s cash on hand.
He’s a money guy.
I said he's good at that....
But that's not all he's doing
It's like you read my comment, ignored what it said, and repeated it back..
Biden’s campaign has had double Trump’s cash on hand.
And it cost Biden twice per vote what it cost trump in 2016... Biden's the first president in the history of the US to spend 1 billion on a campaign, and he was 30k close to losing.
And Biden's polling is worse now
Either we need a lot more money, or we can stop running geriatric candidates no one wants to be president
No man no one even knows what the fuck Quibi is. Hell I'm just assuming it's a real thing, I'm taking your word for it because I don't care enough to look it up. The tent pole of your argument here is based on something no one has ever heard of.
Really?
I'm used to Biden supporters not knowing basic shit, but this one surprises me...
No. No I am not.
My food is more expensive. The house I want to buy is further out of reach. My medical care is more expensive and more restricted.
The southern border crisis still rages on.
The difference is my country is now complicit if not instrumental in a genocide and is in more military conflicts globally.
Every single one of those things was catalyzed because of something Trump did.
Handling of COVID. Flooring of interest rates. Tax breaks for the middle class that expired right as terms rolled over and Congress was controlled by morons who wouldn’t renew them (rich still get theirs). Nerfed the ACA’s tax penalty instead of raising subsidies. Moving the fucking embassy to Jerusalem.
Biden sure ain’t great but he can be swayed by public opinion to some degree. Trump will fucking end us if he comes back.
Lol. Come to Asia. Earn $700/ mo and buy civics at $20,000 and houses at $150k. Otoh we have nearly free healthcare.
Just because Trump risks being the worst thing to happen to democracy in the history of humanity, we cannot excuse genocide.
The funding of the genocide and blocking of UN attempts to address it are real. Trump’s demolition of democracy is, as of now, merely a risk.
Trump’s demolition of democracy is, as of now, merely a risk.
Yeah, a risk because he might not win the election, despite how much you're trying to get him elected. It will also be MUCH worse for palestine under trump.
Trump’s demolition of democracy is, as of now, merely a risk.
Very well put.
And might I say, while our country is very young, this is not the first time a potential presidency is called the end of democracy on Earth. In fact that is the narrative almost every election cycle. And that man often wins. And here we still are.
Trump wins, we still have Bernie, and AOC, and Katie Porter, and Ro Khanna, and Rashida Tlaib.
What really threatens our democracy is if we lose those people because they aren't "progressive enough" or because they are "too liberal".
Trump winning will be a crucial blow to many people in this country.
Biden cementing genocide as a good thing that Americans support has already occurred, continues to occur, if he wins, will escalate, and that is a mark on America's soul that we can't clean out.
Trump had 4 years and didn't do that. Biden had 4 years and did. Will Trump escalate it now? Sure as shit, and that is Biden's fault.
The ironic thing is that anyone really paying attention would know that almost all the negative things about 2024 are due to long term impacts of the trump administration.
You give people far too much credit.
For all you inflation heads out there...
US M0 money supply was $3.6T in January 2017 when Trump took office.
It was $5.25T in Jan 2021 when he left office, a 45% increase in the money supply.
As of December 2023 it was $5.83T, an 11% increase under Biden.
So if we're saying increased money supply caused inflation, the Trump admin is about 4x more responsible for it than the Biden admin.
I don't think I've seen anyone saying he caused inflation. Just that he's trying to tell everyone he won the economy and everything is back to normal. There are multiple articles now with his allies and staffers wondering why the people aren't on board with that message.
Not entirely fair. They are the result of things that happened under the trump admin. Most of it was done by the fed. And more importantly, many more people would be suffering way worse right now had they not done anything.