There is an interesting cognitive dissonance around the economy.
The tone, the memes, the lived experience are all: We’re struggling to barely survive. But when this gets brought up in the context of the current administration and their policies its: Its the best economy in a decade.
When you look at polling data, its always the economy at first position in terms of how people are going to vote. I think the current congress and the administration really shot themselves in the foot with the what they approached as priority in current legislation. It was all “might make a difference to peoples lives in 5-10 years” and almost nothing that “makes a difference in peoples lives they can sense right now”. Its not like that bigger picture stuff didn’t need to be done, but convincing a few wonks on the edges doesn’t get you elected to a second term.
Ultimately voting is transactional. If voters vote for you and you don’t provide the goods, they’ll move on.
The article is misleadingly framed by implying 58% being historically bad (though they avoid mentioning any historical comparisons in the article to avoid outright lying). Unfortunately 58% is a historically good number for this. It was as high as 78% in 2017. Also check out the very well sourced other comment on this article with this number for many more years. 58% seems historically one of the best results ever recorded.
Not that we shouldn’t push for it to be even better, 58% is still not a good number in absolute terms in my opinion, but the article is being very misleading when it portrays this as some unheard of worsening catastrophe.
There is an interesting cognitive dissonance around the economy.
The tone, the memes, the lived experience are all: We’re struggling to barely survive. But when this gets brought up in the context of the current administration and their policies its: Its the best economy in a decade.
When you look at polling data, its always the economy at first position in terms of how people are going to vote. I think the current congress and the administration really shot themselves in the foot with the what they approached as priority in current legislation. It was all “might make a difference to peoples lives in 5-10 years” and almost nothing that “makes a difference in peoples lives they can sense right now”. Its not like that bigger picture stuff didn’t need to be done, but convincing a few wonks on the edges doesn’t get you elected to a second term.
Ultimately voting is transactional. If voters vote for you and you don’t provide the goods, they’ll move on.
The article is misleadingly framed by implying 58% being historically bad (though they avoid mentioning any historical comparisons in the article to avoid outright lying). Unfortunately 58% is a historically good number for this. It was as high as 78% in 2017. Also check out the very well sourced other comment on this article with this number for many more years. 58% seems historically one of the best results ever recorded.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-living-paycheck-to-paycheck/
Not that we shouldn’t push for it to be even better, 58% is still not a good number in absolute terms in my opinion, but the article is being very misleading when it portrays this as some unheard of worsening catastrophe.