President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.
“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.
“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.
So (excepting that the alternative is Trump for a minute) you’re thinking a rational actor should vote for the guy improving the economy for lower wage workers even if it didn’t benefit them individually?
I don’t hate that take.
I do think the formula we american kids were taught in school was more like
Individuals vote in their selfish interests
Selfish votes are tallied and hopefully if you average out people’s self-interested votes they elect a guy who is acting in the interests of a decent subset.
Americans don’t generally think in golden rule terms like “Whatever benefits the most workers is best for the country.”
I’d personally have to be shown evidence that a sizable portion of all these excessive (compared to manufacturing costs) profits are NOT lining the pockets of the rich before I would give out any economics gold stars.