BIDEN NEEDS TO FIGHT

There’ a recent Wall Street Journal poll of 1,500 registered voters that now has all the easily-terrified terrified. In the wake of its release there have been many attempts to dismiss it as a clever piece of ratfucking.

Yes, it’s true - one of the firms that did the poll is on Trump’s payroll. But another participating firm has long worked with Democrats, including John Fetterman and Sherrod Brown. It’s not that lousy CNN poll.

The poll’s larger findings about the close contest between Biden and Trump and concerns about Biden’s age, track with other polls. It’s not an outlier and there is no reason to discount the result.

In particular, the Biden campaign needs to see those results as a wake-up call.

According to the poll, Biden’s North American Bidenomics Tour is a flop, with 58% saying the economy has gotten worse over the past two years.

At which point, one has to ask what fucking planet these people live on - they’re even dumber than the Americans H.L. Mencken had in mind when he observed 99 years ago that “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

Here’s the truth: inflation rose to 9.1 percent in June 2022, but over the past year it has fallen to 3.2 percent; by mid-summer, hourly wage increases exceeded inflation for the first time since 2019. Unemployment is 3.8 percent, close to a record low. How does it not get better than that?

Biden has pushed through Congress a law allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, something all his predecessors - Democrats and Republicans, including Trump - have tried to achieve for the past 30 years! The first ten drugs have been chosen and the prices will take effect after the negotiations in 2026. The Labor Department has proposed a regulation that will extend eligibility for time-and-a-half overtime pay to 3.6 million more salaried workers.

According to the Bank of America, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is projected to create 86,000 jobs based on investments announced so far; according to Moody’s Analytics, the 2021 infrastructure bill is expected to create an additional 660,000 jobs.

But in the face of those facts, 52% of voters agreed that Trump “has a strong record of accomplishments,” while only 40% agreed to the same statement about Biden.

Again, what’s the weather like where these people live, where the sky is green and the grass is blue?

Let’s review Trump’s accomplishments.

Trump’s tax cut lowered taxes for the rich through cuts in corporate and capital gains tax rates and reducing the top marginal tax rate for households earning more than $500,000/year - which has since risen to $578,100. This increased the budget deficit by somewhere between $1-$2 trillion.

But Biden is threatening the deficit? His programs have REDUCED IT!!

Trump weakened or eliminated dozens of health, safety, and environmental regulations. Trump separated children from their parents at the border until an outraged public reaction persuaded him to stop. Trump installed an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court. Trump tried and failed to pass an infrastructure bill - to the point where “infrastructure week” was a running joke! Trump promised he’d build a wall Mexico would pay for, but ended up just replacing existing fencing, with an additional 52 miles of new fencing. The Mexican government paid for none of that. Trump tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

On top of all that, Trump tried and failed to co-opt President Zelenskyy in a partisan scheme to discredit the son of his 2020 presidential opponent, and did so by withholding U.S. aid to apply pressure. He got impeached for that.

And then the cherry on the shit sandwich when Trump completely screwed up management of the COVID epidemic; 400,000 people died of the virus on his watch, a much higher death rate than that in other wealthy countries. When Trump left office the unemployment rate was 6.3 percent - compared to 4.8 percent when he entered office.

And he now faces two federal and two state felony indictments for 91 felonious acts total.

And in spite of all that, a 52% majority of voters says Trump had “a strong record of accomplishments” while only a 40% minority say Biden has “a strong record of accomplishments.”

What the fuck are these morons thinking?

I went to a model show yesterday, the first one since Before Trump. I knew many of them over the past 30 years. Because I am the age I am, wear a baseball hat with “USN Veteran” on it and build models, many of them assume I am one of them. I sat there listening to people on the sidelines talking, and I seriously was shocked to hear the majority of them talking about things that Do Not Exist In Reality.

Jim Messina says it takes voters nine months to absorb good news, which means that their opinion is based on information as of last December, when inflation was up and wages were not keeping pace.

If they’re supposed to be paying attention, they aren’t paying much attention. Biden’s approval numbers - overall and specifically on the economy - have gone from 40% overall approval to 42% and on the economy from 33% to 36%. If this continues, next June his approval rating on the economy will be 43-44%, which, historically, is Lose The Election territory.

When a voter is asked how the economy is doing, they translate that to “Which candidate do you prefer?” In 2016, according to Gallup a week before the election 16% of Republicans said it was improving; a week after, 49% said it was improving.

With polarization where it is now, do any of these questions even remotely portray Actual Reality?

What gets concerning is the figures for how voters see Biden and Trump’s respective outlook and record. 51% believe Trump “has a vision for the future;” only 40% say the same of Biden, despite an unbroken record by Biden in international relations, economic issues and legislative accomplishments - areas where Trump had either zero accomplishments or a negative record.

Biden and his surrogates can make the case that Trump represents an existential threat to democracy and to the future of the country. Economically they can make the case his agenda is both familiar and deeply unpopular while arguing that the course they have pursued is far more equitable and effective.

But they cannot maintain passivity in the face of competition and a hope that voters will come around on their own. Action needs to be taken.

Consider: Biden is 14 points underwater in approval rating, and he’s tied in head-to-head polls with the man who led an insurrection against the United States and “jokes” about suspending the Constitution.

There are known unknowns for which nothing can be done: public perception of his age; a return to inflation; the new COVID strain leads to a resurgence of the pandemic, with even worse results from an American public now pretty much dedicated to not taking precautions.

There are things he can do to break the appearance of passivity. The main one is to send a clear message to working- and-middle-class voters that he is the guy on their side. To do this he needs to give a full from-the-oval-office speech that explains what his economic frame - “middle-out Bidenomics” - is. In detail. To make clear that it is built around the idea of investing in the middle class.

In 1943, FDR was facing the prospect of re-election in 1944, and coming off the defeat of the First New Deal in the congressional elections of November 1942 - which had unfortunately come the Tuesday before the Invasion of North Africa, rather than the Tuesday after. Americans voted their frustration with what seemed to be an unending series of defeats and difficulty since Pearl Harbor; the the progressive midwestern Republican congressmen who had given bipartisan support to the New Deal were gone, replaced by traditional midwestern isolationists who allied with the Southern Dixiecrats to end progress. By the fall of 1943, things were looking different: North Africa and Sicily had been liberated and the Italians had surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese had been stopped at Guadalcanal and rolled back in the South Pacific; the Central Pacific campaign that would end a year later with the liberation of the Philippines and the utter defeat of the Imperial Navy was about to begin the next month. FDR was about to journey to Tehran to meet with Churchill and Stalin and approve the plans to win the war. There was going to be good news that the president could take advantage of.

FDR spoke to the nation about the movement to a peacetime economy, how the government could make sure American’s standard of living, which had expanded in the wartime economy beyond what it had been before the war. At Thanksgiving that year, the President said:

“Therefore, I propose a second Bill of Rights in the field of economics: the right to a home of your own, the right of a farmer to a piece of land, the right of the businessman to be free from monopoly competition, the right to see a doctor when you’re sick, the right to a peaceful old age with adequate social security, a right to a decent education.”

By January 1944, when the State of the Union came, the Democrats were trying to come up with a campaign that would allow them to recover from the congressional losses of 1942 in the November 1944 election.

In that State of the Union address, Roosevelt unveiled an “Economic Bill of Rights.” There were eight bullet points: the rights to work, food, clothing, and leisure; freedom from monopolies and unfair competition; additional rights to housing, education, medical care, and Social Security.

Democratic progressives hoped FDR would make the Economic Bill of Rights the centerpiece of the 1944 campaign to regain control of congress, but the president concentrated on his own re-election to ensure wartime leadership would not fall to the isolationists who surrounded Dewey. FDR only mentioned the Economic Bill of Rights in late October at a speech in Chicago.

As it turned out, the progressive Democrats did not regain the level of control of Congress they had held in alliance with progressive Republicans against the Southern reactionaries that November. The Republicans made gains that led them to foresee victory in 1946, which they got.

FDR wasn’t able to get the national Economic Bill of Rights, but he did get the G.I. Bill of Rights that guaranteed home ownership, support of business formation and an education program that created the modern American middle class.

But he could have had more. One of the proposals under that “right to medical care” would have been national health insurance. He swung for a double rather than swing for the fences.

Joe Biden needs to swing for the fences. He needs to explain to the country how “middle-out Bidenomics” can recreate that middle class we boomers grew up in, by transforming the economy into one that allows a good standard of living while meeting the demands of our age regarding the existential issue of climate change. It can be done.

Biden needs to cast himself as the President of Hope, the way people saw FDR, against the threat of losing everything to a Republican takeover.

It can be done. It must be done.

Name the enemies of America: The Republicans. Big Pharma. Big Tech. Elon Musk and the rest of the billionaire class. FDR and his cousin TR were known by the enemies they were willing to make. FDR proclaimed that he “welcomed their hatred.”

Biden’s starting: he’s going after Big Pharma rolling out the 10 drugs - after capping insulin - whose price Medicare will negotiate down. Like he said, “We’re going to keep standing up to Big Pharma, and we’re not going to back down.” Say it again. And then say it again and again.

Biden - the guy I would not have expected it of - has changed the economic direction of America. But outside of nerds like me who read long articles by the Real Nerds who know this stuff, most people don’t know that.

Marjorie Traitor Goon does. Last week she complained about the “new companies” coming into her district and out-competing the old companies that support her by offering her constituents good-paying union jobs - which she doesn’t like. Most of the country doesn’t like that fucking bimbo as it is. Make her insanity the picture of the GOP - she already thinks she runs them. Take on the Fwee-Dumbass Kawkuss - the majority of the country doesn’t actually like that collection of Confederate traitors.

Don’t offer a long explanation. Present an Economic Bill of Rights.

And then don’t be afraid to hammer the traitors as the traitors to America they are. Repeatedly.

I had to listen to a Republican bimbo yesterday who looked like death warmed over from her too-many facial “procedures” - a stand-in for the dance scene in “Brazil” - talk about how “he can’t even walk up the stairs to Air Force One.” Which is absolute and utter bullshit.

Go after the enemy and stand up for the country. It’s a winning idea. And it will smack the polls and the D.C. Press Corpse in their faces. Like they need to be smacked.

Something big has to be done, because Trump's indictments have supercharged the intensity of the Republican base, while Democrats are indicating less interest in turning out to vote.

That WSJ poll revealed that only 61% of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters said they're "extremely motivated" to vote. That’s down a point since June.

And 71% of Republicans say they're "extremely motivated" to vote. That’s up six points since June.

If Joe Biden wants to be sworn in to a second term on January 20, 2025, he has to get off his assets and get into the ring. Depending on the good sense of the American people all on their own isn’t going to cut it. There isn’t a lot of good sense out there unless he goes out and creates it.

Harry Truman made a 29-day train trip in 1948, an election he wasn’t supposed to win, and he had to beg for the financial support to do that. The Republicans complained. He replied “I tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” “Give ‘em Hell” Harry won that November.

As Benjamin Franklin observed at another critical time in our history, “We can all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”

You can support That’s Another Fine Mess as a paid subscriber for only $7/month or $70/year.

Comments are for paid subscribers.