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I also think that people are greatly overestimating how much the ARP was an intentional attempt to get full employment at the risk of inflation. We were still shut down in most places over covid. It was highly uncertain how much and how quickly the economy would recover.

It wasn’t just “the left” complaining my about price increases

I have memory of both her and Trump talking about tariffs and protectionism in the general. It’s possible she was different in the primary.

The issue with the anti-free-trade stuff is that it was the result of the Fukuyama problem of people making trouble because they're bored. Voters like cheap stuff, they liked Carter->Obama policy making goods cheaper, and then you had Biden/Bernie/Trump all pushing against that and it turns out...

Sadly yes, and I don't think much of the progressive left has reckoned with this yet huge unforced error on progressives for not fighting back against inflation doomerism.

This is really stupid. Inflation under Biden wasn't driven by wage increases but by corps jacking up prices to increase profits. Leftists were 100% correct to excoriate Biden for defending capital during this time. Yes, wage inequality matters, but the capital-labour balance of power matters more.

@skyview.social unroll please this memento thread to Biden's awesome stimulus, and not getting and maybe not taking credit for it.

Trump's obviously illegal shit gets blocked by the courts, and right wingers blame the courts and threaten impeachment and worse. Biden's good shit gets blocked by the courts, and online lefties blame Biden and say this is why Dems suck and you shouldn't vote for them.

I don't think most people know what a recession is, and things getting more expensive and there being increased disruption among service workers people depend on probably felt like one.

on that point: I definitely did not anticipate how unpopular an ultra-tight, inequality-reducing labor market would be. what people seem to want is 2019 when jobs are plentiful but wages and prices are still flat. I'd guess that taxing the rich wouldn't create such a backlash though

Feels like the pubic debates for the 2010 midterms were about undeserving people getting bailouts (which was absurd) and an incoherent debate about the ACA (also absurd, but in different ways)

A recession killing their run is dependent on it becoming the theme and being tied to them. I doubt the media has the will to do either of those things. Something else will be the problem of the day. Obstruction will be the cause, not the implemented policies.

Trump can barely talk. But Republicans have a robust media infrastructure that can turn imaginary trans teens in sports into a top issue and convince voters a good economy is a disaster. Dems urgently need to build one. Or lose elections after we've cleaned up R messes to boredom.

I think it’s definitely notable that AMLO/Morena in Mexico defied a lot of the global trends and AMLO’s big political innovation was…daily briefings directed at the public

They call it "the bully pulpit" for a reason

Like I think a Job Guarantee would be good policy ofc for enshrining permanent full employment, but it’s also (if done well) much better politics bc it’s a BILL, something clearly produced by elected officials on your behalf, with a simple, big idea: everyone has a right to a job now, period.

The Biden administration absolutely sold their agenda, but it didn't matter when every journalist wanted to prove they didn't have a liberal bias by privileging Republican talking points and Biden's own party pushed the message that the economy was bad because polling said people thought it was bad.

Shienbaum in Mexico is doing regular streams to explain policy and what it does. The party over here meanwhile is forming a rapid response team that consists of a guy who had to quit because he died a week later and they sent emails to CNN.

this was another double edged sword of the Biden admin, where behind closed doors they were incredibly anti-immigrant, but they knew it was a message killer so they still got raked over the coals on immigration because Republicans are free to lie for some reason

Another element of it is it was political malpractice to let Trump put his name on the covid checks, and then the Dems doubled down on that failure with keeping Biden's name off the last check. For a lot of people the conclusion was simply "Trump sent me free money and I never got shit from Biden".

Yup, this is it

They were very bad at selling their accomplishments but also in the early stages of the reelection campaign when they were trying to run on "Bidenomics" people on the old site would say it was evil to try to claim the economy was good or that anyone anywhere had been helped at all.

median voter, trying to make heads or tails of this tweet, decides it's a dirty joke about the size of their respective packages

have been needed for security reasons, but most didn't.

I personally disagree with this, but if you’re a Democratic politician or policy maker you need to think long and hard about what the electorate is rewarding and what it is punishing.

A 70 year that was in remission. Not making a special exception for her is not doing her wrong, and it’s not because of the donors. I bet you don’t even know what the committee does, but that won’t stop you.

I keep harping on this but the media fuels this a lot by picking up the most deranged advocate for any left-wing cause they can find as Representative of The Dems.

Scratch an American, a treatlerite bleeds

If people thought we could weather tariffs. Those people can weather a wage increase

Kind of annoying how we finally got to try adequate fiscal policy based demand management right at the moment when we were having inflationary supply shocks for unrelated reasons

swap fast food prices with interest rates

Folks with 3 jobs and an eviction notice sitting on their kitchen table were being told the economy was amazing. Biden got shit b/c while his folks were rejecting some completely bananas mergers & enforcing existing laws Dem Admins have ignored for decades the corporations were literally killing us.