The Public is Smart

This is where I part ways with a lot of pundits

Joe Biden is unpopular. He’s 18 points underwater in approval ratings. This is more or less consistent since 2021.

I think he’s going to lose to Donald Trump. And I don’t think that because I have any special information or insight, but just because polls show him losing to Trump in a head-to-head match.

I mean, nobody can predict the future, anything could happen. But this is obviously a bad place for Democrats to be right now. A bunch of pundits have been writing about this and whether the Democrats should dump Biden. I think they should. Because I don’t want to have another Trump presidency.

Over on Twitter — the bad place — a lot of pundit-types are kind of in disbelief about this. Their response is to kind of mansplain to the public why they should actually like Biden/not be concerned about inflation.

I was going back and forth with this guy. He’s showing me charts that show U.S. inflation is similar to Europe and Canada. So inflation is not Joe Biden’s fault, he says.

I have got to say, I’m not big on this strategy we have of haughtily correcting people onto our side. We can’t mansplain the public into liking Biden or not being concerned about inflation.

Helping the public is supposed to be the goal of politics — not asserting our own agenda regardless of the outcomes. And if the public isn’t happy with our nominee — the one who implemented the policies we (some of these pundits) were so excited about — that should be a sign to us that there is a problem.

I like some pundits more than others. I read them too. But overall, they are too unrepresentative. They’re too rich. The places they live in are too wealthy and cloistered. They aren’t diverse enough, racially, gender wise, or in their family types and age. Some of them are also extremely arrogant. Worst of all, many of them are a little bit contemptuous of the general public in my opinion.

The thing is, pundits are going to be fine one way or the other. In fact, if Trump wins, maybe that boosts their political-take-giving business. There’s no accountability whether they are right or wrong. There is a lack of skin in the game. If you’re rich, and you live in a wealthy enclave, and you don’t have a bunch of dependents, the stakes of all this is sorta low. It’s like a game for a lot of these people.

Charts of inflation in Canada — that is not what is going to be relevant to voters right now. If you are trying to hold on in the middle class and all the sudden your grocery bills are $400, that is going to have more immediacy for you than some chart, presented by some guy who doesn’t have to worry about his mortgage/rent/car payment/childcare bills.

I’m not saying a vote for Trump is logical. I feel baffled by it too, to a degree. But the inability to contend with why so many folks would choose that whole garbage heap over what we think is so awesome is also a little bit frustrating. We should be running away with it — in our own minds.

My feelings about Biden are mixed. He’s not as good a president as Obama was, in my opinion. He lacks the sort of leadership instinct that Obama had. The whole party seems sorta adrift. I’m still a solid vote for Biden by my enthusiasm is dampened, by a lot of things: the mess that’s been made of K-12 education being most pressing for me right now. I can make a list of things he’s done I like (mainly some climate stuff) and some stuff I am concerned about (impending possible war with the entire Middle East).

But this would be a good time for left-aligned people to do a little introspection in my opinion. If pundits love Biden — he’s the guy who implemented their agenda more or less — why doesn’t the public? Could it be that these wealthy, unrepresentative pundits don’t understand the public’s needs and wishes, or failed to anticipate some unintended consequences of their preferred policy positions? Of course not! The public is flawed for not appreciating all they have done for them.

This plays right into the hands of Donald Trump imo.

The general public is not dumb. People KNOW when people are contemptuous of them. They KNOW when they’re being talked down to. They know when they’re being failed or shortchanged by certain institutions.

I hope Biden can pull it off. But I’m not feeling good about how things are going right now.

Whole classes of festering problems like the opioid epidemic are weighing on ordinary people. This time we’re running on a record. I guess it’s natural that we would want to defend it, but that will only get you so far.