r/politics • u/ben_watson_jr • May 19 '24

How Can This Country Possibly Be Electing Trump Again? Soft Paywall

https://newrepublic.com/article/181287/can-america-possibly-elect-trump-again
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u/AllUltima May 19 '24

Not only that, the US is doing pretty well, considering. Take this BBC article, for example. "Could the US economy be doing too well?" This is mostly the kind of messaging that the democrats need, yet don't have. Hardly anyone is really pushing this kind of message stateside, but the opposition message is sure getting pushed. It's time to stop completely losing the messaging battle.

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u/protendious May 19 '24

The problem is there’s no way to make the argument that simply without coming off tone deaf, because things are more expensive.

It’s hard to explain in a 200 character tweet that inflation was because of post pandemic pent up demand coming up against supply chain issues, combined with a war involving a major oil producer with a major grain exporter. And that inflation has dropped significantly, and is better than any other developing country, and is slower than wage growth now. And that there’s nothing Trump can do to bring prices back to what they were (no matter what he says) and that he also contributed with equal (necessary) COVID spending and (poorly targeted) tax cuts. That’s too much for one tweet.

People mostly vote on vibes. And the vibe is, stuff costs more now than it used to, in a noticeable way. 

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u/socaljoe42 May 19 '24

It IS hard to explain these things in a 200-character tweet… which is why the Biden administration should have been using TV to broadcast such messaging, video to keep it in circulation, and 30-50 character tweets to drive people to it. Biden talking to the camera about how “Yes, it’s harder than we’re used to right now,” and “we can get through it TOGETHER,” and “this is what we’re doing and can expect.”

Some of that, and a some better attention to the immigration/border crisis… and they would not be in this situation.

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u/protendious May 19 '24

-Puts together bill for border, main republican point of alleged interest

-Republicans tank it, Biden still gets blamed