The single most common criticism of President Biden’s reelection campaign is that he made a ghastly error by branding his policies “Bidenomics.” Americans think the economy is terrible, and Democrats have been begging the president to stop branding himself as the architect of something that people hate.

I think this advice is wrong. Biden needs to change the public’s view on the economy if he’s going to win.

  • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I think Biden needs to hire a better PR team. He has a lot of really nice accomplishments under his term, but the general public hasn’t heard about most of them. People remember how he forced rail workers to work instead of strike, but they don’t know that he got them benefits afterwards. He has certainly not been perfect, but there is a lot of good to talk about, and it’s not happening well enough.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Hard for people to know any of that when the media never cares to report on it.

  • whatupwiththat@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    how bout that minimum wage? How about Cannabis legalization? Election Day a Federal Holiday… ANY OF THESE WILL DO or ALL!!!

      • Melkath@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        I love how frequently this argument is being thrown out there to excuse Biden.

        If Trump gets elected, he is going to single highhandedly murder all of the brown people of the world and dissolve the United States, but Biden can’t be held accountable for being a do nothing because Congress is incapable of doing anything, which makes the President incapable of doing anything.

        The mental gymnastics.

        • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Biden and Trump both can issue executive orders without need of Congressional approval.

          Executive orders can easily be used to harass people, but they can’t be used to raise the minimum wage.

          Making election day a national holiday isn’t particularly effective, since (a) businesses can ignore it and make employees work on holidays and (b) there is already an executive order giving government employees time off to vote. It would be much better to move election day to a weekend, but that requires Congress.

          Obama already used an executive order to deprioritize marijuana prosecution, which is the most a president can do without Congress.

          Biden tried to use executive orders more creatively to forgive student debt, but that was blocked by the courts.

          • Melkath@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            So essentially, the POTUS needs to be a leader.

            If the POTUS is an impotent geezer, be he an empty headed cheeto windbag, or a hermit crab genocide enthusiast, neither can destroy America, but both can get REAL CLOSE.

            Yup. Still team “flip the monopoly board.”

            • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              If “be a leader” means “inspire the masses”, then your expectations are too high. Each party gets an inspiring leader roughly once a generation. We had FDR in the 1940s, Kennedy in the 1960s, Clinton in the 1990s, and Obama in 2010s. The bad guys had Reagan in the 1980s, GWB (arguably) in the 2000s, and Trump today. If Democrats are lucky we will see someone with that ability in the 2030s or 2040s.

              When we are waiting for a unicorn to show up, Democrats need someone who knows how to advance a legislative agenda, like LBJ (or, for the other team, like Nixon). And inspiring the masses does not necessarily overlap with that. Clinton was smart and charmed many Americans, but he failed to advance much. If anything his signature welfare reform was a step backwards and his health care reform was a complete bomb. Kennedy can take credit for the Civil Rights Act. Obama advanced health care reform.

              That’s right, by “advance a legislative agenda” I mean an incremental - yet permanent - step forward on a single topic. That’s what actual progress looks like in the US. No president since FDR has ever made major progress on multiple issues, and it took FDR four terms to become the exception. And by “incremental”, I mean some things will always be left undone. Before Obama, insurance companies could refuse to cover sick people, drop them in the middle of treatment, or jack up their premiums. After Obama, they can’t do any of those things. But we still don’t have a public option.

              If your expectations are realistic, then Biden has done a fine job. He passed the IRA, which does far more to tackle climate change than anyone who came before. As a bonus, he managed to get us through COVID without starting the recession that everyone said was inevitable. And he even moved health care a little further along by capping drug prices. That’s not “impotent” by any means, especially for just a single term.

              Oh, and if “being a leader” means “not doing controversial things in an unpleasant war” then I have bad news for you. Every modern president from both parties has done that, from Truman’s atomic bombings to Obama’s drone strikes. That’s just a permanent feature of the American presidency.

  • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 months ago

    Idk how the DNC can pitch that everything is actually good when most everyone I know is complaining about higher prices everywhere, some things costing double what they did before the pandemic, higher rents and stagnant wages.

    If they want to change the public’s view on the economy, it may be necessary to alter the economy in a way that benefits the masses in a tangible way.

      • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        8 months ago

        Buddy, I dunno how to tell you or the DNC that data doesn’t change the lived experiences and material realities of voters.

        This is the exact issue with the DNC campaign.

        Everyone I know is struggling more today then they were at the start of the Biden administration. A vast majority of them see Trump as a nonstarter, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy with Biden in the least.

        • Pissnpink@feddit.uk
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          8 months ago

          Hey pal, the thing about data is it includes more information then only your lived experience. You may feel your experience is the reality for all voters, but no, that’s your own experience. This is a big country buddy.

          • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            8 months ago

            This is far from a unique opinion. There’s people in this thread telling the same story and I’ve heard it dozens of times from people in all walks of life.

            If the DNC is facing an issue where people feel worse off, waving a CNN article in their face and saying “no you’re not” isn’t effective messaging in any way.

            The Democrats are wildly out of touch with working class Americans and the only reason their geriatric candidates have a chance is because the other party are a smattering of Fascists demagogues. Biden is a shit candidate and yet we’re stuck with him.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I disagree. Trying to gaslight me about how I’m actually better off now, I’m just too stupid to realize it or whatever is really not helping. We were just starting to feel middle class for the first time last year or so, and now that’s gone. I’m not asking for a lot, I don’t want a boat or a lifted F-250, I just want to be able to take the kids to do fun stuff (not Disney, fuck that) before they grow up without wondering how we’ll ever financially recover from it. Shit be whack right now, and I’d appreciate the messaging coming from the Biden campaign a lot more if they’d acknowledge that instead of pretending that Bidenomics has been a roaring success that ended poverty and moved everybody into the middle class. The only thing that messaging is doing is making me feel like I got left behind, which, as a Millennial, I’ve got to say that I wouldn’t be surprised, just disappointed.

    Look, I know that Biden didn’t cause the mess, but how am I supposed to believe that he can address the situation if he won’t even recognize it for what it is?

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I don’t remember him saying that everyone’s out of poverty and everyone’s in moved into the middle class. So if you’re getting that message it’s not coming from him.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Okay, I’m being hyperbolic, but the messaging is that the economy is all of the following

        • working great

        • for average Americans

        • And doing better now than it was two years ago.

        The third claim, I guess there’s some room for because of lockdowns and all that, but I really don’t see the first two. I just don’t. Not that I think Trump will be better; he’ll be far worse ofc, but I don’t see a meaningful positive impact from Bidenomics in my life, nor in the lives of the people I know. So, like I said before, this really just feels kinda like straight up lying from my POV.

        • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          I don’t see a meaningful positive impact from Bidenomics in my life, nor in the lives of the people I know.

          Nailed it. Maybe the economy is doing great if you’re one of those folks who can afford a lifted F-250 and trips to Disney, but I’m not one of those people and I don’t know anyone who is. The next car I buy will probably be over five years old and last week I took the kids through an automated car wash as a treat.

          • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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            8 months ago

            Going to the car wash as a treat really nails the vibe for me. I hope things get better for you guys soon.

            • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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              8 months ago

              That’s the neat thing, they’re better than they’ve ever been and it’s still like this. Shit just keeps getting more expensive.

  • kttnpunk@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I don’t think Biden was the right choice in the first place, his presidency has only killed momentum/progress on the left and made democrats look as useless, apathetic and unabashedly corrupt as republicans.

    • Melkath@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      And now Democrats have Genocide! TM, hope you got Haliburton stock! - Modern lib… erm… progressives.

  • Melkath@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    The single most common criticism of President Biden’s reelection campaign is that he made a ghastly error by branding his policies “Bidenomics.”

    I’d say he has taken at least a bit more criticism for the genocide.