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I'm seeing a consistent stream of content from people these days decrying Biden and saying that they're not going to vote for the Democratic party in the election. This is one example:
Here's another:
And here's a tweet indicating that voting for the Green Party is not the same as voting Republican:
This sort of thing seemed to start around the time the Israel-Palistine culture war heated up and I haven't really seen it stop. I've even seen one that says that our choices for November are basically Voldemort and Palpatine.
This may just be coming from social-media acquaintances of mine and just the sources they follow (I have a lot of really leftist acquaintances), and may not be representative of the general populace. I really don't know.
I find this interesting for a few reasons.
I mean, I think one of the relevant differences between Hiden Biden in 2020 and genocide Joe today is that in 2020 he was, not quite a black box, but a candidate who didn’t run on his record. Like, literally, he ran on, ‘Trump bad, look at the state of the world today for evidence’. Today he has no choice.
I also want to point to, well, the state of the world today. Inflation is higher than the government admits, there’s wars and rumors of wars, crime is at generational highs, housing costs through the roof, etc, etc. It’s hard to be an incumbent in the early-mid 2020s; the tories and Canadian liberals and French government coalition and PiS in Poland can all attest to that.
But let’s circle back to Trump/Biden. From a far left perspective, Biden has mostly failed at being better than a Republican, and quite a bit of the Trump hate is getting transferred to other major Republican figures, like Greg Abbott or justice Alito. Nevermind that a second Trump administration entails Greg Abbott getting much more of what he wants, or at least his policies being extended over a larger chunk of the border. Nevermind that Gaza is not a genocide. Nevermind that it was Trump appointees who overturned Roe. Biden failing to stop them undermines the ‘last chance to stop fascism’ narrative something fierce. Instead what the far left twitterati seems to be settling on is doomerism.
War tends to be good for the incumbent, historically speaking. The economy and stock market doing great , as much as I may hold my nose at joe. And inflation is coming down. The CPI came in great today, although as many note, it does possibly omit hidden forms of inflation. if you look at 538, Biden's approval nosedived around mid-2021 fror reasons that are not clear and never budged, this was despite all these developments you listed. A LOT has happened since mid-2021, yet similar to trump from 2017-2020, Biden has been stuck in the same low 40s approval.
The stock market is doing great, but how much of those gains does the inflation nullify? I looked up an inflation calculator, and our dollar today is only worth 82 cents compared to what it was worth in 2020.
Also, interest rates are starting to decline, but still remain really high.
Inflation is slowing down, but we're not gonna have deflation. We're stuck with these inflated prices, and I'm not certain, but I don't think wages have risen to match, at least not in all industries. So many people basically just lost 18% of their purchasing power for both their previous assets and future as well.
Okay, but the stock market is up 70% since January 2020.
We're stuck with inflated nominal prices but we're not necessarily stuck with inflated real prices. Median weekly real wages are down significantly from pandemic exuberance but really not bad.
The housing market is of course fucked, but boomers are sitting pretty and that's who Pokemon goes to the polls.
Are you saying that you think prices are going to go down? Or wages are going to catch up? I don't know enough about economics at all to necessarily know how these things tend to go.
I think wages are going to increase in real terms (i.e. faster than prices). That's the usual long term trend according to the graph I posted.
I hope you're right. But where I am, in tech, promised salaries increased for like a year, then dropped right back down once the companies started laying people off. They knew they could get away with it.
You got a pay cut?
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