Summary
President Joe Biden’s economic achievements—lowering inflation, reducing gas prices, creating jobs, and boosting manufacturing—are largely unrecognized by the public, despite his successes.
His tenure saw landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, and major infrastructure investments.
However, Biden’s approval ratings remain low, attributed to inflation backlash, weak communication, and a media landscape prone to misinformation.
Democrats face a “propaganda problem” rather than a policy failure, with many voters likely to credit incoming President Trump for Biden’s accomplishments due to partisan messaging and social media dynamics.
Yes and no. I agree they solved the problems, but there was no fixing high prices even if inflation rate was brought down.
It’s like when Kamala was asked “was there anything you’d do differently?” The problem was she actually answered the question. The administration made the right choices, so there was little different she would have done. She should have done the politician thing and answered adjacently how she’s going to solve high prices.
Same shit as always, the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises but no on hears about it because the right wing own 90% of the media.
I swear for every positive story about something Biden did, there were 3 or 4 about Trump just being Trump: saying some outrageous lie, gaffes, and of course all the crimes. He’s sucked all the air out of the room for 10 years and now we’re going to have another 4. All news, positive or negative, is publicity.
99.9%
the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises
If you didn’t learn the lesson that this isn’t true in the last 4 years then all hope is lost
JFC. Can we stop being surprised that the electorate is full of fucking mentally defective degenerates? Can we not find our own charismatic person to fool the masses into voting our way (which is, ironically, in their benefit)? We have all the fucking actors, just get one to say populist shit. FFS.
The big money donors don’t even want to hear pretend populist messages with a left bent.
Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They’re no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
Yep, when the Republicans went mask off in 2016, the Dems followed suit. They’re no longer content with lying to us or selling us on vague ideas like hope and change. I thought it was refreshing, back when I thought people had the capacity to demand change.
Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren’t boomers, we’re basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
Except the genocide
You haven’t seen shit yet.
i get and agree with the sentiment that donald trump will be worse in relation to the unbridled support of genocidal israel
but framing 40,000+ murders as “you haven’t seen shit yet” is inappropriately dismissive. we have fucking seen shit. have some empathy when you use other people’s suffering to justify your internet argument.
Don’t both sides this issue. With Harris, this could have been de-escalated.
So… yeah. We haven’t seen shit yet. Non voters just made things exponentially worse.
oops! you put words in my mouth :) common mistake.
And that’s fair because you misrepresented mine.
We get it, Biden supported a genocide. As fucking if Trump would have done jack shit to prevent it.
Yeah perhaps that’s why I didn’t make that claim
i hate how people cram words into your mouth like this. thanks for being sane and normal. :)
Inviting further genocide is not punishing him for the genocide. He didn’t play the strong man and step on a country America went and deeply intertwined itself in. So, instead, y’all held your smug, self-satisfied, fart sniffing noses high and let someonw who has championed the genocide take the reigns once more because yoh wrongly believe not touching the switch gets you out of the trolly problem.
Holy strawman Batman!
Jesus you lot are so fucking tribal
You know the democrats were going to kill them all too right?
We weren’t inviting further genocide. We were begging the Democrats to change their stance and begging the public to choose another option if they didn’t.
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The article doesn’t mention any issues related to policy, which made a lot of people not vote for the democrats.
What he did do was miniscule. The only good thing that I can think of is some of the student loan forgiveness.
Honestly Democrat are absolutely horrible at talking to people.
I’ll be the first to admit, Biden did actually do a lot for workers but just like the leader of the painters union said, y’all fucking suck at telling people that.
I mean look at the rail workers strike, Biden stopped the rail workers strike and didn’t address one of the biggest things they were looking for, just to be treated like humans and have sick leave.
There was lots of talk about “doing this for the best of the nation”, which okay I could get behind, sure they got a wage increase but I did as shit could understand why rank and file would feel betrayed when they were asking additional to be treated as humans that get sick.
What I didn’t hear him or anyone say to them directly, that he was still going to work with the unions afterwards to get sick leave in. Why would you not say that at the same time as you announce your blocking the strike? Cost you nothing to say you have their back.
So then months later, with Biden administration support finally got the workers PTO but no one really knew about it because the moment was gone and honestly union leadership also did a shit job of getting that word out too.
It’s not the only thing but it certainly is a big factor in things.
One angle that might explain the lack of media coverage on a win for the working class against the interest of capital owners is that the media itself, at least the mainstream slice of it, is owned by the capitalist class.
MSM will cover things if they think it’ll bring in more ratings. You see it with how many news outlets are treating the upcoming Trump administration. For Cons, they’re banking on a viewer base that’ll be more interested in Trump coverage. For Dems, they’re banking on a viewer base that’ll be more hateful and agree of Trump coverage.
So when you have wins for the working class that Biden’s administration directly helped with, and when you have a media industry that just won’t cover it out of their own self-interest, you have to wonder if the administration will spend Americans’ on advertising or just keep it and move on.
One might say that the best time to do that advertising is during an election campaign though. And that begs the question as to why Biden nor Harris brought this up in their campaigns.
Might it be that those groups are also subject to the capitalist class?
I agree with you for the most part. That being said I have tried to explain this point to multiple people and they don’t care that the Biden admin got the rail workers what they asked for. They insist that stopping the strike means Biden was anti union full stop even after the IBEW put out releases thanking the Biden admin. they also said it was just propaganda. It’s just as much about people not wanting to listen.
Workers were asking for 15 days of sick leave, Congress and Biden gave them 1 with the act that ended the strike. Later, the railroads continued negotiating with some of the unions and gave them four days of sick leave. People from the Biden administration were present for those conversations and take credit for that.
So, no, the Biden administration did not give the unions what they asked for, and yes they likely did do material harm to them by stopping that strike.
If they did nothing then why did the IBEW thank them for the effort? Yea they didn’t get everything they asked for, that’s how negotions work. The people that were effected thanked the Biden admin, why don’t you believe them? Also according to Reuters, most get 5 paid sick days + 2 convertibles.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
Because placating the egos of the people in power make sense, same reason Zelensky congratulated Trump on winning
I got my numbers on sick days from here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute?wprov=sfla1
Yeah. It’s called negotiating. You start at a number higher than what you’d be happy with, expecting to meet somewhere in the middle.
When a third party swoops into a negotiation and steals your leverage it has a significant impact on what that middle ends up being
Yeah, hence why I say that union leadership has to do some work here too.
I’ve worked with the machinists union during a statewide right to work ballot initiative to overturn the legislatures recently passed right to work bill.
So much conversation about how “we have to strike out down!” But at the same breath talk about voting Republican. Well that’s what they did, killed right to work, elected more Republicans to the state legislature.
Cue shocked Pikachu face when the people they voted in immediately submitted a bill to enact right to work.
I mean what the fuck is union leadership doing at that point when you can’t get your own members to not fuck themselves over?
They didn’t get what they wanted though. The points system still is in place that limits the ability to use leaves. The “sick leave” still required notice, so all it did was allow doctor visits to not take PTO, provided the worker could afford the points.
I can’t find a solid confirmation but it looks like as part of the law killing the strike and enacting the recommendations of the emergency board, the attendance rules creating points was vacated without further agreements from the unions. So from what I can tell, your statement is incorrect. I looked up the emergency board’s recommendations but I didn’t do a deep dive into the law to confirm. Link to the recommendations below.
https://nmb.gov/NMB_Application/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PEB-250-Report-and-Recommendations.pdf
Biden and the Dems saved the teamsters’ pensions against the GOP’s best efforts and it didn’t even earn them an endorsement from the teamsters’ union.
This was highly publicized, especially if you yourself were in the union
Internal polling of Teamsters members showed:
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In an electronic poll conducted after the Republican National Convention, 59.6% of rank-and-file Teamsters favored endorsing Trump, while 34% supported Harris.
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A more recent poll indicated a similar trend, with Teamsters backing Trump 58% to 31%
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
But I was told that Dems lose because they don’t have the backs of labor and the working class, and that if they just fixed that, they’d win elections???
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
Bingo.
Or scrolling their feeds. Or swiping. Depending on the age. Every single Democrat leader needs to see that statistic, so they can stop whining about how policy was their problem.
Democrats are messaging like it’s 1950. And hot take, but the only thing that elected Biden was COVID-19, only because it wedged itself into people’s lives like absolutely nothing else can.
Hence, Democrats suck a propaganda.
They should field and finance their own radio jockeys and be flooding the airways with their own counter messages, but instead they’ve abandoned that terrain to the right and now are paying for it.
Something that piece of shit David Frum said on his Twitter once regarding the rightwing/leftwing media system was ‘the left is awash with talent but has no funding while thr right is awash with funding but has no talent’.
Kamala had a billion dollars. Progressives have a deep ecosystem of independent media that establishment Democrats undermine at every opportunity. Democrats were hand in hand with Republicans in pushing social media “reforms” that today promote media like FOX News as trustworthy over progressive media sources. The Democrats create their own weakness.
Conservative messaging wins propaganda battles because it’s simple. Democrats can’t use the same tactics, because they’ll be less effective no matter what. Preventing consolidation of media and monopolization of media would be more effective, since it’s a centrally coordinated effort. Or just preventing anybody from having enough money that they’d even have the ability to do that.
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Oh yeah, that was s give amount of PTO. 😶
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
Would you be willing to donate $10 to Amazon?
I mean, not really, but it’s only $10 so sure.
Thank you, your $10/week subscription has been confirmed. Please call 10AM-3PM Eastern to upgrade or cancel your payment. We apologize in advance for the unusually long wait times.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies and used the FTC to implement things like click-to-cancel, and invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing. Oh and he also tried to pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and everyone is upset he didn’t magically fix everything all at once.
Bidens problem has been one of messaging. He didn’t know how to connect with the voters to get them to understand all the things he was doing.
He could have ran on it more. Trump understands the art of putting his name on the checks.
Call Americans stupid, and we are, but I wish the party that was helping people was a bit more grandious and better about messaging then they are.
It’s also pretty hard to point to things and go “see? remember the thing we did 10 years ago? this is the effect it had!”
Many of Biden’s policies will come to fruition during the next term and Trump will falsely claim responsibility because he can point to it right away.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies
The election is over you can stop lying
implement things like click-to-cancel
Oh fuck yeah an unsubscribe link on spam emails! America is back, baby!
O BEAUTIFUL FOR SPACIOUS SKIES
invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing
I said you could stop lying. Fucking infuriating how cynical liberals are when constructing their fantasy world.
You’re taking credit for the bad bill that was supposed to be passed along with the good bill.
Except the point of separating them was to only pass the bad bill. (remember when Elizabeth “Redface” Warren RAN on pulling this shit on you?)
So now you take the full price tag of the bad bill and pretend it was for good things. Remember what we called it when we called the other bill (again, the fucking ghouls, with maximum cynicism) ‘the green new deal’? We called it the ‘toll road bill’.
You’re warping reality and history.
Oh and he also tried to
Love when liberals take credit for not doing good things, Remember when they “tried” to raise the minimum wage but were stonewalled by an instantly fire-able employee?
pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Again, as was said to you thousands of times but you were too obstinate to acknowledge: he didn’t need congress. He could have literally thrown away the paperwork if he wanted to. Somehow the previous president had the authority to halt the loans but when the senator from MBNA took office that power suddenly didn’t exist?
You know better and you’re pretending not to.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism
Because you want to live in a fantasy world that would shatter upon literally a single fact being thrown into it
You seem… stable…
This by the way is a perfect example of how the democratic party never learns from its mistakes. Because the adults are no longer in the room and the children believe all the lies they were told growing up
Same thing happened with the republicans, just 20 years ago
I’m ootl, what monopolies got broken up? I tried looking it up but it’s not returning results.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
The DOJ filed another suit against them for advertising practices also.
Oh so you lied.
He sued a monopoly
And (after reading) not even over being a monopoly
The user you replied to asked what monopoly got broken up. You deliberately talked past that question. You’re still lying.
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“Your specific points don’t matter to me because I can’t read”
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I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren’t that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn’t expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don’t think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn’t take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn’t drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I’ve tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn’t want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I’d say “be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn’t acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers.”
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I’m worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don’t matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
Apparently, America’s economy seems to be driven only by fear or greed
I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
All due respect, you are literally brainwashed by the deep state. Universities are institutions of the wealthy; of the status quo. They exist to train the managerial class of capitalist society. The ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers. You specifically took as your major the mainline ideology of that ruling class. The only way you could have done yourself a worse service in that regard is if you took economics.
With all due respect youre simping or even more brainwashed than the people you are trying to argue with. You’re either paid or played, and have enough time to respond to everyone here.
Why is it that the “deep state elite” universities always have such liberal voters? Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs? Doesn’t seem very “wealthy brainwashing”.
Most rulers didn’t take polysci, they got law degrees. Or bankrupted casinos.
Why is it that the “deep state elite” universities always have such liberal voters?
Because liberalism is the governing ideology of capitalism and has been since the 1700’s. The problem you’re having is that your definitions of words is mush.
Why do liberals and deep state want to expand social welfare programs?
Can you please observe reality? When since LBJ has that been the case? When, since the Soviet Union was a rising threat, has the capitalist state done anything but austerity, union busting, and violently suppressing popular movements?
Doesn’t seem very “wealthy brainwashing”.
“I’m immune to propaganda”
Most rulers didn’t take polysci, they got law degrees.
Oh heavens, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the law, which is completely free of the entrenched governing ideology.
Perhaps you’d like to go to bat for Sociology next? Just because I didn’t mention a major by name doesn’t mean it’s exempt from institutional indoctrination.
Idk if any of this will help, but you’re very actively involved in the discussions and I encourage that. So, as a friendly commenter who sides with your disgruntlement of the situation, I thought I would at least point out the things that I understand but don’t 100% agree with.
When it comes to degrees, I agree that it is a “machine” (education as a whole) that produces desired individuals to fulfill the roles it has established as “important/valuable”. Everyone can disagree on the opinion of what a “valuable” society is, but I digress. You have to understand that knowledge comes from experience and research though (just like you’ve probably done, just as an individual and not mandated by a course). The most succulent of critiques can come from someone deeply established in a field, kinda like how Bernie Sanders made comments about the DNC after the election and it forced the media and all of us to discuss it and the message.
The truly dangerous ones are those who can fully understand how flawed a system is, but realize they must play it to their advantage to get what they “want” out of life. I just can’t demonize the whole entire system when the people I’ve learned and read from were birthed from that experience. A lot of people realize after or during pursuing a degree, just how bad it is so it’s some kind of awareness for a certain %. Now if they’ve fully embraced the system, you just have to find the examples they choose to ignore in their flawed beliefs.
I also don’t know how effective the “per quote response” is. I’ve been guilty of it in the past, but honestly I think people just dont really read the “tit-for-tat” style comment replies (I find myself scrolling past if it’s too long). If they see one thing they disagree with then they downvote the entire comment. I try to hit the points I want but change the length and style of response in regards to how effective I can actually communicate to the person.
I’m just happy that a little bit of sanity has returned to Lemmy (obvious from the changes in what got downvoted/upvoted or discussed heavily). It felt like everyone just completely drank the kool-aid so we could “save Democracytm!!” Unfortunately, I think people sold all the common-sense realty in their head for the Blue Superhero fallacy that could save us all from all the boogeymen. It will take time for some to let their head critique things effectively, some will never come back to reality. It’s one of the reasons I just asked a simple question instead of critiquing their entire argument (I think his entire premise is flawed, and happily skewed so Biden is still a hero in their eyes). It’s mostly there so other readers can see it and makes them pause for a second instead of just “believing” it’s true. If the OP comes back with a sane comment I’ll engage in a discussion, but we see from the response to me they don’t want to discuss facts so I’m not engaging further.
If we’re going to have the superheroes, they’re going to be us, so I guess it depends how badly we want them.
And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
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Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
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Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
You forgot deporting people
Actually no, Trump deported and convicted less than Obama and Biden. Trump’s removal of holding time limitations for women and children and his removal of ICE’s criminal only focus meant resources were used up and almost always wasted.
Trump is ineffective at everything he claims to be good for.
Are we talking about what he did last time or what he said he’s going to do this time?
His plans supposedly haven’t changed, just a repeat of last time but more and worse.
He even already tried to overturn the election once before when he sent 84 fake electors to 7 states in 2020.
He has repeatedly told us he is going to do everything he did before, again.
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“Am I out of touch? No, it’s the voters who are wrong”
Voters have shifted right because they’re hurting, and the Dems promised 4 more years of the same. Trump promised to remove the elites and actively tear the country they created apart. That’s why they voted for him. The fact that’s it’s a lie and they’re stupid to believe it doesn’t matter. Telling people the economy is doing great while they are poorer than they were 4 years ago pushes them away.
Liberals lost ~15 million former voters and handed America to a fascist dictator, and all they’ve done is blame the left and stick their head in the sand, as though the population didn’t just vote to tear the status quo apart. They did the same thing in 2016. They won’t get another chance, and they still don’t understand that.
Voters have shifted right because they’re hurting
I don’t believe this is the case.
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The Democratic Party took many steps rightward in Harris’ campaign (border security, death penalty, cheney).
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Trump barely increased his vote count from 2020, like mayyybe 40k more votes?
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15 million Dem voters from 2020 didn’t vote at all this time rather more people voting R.
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Leftist voices within the DNC spoke urgently and stridently about the DNCs need to listen to its left base more or face backlash.
You got it backwards, the DNC misread the people and shifted to the right of its own base
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I completely agree. One of the things with the debate is I was like hey he should be pushing inflation right back in trumps face but jeez its also stupidity with folks. I mean we got a guy here saying he did nothing to fight price gouging.
People will never understand that if a president only gets 4 years, they are mainly working with the economy that the previous administration left them. So Trump’s shit policies become Biden’s failures. Biden’s decent policies become Trump’s wins. And if there is another election, all the ravages of these next four years will be blamed on the person who wins it.
yeah its just so hard for someone like me. every time I look at the inflation numbers and see it was april 2020 where it jumped. when I look at the fed interest rate numbers. its like how can people just not look at the numbers a little. no math. just date and whats larger or smaller.
Yep, exactly this. People kept acting like this was the worst economy ever, and, seriously…wtaf.
because trump and putin ran a very loud and constant disinformation campaign aimed at the rural/retired/inflation weary people that were the most vulnerable to it
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
This is not a messaging problem it’s a measurement problem. The metrics we use to gauge economic progress and/or health are not effective indicators of anyone’s experience but the wealthy. When Dems tell me wages have gone up so income inequality is getting better what they mean is that new jobs are on average offering slightly higher pay to new hires.
They don’t say that slightly higher pay is 5 cents an hour which is practically useless. They don’t acknowledge that this tiny wage increase is dwarfed by the impacts of inflation over the last 4 years. Worst of all, they don’t say that because this wage increase only applies to new hires, anyone working the same job for more than a couple of years hasn’t seen a wage increase at all, but that price gouging has definitely impacted them. That last one is important because it applies to a huge chunk of people.
This is just the way it works out with wages but basically everything these pundits are saying is great under Biden could be described the same way. They’re talking about averages which when applied to 330 million people produce numbers that sound significant, but when you look at almost any individual it doesn’t make a practical difference in their lives. Sure, you may have slowed the rate at which things are getting worse, but are you honestly surprised at this reaction? You’re telling people you solved their problems and they’re responding “no, you absolutely did not and fuck you for saying that”
Yeah this shit is insane. We fixed inflation! Great, that’s great, but where are our, meaning the working class, 25% raises to offset the inflation that already happened? I’ll be up for my second raise in three years in 6 months. It’s already promised to be 7% which will beat inflation (and I plan to fight for more), but I would need 25% to get my pay to be worth the same as it was three years ago before my first raise.
Absolutely, and to be clear, this does not imply that Trump has a good solution to this problem. He’ll probably make it significantly worse. But at least he’s talking about it in a way that resonates with people. Don’t tell me my problem is that I don’t understand my own financial situation. Show me how you plan to improve it in ways that I actually care about.
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
