In a NYT guest essay, former Obama campaign strategist and senior advisor David Axelrod has some advice for Joe Biden’s speechwriters for the upcoming State of the Union address — lay off the happy talk:
The state of the union is stressed. To claim otherwise — to highlight the progress we have made, without fully acknowledging the hard road we have traveled and the distance we need to go — would seem off-key and out of touch. You simply cannot jawbone Americans into believing that things are better than they feel.
At a news conference on the eve of his first anniversary in office, President Biden tried. He energetically sold a litany of achievements — record job growth; a massive and complex vaccine mobilization; a historic rescue act and a landmark infrastructure bill, forged with bipartisan support. He did acknowledge the trials this country has endured, but only sparingly. He got the emphasis and proportions wrong, spending more time pitching his successes and touting progress than he did recognizing the grinding concerns that have soured the mood of the country…
What Americans want to hear is genuine understanding of what we have been through, together and a clear path forward — less about Mr. Biden’s accomplishments than about the heroic, unsung sacrifices so many have made to see their families and communities through. They will want to hear less about his “transformative” legislation than the specific, practical steps Mr. Biden has taken, and is recommending, to help reduce inflation, curb violent crime and, of course, effectively confront any future waves of the virus. They want it to be less about him than us.
Axelrod says Biden is uniquely suited to strike the right tone because he’s known for being empathetic. Biden also has the life experience of growing up in a family that was barely clinging to middle-class status, and that’s an asset, according to Axelrod.
Is Axelrod right? I don’t know. I think he’s correct when he notes that the Obama admin had to walk a tightrope as the country pulled out of that economic crisis. It was important to let people know about the real progress the country had made, but a lot of people weren’t feeling it, so there was a risk in doing so.
I’m not sure we can draw any super-useful lessons from past eras (even fairly recent ones) to apply to our current state. If there was a divide in 2011, it’s a yawning chasm now. This was brought home to me anew this weekend when I dined with some Trumpy relatives and we spent about 90 seconds discussing politics.
They live in an entirely different reality than the one I inhabit. That’s always been the case — they were Reaganauts and then Bush Republicans. But since Trump lost, they’re even more unmoored from reality, which I didn’t even think was possible. And yet it is so.
Of course, nothing Biden could say would reach them, but people who are neutral toward or in favor of Biden are also in a profoundly shitty mood. I don’t know what else Biden can do to fix things that he’s not already doing (or willing to do if Congress gets its shit together), and there’s probably nothing he can say that will mollify people who aren’t strong supporters already.
There’s record job growth and higher pay, but people are rattled by inflation, high gas prices, the endless pandemic bullshit, etc. But — and I may be projecting here — I suspect there’s more to it than that: a sense that things are falling apart, that the center (not the political one, the civic core of America) cannot hold. And I don’t think there’s a policy fix for that.
Open thread.
Jeffro
There are, but first the country has to be reassured that the adults are focused on the real issues here. And one of those big-picture issues is that most of the GQP is trying to cause chaos and economic pain on purpose, in order to further their quest for authoritarian rule.
Or, as Jennifer Rubin puts it:
Matt
Shorter David Axelrod: “What we need is more austerity for everything but cops. This worked out so well for Democrats when we tried it in the 90s and in the 2010s, after all.”
Biden campaigned on solutions to a lot of these problems, but his time in office has been one “well, you see, we can’t *actually* do that because we want Republicans to like us. Remember to vote blue!” after another.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: and
The country at large will be reassured once it sees that the criminals in the previous administration are being locked away. Not just the drooling idiots who attacked the Capitol on 1/6, but the people to funded them, the people who directed them there.
Let’s go with those publicized hearings, J6. Let’s go with actual criminal charges, DOJ. It is all taking far too long and hangs over our democracy’s head every day.
trollhattan
Don’t speeches have arcs? Isn’t an SOTU generally* 1. Hey, howdy, look, we’re doing quite well; 2. But also, too, we have a bunch of things that aren’t so great and really need fixing; 3. That stuff I just talked about? Here’s how I’m going to work to fix them. 4. God bless the United States of America–drop mic.
I do not know what Axelrod is suggesting that would change this.
*Three Trump SOTUs were basically “Aren’t I great? Isn’t everybody else so fucked up and treating me unfairly? You should tell me how great I am–steal mic.”
O. Felix Culpa
@Matt:
Huh? Who’s saying that?
lowtechcyclist
I remember Obama’s ‘pivoting to the deficit’ at the beginning of 2010, which was (reasonably IMHO) taken as a statement that we’d beaten the Great Recession, and don’t expect more help from the government. (It’s not like anyone believed they were going to deal with the deficit by cutting defense spending.)
And it wasn’t so much that he said it as that he clearly meant it.
Biden can’t really promise any more help from the government, since Manchin ripped the BBB’s heart out and stomped on it. But he can at least acknowledge the ways in which things are still rough for many families.
Suzanne
Yeah, I think he is.
Two years of right-wing temper tantrums have made me far more disappointed and exhausted about American society than I was before.
I have no doubt that Biden is doing the best job he can, and I know he is operating within the strict confines of our governmental system that don’t give him or the blue agenda much power unless we magically win a staggering majority next cycle. But honestly, I don’t think that will happen and I’m pretty well convinced that political engagement is not going to be sufficient to meet the challenges we face. That is not to say that I’m opting out, but it does make me question how I spend my time and effort. I don’t think that America will be a good place for my kids to grow up.
SiubhanDuinne
Axelrod’s opinion piece turned out to have some useful observations, but I almost didn’t read it this morning, I was so pissed off at the headline: “Mr. President, It’s Time For A Little Humility.” FWIW, I don’t at all think Axe came up with that — I think it’s all on the FTFNYT.
Betty
Biden has had an uphill battle against not only right-wing media but the mainstream media too. This has forced him to some extent to highlight his achievements, achieved despite the opposition of the two saboteurs. He may need a better balance in recognizing the difficulties people still face, but he has to tout his achievements as well.
Baud
Unlike voters, presidents don’t have the discretion to give up and drop out.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
I believe authors never have control over the headlines.
The NYT is garbage.
dww44
@Matt: I’ve never been a big fan of David Axelrod and have been largely unimpressed with his pundit role on CNN. Seems to me he might himself not possess a great sense of humor.
OTOH, I am far more impressed with David Plouffe and he’s worth every second of my time and every dollar he’s paid for his pundit roles on the Cable News networks.
Humor should be part of our messaging, as voters will be turned off by a perpetual funeral dirge about the state of our democracy and the “woe is us” meme is not gonna gain us very many undecided voters. We need to motivate voters not depress them.
Frank Wilhoit
The SOTU should not be a stump speech. (Many “shoulds” have gone by the board.)
Biden has been doing better than any other Democrat since 1980 at pointing blame where it belongs. Baby steps.
Axelrod has a grain of good advice, which would be to explain why national economic indicators do not mesh with local experience. But pull that thread too hard and the whole tapestry unravels. Practical economics has been totally based on falsehoods for centuries. Reality is beginning to obtrude. It is not going to be easy, at all, to get out in front of that.
bbleh
Oh bugger Axelrod. He’s trying to tell a lifelong politician who happens to have got elected President how to politick. Thanks Dave, you had your time, you did some good work, now please to be shutting up and finding something useful to do.
Betty
@SiubhanDuinne: As I said in my comment, he has to contend with an unhelpful MSM as well as unruly Republicans.
different-church-lady
Biden has gotten some stuff done, and things are clearly better than they were a year ago. But a lot of the country doesn’t want to believe that, and none of the media does. So, simply reiterating what they’re already rejecting just isn’t going to work; it would be the equivalent of saying flatly, “Well, you’re wrong.”
Axelrod is describing a hell of a small needle Biden’s gotta try to thread.
Suzanne
This is a very accurate description of how I feel. Half of the country cannot be bothered to even engage in the basic-ass-kindergarten behavior of keeping one’s germs to oneself. We can’t even engage in the common project of basic hygiene. The least partisan thing I can imagine is now a culture war.
And, if I might be fucking petty AF for a moment, it’s making me incredibly selfish. I saw another headline about deaths of despair and opioid overdoses among the white working class. And I was just like…. fuck, really? I go to work and pay taxes and repay my student loans so the white working class can get high? I know this is terrible thinking, but I’m exhausted. And I STILLLLLLLL cannot vaccinate my toddler, so she is STILLLLLLLLL home all the time.
ETA: I should note that I am salty about this in particular as a member of the white working class got fucked up on drugs and busted into my house and cost me a couple thousand dollars in destroyed property. After a long, extensive personal history of drug use and low-level run-ins with the law. And I will note that he has STILL not been arrested. And I will also note a Google search on him turned up no employment or alumni association. But it did turn up transphobic statements about Dr. Levine, calls for the arrest of Gov. Wolf, and he is a registered Republican. So I am feeling especially uncharitable at the moment. And I probably need to calm down.
topclimber
First, Biden should keep talking up the accomplishments. The people he needs to reach are the kind who are least likely to follow politics closely. They need to be reminded about 100 times about what the Dems have done to save the country before Joe eases up.
Second, Biden can pivot to the remaining concerns out there and tie key themes together. Sure, we want the schools to be back to normal–but not just in terms of attendance. We want teachers to feel they can teach what is real without attacks from RWNJ, most especially when it comes to racism. Because, he might point out, many states are trying to manipulate voting to exclude minorities.
Third, I hope he tackles the problem of inflation by castigating those who would aggravate supply chain problems (the convoy clowns) but also by calling out the big corporations who are racking up record profits while they use their monopoly power to raise prices. I will guess that a big majority of Americans would agree.
NeenerNeener
Funny you mention this; I had an IM argument with my RWNJ sister on Friday night. She’s in a rage about The Great Reset, ESG, Critical Race Theory and a number of other bugaboos that she thinks mean that Democrats are coming after her money and property…or in this case her husband’s money and property. She didn’t want to hear that I think it’s all bs….so I finally told her we could revisit the whole subject in 15 years and I expect she will still be very, very wealthy
We also argued about if the media is right or left leaning, of course. I say right, she says left.
Baud
If the Super Bowl provided any kind of window into America, Biden’s speech should include a pitch for crypto.
Maybe Harris can hold up a big sign with a QR code during the speech.
Doc Sardonic
Part of the issue with our current inflationary situation that nobody is talking about, and I have only seen it in passing in the media is that prices are going up because corporations can raise them. Many, if not most businesses, from Mom ‘n Pop run to the Fortune 500 are trying their best to recoup everything they lost in 2020 and 2021 and they want it NOW. Gas prices for example are no longer based on supply and demand, though that is still a small piece of pricing especially in the time of transition between winter and summer blend fuel, they are based on the futures market price. That’s why the sign on the gas station changes every time you see a fuel delivery or corporate sends the new price over the wire.
This corporate decision to “ lets gouge the shit out of people and blame it on the supply chain” hurts everyone and forces price increases but a good chunk of it is simply basic greed.
Hoodie
I listened to an interview with Axelrod on the Obama Bros podcast last week where he covered this ground. He said a bunch of this, but also acknowledged that it’s difficult or impossible for Biden to do any of this given the blaring propaganda organs that fuel the right. These create an alternative universe of facts, some of which Axelrod idiotically parrots in this passage. Seems to me that makes the kind of exercise he suggests is tantamount to Biden setting himself on fire.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: he could bring in Larry David as his exasperated frustration translator
The Dangerman
No coffee yet and late night (h/t Aaron Donald). You’re forewarned.
Biden got elected because he is competent (as opposed to that POS he replaced) and he gets to clean up the mess (elephants in a parade are cool but ya need the Dude with the broom at the end). If anyone thought Biden would clean it up in a year (or maybe even 2 or maybe even a full term), I want what he or she is smoking.
He just needs to play it straight. Not a Malaise speech or some happy hooha like Reagan used to do. Roll up the sleeves and get to work (not to mention roll up the sleeves and get the damn shot.
ETA: I don’t know how much it got covered but LA’s cornerback fell down on that last play. It would have been an easy 6. Donald saved the game.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
After four years of Trump humility, I think it’s high time we had Biden bellowing in a bellicose fashion about American Greatness for ninety fucking minutes.
Gin & Tonic
Heard from friends in Ukraine that Zelensky just notified the nation that an attack is planned for Wednesday.
The Moar You Know
@Suzanne: If you actually knew, personally, an opioid abuser you’d be even angrier. I watched a good friend of mine wreck her life for years with that shit. All you can do to help is walk away. They do it to themselves, goddamit, voluntarily and knowing the consequences, and we all fuckin pay for it.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
That sucks. Is it based on any new information?
West of the Rockies
@SiubhanDuinne:
And why did the FYNYT never have a problem WITH TFG’s incredible lack of humility?
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: How awful.
topclimber
@Baud: Nothing on AP yet.
JCJ
Perhaps he should mention the real Axis of Evil – Trump, Fox News, and Q – and prepare for their destruction
The Moar You Know
@NeenerNeener: my new years resolution was to quit all news and the internet, save what I need for work. This site (and Calculated Risk and NDD/Bonddad’s blog, because I like knowing about my money) is the only outlet I get anything from anymore. (BJ is a hard thing to give up!) And it hasn’t been that long, but both on the right and left (especially on the right) I find myself being increasingly unable to understand what people are talking about. At all. So much of our interpersonal conversations are based on news – or something from the internet – and having really disconnected from most of that I find understanding others is rapidly becoming very, very difficult. It’s like everyone is speaking in code.
Cervantes
Give me a break. Gas prices today are lower than they were in 2014. I don’t remember it being an issue then.
trollhattan
Meanwhile.
Holes in his clothes. Mr. Greenberg is a lucky man.
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
Welcome to the club.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Axelrod isn’t wrong. The biggest problem is the American electorate, which is perpetually oriented toward white grievance from Bangor to Key West to San Diego to Seattle and all points in between. Further, white women seem to be even more fearful than white men, adding an extra layer of rhetorical toxicity.
Cameron
@SiubhanDuinne: Agree 100%. He wouldn’t say something like that to Biden even in private. The headline makes it sound like the President should cover himself with sackcloth and ashes, kneel in front of the Heritage Foundation office, and give himself 30 lashes.
jonas
@Gin & Tonic: So do they think this is serious, or is it just Ukraine/NATO/US trying to mess with Putin’s head by getting out in front of him with his own intelligence? Last week Zelensky was trying to play down everything and telling people not to panic.
JMG
The SOTU should deal with the basic truth of our situation. The country is immeasurably better off than it was one year ago, at the most basic level because of all the lives vaccines have saved. But there is still a long way to go because the virus is very difficult to beat. Inflation is indeed an issue, but the fundamental restructuring of the world economy needed to tackle it without just making people who aren’t rich poorer (the traditional policy solution) is beyond Biden’s imagination, let alone power to accomplish. So he’ll nibble at its margins by necessity.
trollhattan
@Cervantes: Gas price has an outsized impact on folks’ general perception of “the cost of everything” because most folks buy it regularly and it’s the only consumer item that has the price posted prominently, for everybody to see. i.e., I can tell you what a gallon of premium goes for but not a gallon of milk.
Volatility has a big role. In the depths of covid I saw CA premium go under $2.00. A month ago it was above $5.00 at most stations in the area. Big change.
And third, everybody who bought that RAM with lift kit in the last couple years is getting their ass chewed every time they fill their monster (deservedly, but that’s a different topic) and their pain is obviously Biden’s fault.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
Lock away Ginni Thomas’ fat ass and I sure in hell would feel a lot better. Bonus points if she shares a cell with Betsy DeVos, Ivan’s Trump and Rebekah Mercer.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: it’s a good club. This place is next. My anxiety level had crashed through the floor by mid-January.
Gin & Tonic
Sorry, folks, that was a misinterpretation. I just read his decree about a “National Day of Unity” for Feb 16, Wednesday, and it appears to be a “rally the country” type of decree. A (very) few very pessimistic people thought that means he thinks an attack is coming.
Suzanne
@The Moar You Know:
I do, actually. My BIL had a terrible opioid problem, as did a very good friend of mine from college. They both turned it around. Without breaking into anyone’s homes, I might add.
Again, my better angels realize these people need care. But I am salty AF at the moment.
Hoodie
@Cervantes: It wasn’t. And 2014 had a GDP growth of less than 3%. 2021 was 5.7%. This hysteria is mostly media-driven crap. Sure, people like cheap gas, but many don’t seem to realize that the lower prices in the early stages of the pandemic were because things came to a grinding halt. Americans are morons.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Whew. Dread levels reset to OMG from OMFG.
topclimber
Zelenskiy invited Biden to visit less than 24 hours ago.
ETA: G&T has new info, of the relieving variety.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@The Moar You Know:
This.
Outpatient therapy is ineffective. The only thing that works is a complete collapse into inpatient treatment, and then a complete relocation from all the triggering people and places.
Tony Jay
@West of the Rockies:
He helped sell newspapers, brought clicks and dragged eyeballs to their product. In their view he had nothing to be humble about.
Biden, in contrast, just wants to quietly fix things that would be really hard to explain without some level of research. He’s boring, and that makes them look boring. They’d rather he just shut up so they can report on how awful Biden’s America is until the Party of Crazy Headlines rides to the rescue.
It’s like you don’t even care about their sales. You monster.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@trollhattan:
Dude is a mayoral candidate here, and not even a star. Location was really odd, about a half mile from where oldest daughter works.
The Dangerman
@Gin & Tonic: I still think Putin is gonna fold. He’s just waving his dick around to get something from the West or distract from something domestically.
For the love of Decency, Donald, I didn’t mean literally. Zip it back up, Buddy.
Kristine
So, last week Biden & the Democratic Party were supposed to trumpet their accomplishments because voters weren’t hearing about them. Now Biden is supposed to tone it down.
Wondering whether listening to pundits is a fool’s errand. Maybe it’s just me…
topclimber
@Tony Jay: Hopefully the Jan. 6 hearings give them plenty of material and lots of clicks. Yes, I realize I am saying this about the FNYT but they can be of use now and then to our democracy.
Starfish
@The Moar You Know: Did Calculated Risk change? Did it become something about mortgages only? Was it always that way? Is my RSS link wrong?
Baud
@Kristine:
He should have done the exact opposite of what he did do. #MSMonDemPresidents
catclub
yeah, I think there might be a different president to aim that line at, and the FNYT missed that chance – kind of on purpose.
SiubhanDuinne
@NeenerNeener:
I’m sure I should know what ESG stands for, but I don’t. (Or I could just ask my RWNJ brother. He’s probably in a rage about it, too.)
jonas
@Gin & Tonic: Phew! Thanks for the clarification!
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: The decree also calls for a 30% pay increase for the armed forces.
catclub
@West of the Rockies: I shake my tiny (and slow typing) fist at you.
bluegirlfromwyo
The white male supremist right has sensed this for decades as POC and women have made strides. Now IMO they’ve decided to engineer the collapse in their image. The only thing to do is work with the system where we can and change it where it doesn’t. Damn hard to do when many outside the right insists on compromise with those who welcome collapse.
Raoul Paste
I really hope Biden goes on offense to some degree in the SOTU. “Folks, here’s what’s holding us back…”. I’m certain he could do it very well, and forcefully .
Apparently many people like to be angry in America, well, give them truthful reasons and not a bunch of lies
Bobby Thomson
My natural inclination is to do the exact opposite of everything Axelrod suggests. He was one of the main anchors on the Obama presidency
billcinsd
@Doc Sardonic: Most things aren’t priced by Supply and Demand. Typically 60-70% of products are priced on a cost plus basis rather than supply nd demand. Now maybe gas was priced by S&D, but most things aren’t, which is one of those things that economics spend much time on that aren’t that important.
Cameron
I don’t have a clue how this country (hell, maybe the world) can be put back together. Most of my life the argument between the major parties was over how to govern the USA. Now the argument is over the nature of reality, with a disturbingly large number of people espousing viewpoints that are incompatible with the known universe. (“We make our own reality.” Right. Got it.) How is that fixed?
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
Yup, just heard that as a news headline.
Starfish
@Gin & Tonic: This does not sound good.
Madeleine
Good grief! So we’ve been hearing over and over how bad Dem messaging is and how they (we) don’t talk up their accomplishments enough, so Biden’s been doing that. And Axelrod advises/opines that Biden must stop this? Axelrod should keep his opinions to himself. I’m with topclimber at #18.
jonas
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I suspect Putin’s looking for a way out as well. I think he got high on his own supply and 1. thought Biden was a doddering fool who wouldn’t put up a fight and that 2. he could drive a wedge between the US and other NATO allies with his sabre rattling and that they’d pressure Ukraine to back down and accede to Russia’s demands. That’s not how it’s gone down and now he’s screwed either way.
Tony Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Phew.
That said, I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear about an “unprovoked Ukranian attack on peaceful Russian border posts” in the next week. Something to give Putin an excuse for a short, sharp incursion “in self defence” so he has something to trade in the inevitable peace talks.
This is what Biden’s people were warning of early on, but while that may have put Putin’s plans back on their heels, he’s got to be feeling the pressure now. He needs something to distract attention away from the fact that he’s assembled a very large military force at great expense and is not far away from having to send it back to base looking like a very silly dictator indeed.
All of this is, of course, supported by my many years lecturing on political/military issues at Fuknoze College.
Cameron
@Baud: Ahh, more of that precognitive hindsight that some critics believe is the Democrats’ secret (and unused) power.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
I guess it’s this, never heard of it:
germy
scav
Back-seat driver has certainly become a well-paid profession.
Starfish
I think that the discussion should be more nuanced than Axelrod makes it. The President cannot tout “Look at how great we did with COVID” as we approach a million dead. He can say “Look at all the jobs,” but he has to temper that with “But we do understand that inflation is happening in some sectors” and their approach to resolving that if they have one.
He should press government accountability and getting the bill where Congress members are no longer allowed to trade stocks passed.
He should say something nice about the post office and what percentage of the COVID tests got delivered and when and how that is going to be finished. Some people are still waiting on those, right? With Omicron picking up in some regions, he should highlight if they are expediting test delivery to those regions.
I am seeing centrists attacking lefties who are opposing anti-choice Democratic legislators. When we are on the verge of having Roe overturned by this Supreme Court, I need the centrists to knock that crap off.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
From what I heard, it would seem to be both: Zelenskiy told the Ukrainian people that he was told (by whom?) that Wednesday would be Invasion Day AND he also declared in the same message that Wednesday would be a Day of National Unity.
Jay
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blockade-arrests-rcmp-monday-1.6351112
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@bluegirlfromwyo:
“Can’t we meet in the middle and a peaceful, nonviolent way? What about the lessons of MLK? Ghandi? Nehru? Why can’t we simply compromise?”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jay:
In Ottawa, the OPS would have let them practice at their gun range in shifts, so as not to “exacerbate” tensions.
I suspect that the next counterprotest should involve baseball bats and hockey sticks against the truckers, their children and their vehicles.
Maybe the OPS will do something about THAT.
Sure Lurkalot
Not an Axelrod fan, he always seems to be a scold and a bit arrogant.
I think several of the comments hit on the right note…cite the state of affairs when you took office, speak to the things done to ameliorate, acknowledge that problems still exist and persist, that headwinds are inevitable, announce plan and vision to address. End on a empathetic but positive note.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jay:
Yup. And the PM is apparently considering using Emergency Powers.
Seems to me this is exactly the kind of situation the Emergencies Act was designed to address.
Brachiator
I don’t know what Americans want to hear. I don’t dismiss Axelrod. Maybe people want an acknowledgment of suffering and a guarantee that everything will be all right.
But some of this seems to be built into the false narrative of “when can we return to normal?”
I don’t agree that Biden has been making it about him. And I don’t know what pundits think middle class relief looks like. Again, I am puzzled that they discount the stimulus payments and the massive amount of relief for lower income and middle income Americans already in the American Relief Plan.
Inflation is hammering many countries. There is not a fast solution for this.
JML
Here’s where Axelrod is fundamentally wrong (and missed this when Obama was president too): when you’re in charge, you need to tell people what you’ve accomplished early and often or you’re ceding the field to let others take the credit or the media to pretend you haven’t done anything or giving more room for the opposition to claim you’ve made everything worse. Sure, people want to hear about what you’re going to do for them, and you shouldn’t lose sight of what you’re going to do next for the people, but you also have to take the victory lap for the things you’ve done and get as big a cheering section to echo that it was, in fact great.
Democrats have failed at this for multiple generations, but it’s been a massive problem from Clinton onwards (jebus, that’s 30 years!). We pass a good law, and instead of having a parade on how much better we’ve made things, a huge chunk of the left spends most of their time complaining about how it doesn’t go far enough while faux moderates whine about it not being bi-partisan enough, and the people who are actually trying to get anything done just get shit on. We’re finally waking up and crapping on Republicans who are trying to take credit for the infrastructure bill they didn’t vote for…but how many Democrats do you see really trumpeting that success?
Success breeds success. You have to talk about what you’ve accomplished in order for people to have faith that you will achieve more.
Cameron
@SiubhanDuinne: The only Wednesday reference I could find came from the US: https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-russia-european-union-diplomats-leave/
Miss Bianca
@trollhattan:
Really? Shots fired at a Democratic politician? In Kentucky?
If the authorities don’t discover a motive, it’s because they don’t want to discover a motive.
Sure Lurkalot
@Tony Jay:
That’s my alma mater! I graduated with honor!
Jeffro
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: see, I knew I wasn’t the only one. =)
My anxiety would climb down to a 7.5 on a 10 scale from its usual 9, 9.3, if sedition funders and organizers were charged already. The fascists can always find more footsoldiers but I want the ringleaders in jail. Basically, I want the return of at least the semblance, the facade, of the rule of law in this country.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cameron:
I haven’t heard or seen it anywhere but MSNBC. Am prowling around the back alleys of the Internets to see if there’s another source.
SiubhanDuinne
Pentagon briefing just started.
Miss Bianca
@Starfish:
If you’re talking about me, I wasn’t aware (or had forgotten) that Cuellar was anti-choice. So of course I would support a pro-choice challenger in that event. This “centrist” being a former Planned Parenthood employee and clinic escort who has a better thank average understanding of what the Roe overturn would entail, thank you very fucking much.
Jinchi
This is stupid advice, which unfortunately isn’t surprising coming from a Democratic strategist who was center stage during the disastrous 2010 cycle. Nobody seriously is looking for an apology. They want to know that there is a plan moving forwards.
Biden needs to take credit for his successes and lay down his plan to deal with ongoing problems. He needs to remind the country that the Democratic middle class focused agenda is a popular one, that Republican austerity policies have been disastrous, and that the country is just two Senate seats away from transformative change.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Miss Bianca:
Eh, it’s here in the People’s Democratic Socialist Kenyan Gay Shariah Republic of Louisville. A Democrat is going to win, but it’s a question of flavor. Greenberg a developers’ attorney, pretends at goo-goo respectability, works in finance and acquisitions, and is known primarily as a big league gentrifier. He’ll have some serious GOP support for most of what he does, but those old progressive and black wards will turn out against him in a big way. Frankly, I suspect it’s some business dispute gone bad with marginal relationship to the mayoral race.
Chief Oshkosh
@Hoodie:
Ah! The opening line to Biden’s SOTU address!
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
Preferably said with middle fingers raised.
Cameron
@Hoodie: “Morans.” It’s “morans,” moran.
Geminid
@jonas: The potential Wednesday attack date has been talked of since Friday at least. On Sunday the Times of Israel reported that senior Ist3aeli officials believed that the window for evacuating Israeli citizens from Ukraine was closing and might be shut by Wednesday morning. This intelligence estimate was attributed to the U.S., but the Israelis may have also based it on their own information.
VOR
@NeenerNeener: I don’t know if the media is left or right as much as it is lazy and over reliant on access. TFG was great for the media because there was always controversy and problems. They had a White House which leaked like a sieve, many people coming to them with stories. And they could use the lazy framing of horse race rather than talk about policy, because the Trump White House wasn’t really about policy.
In contrast, the current White House doesn’t leak as much. The Press Secretary shuts down stupid lines of inquiry by asking basic questions like “Who is saying that?”. Reporters don’t like having to gauge the merits of Build Back Better, they are much happier reporting gossip on whether Manchin or Sinema had Wheaties for breakfast.
Chief Oshkosh
@Raoul Paste:
I think you’re right.
Brachiator
@JML:
Good points.
Trump lied about what he was going to do, lied about doing it, and lied about what he said he had done.
The rubes ate this shit up. And asked for more.
Biden has got shit done. And there is more shit to get done.
However…
Back in 2016, press and pundits kept saying that Hillary had no plan. She was not telling people what she would do.
This was a lie.
The press kept ignoring her plans. They couldn’t read it, could not report on it.
Warren had a number of detailed positions. The media just shrugged and said, “that ain’t right. What’s Bernie got?” And then they would declare Bernie crazy and proceed to ignore him.
Trump would like about replacing Obamacare and Fox News would jump for joy, even though this was total bullshit.
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
I have to assume were Mr. Greenberg Black, the shooter would have obviously been protecting himself, from Mr. Greenberg.
“The only motive here was self-defense.”
Cermet
Nothing like war clouds to drive up energy prices and fuel inflation. Maybe not backing Russia into a corner and accepting that NATO needn’t take ever country bordering Russia into its organization isn’t the best way to get the Russians feeling that NATO isn’t a threat they need to fear.
Kattails
@Suzanne: Rant away, dear. We will nod and tsk-tsk at appropriate moments. Not good to keep these things bottled up.
Someone speculated that Putin is hoping to bully Zelensky into giving up on the idea of joining NATO; seems like a pretty expensive way to go about it. If Vlad paid more attention to improving his own economy he might actually get somewhere. I’d personally like to remind him of Croesus asking the Oracle of Delphi whether he should go to war against the Persians. The answer: if you do you will destroy a great empire. Didn’t quite go the way he interpreted it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Chief Oshkosh:
“Looking out here across this Congress, it occurs to me that you people really make me sick. (pause)
Between looking at what passes for Ted Cruz’ face (don’t slouch and hide, Ted, sit up and take the punishment – you did let Donald trash your wife and father without doing anything but polish his balls), and Mitch McConnell trying to pretend he’s a normal person while he systematically trashes every saving institution to the amazing mass of mediocrities in the House, we have a problem…..”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Cermet:
Hungary and Czechia should have been where it stopped.
Jinchi
Obama was humble to a fault and it hardly worked in his favor. It’s crazy to think that Democrats at the time were terrified of campaigning on “Obamacare”.
trollhattan
FWIW
trollhattan
@Jinchi:
I wished for just one SOTU delivered by Luther, his anger translator.
catclub
@Cermet: I assume you also blame April Glaspie for Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait. she backed him into a corner.
debbie
@Kattails:
I believe a meeting has been scheduled this week for Zelensky and Putin to address this very issue. Or so it was reported on NPR.
Baud
@catclub:
If only Saddam had let the inspectors in earlier, W never would have needed to go to war with him.
Audrey
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought I had read he was going to invoke it, i.e the considering period is over? I feel so sad it’s come to this and furiously angry the various local law enforcement agencies were so completely feckless. I thought that at least they wouldn’t want to make their obvious bias soooo very obvious.
rikyrah
@Jay:
I want to know the background of those arrested.
And, where did they get their money from? Always follow the money.
Suzanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
One thing you didn’t note but that I think is pretty potent is Mom Rage. Every woman I know who has school-age children is just so exhausted, and pissed, and burned the fuck out due to this pandemic and the reality that half of our country does not give a shit about children.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Guessing they don’t get the velvet glove treatment for the guns and ammo, either. Canada isn’t the US when it comes to Guns for Everybody.
Fair Economist
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh hell no Biden shouldn’t be humble. He has done a GREAT job. He has brought us out of a deep depression creating more jobs in his first year than any other President ever with so much growth we surpassed even China. He saved over a hundred thousand American lives with his accelerated vaccination program, an achievement matched by no other President EVER, and would have saved tens of thousands more if his vaccine mandate hadn’t been blocked by the death cultists the ReGermagains have packed the courts with. Biden’s first year has been a godsend to the country and it’s insane to hold the huge mess Trump and his mismanagement of COVID created against Biden.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Cermet:
Jesus fucking Christ dude. Just stop with this shit already. Are you Bob in Portland’s alt?
Suzanne
@Kattails:
Honestly, I am in a punishing mood. The red states have killed people and are pits of despair. And they deserve some negative consequences. And I am totally out of Give A Fuck today.
I don’t need South Dakota. I don’t need Idaho. I really, really do not need Texas. Give them back.
Kattails
@debbie: Yes. I think Putin should be told to go pound sand, but I don’t have a country of several million people to protect. Short term security? I wouldn’t trust Putin under any circumstances, any more than I’d trust TFG. Just how limp is Putin’s dick on any given day? Get some Viagra man. That “f*cking a corpse” metaphor he used a few days ago was utterly repulsive.
scuffletuffle
@Suzanne: If the dude has assets, look into suing him directly.
Tony Jay
@topclimber:
Wouldn’t that be nice to see?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That’s how Baud!!!20XX!!! first SOTU would start out.
Kay
I like Biden but I don’t agree with Axelrod that what’s “off” about him is a lack of humility. He sounds kind of short tempered and sour to me lately, like he’s frustrated. It surprises me because that’s not how I think of him.
Geminid
@Starfish: You speak of “centrists” attacking “lefties” opposing anti-choice legislators, plural. I saw people discussing a primary challenge to one anti-choice legislator, Henry Cuellar (TX-28). Are there more that you know about?
I think this is an individual problem, not a general one. Cuellar was the only Democratic Representative to vote against codifying Roe in a federal statute.
Whether challenger Jessica Cisneros can win the Texas 28th District general election is a real question that merits consideration. Her Republican opponent will be as or more anti-choice than Cuellar and could be tough to dislodge in 2024. But that is for the Democratic voters of the 28th to think about.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
I’ve long suspected that Saddam acted like a man who had WMD because he really believed it, but the guys charged with building them skimmed the money and knew otherwise.
”Oh, yes Saddam, they’re fueling on the launchpad and we await your command”
(whispers to aide in sotto voice) “Make sure that plane waits for 15 more minutes. Carry the bag, and see if you can get us a good table with a view of the Eiffle Tower tonight!”
Captain C
@germy: Sounds like something from the NYT Pitchbot.
trollhattan
Wow Georgia, looks like you can have a Ron Johnson-level stupid governor if you vote for this dude.
As the Bible tells us, losing your Twitter account is tantamount to being delivered straight to the Devil’s lair for eternity.
Suzanne
@scuffletuffle: Oh, don’t worry, he doesn’t. I looked.
He’s a 40-year-old white man who has been given second, third, fourth, fifth chances and who still elects to be a degenerate and a lowlife. And I’m finding it really hard to muster up the human empathy for him and others who are destructive and turn to shitty behavior due to their “despair” instead of moving to a new city or starting a business or getting an education or whatever.
I’m such a coastal elitist.
Cameron
@Kay: Yes, but it’s certainly understandable. He’s facing enormous problems, has done a lot to solve them, and gets lies from Republicans and tsk-tsking from Our Liberal Media.
Baud
@trollhattan:
“Next thing you know, we’ll be burning books!”
Eolirin
@Raoul Paste: This. It needs to be this. Midterms are base elections. We need turnout to be high. Accomplishments don’t do enough to boost turnout, at least in this country, a sense that we need to beat the other side is necessary.
That that’s what’s required is actually really dangerous, because it means you need to engage in turning citizen against citizen. But we’re already well past the point where we can avoid it. The right has been doing exactly that for decades to great success with an end goal of ending democracy. We need to take that threat seriously.
As a party, we need to start placing the blame for the continued pandemic problem squarely on Republican inaction, on anti vaxxers pushing disinformation, on active measures by Russian intelligence. We need to treat inflation as a corporate greed problem and push through legislation aimed at making it harder to engage in price gouging. It needs to also be wrapped into a conversation about tax fairness and social support. We need to be willing to call out Manchin and Sinema as obstacles to that and tie them into that narrative if necessary. Anger at gas prices etc needs to be pivoted away from the government and toward the gas companies. And on and on.
trollhattan
@Kay:
It’s either a very poor read of the man or argument in bad faith. As much cruelty and death as Biden has suffered, lack of humility is simply not possible. (“If only my wife had been a better driver….”)
catclub
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I think he was really worried about Iran and wanted THEM to believe it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I thought inflation was no big deal and nothing to worry about? That’s what many of the commenters here said so previously. What changed? Why does Biden need to address it now?
Kay
@Cameron:
It is completely understandable but not acceptable, I don’t think. I mean, he’s mirroring the mood of the country in a way so it’s arguably “everyman” but he’s not everyman- he has to be the happy warrior.
Not his fault but it is his problem. I think low approval ratings set up a very human response, where one feels unfairly measured by the approval ratings, so become less generous to the people doing the judging. I think he does best when he trusts his gut, so I would ignore Axelrod if I were him and tap back into his kindness and generosity. Magnanimous. A person with a sense of humor.
lowtechcyclist
Agreed.
Eolirin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Inflation isn’t, currently, a huge issue economically, but it’s a huge issue politically. This is an election year and it’s been a constant media drum beat for months. It needs a response solely for those reasons. But there’s also been a lot of bullshit that’s been going on regarding prices in the context of legitimate supply chain disruptions. Stuff that should probably be made much harder to do. Corporate profits shouldn’t be spiking on the back of price hikes that are legitimately driven by inflation, that they are is because companies are assessing that there’s more money sloshing around and that the broader inflationary pressures give them pretext to make more money.
Democrats can and should be expressing anger at, and fighting for, more fairness around those kinds of issues. It’s part of a line with drug price increases. This stuff needs to be made a clear moral issue and hammered on.
Baud
Vice news via Reddit
Kay
@Baud:
Literally afraid to look.
Eolirin
@Kay: If you had to deal with having to negotiate with Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema for a year, and then had to deal with trying to talk Vladimir Putin out of doing something catastrophically stupid, all against the backdrop of our brain dead media I’m pretty sure you’d be really surly too.
I know I couldn’t do that job without ripping people’s heads off.
lowtechcyclist
I think it’s a lot more effective when you really do need to warn people about bad shit happening imminently, if you haven’t been impersonating Chicken Little for weeks.
IOW, I think Zelensky was handling it right last week, and if his intel now says the sky has a good chance of falling on Wednesday, he’s doing the right thing now by letting his people know it’s coming.
Kay
@Cameron:
I feel like I saw it with Hillary Clinton. Political media were horrible to her, so she understandably was stiff and defensive, which just made them attack her more because now she’s not only a she-devil, she’s stiff and defensive! I don’t how one gets out of one of those.
His isn’t entrenched so maybe easier?
Kay
@Eolirin:
Oh, I would! But there’s a much higher bar for him.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Uh oh
Baud
@Kay:
Seems to move he should avoid the national media as much as possible and get out among the people. The media is just going to try to needle and provoke him.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I was afraid it would be someone I know. Not kidding. I don’t want to know.
I’ve already determined there are insurrectionists in the government. I assume that now. I think it’s undeniable.
Eolirin
@Kay: They’ll never be as aggressive about it with him as they were with her. He has to stay professional about it because he’s not a Republican, and they’ll be more willing to go after him because of that, but he’s still a man. They won’t take stiff and defensive the same way.
What they will take more offense to is not being treated like part of the social club. Not giving them access is going to raise the biggest yells from them. That’s how it’s been playing out so far too.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
No. It reads as excuse-making. Biden was strongest when he spoke on Afghanistan and had a very clear buck-stops-with-me approach. If there were no Manchin and Sinema, there are other Dems almost as bad. I am sick of hearing about these two. The GOP should be the target.
I don’t ever want to hear Biden call MCCONNELL his “friend” ever again.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Here is a hot from the headlines story about inflation.
The government is getting slapped around hard and asked what they are going to do about it and when.
Oh, wait. This is about inflation in the UK.
But you can find similar stories about Portugal and other advanced nations.
Food and energy costs are rising faster than people expected.
And governments are expected to do something about it, even though there is only so much that governments can do.
Here, the GOP will fight efforts to provide direct relief to people. That’s the political edge to the thing.
Eolirin
@Kay: Yeah, but he’s still only human. I can’t even imagine how much stress there is.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s hard because he’s this well liked person and all of a sudden 60% of the country doesn’t approve of him. Harder maybe for someone who is accustomed to generally being liked than for a person who revels in oppositional, win/lose thinking.
topclimber
@Cermet: The pedant in me thinks you got mixed up with a double negative, but grammar aside, you bring up an argument that needs airing.
American diplomat George Kennan coined the notion of containment 75 years ago. One of his key points is that Russian rulers have been paranoid for centuries, often rightly so. Containment was meant as a defensive tool–don’t take any crap from them but don’t bait the Russian bear.
Since then, the Soviet Union has evaporated, Western money folk happily joined Russian oligarchs in plundering the economy and we have expanded NATO to include the likes of Orban’s Hungary (oh yes, let’s fight to preserve that “Democracy”).
The West can contain Russia and promote democracy throughout Eurasia without every country being part of NATO. It wouldn’t hurt to admit that we insist on a sphere of influence in our own hemisphere–either give that up or give up pretending that doesn’t give countries like Russia or China similar ideas.
I truly hope that Ukraine agreeing to postpone NATO membership indefinitely is the face-saving agreement that lets Putin climb down from his limb. Let him take a victory lap and get back to having to explain to his folks why the country that almost beat us to the moon remains an economic basket case.
Maybe the Russian people can focus on making a freer and more equitable society if not distracted by war-jawing. Maybe Americans can too.
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia: IOW, he’s upset that some people exercise their free choice of how to invest their money based on criteria that he happens to disagree with.
Hard to think of anything more snowflakey than that, I must admit.
Tony Jay
@Sure Lurkalot:
I keep my credenzas in a laminated folder.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Saw this in a Yahoo! Finance article from a few days ago:
Do you agree with these economists? It sure seems at odds with what people thought was going to happen only a few months ago; that inflation was “transitory”
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
I agree that Biden should attack the Republicans hard, even though the truth might be more complicated.
He should challenge the GOP to vote for the BBB legislation, and attack them for not being bipartisan. Being bipartisan means doing what the people want, and the American people clearly want relief.
Demand relief now. And point out that he will come back and ask for more relief if the American people need it.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: I said rolled into as necessary, as in made part of the attack on the GOP. It starts with the GOP. It needs to always been centered on that. But Biden needs to remind people how our system works because there’s a tremendous amount of ignorance in people’s thinking on this, and the party needs to be willing to throw them under the bus if it comes down to it. We can’t allow their obstruction to be viewed as being part of the Democratic party as a whole. They need to be made to own it.
Otherwise we feed the dems don’t care and are just as bad as Republicans line. We have, on record, 48 votes for filibuster reform to pass voting rights, for instance. We need to credibly make the case that if there are 52 democrats in the senate that we will have 50 instead of still only having 48. Same for things like BBB style legislation.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Folks forget stagflation at their own peril. Nixon-Ford-Carter-Reagan era type. This is not that.
bluegirlfromwyo
I feel the same way and no one’s broken into my house so don’t feel at all bad about thinking this way. What chaps my ass is that we’re still supposed to think these people are the true hardworking Americans. Like I said to my dad when we discussed that vomit J.D. Vance and too many others called a book…So, this guy goes to Yale, comes home, decides his drug-addicted family holds the secret of the moral universe and I’m supposed to nod, say sure, and feel sorry for being their elite oppressor? That won’t be happening.
Cermet
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I was OK with Poland (and frankly, the Czech’s certainly) but the Baltics was ridiculous being on Russia’s border. For many of the warmongers here, they have no issue with this situation. Yeah, back a nuclear super power into a corner. Sorry and while putin is a murderous pig he isn’t wrong – at least and solely on this and only this issue.
Starfish
@Miss Bianca: It was not targeting anyone here specifically. I am just seeing the hatred for AOC and Bernie Sanders shine so brightly that people are ignoring why there is opposition to the person in that seat.
The Moar You Know
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): that’s called “denial”.
Inflation is not the equity-destroying monster that this country saw in the 1970s (when I was a little kid) but it’s bad enough recently that it’s going to chew up the recent wage gains we’ve seen if it hasn’t already. And in some sectors of the economy, for example used cars, food, and housing, inflation is running scary high.
I would also point out that inflation numbers as reported by the media have never in my lifetime been anything approaching accurate or honest, as those numbers leave out food and energy.
Cameron
@Kay: I think if he comes out swinging, he’ll aim at the right targets. But I do agree with you he’ll do much better letting his natural empathy guide his remarks: more “we’ve been here for you in these challenging times,” rather than “eat dirt, you ungrateful sods.”
Mike in Pasadena
Axelrod should disappear into the void and never be heard from again. A fountain of bad advice and misjudgment. Go back to the sewer you crawled out of, David.
Cermet
@topclimber: Wow – it would pay to reread one’s use of double negatives – just wow.
lowtechcyclist
I don’t have a folder that big, but occasionally I pull out my old Credenza Clearwater Revival CDs and give them a listen.
dnfree
deleted, reply to wrong comment.
Eolirin
@The Moar You Know: They leave out food and energy because those numbers tend to be volatile and prone to supply shocks. They’re not useful for setting policy around because of it.
Inflation stats are primarily of use for economic modeling and figuring out when to set interest rate hikes. They really shouldn’t be looked at as meaning much outside of that context.
Suzanne
@bluegirlfromwyo: I am really fucking done with sympathy for degenerate white people. The fact that many of them would describe themselves as “hardworking” because they lift heavy objects for money while I am “elite” for sitting at a desk and doing math instead just fills me with rage.
They’re not more American than I am. They don’t have more “common sense”. They don’t work harder and I am sick of pandering to them.
catclub
@Eolirin:
This. Reporting on high unemployment isn’t as interesting to right leaning financial media as inflation. The wrong lesson of Weimar inflation 1923 [they got over it. bankers lost loan assets]
versus nazi unemployment 1933 is the one that financial markets have absorbed.
sdhays
Outside of Washington, I really don’t think that the SOTU means all that much. If it’s terrible, it will add to bolster generalized negative feelings about Biden, but if it’s good, it will be forgotten by average people within days or weeks. After all, at the end of the day, it’s just a speech.
So, what’s the goal? What’s the overall plan for after the SOTU? With the current Senate, there’s no point in hoping for legislation. What initiatives can the administration announce and roll out over the rest of the year to remind people that the administration has their backs?
That’s what’s going to matter. Biden’s tone will be fine unless he’s too far out of step with pundits, whatever they’re feeling that week. If he’s too rosy (which he won’t be), they’ll go on and on about how he’s out of touch, and if he’s too pessimistic (which he won’t be), he’ll be the second coming of Jimmy Carter.
stinger
@Baud:
Had we not been spared a President Palin, we might have had the opportunity to find out.
dnfree
@Suzanne:
Today we read about an Asian-American woman followed up to her apartment and murdered by a mentally ill homeless man with a rap sheet indicating violent tendencies, but it’s okay, his “freedom” enables him to be on the streets.
My husband spent a 45-year career in mental health watching the care system be systematically demolished and “defunded” to the point where the violent mentally ill have no reasonable support. How many police calls are from families who can’t deal with a mentally ill relative?
Yes, the big state hospitals had their flaws. But in the 1960s, this guy would already have been on a locked ward based on his behavior. Is leaving him on the street better for him or anyone else, including the police?
catclub
@Cermet:
I would say it would never fail to not come amiss to reread one’s use of double negatives
sdhays
It seems Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the FTFNYT has been dismissed.
Womp womp.
Baud
@sdhays:
?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Eolirin:
@Brachiator:
Thanks for the explanations.
I’ve always been most concerned about any political fallout for Biden and Dems re: inflation
Suzanne
@The Moar You Know:
Housing is an absolute shit show. The younger generation of first-time homebuyers are really screwed. Many of the young people I know are terrified that they will never be able to own a home and therefore they’re going to be rent-fucked forever. They especially cannot afford to live where they need to work.
The housing crisis is a huge fucking crisis.
Kay
Just your normal unhappy citizens petitioning their government for a hearing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sdhays:
my recollection is, at least pre-trump, most SOTUs got terrible reviews (too long! a laundry list!) and most POTUS got a polling bump out of them
TheTruffle
I’d support the fireside-chat approach myself–in spirit if not setting. The country needs reassurance. Well, at least the portion we can reason with.
At least a reason not to be pessimistic. I admit I’ve been feeling this country can’t be saved at times.
catclub
@Suzanne:
and yet they treat Donald Trump as if he is an anti-elitist man of the people. Hiding behind lawyers and real estate accountants.
scuffletuffle
@Suzanne: Right there with you!
Eolirin
@dnfree: People with diagnosable mental health conditions make up such a tiny tiny percentage of violent crimes that I’m not sure it would meaningfully make a difference except to that one person. Systemically oppressing an entire group of people and denying them their dignity when the overwhelming number of them are not and will never be violent is not a worth while trade off.
Locked wards like we used to have will always, always, always do more harm than good.
But yes, we need way the fuck more mental health resources in this country period. And not everyone needs to be able to go out into the community until it’s safe for them to do so.
But honestly, that applies even more to the angry drunks, racists, white supremacists, people with any kind of impulse or anger issues, and especially if any of them happens to own a gun at all, that if we were trying to prevent violent crime that way that we’d have to lock up like half the population indefinitely.
Our prisons are full of non violent drug offenders instead. We should maybe rethink our overall priorities on these issues.
Prevention can’t be via indefinite incarceration though. It’s not viable. Even people who commit assault get let out of prison eventually.
TheTruffle
@Kay: So…where did they get the money for the ammo?
catclub
one of these is not like the others. is body armor illegal? considered a weapon? Is it illegal if spelled with a ‘u’?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sdhays:
@Baud:
Interestingly, NPR had this to say:
Rakoff was appointed by Clinton so IDK what’s up with that
Eolirin
@catclub: I think it’s just a sign that you’re preparing to deal with an active conflict with law enforcement, because why else would you need it?
Most of those things are legal in the US too, but if you bring them to a protest that goes violent I think it speaks to intent. That probably matters more in Canada than it does here; see Rittenhouse verdict.
catclub
ummm, i think there are lots of places – think other nations – where the cost of houses relative to incomes is far worse. They seem to survive.
Ask Tony jay about that.
kindness
No happy talk eh? Doesn’t it really depend on who the audience for the SOTU speech is for? I mean, I might pay attention to it but I suspect most people won’t. I really think while the SOTU speech is addressed to us it really is for the Elite Village Elders as they are the ones who will dissect it and spit out their judgement of it (as shabby as that will invariably be). If President Uncle Joe doesn’t pound the good things he’s brought, we know the MSM won’t mention them. And even if he does bring them up our Village Elders will tut-tut them because they are so much better and more sophisticated than Biden (or us) are.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think that some economists like to fall back on conventional wisdom and established dogma. But I am not an economist and would like to see how other jackals think about this.
But consider.
You are a restaurant or bar and you had to increase wages. You also had to close for a while, switch to takeout only, or limit your seating to 25 percent of customers. Your leases increased. Wouldn’t you raise your prices?
You are a supermarket and had to adjust to supply chain disruptions. You may have had to increase wages. Also for a while customer traffic was strange and buying habits different. Wouldn’t you raise prices?
You are a greedy corporation. Your stock price continued to rise and your earnings were high. You have benefited from tax cuts. Wouldn’t you raise prices anyway, especially if it would hurt Democrats?
For a good chunk of the pandemic, consumers had less money, especially those who lost jobs. Rents and mortgages still had to be paid. Consumer spending may have been up in some places, but not in excessive amounts.
I don’t understand this stuff, but it is odd to me that people are always at fault. If they spend money, they increase inflation. If they get higher wages, they increase inflation.
If they die from Covid, they increase inflation.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
Sure would like some reporter to ask McConnell what the GOP plan is to make housing more affordable
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Cut taxes, reduce regulation.
Eolirin
@Brachiator: Of course you would. But in two of those three cases there’s a place for government intervention to lower the impact that has on people’s lives.
We can and should do more to help with supply chain issues and we can and should do more to stop profit motivated price gouging
The restaurant case is a business adjusting to a one off supply shock and won’t lead to long term price rises.
Suzanne
@catclub: Housing is the primary way the middle class builds wealth in this country. We have a shortage due to years of underbuilding, it is increasingly difficult for young people (who are usually first-time homebuyers) to qualify for a mortgage or to compete for a property, and costs are going up faster than wages, by a lot. And rent increases are significant. It may be worse in other places, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t really bad here. The young people I know and work with are all really freaked out about it.
I don’t understand this tendency to tell other people who express a political concern that their problems aren’t real.
Ruckus
@Baud:
That’s mighty generous. I sure wouldn’t give them that much credit.
catclub
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
If inflation were at 8% the Fed would have employed a zillion tools to attack it. if unemployment were at 8%? meh.
If unemployment is at 3% THEN the fed will employ tools to bring it UP.
Dual mandate. yeah, right.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The GOP represents more depressed places with lower property values than the Dems. But they’ll be pissed when enough people move from high-cost locations to their shitty red states and bring their more liberal politics with them.
Mai Naem mobile
Most of the people on this thread are assuming that a lot of Americans are going to watch the SOTU address or the news following it. This isn’t 1992. Its not some national moment. Most people I know are either working their asses off trying to make ends meet or working their asses off because there’s a shortage of labor. Either way they’re fed up of COVID and Biden can’t fix COVID and the reasons don’t matter to them..
SiubhanDuinne
Mazars USA has just fired Trump as a client. His long time accountants say a decade’s worth of financial records for the Trump Organization are “no longer reliable.”
Hmmmmm.
zhena gogolia
@Cermet: Oh, please go fuck yourself.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Yeah, housing is a huge problem everywhere, and it is a problem for people in those places too, even if they manage. But other places at least also have the benefit of not having student loan debt, and high medical costs. We compound all of those issues here.
Housing is becoming impossible here. It’s a huge rolling crisis. And one without many easy solutions.
zhena gogolia
@sdhays: Yay!
Omnes Omnibus
@Cermet: Please blow a goat.
dnfree
@Eolirin: You are absolutely correct that the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. They are more likely to be victims (which isn’t good either). But this woman is dead at the hands of a violent mentally ill person. Might be one of a small percentage of the mentally ill, but his being in the street matters to this woman and her family.
In the days of the big state hospitals, there were certainly abuses and people who were in for years who could have lived independently. But there were some who belonged there, even against their will, for public safety reasons and sometimes for their own safety. Now the biggest mental institution in Illinois is the Cook County jail. Do you really think that’s an improvement?
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Yep. We have an Arpaio-like fake tough guy sheriff here in Florida who said as much in an appearance with our shitty Trump-clone governor. From WaPo:
topclimber
@Suzanne: For an analysis let us turn away from the banksters and listen to Paul Krugman.
I understood him to say that the Fed needs to tighten short-term interest rates to keep the economy from overheating. But also that the markets are not YET baking in long-term inflation expectations, as per long-term interest rates (which I believe Fed policy does not directly address).
Unfortunately, inflation news will be bad at least to the mid-terms.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Because people like you believe it is a huge problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@sdhays:
Good. Good.
mrmoshpotato
@Cermet: Hi Vlad! I second you blowing a goat.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: Housing is also a business problem. It’s so high in some places that companies can’t get workers.
My first thought is a tax on ownership of multiple units over, say, three. Maybe an exception for units administrated as complexes. I don’t know the answer here, but it is a really significant issue among the younger cohort.
danielx
@Suzanne:
I have run into that kind of arrogance before: “you’ve never worked a day in your life”, because I don’t do physical labor (I have), haven’t worked on a production line (I have), and I’m grateful as hell I got to a point where I didn’t have to do it anymore, too.
I’ve worked a shit ton of twelve hour days, and I didn’t do it while working a shift or as a physical laborer. Doing brain work is just as exhausting as physical labor and in some cases worse.
Shorter: fuck off, Trumpster shitbag, I’ve worked just as hard as you.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Honestly, that’s the reason Arizona “turned blue”. It didn’t “turn” anything. It became an attractive target for southern Californians who want to buy property and now there’s a critical mass.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): FWIW, I think inflation is a real problem, though I don’t know the precise causes and have no idea what to do about it. The response to irresponsible media narratives about inflation shouldn’t be to deny that it exists. It’s real. Anyone who buys groceries regularly knows that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@topclimber:
So basically, the Dems are fucked then, is what you’re saying
If energy (gas) prices don’t go down voters are going to be pissed and be in a “throw the bums out” attitude if prices don’t come back down
Baud
@Suzanne:
Same with Georgia and the growth of Atlanta, I believe.
topclimber
@zhena gogolia:
@Omnes Omnibus:
@mrmoshpotato:
You guys have the most convincing arguments on this issue, that’s for sure.
Suzanne
@danielx: Yes.
It’s also a sexist attitude, because in that mental construction, only “man jobs” that require physical strength are “hard work”. Note that this cohort never speaks up for preschool teachers who lift kids all day, or nurses who lift patients, or waitstaff who lift trays of dishes, or women who work in retail stores and load racks full of clothes. Nope. Only man work is respectable.
Ruckus
@Cameron:
Idiots die off just like everyone else. The key is that you don’t want a larger portion of idiots than people with a functional brain.
zhena gogolia
@topclimber: Arguments have been presented to this person ad infinitum and ad nauseam. We’re past that point now.
Geminid
@Suzanne: A New Mexico jackal with experience organizing among young people described affordable housing as one of their top concerns, as important if not more than combating climate change, and said that this informed local Democratic party outreach.
topclimber
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No. Just another hurdle. I am not sure how big a one. Smaller than election shenanigans at the state level.
FWIW, I think Dems have a credible shot at keeping the House and expanding their Senate edge.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@topclimber:
Hopefully. Thanks
Eolirin
@dnfree: It is, actually. I’m saying that with full recognition that that’s an incredibly shitty and horrific place for things to be. I don’t think it’s acceptable for things to be there, I want to be clear about that.
But it is actually better. It was that bad. If you listen to the lived experience of the people who founded the peer movement you will be sick. We were still fucking lobotomizing people when the decisions to defund broad institutional confinement got made.
The entire mental health edifice has been rooted in the wrong values and the wrong kinds of treatment approaches and objectives from the get go, and it’s only now, slowly, starting to get better. Asylums, as they existed, have no place in care.
And we wouldn’t be having this conservation at all if there wasn’t a diagnosis. A lot more Asians Americans have been subjected to violence since the pandemic has started. Almost all of those assaults have been carried out by people without mental health conditions, and there are no calls to be rounding up and incarcerating white supremacists, preemptively, and indefinitely, because they might hurt someone. Despite them being much greater threats of violence.
The whole framing you’re engaging in treats people with mental health conditions as being subhuman, and less deserving of rights than even violent criminals, because they get to serve their sentence and go back into the community. I know that’s not intentional on your part. But it’s why this stuff gets this much of a response from me.
Baud
Re: housing, you can once again thank Manchin and Sinema for fucking us over.
Brachiator
@Mai Naem mobile:
Does this make sense?
In the old days, the president would give the press a copy of the SOTU address shortly before delivering it. And after the speech, talking head pundits would praise or attack the speech. The speech and commentary would appear later on TV and in newspapers.
I don’t know if they do this now, but shouldn’t the president put his message (not just the speech) out on social media soon after the speech or as he is giving it.
Put the message on the White House web site.
Do something to get the message, not just the speech, in front of the people.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Among the young people I know (Spawn and his friends, but also a lot of the recent college grads I have worked with), their top issues are climate change, higher education costs (student loan repayment or forgiveness is just a part of that), and housing costs, especially in cities. I believe polling bears this out, too. We’re been so focused on healthcare and strengthening unions and the pandemic, and all of those issues are critical, but they don’t speak directly to the concerns of young people who are in college, or very recently went, or who want to go. This is a cohort of people who believe that they don’t even get what their parents had, and they’re right.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed.
@catclub:
The Fed is hiking rates starting next month. Originally, hikes weren’t coming until 2023. So they’re doing something about it
@Baud:
Taxes will have to go up eventually because of the national debt/deficit
@Brachiator:
Interesting. I guess it could be conventional wisdom at work here to a degree.
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
I thought that was you in the next row….
I believe this is exactly what Biden has been doing is taking any level of surprise out of Putin’s plans. Broadcasting the most likely thing that Putin would attempt, given the build up and how much Biden likely knows, given the current day surveillance abilities of both countries. Taking away any chance of surprise or masking messaging vlad might try takes away a spectacular amount of effectiveness he might gain. I also wonder about the actual troop strength, given the Russian level of vaccination. Of course he could have ordered all troops vaccinated, but did he…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
Hah! True enough
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You asked what McConnell would say, and that’s what he would say.
Suzanne
@Baud:
I agree that this is an important thing (and fuck Sinema and Manchin for spiking it), but it would not have helped most young people without kids buy their first condo in a city, or that first starter home, or whatever. Even the young people we would have called “upwardly mobile” are fucked by high housing costs and so they aren’t moving upward because they are struggling so hard to get on the ladder at all. And this is a cohort who aligns Democratic. We would turn them into blue voters for life if we could make significant progress for them.
Eolirin
@zhena gogolia: Also someone who is arguing from a position that denies Ukraine national sovereignty and makes its ability to petition for membership in international organizations something that should be contingent on whether it’s convenient to US and Russian geopolitical issues can fuck off.
The Moar You Know
@catclub: In Canada, very much so. In fact, every item on that list is illegal in Canada save for the long guns (which are perfectly legal if registered).
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I don’t think anyone was saying there was no inflation – I was saying people are often irrational about money and they’re only looking at inflation, which is too narrow:
They could have let it just tank and we’d have 25% unemployment. They didn’t. They ramped it to get it over the covid hump.
Gas prices are the same as they were in 2014. If people weren’t freaking out over gas prices in 2014 and they are now, I think that’s irrational. Even the group who haven’t come out ahead – upper middle- are down something like 1% in disposal income.
Baud
@Suzanne:
If you click on the link there are other items in the plan, although I don’t know the details.
I don’t believe in the voters-for-life theory. We lose and gain voters all the time for all sorts of reason. The whole Reagan Democrats thing became a Village meme for 30 years. Not saying I don’t want to do more than we’re currently able to do. I just don’t want to overestimate the political benefits.
The Moar You Know
@Mai Naem mobile: a brilliant one sentence summation of American politics and voter issues for the next election cycle.
This is literally all that matters to voters right now.
Eolirin
@The Moar You Know: If that is really honestly 100% true, we don’t deserve to have a country anymore, and we probably won’t.
I don’t think it is though.
Suzanne
@Baud: I don’t want to say that people never change parties, but the evidence is that party alignment is pretty sticky.
This is especially salient to this discussion:
Here’s a FiveThirtyEight post on the issue: Partisan Loyalty Begins at Age 18.
We have to behave differently than the GOP on this issue since this is a more integral part of our coalition.
catclub
@The Moar You Know:
Thanks! information!
Baud
@Suzanne:
Unless young people turn to republicans, however, that stickiness will remain no matter how well we do today.
Suzanne
@Baud: Sure. But there’s a strategic advantage in being a gateway drug. Appeal to more young people early in their voting life, possibly even before they have ever cast a vote, and then there’s already alignment.
FYI brands do this, too. The patterns that start early are the ones that endure the longest. So I firmly think that we should be incredibly visible about taking action on the issues they care about. It’s an investment, especially as the coalition is tenuous.
ETA: What you are overlooking is the “no alignment” alternative, which is more plausible. They don’t have to align to the GOP to be an issue, they can just align to….nothing, and then it is harder and harder each year to change the habit of not participating.
Brachiator
@Kay:
This is true on a macro-economic level, but this is not necessarily meaningful to individuals.
The most recent economic reports indicate that in the US and other countries, rising food and housing costs are outpacing rising wages.
This drives me nuts. The Fed, Treasury and a number of economists have repeatedly said that they do not think that inflation is a major problem yet. But Manchin, the GOP and headline news keep beating this dead horse.
Eolirin
@Brachiator: They sliced the data pretty fine on that statement; it’s quite possible that in aggregate rising costs are outpacing rising wages but that it’s still true that wages are rising faster than costs for low income workers. They’re seeing the biggest increases after all. And they have different consumption patterns and exist in a different part of the housing market.
Kay
@Brachiator:
It isn’t outpacing gains for the lowest paid workers (and the wealthiest) but even if it were – we had a catastrophic pandemic and almost everyone is working. Home sales are booming. Spending on goods is booming. The median income in my county is 34k -it is working class. Restaurants are packed.
I get it- milk costs more and gas costs more so that’s a tangible, immediate rise that people can see- but would they be buying all this shit if they were really feeling that strapped?
I have a solidly middle class client group. I had a good year in 20 and 21 and I wasn’t alone in that. We’re all busy.
When the pandemic hit I though we were all going to fall off a cliff. I thought it was 2009 all over again. It just didn’t happen. Instead factories here got into a bidding war for “operators”- the lowest tier workers.
I just know what this place looks like with a bad economy. It looks nothing like this.
Suzanne
@Kay:
So this might be a problem, or at least problem-adjacent. In much of the country, houses at that sub-$500K price point are being snapped up by investor groups to be used as rentals. They can afford to outbid everyone else. It’s bidding up the prices for first-time homebuyers and families who can’t afford a half mil, and it takes a house almost out of circulation. It’s brutal. This is why lots of Teh Yoot are so concerned about housing.
dnfree
@Eolirin: Believe me, we have mental illness in our family—years of paranoid schizophrenia in the most obviously serious case, years of family not able to get proper treatment, years of quick hospitalization and quick release with no solution. And professionally, years of my husband battling for more funding for the community mental health center he ran.
You’re sincere, I can see, but we are not the people who think the mentally ill are “less than”. Most were not well-served by institutionalization, but as I’m sure you’re aware, the promised community funding didn’t follow.
I’m referring to a VERY small proportion of the mentally ill who DO act violently and who wind up harming others, including family members as well as other people, and who wind up being shot by police, or shooting police, when desperate family members call for help, and who wind up homeless because they can’t live well with others, and who wind up in Cook County jail, still not getting the treatment they need. If you have some suggestion other than possibly long-term housing, WITH TREATMENT, what is it? Our relative broke the arm of a woman in a movie theater because he thought she looked at him funny. She didn’t deserve that any more than he deserved being schizophrenic.
bluegirlfromwyo
@Suzanne: Hell yeah, sister. I didn’t waitress my way through college so a bunch of jerks could look down on me for not spending 10 hours a shift on my feet anymore. Except that it isn’t man work so they don’t think it counted anyway.
janesays
@Matt: So I assume you’re completely unaware of who represents the states of West Virginia and Arizona in the United States Senate, then?
Bupalos
Dark as it is, I think betty’s zeitgeisty “center cannot hold” offering is the most salient explanation for what Biden, and all of us, are up against. So many things are feeding into it that are so far upstream from what our “politics” can reasonably hope to address with policy.
The reality is that reactionaries are going full “rule or ruin,” and it turns out modern liberal democracy, unmoored as it is from local community and institutions, just seems absolutely ripe for that tantrum tactic. The paralysis in Otowa- in a country with far less of a right wing kook issue than we have- is shocking. I watched the first bit of Tucker Carlson I’ve seen in maybe a year, and it was literally terrifying. Making a handful of semiliterate goons in Canada into Ghandi and Thomas Jefferson rolled into one. Straight up egging the audience on to root for chaos and bullying, contradicting every impulse and sentiment he and his law-n-order whites were talking about 10 minutes ago. Its true 1984 kind of stuff.
sab
@Suzanne:I feel a lot of sympathy for you having been somewhat on the other side as a very worried step-parent. The AA groups all recommend tough love, but we thought “Really? Turn this kid loose on society with no support or guidance?” Ten years later much improved, but those ten years were awful. But at least we helped reduce the damage to everyone around himm and he is still alive and cleaned up.
@The Moar You Know: A lot of them do beat it if they can get repeated, timely help. That’s a tough combination to find.
Brachiator
@Eolirin:
Good point. But can’t it also happen that nuance is not helpful or useful?
Even if people bother to read economic news, they are not going to say “Well, I am not a low income worker, so I am OK. Good job, Joe!”
But more to the point, a person who was earning less than minimum wage, or who had a spell of unemployment during the pandemic may still be hurt by rising prices.
Brachiator
@Kay:
A last word. I agree with you about much of this. But the whole point of consumer sentiment is that it is not looking at macro-economic reports. That house sales are booming is not a consolation if their rent is too high.
sab
@Suzanne: I bought a house in my lower middle class neighborhood in 1999 for 95k and my mother was outraged because I overpaid. Of course I did. It had an attractive lot and a creek in back, a block from a thousand acre metropark.
Last week some one bought an identical model house without the big lot or the creek on the street next to mine for 185k. This area isn’t booming and we are still lower middle class. These buyers must be stretched to their budgetary limits.
Gvg
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): the masses think it’s important, so it is. Perception causes a certain kind of reality. Election reality. The masses are stupid but they are our fellow citizens.
inflation has caused serious problems in the past and…it’s become a kind of mythology. The narrative is programmed into too many. I would argue wage stagnation has harmed more people, but I guess there are no narratives about that.
if those malignant chuckleheads of the GOP get back into power, we will get hurt, so we have to take the inflation seriously.
The Lodger
@Baud: I think these hacker guys are back on my good side.