It’s become a favorite pastime of the Biden era to read each day about how poorly voters say they’re doing and simultaneously how great the news media say everything actually is.
Media: Biden is on a roll! Full employment! Inflation cooling! NATO has rallied!
Normal person: I have no money…
Media: Sure ya do! Wages are up! Record spending! Hot diggity dog!
Normal person: I’d like to buy my first home, but interest rates are too high, and I’d like to trade in my car, but even used ones are too expensive…
Media: Nonsense, my boy! Gas prices are down! And have you seen what the president’s done with NATO?!
Normal person: Maybe a hardship withdrawal from my 401K will hold me over…
Media: Now that’s the spirit!
Every poll and survey shows that shoppers are spending more and getting less. Retirement withdrawals are up. Credit card delinquency is rising.
The media will then ask in earnest, “But why aren’t people happier?” and make up some ridiculous theory like that it must be TikTok’s fault.
Seriously. The New York Times, Washington Post, and New Republic each ran articles in recent days positing that what people are seeing on TikTok might actually be a reason why so many say the economy sucks, that they don’t understand why their savings are dwindling, and that that the price of food — even crap food at McDonald’s — is frightening.
And when they’re not proposing the absurd, the media simply blame the public for not getting it.
Charles Blow of the Times never fails to deliver the parody version of what his smarter peers are saying, and this issue was no different. “[T]here are those who just don’t feel the positive impacts of the Biden presidency, whether it’s on the economy or on foreign policy,” he wrote this week. “This isn’t because the administration hasn’t had successes, but because individual citizens sometimes don’t recognize the source of those successes or experience them in ways that they can immediately feel.”
Folks! Biden’s successes are there, folks! You just don’t recognize them, folks! You just aren’t experiencing them in ways you can immediately feel, folks!
Don’t you see? It’s not Biden’s fault. It’s yours for not understanding how good everything is.
The choice for president next year is all but certain to be between reelecting everything we currently have or attempting to go back to what we had. To the extent that you can believe polls on the matter, it looks like most people are ready to choose the latter, which, according to the media, is a threat to democracy!
What do you mean you want cheap food and fuel? Don’t you care about democracy?
“[T]he threat Trump poses hasn’t diminished,” Blow continued. “It has increased. He’s more open about his plans to alter the country and our form of government if he is returned to the White House. And yet, some Americans simply aren’t registering that threat as having the potential to harm in the way that it obviously can.”
Aren’t you scared? You should be!
It’s quite the sales pitch: Be poor. Save democracy. Biden 2024.
