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Where are you getting that "response" from? Here's a more accurate exchange: Average voter: I can't afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks. Response:
by crazygringo 2y ago
Where are you getting that "response" from? Here's a more accurate exchange:
Average voter: I can't afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.
Response: I know, inflation was caused by COVID and Biden got it back down. We had the best soft landing you could have asked for, Biden did a great job. But the original inflation wasn't under the president's control, it was a worldwide phenomenon, and you can't run it in reverse to go back to old prices.
What the average voter hears: I don't care about any of that. Prices were lower under Trump and he's a businessman, so I'll vote for him so prices go back down.
- hackyhacky 2y ago> What the average voter hears: I don't care about any of that. Prices were lower under Trump and he's a businessman, so I'll vote for him so prices go back down. Yes, and critically: "I trust Trump when he says it's Biden's fault, so I'll vote for him." It doesn't matter how correct the interlocutor is if the average voter doesn't trust them. Unfortunately, most people place trust in people who appear sincere and unrehearsed, which is the opposite of how much politicians behave, where a "starched, bland, rehearsed" style is traditional. Trump is improvised and chaotic, which people mistake for genuine and trustworthy.
- prox 2y agoAlso simplistic answers are easy to understand and sound thruthful. Whereas complex answers sound wishy washy to probably the average worker class member.
- viridian 2y agoYou really do need to adapt your message to your audience. If I'm explaining tech issues to my mom or in-laws, I over-simplify and analogize. If I'm talking to a team member, I'm direct, and specific. If I'm talking to management, the applicable buzzwords and narrative building towards organizational goals get high priority.
- hackyhacky 2y agoExactly. Nerds (like me) appreciate complex explanations from politicians, but if a politician tries to explain causes of inflation or the subtleties of diplomacy to an average voter, it will be perceived as digressive and unnecessarily confusing.
- dboreham 2y agoThis is cool. Explains also Boris Johnston. Similar to the finding that people believe text more if it's in a larger font.
- stcroixx 2y agoWe also actually saw very little of Biden during his presidency even during his 2020 campaign. The glimpses we did get often looked alarming regarding his fitness. Then the debate and it couldn't be hidden anymore. Many took this to be the evidence we were lied to for 4 years and don't know who is running the country, which caused the admin to appear very untrustworthy.
- hackyhacky 2y agoHas Trump ever done anything to "appear untrustworthy?"
- stcroixx 2y agoNot enough to dissuade the people that like him from voting for him again. It's not like they don't know what it's like to have him in charge.
- hackyhacky 2y ago> Not enough to dissuade the people that like him from voting for him again. Then apparently trustworthiness isn't a desirable property for a politician among the American people. What incentive does an aspiring politician have to be truthful if Trump can get elected?
- EricDeb 2y agoI think that argument might have worked better if there wasnt the impression Biden made it worse with covid relief/spending bills. Also Dems needed someone out there repeating their messages ad-nauseum and kamala was not a pete buttigieg type who will literally go on any show at any time.
- carom 2y agoThe stimulus money was insane, shutting down the economy was insane, forcing people to take a vaccine by threatening their jobs was insane. The democrats lost so much good will with so much of the population during COVID.
- drawkward 2y agoMuch easier argument to make with 4 years of data behind us.
- metabagel 2y agoThe U.S. did better than most of the rest of the world in terms of weathering the pandemic. The stimulus money is the reason for that.
- Johnny555 2y agoDidn't most of that happen under Trump's administration?
- jcpham2 2y agoIf you were a taxpaying American he even sent you an unnecessary letter. I still have mine, my job was required or whatever so I never missed work or needed the stimulus I just invested it. Prices aren’t coming down
- pfisch 2y agoThose things happened under Trump though. He did the stimulus money and shut down the economy.
- 2y ago
- lazyeye 2y agoThe underlying subtext to the majority of comments here is that the voters are stupid. Its a pretty simple-minded analysis actually.
- drawkward 2y agoStupid? Nah. Ignorant? Yes, when it comes to technicalities of economics.
- lazyeye 2y ago*Shrugs* I think they have a much better understanding of the realities of their own lives than the clueless fools in Silicon Valley.
- drawkward 2y agoI completely agree, which is why I have been arguing all along that it is the disconnect between that lived reality and the way Democrats have been messaging that got in Harris' way.
- Aeolun 2y agoTrump has a lot of faults, but it’s not that he can’t keep his messaging at a level even the most uneducated of voters can understand.
- lazyeye 2y agoDoes anyone remember when the left side of politics used to be about advocating for the working class? Now that they just sneer at them.
- Aeolun 2y agoLook, I’m all for the working class. I can totally see how they’d vote for Trump because at least it’s better than voting to continue the oligopoly that’s the US right now. At least when you’re voting for Trump it’s abundantly clear in whose interests he’s working, and maybe if you repeat the same thing to him often enough, he’ll actually do it on a whim. It still feels like a dumb idea, because of well, literally everything the man has ever done. Has anything he’s done ever had a positive impact on the working class? At least the dems have a sorta spotty record on healthcare, and a minor interest in keeping the workers fed and clothed. It’s not the working class that I have an issue with. It’s everyone voting for Trump that I have an issue with. They just happen to overwhelmingly be hillbillies. Europe has sensible political parties for the working class, that actually work for their interests, and the only reason I can imagine the US doesn’t have them is because nobody is interested in them. They roundly rejected Sanders and he’s the closest the US ever came.
- ComplexSystems 2y agoYour rewritten "response" has the same problems I am pointing out. To the average voter, it says 1. Biden is good and inflation wasn't his fault 2. Biden's handling of it was good, he did all good things, Biden is good 3. In closing, our answer to how we will make it so you can afford groceries is: no
- jandrese 2y agoCertainly Trump will reduce our grocery prices. He has a plan to introduce a lot of tariffs to accomplish this.
- bagels 2y agoPlease explain to us all how tariffs will reduce grocery prices.
- jandrese 2y agoAsk Trump, it is his promise.
- themaninthedark 2y agoTrump stated his plan to lower food cost was to lower the cost of the energy inputs that he says are driving up the food costs; lower diesel cost for farmers and transportation and lower energy cost for fertilizer production. If this will work or not, no idea. But it did play as a better soundbite than "I will hold the grocery stores who are price gouging you accountable for it" because that soundbite says "We have been letting them get away with charging you for 3 years and now that we have an election to win we promise to do something about it".
- bagels 2y agoLowering input costs could actually achieve something, thanks.
- ConspiracyFact 2y ago
- VoodooJuJu 2y agoStill refusing to listen to us plebeians. I can't afford groceries. I'm not looking for a scholar-bureaucrat reframe of my problem. I'm looking for a solution.
- squidsoup 2y agoThe solution is to stop the redistribution of wealth to the billionaire class. Something that is not going to happen under any American administration.
- drawkward 2y agocries 2016 Sanders candidacy tears
- raddan 2y agoSanders correctly identifies the problem most of the time, and I mostly even agree with his solutions. However, he is one of the least effective legislators in the entire senate. https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives https://thelawmakers.org/find-representatives Winning, as we have recently and very painfully seen AGAIN, depends on building coalitions. It does not help that Bernie is not a Democrat. You could argue that he should be considered a Democrat for the sake of party self-preservation, but he literally is not one. My opinion is that his unwillingness to declare himself a Democrat is a reflection of his inability to find and muster support for his causes. Hard pass.
- jcgrillo 2y agoYou don't need an administration to make it happen, just a tiny fraction of the electorate sufficiently organized and radicalized. Not advocating for that option, just pointing out that it is entirely a possibility.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gitremote 2y ago
- tyingq 2y agoWhat the average voter wants to understand, even if they don't say it this way. "Why didn't my wages/pension/etc rise at the same inflation rate as my groceries?"
- smileysteve 2y ago... The data says wages outpaced inflation. Social security / medicare are indexed to inflation. The s&p500 outperformed inflation. (And treasury interest rates - 3 month and 10 Year - are ~<2x cpi and cpi targets for the first time in ~20 years) How do you convey ideas to voters when the basis of the idea is feeling vs fact, outlier vs median? https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/30/wage-growth-slowing-outpace-inflation-jobs-earnings-payroll-wage-gains/ https://www.marketplace.org/2024/10/30/wage-growth-slowing-o... https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/awifactors.html https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/awifactors.html
- ethbr1 2y ago> How do you convey ideas to voters when the basis of the idea is feeling vs fact, outlier vs median? That's the best description of what good politicians can do that I've ever heard.
- drawkward 2y ago>... The data says wages outpaced inflation The data are aggregate measures. I have no doubt that for, say, the top 20% of earners, wages did outpace inflation. Maybe the next 30% were able to tread water. The bottom 50%, however, are likely on a sinking ship.
- supportengineer 2y agoWhy does the richest country in the history of the world allow 50% of its workers to be on a sinking ship? That is the question
- drawkward 2y agoBecause it was bought by billionaires.
- r00fus 2y agoBiden's choice of keeping Jerome Powell, a Republican, as Fed Chair was a choice. An extremely ill-advised one.
- Izikiel43 2y ago> it was a worldwide phenomenon Because governments printed a ton of money without the economy growing to back the new amount of money, hence prices of goods increasing to match the available money supply.
- ethbr1 2y agoOne could also argue it was also in indebted government's best interests, as in the intermediate term it effectively decreased their debt loan (by devaluing the actual dollars it's denominated in).
- nathias 2y agohow did COVID create new money supply?
- smsm42 2y agoCOVID didn't, people that distributed $5 trillion during COVID time did.
- rqtwteye 2y agoWhat the average voter hears: we take credit for all positive things and everything negative was out of our control.