Perception v. Reality

Facts are meaningless if perception doesn't reflect them. The key is messaging, and it's not something the Democrats are very good at.

We’re now seeing stronger economic indicators than at any time since the onset of the pandemic, and I’m at a loss to explain why Republicans failed to talk about the economy and issues like gas prices and inflation in the 2022 midterms. Instead, they opted to talk about culture war issues. Now, with gas prices and inflation falling, and with unemployment dropping to historic lows, they seem to have missed a political opportunity.

More amazing is what they’ve chosen to talk about. According to Gallup, the culture wars connect with about 34% of the population. Leaving 66% who don’t want to ban books, hire the American Taliban to run school boards, vilify the LGBTQ+ community, or put politicians between parents and medical doctors where women’s reproductive health or their kids’ gender identity is concerned. And no, they don’t think that Disney is “sexualizing children“ as presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said the other day.

Presidential elections can turn on the economics of the time, and for better or worse, it is the White House occupant who gets the credit or blame. This economy is better than we may think, partially because the Democrats are lousy messengers. The party, and the president they work for, have mostly failed to make their case to the American people. It’s a failure of imagination, and an unsettling lack of understanding of media messaging in 2023.

Here are the facts they could be working with:

·      Unemployment is at its lowest since 1969

·      Manufacturing is returning to our shores.

·      Supply chains are getting unstuck.

·      We are finally rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

It’s traditional for the party not in power to hang a bad economy around the incumbent’s neck. Thanks to his streak of bipartisan legislation, President Biden has become a transformational figure like FDR, LBJ, and Ronald Reagan. Whether you like him or not, The Inflation Reduction Act, The CHIPS and Science Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, are all moving the economy forward.

The president’s team is apparently incapable of messaging in the modern world. Today, you must be a multi-platform news distributor if you wish to reach the full breadth of the American populace. The Biden White House completely misses the moment. From Bloomberg News we learn that Americans spend more time on social than any other form of media: 95 minutes/day on TikTok, 74 on YouTube, 51 on Instagram, 49 on Facebook, 29 on Twitter, and 21 on Snapchat, but the Democrats are nowhere to be seen on these emerging platforms.

To the world, stability matters. The recent Congressional Freedom Caucus threat to default on our bills was dangerous bluster. Had we defaulted, Moody’s Analytics, the go-to master of economic metrics, said 8 million Americans would’ve lost their jobs. For over 70 years, the “full faith and credit” of the American government has made and kept the dollar the currency of the international realm. That level of trust and reliability comes with innumerable assets. Not paying our bills and essentially declaring bankruptcy wouldn’t have been a “strategic correction” as the Former Guy intimated in that weird Clown Hall on CNN. He may have bankrupted six of his companies to his strategic advantage, but running the world’s largest and most stable economy is nothing like running a business.

In 2008, the Democrats had the digital lead. The Obama campaign was masterful in reaching people outside the umbrella of mainstream media. Now the Republicans have the lead, and some are wondering if the Dems are even in the game.

The president says the right things but in the wrong forums. “We put forward a proposal that cuts spending by more than a trillion dollars…on top of the nearly $3 trillion in deficit reduction that I previously proposed through the combination of spending cuts and new revenues,” he said to the wind. “Let me be clear, I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects…a $30 billion tax break for the oil industry, which made $200 billion [in profit] last year—they don’t need an incentive of another $30 billion—while putting healthcare of 21 million Americans at risk by going after Medicaid.

“I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects $200 billion in excess payments for pharmaceutical industries, and refuse to count that while cutting over 100,000 schoolteachers and…assistants’ jobs,” he said to the starry sky. [I won’t cut] “30,000 law enforcement officers’ jobs across…the entire United States of America. I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly…1 million Americans.”

Saying the right things is never enough. The Democratic Party and its leader, Joe Biden, need to get in the game. The facts don’t matter if they oppose popular perception because perception is reality.     

©2023 Jon Sinton