Robert Reich - It seems like every day, a reporter calls, asking me why Biden isn’t getting more credit for an America that’s better off than it’s been in decades. After all, inflation has plunged from 9 percent last year to 3 percent now. Real wages are up. Consumer confidence is up. Jobs continue to surge. Unemployment is near a record low. Gas prices are down. Manufacturing is making a comeback. Other aspects of American life have taken a turn for the better, too. Violent crime is down. Covid deaths are down. Illegal immigration has fallen. Roads and bridges are finally getting repaired. Yet just 39 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s performance, according to the latest survey by The New York Times and Siena College....
The shocks of calamitous events .... don’t evaporate when they’re over. They linger in the public’s mind, creating ongoing anxieties that generalize to society as a whole. Which is why so many Americans still believe the nation is “off track” today. There are also deeper and longer-term problems — the decline of the middle class, the stagnation of the working class, homelessness, the climate crisis, and the searing inequalities that characterize this second Gilded Age. All have spread a pall over the era we now live in. As good a president as he is, Joe Biden cannot be expected to reverse these long-term problems in his first term. He is, however, making some progress on them — more, I’d say, than has any administration over the last four decades.
2 comments:
Where is our $15 minimum wage? Our college debt relief? Our child tax credit? To much of the US populace, Biden failed on those kitchen table issues, and his falling asleep on the President of Israel causes deep concern that he is cognitively unfit for office. Those things seriously damage Biden's popularity.
As always Reich is a truth teller and Right again. Sadly the second Guided Age appears to have influenced the judgement of those who rule upon the law of the land on Their Supreme Court!
Semper Paratus
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