How could it be that the election we have just survived was as close as it seemed? (It wasn't actually very close in truth; Biden won by about 6 million popular votes, but the crazy Electoral College system made the contest seem closer than it was.) This chart from Kevin Drum points me to one reality.
For middle income people in this country, the four Trump years were pretty good. After the long trough that economic life was mired in during much of Obama times, by 2016 income was finally inching up. If you weren't alienated by Trump's misogyny, racism, corruption, cruelty, and generally embarrassing lunacy, what wasn't to like?
As better pundits sometime point out, presidents are only marginally responsible for good economic times. Events beyond their control can throw economic life into a tailspin -- note the chart doesn't include what has happened to median income since the pandemic. We won't fully know for awhile yet how bad a hit most people have taken.
Meanwhile, whatever else pollsters missed, they always showed that people gave Trump good marks for "the economy."
I've seen a suggestion somewhere (and am embarrassed to have lost the citation), that political journalists are scarred by their own position as precarious survivors in a dying industry. The thing we called "the economy" doesn't look good to them, as media outlets consolidate and jobs in their profession disappear. So it was hard for them to fathom that for many people, especially white mid-career and older ones, good times were back.
It's going to be very hard for Joe Biden and the Dems to promote economic health (equitable and greenish, we hope) if a Republican Senate can block every move. All the more reason to try to elect the two Democratic challengers in the run-off on January 5 in Georgia. I'll start back on the phones this week. Want to join me?
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