Economic Policy – The Wrongologist

Democrats Are Better For The Economy

The Daily Escape:

Sunset at Fonts Point, Anza-Borrego Desert SP, CA – March 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon

“If you want to live like a Republican, vote for a Democrat.” – Harry S. Truman

Republicans always claim that they are the Party of prosperity. They pretend that their policies lift everyday workers and their families, what with tax cuts and all, and the public seems to buy it. In polls, the Republicans usually get better marks on the economy than Democrats, often by hefty margins.

But as John E. Schwarz notes in the Washington Monthly:

“What is truly startling is the astonishing degree to which American workers have fared better under Democratic than Republican presidents….Today, the economic data are unambiguous: Whether it’s real wage gains or job creation, average Americans have fared far better under Democratic than Republican presidents.”

From the economist Jeffery Frankel, Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers:

“Since World War II, Democrats have seen job creation average 1.7 % per year when in office, versus 1.0 % under the GOP. US GDP has averaged a rate of growth of 4.23% during Democratic administrations, versus 2.36% under Republicans, a remarkable difference of 1.87 percentage points. This is postwar data, covering 19 presidential terms—from Truman through Biden. If one goes back further, to the Great Depression, to include Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, the difference in growth rates is even larger.”

Frankel says that the results are similar whether one assigns responsibility for the first quarter of a president’s term to him or to his predecessor. He also makes the point that the average Democratic presidential term has been in recession for 1 of its 16 quarters, whereas the average for the Republican terms has been 5 quarters, a startlingly big difference.

Frankel asks whether these stark differences in outcomes are simply the result of random chance? But he concludes they aren’t:

“The last five recessions all started while a Republican was in the White House (Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, G.W. Bush twice, and Trump)….The odds of getting that outcome by chance, if the true probability of a recession starting during a Democrat’s presidency were equal to that during a Republican’s presidency, would be (1/2)(1/2)(1/2)(1/2)(1/2), i.e., one out of 32 = 3.1%. Very unlikely.”

I know, nobody said there’d be math in the column. Frankel says that the result is the same as the odds of getting “heads” on five out of five consecutive coin-flips. And it gets worse if we look back further in time:

“A remarkable 9 of the last 10 recessions have started when a Republican was president. The odds that this outcome would have occurred just by chance are even more remote: one out of 100. [That is, 10/2¹⁰ = 0.0098.]”

More math, but you get the idea. If you look at job growth, the results are similar. More from John Schwarz:

“The significant contrast between each party’s record on wage and job growth has held true from the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 through to the onset of the pandemic, just after 2019 ended, and after that, starting once again under Joe Biden.”

Here’s a chart from The Economist:

The Republican and Democratic Parties were in the White House for roughly equal amounts of time, 24 years each. During the Republican presidencies they created about 17 million jobs, whereas Democrats presided over the creation of about 60 million. That’s such a big gap that Americans can safely reject claims of stronger economic performance under Republicans.

Schwarz closes with this:

“Democrats have an amazing story to tell in 2024. They should tell it loud and clear.”

Absolutely!

Enough of the hard math. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we try to disconnect from Trump’s Bible sales and from the plan by Senate Republicans to introduce articles of impeachment of the Secretary of Homeland Security when there’s so much truly pressing business for them to consider.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we’re attending to some spring yardwork in the precious time between passing rain and snow showers. We will also find the time this weekend to watch college basketball’s March Madness.

To help you focus on anything but politics on this Easter weekend, grab a seat by a south-facing window and listen to Gregorio Allegri’s “Miserere mei, Deus” (Have mercy on me, O God), performed here in 2018 by the Tenebrae Choir conducted by Nigel Short at St. Bartholomew the Great Church, in London.

Allegri composed this in the 1630s, during the papacy of Pope Urban VIII. The piece was written for use in the Tenebrae service on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday of Holy Week. Pope Urban loved the piece so much, that he forbid it to be performed elsewhere outside of the Sistine Chapel.

We all could use a little mercy now, and this is beautiful:

State Of The Union Speech Mop-Up

The Daily Escape:

Morrow Bay, CA – March 2024 photo by Slocoastpix

(This is most likely the only column this week, as Wrongo is working on an outside project.)

Today let’s cover a few disparate topics that are about clean-up from the Biden State of the Union address. The Hollywood Reporter reports on Biden’s viewership ratings with this headline:

“The 2024 State of the Union address drew a larger TV audience than the 2023 address.”

Biden’s speech averaged 32.23 million viewers across 14 broadcast and cable outlets, almost 5 million more viewers than the 2023 State of the Union. Viewership rose on all of the largest outlets by about 18%. More:

“The vast majority of viewers — 28.47 million — watched the State of the Union on the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and the three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). All seven outlets drew a bigger audience than they did for last year’s address.”

So much for viewer apathy. One big surprise to Wrongo is that Fox News led with 5.84 million viewers, beating out the 5.24 million for ABC, which had the largest viewership among the broadcast networks. NBC’s 4.47 million viewers finished third, followed by MSNBC at 4.43 million, (its largest audience ever for a State of the Union).

Why would Fox have more viewers when their network demographics skew far more to the Right than the others? Did they tune in hoping to see a Biden senior moment?

Second, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Jesus) lied in her rebuttal for the GOP.

Third, Umir Haque’s newsletter, the issue has some good insights that Wrongo hasn’t seen elsewhere. About leadership: (emphasis, parenthesis and brackets by Wrongo)

“We recently discussed the difference between occupying a leadership position—and being accepted as a leader. This Biden’s been hid[den] away by the Democratic machine….Those roaring, electrified [people attending the speech)? Those surging positivity ratings? That’s…going from merely occupying the position, to being accepted as a leader.”

“Biden quietly proposed something very much like a new America. A new American social contract. The ideas came so fast and furious that they were almost easy to miss, sandwiched between philosophy and persuasion.”

“…most State of the Unions aren’t like that. They’re pretty boring because Presidents tout their accomplishments. They’re backwards looking…sort of performance reviews….This one really was…profoundly different.”

Haque who lives in the UK, says that the ideas Biden put forth, are very popular in Europe:

Taxing billionaires, which is part of a new movement, arising mostly in Europe, to reduce inequality, by having a global tax on the ultra-rich.
Taxing executive compensation on salaries over $1 million by making them no longer tax deductible. This is also linked to recent moves by European nations to make economies more equal again.
Giving home buyers tax credits. This is a first step towards fixing America’s badly broken housing market…..many European nations are trying to fix that through incentives like this.
Lowering drug prices. One of Biden’s most revolutionary policy ideas was to let the government negotiate prices for many more drugs—this is a big deal, because of course Americans are ripped off incredibly badly by their version of “healthcare.” This would bring the US in line with other Western nations.

More: (brackets by Wrongo)

“if you read between the lines….Biden [is] recognizing how badly broken many aspects of the American social contract [are] —healthcare, housing, inequality, salaries, taxes—and how all that adds up to an incredibly precarious life even [if you are] at or above the median [income].”

“Taxing billionaires, limiting salaries, intervening in broken markets, giving people actual support—none of these are ideas we associate in the slightest with…American politics. They’re the stuff of social democracy, and Biden’s setting out a sort of lightweight…social democratic vision. It’s not quite one fully, but what it does…is begin to put America on the path to becoming one, like the rest of the Western world.”

This sets a clear distinction between the Parties in 2024. Democrats since Bill Clinton have not had a clear definition of what they stand for: What do they stand for? What’s their overarching idea? Are they after a just society, and a good life for all Americans?

This theory of the good life, the just society, and how they’re linked now has Biden championing a politics that isn’t simply another version of “life’s about winners and losers”. Haque thinks this is an incredibly important evolution in US politics.

Will Biden’s move leftward bring enough votes to win in November? We have to hope it will. Conservative Republican Peter Wehner in the NYT reminds us that there’s just 34 weeks to the election:

“The next 34 weeks are among the more consequential in the life of this nation. Mr. Trump was a clear danger in 2016; he’s much more of a danger now. The former president is more vengeful, more bitter and more unstable than he was, which is saying something…..He’s already shown he’ll overturn an election, support a violent insurrection and even allow his vice president to be hanged. There’s nothing he won’t do. It’s up to the rest of us to keep him from doing it.”

It’s time on this Monday morning, to wake up America! IF he gets to run the country, Trump will act like a juvenile delinquent, flipping over as many of the cafeteria lunch tables as he can. In a nutshell, that’s his MAGA platform. And like the Zombie Apocalypse come to life, sooner or later all Republicans who hold public office will endorse him.

The rest of us have to put aside our ideological differences and support Biden. To help you wake up watch and listen to The Clash perform “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais” from their 1979 album “The Clash”. This is far from their best, but it’s on point for today’s column:

This song is from a time when the youth began to realize that sticking together was actually a better idea than allowing themselves to be divided. That has to come back.

Sample Lyric:

White youth, black youth
Better find another solution
Why not phone up Robin Hood
And ask him for some wealth distribution

Thoughts On Biden’s Performance And On Gasoline Consumption

The Daily Escape:

Saguaros and poppies, Catalina SP, Tucson, AZ – March 2024 photo by Paul J Van Helden

You’ve all heard and read about Biden’s State of the Union (SOTA) speech last Thursday. But maybe you’re unaware of the White House strategy for the speech. This was the first SOTA in history to be streamed live on Instagram, in addition to a primary stream on YouTube. Playbook reported that the 9 pm and10 pm hours were the best periods of grassroots fundraising for Biden since the President’s campaign launch.

The White House Office of Digital Strategy also held several events to brief and engage digital creators and media brands around the SOTA. There was a creator watch party in the White House State Dining Room during the speech. Given the declining reach of legacy media, these creator engagement strategies are important.

Trump had planned to comment on Biden’s speech in real time on his Truth Social platform but it went down for the first part of the SOTA. It took over an hour to read what he had to say. When the site came back, we learned that Trump had pretty much just been ranting about Biden’s coughing and warning people not to shake his hand because it had germs.

As an aside, Trump has been a germophobe forever. A casual friend knew him quite well in the 1980’s. Then Trump was a young real estate entrepreneur wanting to get into a fancy Westchester, NY country club. My friend’s husband was also in the real estate business, and Trump’s father Fred prevailed on him to get the Donald into their club. That led to multiple weekends where Trump would take a limo to Westchester to play golf with my friend’s husband and several buddies, all of whom were club members.

It turned out that Trump was a good golfer, so the men were ok with playing with him, except for the obvious cheating on the course. But after each round, the group would adjourn to one of the members’ homes for a potluck, and there Trump’s germophobe flag would fly. He wouldn’t shake hands, and he washed his hands often. He clearly preferred going through the buffet line first, to the extent that if he couldn’t he wouldn’t eat.

Apparently, Trump has done a lot to overcome his germ fears but it all came back when Biden didn’t wash his hands before leaving the podium.

A little on Biden’s strategy: Biden isn’t banking on turning out 100% of Democratic voters. He’s not necessarily counting on low-propensity voters who normally have very little interest in politics. His goal is for Trump to continue to be himself, while Biden, in addition to getting high Democratic turnout, will peel off about 10% of self-identified Republican voters (up from 8% in 2020) and then win Independents. Wrongo has stated previously that he’s certain that Trump will not get near the same number of votes he got in 2020.

Next up, the Biden campaign is rolling out a $30 million ad buy and many more campaign travel stops.

What to say about the rebuttal speech? Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) spoke from her kitchen table. By the end of the evening, there seemed to be less talk about her vice presidential chances than about who might play her on Saturday Night Live’s cold open.

Let’s turn our attention to gasoline consumption in the US. Wolf Richter reports that for 2023, gasoline consumption was where it had been 20 years ago, even though miles driven set a new record. This was largely due to more efficient internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and the shift to electric vehicles (EVs). Wolf provided two handy charts:

Gasoline consumption in the US in terms of product supplied to gas stations rose by 1.5% in 2023, to 376 million gallons per day. But that was still down by 3.9% from 2019. It’s finally back where it was in 2003, (20 years ago).

For clarity, gas consumption is determined by miles driven, and the growing efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles, including hybrids, along with the transition to EVs (the #2 bestselling model in the US in 2023 was a Tesla).

The second chart above, “per-capita gasoline consumption” makes what’s going on clearer. The US population has grown over the past 20 years, but while gasoline consumption has been flat, per-capita gasoline consumption has plunged by 15% from 2003 and by 21% from 1978.

Further, average fuel economy has increased by 42% over the past 20 years, along with average horsepower, because of technical innovations that make today’s ICE vehicles more powerful and more economical than ever before. From Wolf:

“Since 1975, fuel economy for highway driving doubled from 14.6 mpg to nearly 30 mpg in 2023!”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“With less demand for gasoline domestically, the US has become a significant exporter of gasoline….Exports of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel accounted for about 21% of the record 10.1 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products that the US exported in 2023.”

Where will gas consumption go from here? Biden says we should be at zero emissions by 2050. How will we replace the tax receipts from federal and state gas taxes?

Enough. Let’s punt on the election and on the debate over EV cars. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, when we take a break from the assault on our consciousness by media and social media, and instead, focus on calming ourselves before launching into another week of disinformation.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re planning for projects on the Fields of Wrong, preparing for a meeting with our yard guys. We’ve finally convinced them that because of global warming, yard work must begin in early March rather than in early April.

To help you get centered on this Oscars weekend, grab a seat by a big window, then watch and listen to famed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas lead the USA’s National Youth Orchestra in a 2018 performance of Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down” from his ballet “Rodeo” in Beijing:

Osnos Finds Biden’s Sharp Despite His Age

The Daily Escape:

West Quoddy Head Light, Lubec, ME – February 2024 drone photo by Rick Berk Photography

Wrongo has lots of time for Evan Osnos, a writer for the New Yorker. Osnos wrote a great book “Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury”, a detailed look at America’s reactions to 9/11 and to the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol. He follows the lives of a few people that reveal how we lost the ability to see ourselves as part of a cohesive society. Highly recommended.

Apparently, Osnos is one member of the media that Biden is willing to spend time with. In a New Yorker article, Osnos offers a look into Biden’s state of mind as the 2024 election silly season begins. Osnos writes:

“If you spend time with Biden these days, the biggest surprise is that he betrays no doubts. The world is riven by the question of whether he is up to a second term, but he projects a defiant belief in himself and his ability to persuade Americans to join him….”

“Now, having reached the apex of power, he gives off a conviction that borders on serenity—a bit too much serenity for Democrats who wonder if he can still beat the man with whom his legacy will be forever entwined. Given the doubts, I asked, wasn’t it a risk to say, “I’m the one to do it”? He shook his head and said, “No. I’m the only one who has ever beat him. And I’ll beat him again….”

Osnos thinks that for Biden, going against Trump is personal. After all, Trump tried to steal the presidency from him. Biden knows that Republicans have sold imaginary voter fraud to its voters to undermine the democratic process. Biden’s certain that he’s the best person to hold them at bay.

Biden knows that what Trump and the GOP are planning this fall is exactly what they did on Jan. 6, but with better planning.

The balance of the Osnos report is about Biden’s view of the upcoming election, about his view of Trump’s weaknesses, and about the negative polling on Biden’s policy stances and economic measures. Osnos asked Biden if it was possible for him to convert Trump supporters and others, given that he’s behind in the polls:

“Well, first of all, remember, in 2020, you guys told me how I wasn’t going to win? And then you told me in 2022 how it was going to be this red wave?….And I told you there wasn’t going to be any red wave. And in 2023 you told me we’re going to get our ass kicked again? And we won every contested race out there….In 2024, I think you’re going to see the same thing.”

Biden wants to make certain that we’re not going to buy into the 2022 red wave again. The NYT helped to push that narrative back then too just as it is today. Osnos, who wrote a book about Biden’s 2020 win, reflected on the changes brought about by age:

“For better and worse, he is a more solemn figure now. His voice is thin and clotted, and his gestures have slowed, but, in our conversation, his mind seemed unchanged. He never bungled a name or a date.”

Please. Will the American media just give Biden’s age a rest? John Harwood tweeted that the Osnos interview, like Harwood’s own last fall, “shows talk of his alleged mental decline as utter bullshit.”

No one should be a Pollyanna about Biden’s reelection chances – 2024’s gonna be a fight. Osnos reminds us:

“Biden should be cruising to reelection. Violent crime has dropped to nearly a fifty-year low, unemployment is below four per cent, and in January the S&P 500 and the Dow hit record highs. More Americans than ever have health insurance, and the country is producing more energy than at any previous moment in its history.”

But today, the two Parties have wildly different intentions for the country and have very similar levels of support. In 2020, seven states hinged on a difference of less than three percentage points. Everything will come down to improving turnout on the margins.

Osnos also talked to a Biden campaign staffer, Mike Donilon, about a “freedom agenda”:

“It’s easy to miss how unusual a “freedom agenda” is for a Democratic Presidential campaign. Since the nineteen-sixties, Republicans have held fast to the language of freedom—from the backlash against civil rights to the Tea Party to the Freedom Caucus. But….he sees an opportunity for Democrats to…lay claim to the freedom to “choose your own health-care decisions, the freedom to vote, the freedom for your kids to be free of gun violence in school, the freedom for seniors to live in dignity.”

He also interviewed Bruce Reed, a close Biden aide who talks about how to bridge the ideological divide:

“We live in abnormal political times, but the American people are still normal people. Given a choice between normal and crazy, they’re going to choose normal.”

This is a distilled message that Biden can use in the election: Trump and his anti-Constitution, anti-rule-of-law, anti-democracy cult will sure as hell try to steal your vote this fall to install Trump. Remind voters that it’s not just an abstract: Democracy is certainly on the line this fall, and if Trump returns to power, he intends to gut your freedoms.

We could all help Biden by asking our friends what are they prepared to do?

35% of Americans Meet The Criteria To Be Middle Class.

The Daily Escape:

Stoney Brook Grist Mill, Brewster, MA – February 2024 photo by Michael Kerouac

Wrongo and Ms. Right spent Sunday with one of our daughters and son-in-law. We spoke about the Ezra Klein op-ed in the NYT about why Biden should step aside. One of Klein’s points is that in presidential campaigns, the candidate is always the campaign’s biggest asset, and that Biden isn’t being used by Democrats as if he is their biggest asset.

Elsewhere, some pundits are saying that the Democrats need to forget campaigning on policy: Dems always try to find things people like and tell them they’re going to help them — and after that, show them the candidate’s character, biography, and qualifications for office.

Instead, the Republicans campaign by appealing more to emotion than intellect, using a negative message to develop enthusiasm.

While Wrongo is happy that Dems want to campaign again on an anti-Trump message, he still thinks policy is the right way to appeal to at least two types of voters: Those who rarely vote, and those who voted Democratic last time but are less enthusiastic this time. These voters think our political system hasn’t produced results for them, and they’re looking for promises to change that in order to get their votes.

While we keep touting Biden’s economic performance, Wrongo recently found a very important poll taken last November by the WaPo that asked Americans how they defined being in the middle class:

“About 9 in 10 US adults said that six individual indicators of financial security and stability were necessary parts of being middle class….Smaller majorities thought other milestones, such as homeownership and a job with paid sick leave, were necessary.”

They also asked how many of those markers of being in the middle class people said they had achieved, and the results are a staggering rejection of how well the US economy is working for many people:

“Just over a third of Americans met all six markers of a middle-class lifestyle. While about 9 in 10 Americans had health insurance, only three-quarters had health insurance and a steady job. With each added measure of financial security, more Americans slipped away from the middle-class ideal.”

Let’s get into the findings. Here’s the WaPo chart about what factors Americans think it takes to be in the middle class:

It’s arbitrary to pick six, but they were the most frequently mentioned. A secure job. The ability to save. To afford an emergency. Paying the bills without worrying. Healthcare. Retirement. It’s a sensible list. And in the poll, huge majorities agreed those are the key criteria for a middle class life.

The Very Big Problem with this is that when the WaPo asked the same respondents if they had the ability to meet those criteria, the numbers are startling. Here’s the second WaPo chart:

Just 35% of people say that they meet the criteria that almost everyone, (~90%) agree should make someone middle class. If that’s true, America needs to redefine “middle” class. The majority in this survey did not have the financial security associated with being in the middle class. More from WaPo:

“The most common barrier was a comfortable retirement, something that about half of middle-income Americans over 35 felt they were on track to achieve.”

Think about what this research is really showing us. America no longer has a middle class. While ~90% of people agree on what a middle class life is, only a minority can afford it. This means we have a “phantom” middle class: Americans want to be middle class, but only a minority of them are. So what class does that make the majority?

What this research appears to show is that America is building something more like a permanent underclass.

Acknowledging this issue would be a great starting point for Biden to gain traction with low propensity voters and with the Gen X and younger voters who make up most of the low enthusiasm cohort of Democratic voters.

As Anat Shenker-Osorio puts it:

“Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it.”

This time around the Democrats need to emulate Republicans who work at moving the needle instead of chasing it. And this middle class problem is an issue that will move the needle.

Fortune Magazine’s Tiffani Potesta writes that Gen Xers personify the problem of middle class life: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Gen Xers expect to keep working longer than they planned–and will be the first generation to go into retirement with less financial security than their parents and grandparents.”

Gen X will be the first to reach retirement under a new paradigm: the widespread move from Defined Benefit plans to Defined Contribution or 401(k) plans in the US. This is a barely cited yet fundamental societal change that shifted the responsibility to save for retirement from employers to individual employees. More:

“…the numbers do not add up: Gen Xers reported that on average they will need roughly $1.1 million in savings to retire comfortably, yet they expect to stop working with only about $660,000 saved–a savings gap of around $450,000.”

Still more:

“According to a report from the National Institute on Retirement Security, the average account balance in 2020 for private retirement accounts among working Gen Xers was $129,994. This is woefully short of the amount of savings most of us will need to be secure in retirement.”

What’s worse is that the median account balance was scarier: $10,000–and 40% have zero savings.

For a society to be staring at the next few generations not being able to retire and not to be members of the middle class is very troubling, particularly in terms of what’s likely to happen if that’s the case. Losing our middle class is almost a sure path to autocracy, possibly through the rise of fascism and/or authoritarianism.

Biden and the Democrats need to acknowledge these problems are real and pledge to do everything possible to return America to having a true, bell-curve shaped middle class. They can run generally against Trump as “order vs. chaos”, but Trump is running on “America’s decline”, which includes the financial insecurity of millions of Americans. Biden needs to call that out specifically, along with ideas on how to fix the problem. That would make financial insecurity an issue for Democrats equal to abortion, something that targets a specific group and encourages them to get to the polls in November.

If Bernie Sanders isn’t too old to rage against economic insecurity, then Biden is old enough to do the same.

What’s South Carolina’s Democratic Primary Telling Us?

The Daily Escape:

After the storm, Southern AZ – February 2024 photo by Leila Shehab

Welcome to the Monday Wake Up Call. Let‘s start with a quick review of the South Carolina Democratic primary: Biden won. He swept every county, garnering 96% of the vote overall and 95% or better in every county. At the watch party, people were headed out the doors less than an hour after polls closed. Here’s an MSNBC screen grab that says it all:

With the Biden vote so dominant and the race so noncompetitive, turnout was low, at 131,000. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary and 12 Democrats on the ballot, 536,949 people voted. That means we didn’t learn very much about voter engagement for 2024.

And once again, the advance polling couldn’t be trusted. Here’s what Emerson College found on Jan. 5, 2024 just four weeks prior to the primary:

This meant that there were 23% undecided in early January. We all know that there are months to go before the general election this fall. It seems certain that Biden and the Democrats are currently testing the effectiveness of messages across the various voting cohorts in the US.

Democratic politicians and MSNBC pundits keep hammering on Trump’s threat to democracy. But how to tell the story about Biden’s first term in ways that normal people can understand? Is the implied threat of an authoritarian takeover by Trump enough to propel turnout in the fall? Or should the message focus on how much better off people are three years on from Trump?

The continued strength of the broader economy is finally starting to break through to people’s consciousness. But Biden and the Democrats still have to sell the Biden recovery and not flinch from fears that voters won’t buy it because they don’t feel it. Anat Shenker-Osorio famously said in an article in 2017 for The Hill, that Democrats shouldn’t just take the country’s temperature, they should change it.

Ezra Klein offered thoughts about American’s need to vote for stability:

“Biden and his allies are framing this election as order against chaos. The party that gets things done against the party that will make America come undone.”

“…Democrats are right that voters are craving stability. But…Trump is leading in many polls because voters believe that he is the one who might offer it. What Trump is pitching….is a push for order — ‘I am going to be the one who secures the border. I’m going to be the one that cracks down on crime. I’m going to be the one that tries to stabilize your prices.’”

“I’ve struggled with this portrayal of Trump as the candidate of stability. I doubt it can survive the gale-force winds of the actual campaign he will run, of the things people will hear and see from him when they tune in to the election.”

Finally:

“…Democrats are having trouble persuading voters of their central pitch: that they are the party of stability. It does not feel like a stable time. It is not Biden’s fault that the world is tumultuous. But that does not mean he will not be blamed for it.”

That’s where Wrongo parts ways with Ezra. He’s not certain that voters who yearn for stability will cast their lonely eyes on Trump. Think about how effective Nikki Haley’s message is that chaos follows wherever Trump goes. Trump’s base isn’t buying that, but that criticism was successful for Haley with Independents in New Hampshire, and will be effective with the “never Trumpers”.

As far as what will motivate 2024 voters to turn out? Wrongo is struggling with how to balance the need to defend America from the authoritarian Right and the kitchen table issues. Wrongo was in high school when the John Birchers were insisting that the threat of creeping communism required a militarist leader to keep America safe. That led to the Republicans nominating Barry Goldwater, at the time a member of the radical Right. The Birchers’ Republican heirs today have moved beyond Goldwater. They hunger for a fascist strong man.

Do average voters see this threat, or are they fretting so much about overpaying for their rent and groceries to care?

And the stability argument resonates with Wrongo. This Sunday brings the Super Bowl, which used to be the one television event that would still unite America. But a significant minority of Americans now think it’s a PsyOp to make Trump lose the election. Klein says in his article that:

“The cliché used to be that Democrats fell in love and Republicans fell in line. The reality, in recent years, has been that Democrats fall in line and Republicans fall apart.”

Time to wake up America! The choice whenever voting starts in your precinct this fall is between chaos and stability. We must stay obsessed with turning out Independents and unaffiliated, along with the Republican “never Trumpers” whose collective votes will ultimately determine the 2024 election.

Biden has to lead the way, and he’s got to do more interviews even though it increases exposure to his age as an issue.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Doreen Shaffer & the Skatalites tune, “You’re Wondering Now”. This was covered and popularized by the UK group The Specials in the 1980s. The Skatalites did this in 1968. But they were covering “You’re Wondering Now” by Andy and Joey, another Jamaican group who first performed it in 1963. Ska is a happy sounding form of music that featured a bass line on the off beat. In the early 1960s it was the dominant music genre in Jamaica and was also popular with the British mods. Shaffer’s voice is pure and wonderful:

Sample Lyrics:

You’re wondering now, what to do, now you know this is the end
You’re wondering how, you will pay, for the way you did behave

Curtain has fallen, now you’re on your own
I won’t return, forever you will wait

Cartoons Of The Week

From Paul Thornton of the LA Times: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I know the story of Trump’s march to a third GOP nomination barely registered among those who’ve closely followed political news since 2015 — but still, please let it surprise you. Please let the fact that a man who tried to topple American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021, is now the second-most likely person to lead it after noon on Jan. 20, 2025, shake you to your core. German democracy held out for nine years after Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923; Trump’s likely nomination puts us on course to halve the time it took Germany to empower (or in our case, re-empower) its fascist leader of a failed coup.”

It was a bad week for Trump and a good week for Biden. Trump’s week was bad enough that he may soon be renting Mar-a-Lago from E. Jean Carroll. Also, it shows us that Trump can lose to an 80-year-old. On to cartoons.

Biden’s “bad” economy continues to set records:

Elephant reacts badly to December’s GDP numbers:

When it comes to Trump, the Elephant is all talk and no tusk:

House Republicans say immigration deal is dead on arrival:

Why isn’t the media covering Abbott’s insurrection?

Trump loses:

The Alabama execution:

Another Reason Why People Think The Economy Sucks

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Camden Harbor, Camden, ME – January 2024 photo by Daniel F. Dishner Photography

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has crunched the latest Social Security Administration (SSA) wage data. It shows the average American workers haven’t made much money since the 1970s:

“The latest SSA data demonstrates how vastly unequal earnings growth has been between 1979 and 2022. Over that period, inflation-adjusted annual earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% skyrocketed by 171.7% and 344.4%, respectively, while earnings for the bottom 90% grew just 32.9%.”

That’s 33% over 43 years, less than 1% per year. The largest share of total earnings in the US economy have accumulated at the top of the wage ladder. The EPI is describing “labor market earnings”, the pay (including benefits) of the 80% of workers who are not managers or supervisors at work. For decades before 1980, these workers’ hourly pay largely tracked economy-wide productivity growth.

When productivity growth slowed significantly, hourly pay growth collapsed even faster, leading to a growing gap between these typical workers’ pay and overall growth. That difference in missing pay for typical workers went to workers at the top or to business owners.

The EPI study shows that if you’re in the bottom 90% of wage earners, you’ve seen annual wage growth of less than 1% per year over the past 43 years. If you’re in the “upper middle class” things were very different. Here’s a chart from EPI:

Average wages in the 95th to 99th percentile have almost doubled, from $120K to $234K (all figures are in 2022 dollars). But this leaves out the real winners, the top 1%. Average wages for them went from $289K in 1979 to $786K in 2022. But even this huge growth is eclipsed by the wages of the top .1%, which increased an astounding 344%, going from $634K to $2.82 million.

Note that the data are for average annual wages which for the bottom 90% were $40,845 in 2022. Data on average wages are all that’s available, but it’s misleading. The MEDIAN wage for all workers is around $34k. That means half the bottom 90% are making LESS than 34k. Also, median household income is around $76k; which is two people working in the same household.

The media and the rest of us really have no idea how little the average person is earning.

And this is just income from wages. People at or near the top of the pyramid own the vast majority of the equity capital in the US — the top 10% of households own 85% of the total corporate stock owned by households.

The economic debate in America since the 1880s has been between those in favor of lightly regulated heavily financialized consumer capitalism, with some very modest income redistribution, sufficient — barely — to keep the losers in that economy from starving or freezing to death.

The other side are the Republicans who think England in the Industrial Revolution, is a model for what America ought to look like today. And Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon says we should listen to Republicans more. He’s specifically talking about NATO and immigration.

And this has been the GOP’s pitch forever:

Democrats need to address the negative impacts of US wage distribution as part of their 2024 pitch to keep the presidency, and return to controlling the House and Senate in November.

The Fields of Wrong are covered in snow, mostly due to temperatures being below freezing for the past several days. We had a tree fall into the road during the big windstorm last Sunday. Now it sits, snow-covered, on our property waiting for our next chain sawing event.

It’s Saturday, and professional football will be all over the television for the rest of the weekend. Good luck to those of you who follow one of the remaining eight teams. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to forget about the Red Sea, the New Hampshire primaries and funding the government, and instead try to calm ourselves for a few moments. Hopefully we’ll be in better shape to launch into the roller coaster ride of next week’s horrors.

Take a few minutes and grab a chair by a window. Now, watch and listen as John Williams is persuaded to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his “Imperial March” from Star Wars during a gala to celebrate his 90th Birthday.

There are many seriously talented people on the stage, including track star Florence Joyner, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Spielberg, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Star Wars actor, Daisy Ridley. Williams is 91, still going strong, and an example to those who think young Biden is too old to run again. Bravo, Maestro:

A New Year Brings New Work

The Daily Escape:

Merced River, Yosemite NP, CA – December 2023 photo by Graham Holmes Photography

We’ve enjoyed a few days away from the news, seeing kids and grandkids while eating non-stop and playing games in the living room. But it’s nearing the time when we will need to refocus on the state of our country. These are overstimulated times, as the abuse of all caps and exclamation-points around the internet shows us.

It’s doubtful, as the song goes, that “Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight“. It seems that next year will be very much like 2023 where the “bad vibes” were everywhere, despite all of the good news about the economy.

Here’s one finding from a poll by YouGov that was performed between December 11th and 14th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adult citizens, with a 4± point margin of error:

The bad vibes were overwhelmingly felt by Republicans, 66% of whom felt that 2023 was “One of the worst years in American history” even though it clearly was not. From the NYT:

“The “vibe” is bad, voters can’t see that the economy is good.”

The economy is really good. Unemployment is near its historic low. Inflation is nearly controlled. While the Fed raised interest rates rapidly to slow economic growth, we are now likely to experience a soft landing of the economy. Back in December 2022, the Financial Times (paywalled) published a survey that showed 85% of economists were projecting a recession in 2023. But it didn’t happen, largely due to US fiscal policy (adding money to people’s pockets) overriding the impact of the Fed’s desire for a restrictive monetary policy.

Maybe people believing that the economy was bad shouldn’t be surprising. FOX, along with other media have been telling people non-stop that the economy is a problem (and using inflation as the proof). With few exceptions the Democrats haven’t responded clearly. Biden tried to brand the economy as Bidenomics, but neither he nor the Democrats mention every day how great the economy is.

Without hearing from the Dems, most Americans hear that the economy is bad and nobody contradicts that. So one side uses proper messaging techniques and the other side wonders why they’re unpopular. This is true for the Dems on issue after issue.

Heading into 2024, Wrongo is putting on his armor, because next year’s not going to be easy. In fact it’s going to be a shitshow. We know that we’re having an absolutely make or break election for president. Control of Congress is on the line as well. It’s now becoming clear that unless there’s a legal miracle, Trump will not be judged guilty in any of his pending criminal cases prior to the election.

That means it’s up to us voters to get the 2024 election right: Overwhelming turnout, hammering the message locally and not simply relying on the national Democratic apparatus to get things done for us at the local level. If we fail, it’s hard to see how America recovers fast enough to keep the entire world from turning to chaos with a Trump win.

From Rick Wilson: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“If I could weigh one magic wand and accomplish one simple change in the minds of anti-Trump voters, Republican or Democrat, it would be this: stop believing in miracles. Miracles are in short supply….It’s taken me a while to overcome the hope that something derails Trump….But nothing does. He is a protean force in American culture now, seemingly beyond all sanction. He is not going to jail….He won’t be disqualified from the ballot in any states when the Supreme Court is done. Trump is going to be the nominee; he is going to lure the media into his narrative frame once again.”

“The miracles in politics are the ones we make. They come from work planning, preparation, organization, and focus. Nothing will set the Democratic Party back further and faster than the fantasy that somehow the law or fate will take Trump out of their way. This one will take a lot of work at every return, and there are no shortcuts.”

The DNC sends us their mealy-mouthed-please-send-money-now emails every week. They must up their game if they hope to win. Also, Wrongo can’t understand why so many Americans can’t see the handwriting on the wall. This isn’t a time for third parties, it isn’t a time to “send a message” to Biden.

The best defense for our democracy is to speak out and encourage everyone we know to vote.

We close this year with our final seasonal Christmas musical presentation, selections from the 2023 Christmas Carols Concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. This is snippets of the whole carols, which may disappoint some:

Cartoons Of The Week

It’s the start of a brand new week with shopping opportunities! And you can watch our Senate and House members leave for their undeserved vacation without doing much. Try that at your house. On to cartoons.

Trump told us what he plans to do: