Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, August 3, 2023

Selling Bidenomics

 As things stand now, I think the hump that prevents Biden from winning not only the 2020 states but possibly NC and TX is the economy. What's weird is that by most metrics the economy is kicking ass. Some of this is the lag in perception between actual improvements in the economy and how people think the economy is going.

My worry, frankly, is that fucking algorithms have poisoned our ability to accept good news. We've hard-wired our brains to crave outrage and upset, and we may not even accept good news unless we have no other cognitive choice.

Sure, 45% of Americans will believe that we are in a socialist, communist, atheist, gay depression because we have a Democratic president, but you still do win in the middle. Are the fickle weathervanes that constitute independent voters capable of assimilating good news at this point?

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