Unitary Politics

 Krugman wonders why people are so sour on the economy when it's "meh" as opposed to "bad." It's the whole "Vibes" thing again, in some ways. However, I think Marshall's point that all politics is unitary is important. Prices ARE a problem for many people. There AREN'T a lot of job openings. It's not 2008-9, but things are kind of shitty.

However, I think the whole "Focus on affordability" tactic espoused by political strategists misses this point of unitary politics. As Morris notes, people aren't thrilled with ICE and deportations. Americans aren't monsters and generally like their immigrant neighbors. Yeah, MAGA is gonna MAGA, but most people aren't thrilled with what they are seeing out of Minneapolis and elsewhere. They aren't thrilled by the destruction of the East Wing.

What happens is you combine general attitudes about corruption or incompetence or cruelty with a soft economy and you get general backlash. I might be most outraged by the attacks on liberal democracy or the Russophilic foreign policy, but that will also show up as being upset about the economy. Biden faced this, too.

Aside from both Biden and Trump facing this conglomerated unease, they both struggled to turn the narrative around. Biden is a bad speaker, and he has gotten worse as he got older. He is not senile,  but he cannot command the bully pulpit. Trump is a bad speaker, and he has gotten worse as he has gotten older. With Trump, it is the raging narcissism that cannot allow defeat or retreat, that locks him into rhetorical boxes. I mean there were some naïfs saying that he could use the SOTU to bring the country together. C'mon!

Trump threw red meat to MAGA and the GOP last night. Polls that say people were happy with the speech only demonstrate that most people didn't watch, only partisans who were favorably disposed to him in the first place. His lies about prices are not going to change perceptions about him. 

Democracy works, not because it's efficient (it's not), but because it can correct course - or you lose the next election. Trump's continual doubling down on unpopular actions hopefully holds the seeds of his destruction.