Subject: Re: The Philadelphia Inquirer Isn't Spineless
the 2 worst shit sandwiches in my lifetime: the s.s. GWB handed over to Obamam, and the s.s.
trump handed over to Biden. Dems should have been screaming from the rooftop about the actual
total dumpster fire that the Republican Presidents dumped in their lap. Biden should have been prefacing every public statement with a statement that the utter mishandling of covid by trump forced America into the situation we found ourselves in.

I don't think that would have helped, because that wasn't where the Democrats damaged themselves.

The American Rescue Plan was popular. That was the big spending package that the Democrats passed shortly after Biden took office. That was the massive stimulus to jump start the economy after Covid. When it passed, the unemployment rate was still above 6% and the economy was still reeling. And the inflation rate was under 3%.

Where the Democrats really damaged themselves was after that. By the time the infrastructure bill was passed in late 2021, unemployment was already back down to pre-Covid levels - but inflation was nearly 7%. When the Administration moved to the rest of the Build Back Better bill, inflation was close to 9% and unemployment was back down to near-record lows.

We weren't in s.s. territory any more when those bills were passed. By the time the IRA was being negotiated, it was very clear that the ARP had been bigger than the economy could accommodate without inflation. Expansionary fiscal policy carried a big risk of making inflation worse, and certainly didn't "message" to voters that Democrats shared their concern about inflation.

Ultimately, this wasn't only partially a messaging problem. It was mostly a priorities mismatch. Voters were deeply concerned about inflation at that time. Democrats wanted to seize the opportunity that their majority provided to get some of their longstanding priorities enacted (like more money for infrastructure and to fight climate change). Those two things didn't match up, and Democrats chose the latter. They felt it was more important.

Regardless of the merits of that - regardless of whether the Democrats were right that it was more important to pass the BIL and IRA than to slow down - it didn't line up with what voters said was their big concern. Instead of paying attention to inflation, the Democrats handwaved it.

The messaging made it worse, but that wasn't the Democrats doing it badly - it was a choice. The Democrats could have gone out and said, "inflation is terrible and it's all Trump's fault." But that would have made passing the more spending bills harder. Especially since progressives were still dreaming of a $6T or $3T size Build Back Better Bill. To keep the BBB (later the IRA) alive, Democrats had to message as if the super-high inflation wasn't a problem - that it wasn't high compared to historic levels, that the "misery index" was still low, that inflation was transitory - and therefore there was no reason to throttle back the fiscal expansion.

Democrats got the IRA passed, but they're paying the price now.