Joe Biden wants us to believe that things aren’t as bad as we think they are, that we don’t appreciate all the good things that he has done for us. But as Maureen Dowd recently put it in her New York Times column, “Exhausted, confused, isolated and depressed Americans are not buying the Democratic line that things are better than they look.”
But it’s not only Republicans who aren’t buying the fairy tale about how wonderful we have it now that Biden is president. There’s a revolt going on inside the tent, among Democrats themselves. I mean, when you lose a committed lefty such as Bill Maher – who’s riled up over what he has called the “insane excesses of the left” – it’s time to wake up and take notice.
And plenty of Americans have taken notice. The party is losing adherents – and despite what the president’s handlers are telling him, hitting their message harder won’t solve the problem. The problem is the message itself.
Who exactly do Democrats still represent these days, besides people living in big cities and some suburbs, or hanging out in Ivy League faculty lounges? Blue-collar white voters abandoned the party a long time ago, thanks to Ronald Reagan. Now even some working-class Blacks and Latinos are cozying up to the GOP. Democrats certainly don’t represent a vast majority of the folks who live in “flyover country.” An Associated Press headline didn’t pull any punches: “‘The brand is so toxic’: Dems fear extinction in rural U.S.“
Biden, a pol all his adult life, surely knows that Americans have had enough of inflation, of COVID, of masks, of crime, of undocumented immigrants on our southern border, and of the woke, progressive educational establishment looking down their elite noses at parents who want a say in what their kids are being taught in school. But he also knows that voters aren’t going to blame his party’s favorite bogeyman for all of that.
Pinning the tail on Donald Trump has gotten old. They’re going to blame the guy currently sitting in the Oval Office. That’s how politics works.
Never underestimate the power of likability – or unlikability. And right now, many Democrats have very little of the former and a lot of the latter. It’s why the political apocalypse is heading their way, with an arrival date of Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022.
People just don’t feel good about things in general. More than 60 percent of Americans think we’re on the wrong track – several polls have that number at over 70 percent. Democrats don’t need better marketing. They need better ideas and a leader who can articulate them without reading notes.
Americans are rightly concerned about the surge in crime in cities across America. And they notice when Biden talks about “gun violence,” as if guns have a mind of their own and decide to go out and commit crimes, but is less enthusiastic when it comes to talking about actual criminals.