Remarkably, only 47 percent of Democrats in the poll say the Build Back Better agenda would help people like themselves. The critical question for Democrats is whether those woes will prove abiding. Donald Trump did not sign his signature tax cut into law until days before Christmas Unlike Trump, the president is not trying to advance deeply controversial tax cuts for corporations.
Unlike Obama, he is not trying to enact systemic reform of the health-care system historically a politically thankless task. Rather, he has assembled a bunch of largely majoritarian social-welfare programs and tax increases on the superrich. Beyond the popularity of its individual provisions, the Build Back Better agenda would also increase household income for the bulk of the U. As for the economy, Biden is presiding over one of the most rapid labor-market recoveries from a recession in modern memory.
To the majority of Americans who work for a living, the labor market is historically favorable. Meanwhile, household wealth is at a record high. And although that wealth is extremely unevenly distributed, a majority of Americans appear to have more in savings than they did before the pandemic. Of course, the counterpoint to all this is inflation. Although nominal wage growth is high, rising prices have pushed real wages down for the top three-quarters of workers through most of this year.
Finally, although the pandemic is far from over, case counts have been falling since mid-September, and voters have steadily downgraded the coronavirus as an issue priority. The substance of that agenda is atypical in its popularity.
This bias has two dimensions. First, the American right has a much more potent propaganda apparatus than the Democrats do. Meanwhile, a majority of the top-ten news posts on Facebook on any given day tend to be from right-wing outlets. One can argue that this reflects high consumer demand for conservative news rather than any conspiracy wrought by right-wing elites.
Of course, conservative media did not become a cultural force in just the past three months. This was most overt in its coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal, when the mainstream media subjected Biden to weeks of relentlessly and, in my view, unjustifiably negative coverage.
Back in March, the political scientist Matt Grossmann predicted that Biden would see his legislative agenda grow more unpopular in the coming months as the media lavished it with greater attention. In February, he issued a blistering press release saying that, while he was voting to acquit Trump during his impeachment trial for allegedly instigating the 6 Capitol attack, he condemned the then-president's unwillingness to accept his election loss and called his language "extreme, aggressive and irresponsible".
But on a balmy night in October, the Iowa senator was basking in the glow of the former president's loyal crowd - and openly acknowledged exactly why he was doing so. Grassley was citing a recent survey by the Des Moines Register showing Trump more popular in Iowa than he ever was during his presidency - and with almost universal support among the state's Republican voters. And the depth of that support was reflected in the rally's speaker list. Grassley was joined by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds also up for re-election next year and two of Iowa's three Republican members of House of Representatives.
It was an impressive show of force in a state that, with its first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses, could be pivotal in determining the party's presidential nominee in After four years in the White House, and despite the election loss and how the last days of his presidency unfolded, those "alienated voters" are sticking with their guy.
A Trump rally, at this point, is a political movement distilled into its purest form. It's the realm of flag-bedecked pick-up trucks, vendors selling obscenity-laced signs directed at Biden and Maga-hat-wearing die-hards sporting T-shirts that claim Democrats stole the election, that vaccines mandates are government dictatorship and - perhaps most importantly - that Trump will be back in Hanson may get her wish.
Trump has already hired two Iowa-based staffers with campaign experience. His rally speech, while dominated by complaints about the election and swipes at members of his own party, closed with what sounded like a campaign platform. He promised action on immigration, tech-company regulation, the economy, veterans' affairs and education. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump even considered announcing his bid in August, when Joe Biden was mired in the turmoil of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He was ultimately convinced to hold off until after next year's congressional mid-term elections, lest that vote become a referendum on his political rebirth and he risk garnering some of the blame if Republicans underperform expectations. If Trump is dipping his toe once more into presidential politics, the prospect hasn't been universally welcomed outside the friendly confines of his rallies.
A recent Pew Research poll found that, while two-thirds of Republicans in the US want Trump to remain a "major political figure", fewer than half want him to seek the Republican presidential nomination a third time. It's what the New York Times' Jonathan Martin has called the "gold watch" constituency - a portion of the party that wants to thank Trump for his service and then usher him into retirement with a shiny gift and a pat on the back.
Trump, by a margin of nearly 23, votes. In politics, voters are often more attracted to vinegar than honey. That has always been Mr.
And that appears to be why Mr. Biden won this election. Across the United States, something surprising happened this year.
Voter turnout hit levels not seen in a century, with both sides benefitting to some extent. The Republican Party actually picked up seats in the House of Representatives, taking a bite out of the small Democratic majority, and appears to have held the Senate, pending two January runoff elections in Georgia.
But Mr. Trump, despite motivating enough friendly voters to give him 10 million more votes than in , was defeated in several states where he won last time, because Mr. Biden inspired even more new voters. Last summer, Mr. Biden did not take the bait. One of his first postnomination speeches called for an end to both rioting and racial discrimination, since both are wrong and both harm innocent people.
Most people can get on that bandwagon.
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