On the menu today: A smorgasbord of offerings, looking at what Americans think are the most important problems facing the country, why Joe Biden thinks the public is primarily worried about delayed fights and airline fees, and the ridiculously bad choice the American electorate is being forced into as the 2024 presidential election approaches.
Biden’s Difficulty Getting Airborne
In April, the Gallup polling organization asked, as it does every month, “What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?” It’s an open-ended question, respondents can give whatever answer they want, and Gallup tries to put the collected off-the-cuff answers into several categories. (Note that the priorities expressed by Americans rarely change dramatically from month to month, and answers are collected during nearly the entire month — in this case, from April 3 to April 25.)
The single most common answer was “the government,” or “poor leadership,” at 18 percent.
Fourteen percent said the economy in general, and 9 percent said inflation or high cost of living.
(I know much smarter economic minds than mine can lay out the case that inflation is largely conquered by pointing to data from the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index; I would simply note that many Americans don’t feel like inflation has been conquered.)
Eight percent said immigration; 7 percent said “guns” or “gun control”; 6 percent said “crime” or “violence”; 4 percent said “race relations” or “racism”; 3 percent said “poverty/hunger/homelessness”; and another 3 percent said “ethics/moral/religious/family decline.”
For a country that allegedly is going nuts over social-media controversies, celebrities, and trivialities, that looks like a reasonable list of concerns and priorities.
“The economy” always ranks high on the list of people’s concerns, but I don’t think 21 percent offering a version of that as the most important problem facing the country today should be dismissed as a rote or placeholder answer. I don’t begrudge those who celebrate the state of the U.S. economy compared to the rest of the world. Compared to a lot of other relatively free-market societies, our unemployment rate is low, our standard of living is high, our innovation and productivity are nearly unparalleled, and the opportunities to pursue your dreams remain higher here than just about anywhere else on Earth.
But if this is a good economy, I’d hate to see a lousy one. Gas prices are still really high by historical patterns — the national average cost of a gallon of regular gas is less than it was last year, but significantly higher than prices from 2015 to 2021. Grocery prices jumped 8.4 percent in the year through March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average price of a new car hit $48,008 in March; rising interest rates have made car loans far more costly, with the average monthly payment reaching $730. American car dealers are selling 3 million fewer cars per year than they did before the pandemic.
Inflation kicked Americans in the crotch last year, and we’re still getting used to the higher prices.
Americans have hit a new record for credit-card debt, and 36 percent of U.S. adults owe more money in credit-card debt than they have saved in the bank. Also notice that quite a few Americans were unnerved by the collapse of several regional banks; about a fifth of Americans are “very worried” about their deposits in banks, and almost 30 percent are moderately worried. Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, accounts are insured up to at least $250,000 per depositor, but . . . maybe lots of people are just anxious that they’ll wake up one morning and find the bank’s doors locked and the ATM shut down.
For the past year, we’ve heard President Biden insist that the economy is “hot as hell,” while a lot of economists look at the data, see contradictory trends, and declare the economy “strange,” “confusing,” or even “extremely confusing.” (I can’t help but wonder how much confusion stems from the desired economic figures enacting the desired economic policies, but the expected good results not arriving.) Warren Buffett recently warned that “an incredible period” for the U.S. economy is coming to an end.
Immigration? Just look at how the surge of migrants at the border, now in its third year, is expected to somehow get even worse after Title 42 expires.
Guns? We seem to bear witness to some disturbed angry loner shooting up a school or shopping mall or workplace every week — sometimes more than one a week.
Crime? Unsolved-murder rates are at a record high. Violent-crime rates may have dipped a bit from 2021 to 2022, but they’re still well above pre-pandemic levels. (Random question: Why does U.S. News and World Report rank states on their crime levels based on data from 2020? Haven’t we seen an unnerving surge in crime in a lot of places since then?)
Of course, just because poll respondents didn’t give a particular answer off the cuff doesn’t mean they don’t care about it at all. Fentanyl and opioid addiction, education, the war in Ukraine, the rise of China . . . just because negligible percentages of Americans mentioned these as top issues doesn’t mean that Americans aren’t concerned about those issues, or that they’re not important in their own way.
I mention all of this because yesterday, in his first major speech of the week, President Biden chose to talk about . . . airport delays and airline fees.
Now, there are some extremely fair gripes about the country’s airlines. They urged a lot of pilots to retire during the pandemic, cut recruiting and training, and then were caught shorthanded when the pandemic ended and Americans returned to enjoy “revenge tourism,” making up for missed trips and vacations during 2020–2021. Karol Markowicz fairly asked why Americans spent $50 billion rescuing the airlines during the pandemic, only to be treated like cattle once the planes started flying again.
But Biden really thought that the debut of a new Department of Transportation website deserved a presidential event. And, unsurprisingly, Biden screwed up the name of the website. He announced, “First, we just launched a new website: FlightsRight.gov [FlightRights.gov]. FlightsRight.gov [FlightRights.gov]. It features a dashboard we created last fall to give travelers more transparency into airlines’ compensation policies.”
In addition to the website, Biden announced:
Later this year, my administration will propose a historic new rule that will make it mandatory, not voluntary — but mandatory for all U.S. airlines to compensate you with meals, hotels, taxis, ride shares, or rebo- — and rebooking foo- — fees, and cash, miles, and/or travel vouchers whenever they are the ones to blame for the cancellation or delay. And that’s all on top of refunding the cost of your ticket.
From Biden’s description, you might think that airlines delay and cancel flights willy-nilly, but that’s not actually the case:
According to the Transportation Department figures, air carriers were directly responsible for about 41 percent of delays through May, a figure on par with last year but higher than before the pandemic. Late-arriving aircraft — another problem mostly attributable to airlines — accounted for an additional 37 percent of delays.
Problems with the nation’s airspace, such as congestion, bad weather or staffing at air traffic control facilities, accounted for 17 percent of delays — the lowest level since officials began tracking the data in 2004. Extreme weather is its own category and accounted for about 5 percent of delays.
As for cancellations, problems attributed to airlines were cited in 38 percent of cases, the highest rate since 2012. But the majority of cancellations involve circumstances beyond the carriers’ control. Weather was cited in 55 percent of cases. National airspace problems, such as those involving air traffic control, accounted for 7 percent of cancellations.
This will make any delay extraordinarily expensive for the airlines; remember that if the morning flight ends up delayed, then the afternoon and evening flights for that plane are extremely likely to be delayed as well. This represents the federal government imposing more costs on the airlines. If you’ve been looking at summer-vacation options, you know that air fares are jaw-droppingly expensive — 17 percent higher than a year ago. As much as travelers might want to see the administration “punish” the airlines, travelers themselves are the ones who will get “punished” down the road with higher fares.
Biden insists the economy is hot as hell, insists the border is secure, insists that an assault-weapons ban would stop mass shootings (even though 77 percent of mass shooters used handguns), and insists Democrats have “a great record” on crime*. As far as Biden is concerned, he’s doing a great job, and it’s the American people’s fault for not recognizing what a terrific job he’s doing.
In that light, it is not the least bit surprising that 18 percent of respondents told Gallup that “the government,” or “poor leadership” was the top problem facing the country.
On Sunday, our old friend Jonah Goldberg looked at that Washington Post poll and lamented that at a time when the country has real problems to solve, we’re somehow trapped in a scenario that appears inexorably to lead to a 2020 rematch between the guy who most Americans think is a felon and the guy who most Americans think is senile.
What a profoundly unserious moment America is living in. We have one guy who is the likely nominee on the Republican side who is fundamentally and indisputably unfit for public office, and who a majority of Americans thinks should be charged with crimes, including trying to steal an election.
We have another guy who is definitely the nominee for the other party who a majority of Americans thinks does not have all the marbles to be president anymore. They believe the party is taking an enormous, enormous risk putting this guy out there on the campaign trail when one fall, one bad moment could erase all possible trust in him.
Much like a replay of 2016, when we had two candidates who were so unpopular they each had a chance to lose to the other, we are now going to have a race between two candidates who are so unfit they have a chance to lose to the other.
Imagine what a different world it would be if Democrats who thought Joe Biden was too old to continue being president refused to support him in the upcoming primary or the general election.
Imagine what a different world it would be if Republicans who thought Donald Trump was too reckless, selfish, and unhinged to be president again refused to support him in the upcoming primary or the general election.
*Maybe he meant Democrats have great criminal records.
ADDENDA: A public-service announcement: Mother’s Day is this weekend. If you haven’t ordered flowers yet, you ought to do so today. . . .
Our Charlie Cooke warns Democrats that they’re rerunning the 2016 presidential campaign playbook:
Do Democrats understand the risk that they are taking here? Honestly, I am not sure that they do. In recent years — since 2016, really — I have heard many of my friends on the Left imply that, because Donald Trump is unfit for office, normal American voters should feel obliged to accept whatever garbage they are served up in lieu. This is wrong. Certainly, there are a lot of voters who, as Jim puts it, are likely to “take their chances with the senile guy rather than live through another four years of Trump.” But there are also a lot of voters who are likely to say the opposite. I am not sure that Democrats have reckoned with this.