On the menu today: There are good reasons to doubt that Joe Biden’s recent streak of good news is going to do much for Democrats in the midterms, and there are good questions about just what the soon-to-leave-Congress Liz Cheney wants. Also, the book nagging will continue until morale improves.
Biden’s Good Fortune Won’t Last
Two weeks ago, I expressed doubt that the Biden administration’s recent run of good fortune — good jobs numbers, killing Ayman al-Zawahiri, getting Joe Manchin to come around on a renamed Build Back Better — would make a significant change in midterm election outcomes.
No doubt, Republicans have shot themselves in the foot several times with some seriously subpar Senate and gubernatorial candidates. Democrats want to make the midterms a referendum on Donald Trump and not Joe Biden, and the former president loves to be the center of attention, no matter the circumstances, even if it harms his party. And sometimes narratives become self-perpetuating; the contention, “Look at the amazing Biden comeback!” spurs other news institutions to look for more evidence of an amazing Biden comeback.
But stringing together a couple of good news cycles — ironically while President Biden was in Covid isolation or on vacation — is not going to change the fundamental political environment, a year of runaway inflation, lingering high food prices, and gas prices that are dropping but still high by historical standards.
President Biden’s job approval is still lousy. In the FiveThirtyEight average, he’s rebounded a little bit, from around 37 percent to around 40 percent, and the numbers are similar in the RealClearPolitics average.
Democrats have rebounded to a tie on the generic-ballot question, in both FiveThirtyEight and RCP, which is no doubt an improvement for them. But Democrats usually lead on the generic-ballot question. Back in 2020, Democrats led on the generic-ballot question by 6.8 percentage points in the RCP average. When you added up all the House votes cast in 2020, they won by 3.1 percent, and Republicans gained 14 seats, narrowing the Democratic majority to just ten seats.
Why am I unconvinced that we’re witnessing a dramatic turnaround for the Democrats?
For starters, the “right direction/wrong track” numbers are still abysmal, with more than 71 percent of Americans convinced that the country is on the wrong track. For comparison, in the 2014 midterm elections, when Republicans walloped Democrats from coast to coast, 65 percent of Americans said the country was on the wrong track. And in that year, Democrats could at least blame divided government and the GOP-controlled House of Representatives for their losses. As ABC News summarized back then, “‘Wrong track’ sentiment in past midterm elections has related strongly to losses by the incumbent president’s party.”
The incumbent party just isn’t going to have a good year when around 70 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
The Biden administration insists that the July inflation numbers were good news; in reality, they represented a minor improvement from catastrophic to slightly less catastrophic. As Dominic Pino aptly summarized:
So when Biden said “zero inflation,” he was using political sleight-of-hand to get people to think that inflation went from 9.1 percent, the widely publicized number from the June report, to zero. But he’s conflating the month-over-month number with the year-over-year number. Using the year-over-year number consistently as the meaning of “inflation,” which is how the numbers are most commonly reported, Biden could have more honestly said that inflation declined from 9.1 percent to 8.5 percent between June and July.
Along with alleged zero inflation, the administration keeps touting the drop in gas prices. But that drop in gas prices is largely driven by Americans’ choosing to drive less and fill up their tank less often. As the American Automobile Association reported:
“New survey data from AAA finds that drivers are making significant changes to cope with record pump prices. Almost two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults have changed their driving habits or lifestyle since March, with 23% making “major changes.” Drivers’ top three changes to offset high gas prices are driving less, combining errands, and reducing shopping or dining out. . . . While many Americans are adapting their daily habits to make up for higher gas prices, it also affects their future travel plans. Many Americans have postponed taking a vacation this year.”
The Biden team is doing a touchdown dance, convinced that their releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — now at its lowest level since 1985 — brought down gas prices, when in fact it is Americans’ driving less and canceling vacations that reduced demand.
Democrats will respond, “Ah, but things are different now because our party passed the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’!” The first question is how much Americans even notice that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is now law. A July poll found that only 24 percent of Americans knew that Congress had passed, and Biden had signed, an infrastructure bill. Things that seem like a really big deal inside the Beltway often aren’t noticed, much less celebrated, in places such as rural Maine, North Las Vegas, Auburn, Wash., and the suburbs of Richmond, Va.
Those locations aren’t random examples. The fate of endangered Democratic incumbents such as Jared Golden of Maine’s second district, Dina Titus of Nevada’s first district, Kim Schrier of Washington’s eighth district, and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia’s fifth district will hinge on whether passing the revised Build Back Better is seen as a genuine improvement in people’s lives.
The most fast-acting provisions of the legislation are tax rebates for heat pumps, solar panels, and the purchase of electric vehicles. How many Americans will act to claim those tax credits? How many will owe sufficient taxes to find the tax credit a significant change? How many Americans will credit Democrats now for a tax credit they won’t feel until they pay their taxes next spring? Does that sound like a political-environment game-changer to you? Maybe some grassroots Democrats feel better about their representatives and get a little more enthusiastic about the midterms. But this is nibbling around the edges.
There’s another reason to think that the issue of inflation is far from settled, despite Biden’s insistence that inflation had reached zero last month. Even as gas prices are declining, the cost of food continues to soar, and as you may have noticed, human beings need to eat:
Over the last 12 months, grocery prices soared 13.1 percent — the largest annual increase since the year ending in March 1979, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday.
The prices of nearly every grocery item have ballooned over the past year.
The cost of eggs has soared 38 percent, and prices for other goods have also jumped: Flour is up 22.7 percent, chicken 17.6 percent, milk 15.6 percent, ground beef 9.7 percent and bacon 9.2 percent. Fruits and vegetables got 9.3 percent more expensive. . . .
In July, adjusted for seasonal swings, egg prices popped 4.3 percent compared to June. Coffee and peanut butter each got 3.5 percent more expensive. Flour rose 3.2 percent and bread prices went up 2.8 percent. Cheese jumped 2 percent, while chicken got 1.4 percent pricier.
With almost comical understatement, CNN adds that, “Unlike discretionary items, consumers can’t simply stop buying food when prices rise.”
It doesn’t do Americans all that much good if the average price of a gallon of regular gas nationwide is down to “only” $3.94 but the cost of their regular grocery bill is still much higher than they’re used to paying. Ask yourself: Did you notice any sudden improvement in your household finances in the past month? Maybe filling up your tank has gone from feeling like a severe heart attack to feeling like mere chest pains, but overall, your economic life hasn’t transformed in the past month.
What Does Liz Cheney Want to Do?
Over in that other morning newsletter published by Politico, there’s a curious contention about what Liz Cheney achieved over the past few months:
Cheney calculated that a national platform and massive fundraising base built around her fearless and uncompromising opposition to Trump is far more politically valuable than serving in Kevin McCarthy’s House majority. It is a more modern way of understanding political power in which attention is the coin of the realm.
Many people in the political world are convinced that attention is the coin of the realm. But getting people to pay attention to something, by itself, does not necessarily change anything. As Stephen Covey advises, “Begin with the end in mind.” What do you want the attention for? Or at some point, does getting and keeping attention start to become the objective?
Both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get a lot of attention, but does that necessarily mean either of them has a lot of political power? They can call attention to issues, but can they get things done to address those issues? Back in 2021, new GOP representative Madison Cawthorne wrote to his colleagues, “I have built my staff around comms [communications] rather than legislation.” You saw how things worked out for him. A big question for everybody seeking office in Congress is, “Do you want to be a legislator? Or do you want to be a star?” Do you want public office because you want to do something or because you want to be somebody?
This is not a new phenomenon. Former Ohio representative Jim Traficant was a “star,” in the sense that he was well known outside of his district for his outrageous appearance and “Beam me up, Mr. Speaker!” floor speeches. But almost no one else in either party really cared what he said about anything.
On the edition of The Editors taped yesterday, I argued that Glenn Youngkin’s approach to Trump was better, more effective, and wiser than Liz Cheney’s — presuming that your goal is to influence policy. I suppose if you want to be a bigger star and get more praise from people who generally detest conservatives, Cheney’s approach will get you where you want to go.
If you really want to have a major say in which laws get passed and which policies get enacted, you must be in the government. You can try to influence things as a pundit or a think-tanker or a party-committee member or an academic, but enacting change is a lot harder when you’re outside the system than when you’re inside it. Back in 2012, South Carolina senator Jim DeMint resigned his seat to become president of the Heritage Foundation, contending that he could do more for the conservative cause outside of government than he could as one of 100 senators. DeMint didn’t exactly vanish, and his photo didn’t start appearing on the side of milk cartons, but he had a rocky tenure at Heritage. By 2017, the foundation’s board had asked him to leave. The argument that DeMint became more influential and consequential outside of the Senate isn’t very convincing. No one is asking, “What does Jim DeMint think?” anymore; DeMint’s most consequential move in the Senate may have been clearing a path for his successor, Tim Scott, to achieve national prominence.
Does the world need Liz Cheney to become another former Republican member of Congress regularly appearing on CNN or MSNBC, denouncing Donald Trump as a threat to the country? Would the GOP truly benefit from a longshot primary challenge against Trump in 2024, or an independent bid for president? (A three-way race among Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Cheney would just split the anti-Trump vote.) A longshot presidential bid would just turn Liz Cheney into another version of Mark Sanford, Joe Walsh, Bill Weld, or Evan McMullin — a largely ignored gadfly.
Does that get Cheney where she wants to go?
ADDENDUM: Thanks to everyone who has purchased the $.99-cent short story Saving the Devil and preordered Gathering Five Storms. As with the previous thrillers in this series, Between Two Scorpions and Hunting Four Horsemen, these books are only available through Amazon, because that’s part of the deal of being published by Amazon. (Certain bookstores will order it for you if you ask.) If anyone out there wants to discuss non-Amazon publishing options, you know how to reach me. I’ve had some inquiries about audiobook versions, and let’s just say that option is under discussion.
Oh, and if you have Kindle Unlimited, the $9.99 per month subscription option from Amazon, all the books are free.
(I can hear it now: “Jim, how can you be willing to have your novels published by Amazon when Jeff Bezos is a liberal and the root of all evil?” Well, Amazon was willing to publish them and gives authors a much better deal than traditional publishers.)