The Biden Campaign Has a Trump-Fatigue Problem (nymag.com)

submitted 5 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Joe Biden’s campaign is facing a strategic dilemma. Since the president’s job-approval ratings have been consistently low, his path to reelection depends on making 2024 a comparative choice between himself and Donald Trump, his scary, extremist predecessor. That task is becoming more urgent as evidence emerges that a sizable number of voters either don’t remember or misremember the four turbulent years of the Trump administration. But paradoxically, educating voters about the potential consequences of a Biden defeat could annoy and alienate them by pushing Trump fatigue to new heights.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] return2ozma@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

@mozz@mbin.grits.dev thoughts on this article? I know a lot of people really do have Trump fatigue and no longer pay attention when the news talks about him.

[-] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 28 points 5 months ago

I read the first little bit. My thoughts are that it would be nice if the article painted this whole issue as a media issue instead of a what-Biden-should-do-better issue. It’s not like they’re wrong in anything they’re saying, but leaving out the WHY aspect of how the average voter is so badly misinformed, leaving room for the reader to conclude that Biden’s campaign just isn’t doing a good job in an otherwise neutral situation, seems like a notable omission.

[-] return2ozma@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Is the Biden campaign doing itself a disservice by mostly running on "but Trump"?

[-] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I watched most of his speech to the NAACP, after verifying that you were right about him saying he was VP during Covid and it was just as bad as it sounded. He did mention the fact that Trump would be an objective catastrophe and that’s relevant, but I think people already know that; he actually spent most of the speech talking about what he’s done, which I think an overwhelming majority have no idea about beyond a handful of anecdotes. It’s actually so out of line with the popular perception that when he talks about his record (a lot of the same stuff I keep talking about here), it sounds weird and outlandish and comical because a lot of people just have never even heard of it before.

I actually don’t think his campaign is depending mostly on “but Trump,” although I haven’t kept close tabs on it. Are you sure you’re not engaged in an effort to shift the blame for his poor performance onto some tactical failures in his camp whether real or imagined, as opposed to the news media which is overwhelmingly lazy and irresponsible at best, and at worst actively working to undermine him at every turn?

[+] return2ozma@lemmy.world -10 points 5 months ago

Whenever Biden or his team talks about the economy doing great, voters get confused because they're not doing so great financially. Then Dem defenders tell them "the economy actually IS doing great so suck it up and vote Biden or you'll get trump." Not really a win for voter outreach.

[-] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 17 points 5 months ago

So there’s a really interesting thing that happens with those polls.

If you ask people how the country’s economy is doing, they say it is in the toilet. But, if you ask them how their state is doing compared to that national average, they say it’s well above average.

There are a few different ways to interpret that, but one obvious one is that the situation they can directly observe isn’t as grim as what they see on the news, and so they assume that something weird happened, and the country is terrible (because they trust the news, or memes, or their friends’ Facebook posts, or whatever gives them their information) — BUT that they don’t see it reflected firsthand, because their environment is beating the average.

There are other interpretations of course. It’s impossible to really say. And that is the problem with trying to use indirect qualitative measures to sort out how the economy is doing; you can always (as you did) reframe it into some un-falsifiable emotion based construction that leads only to one inevitable conclusion (things are bad and it’s all Biden’s fault and if you try to tell me numbers for why it’s not, then that makes it his fault even harder). But, I would still assert that measuring the numbers actually is a good way to see what’s happening.

[-] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de -1 points 5 months ago

That makes "Trump worse" sound like a "dem defender" problem and not a Biden team problem then.

this post was submitted on 21 May 2024

54 points (82.9% liked)

politics

19132 readers

3952 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News