- Joined
- Mar 17, 2007
- Messages
- 9,311
To a fair extent, the best way to make someone unpopular is often to elect them. It's awfully hard for someone to deliver on most of their campaign promises, even when they make a genuine attempt to do so. And voters tend to eventually want change.
If doing your job well were enough, you'd think Winston Churchill would have won the election in the summer of 1945, just after defeating the Germans in WWII. But he lost. The next election cycle, the voters tired of Labor, and voted Churchill back in.
And if you aren't good at your job, it becomes increasingly more difficult to blame your predecessors the longer you are in office. Putin can't very well blame Yeltsin or the collapse of the USSR for Russia's economic challenges anymore - though he could when he was new in office.
Trump, Bolsonaro, BoJo, and Erdogan are all fairly reliably not good at their jobs; I'd order them as I did worst-to-least-worst. Morrison, I don't know, at least from across the ocean he seems somewhat competent. He at least is better at listening to his scientific advisors than Trump and Bolsonaro.
On the other hand, if you are good enough at your job and can do your PR well, being in office can perpetuate itself. Look at FDR, and the Democratic Party in general from 1933 to the 1960s. Hoover and the Republicans obviously failed to resolve the Great Depression, FDR and the Democrats got elected and started making major changes right away, the electorate say progress, and gave the Democrats a larger majority in 1934 than in 1932. For the next several decades, the Democratic Party was predominant across the U.S., and in most parts of the U.S. Even when Eisenhower became president, he was a moderate Republican, who campaigned on foreign policy, and who continued to make significant government investments domestically, like FDR Democrats and unlike Hoover Republicans.
I don't think any campaign manager is going to recommend intentionally losing so the public can see just how bad the other guy is, but displaying incompetence can encourage the public to vote you out of office.
On a long enough timeline, you'll end up with an authoritarian regime with Trump. Possibly by the end of 2023, had he won in 2020. We'll find out if American democracy survives long term, but it at least has a fighting chance thanks to Biden winning.
As for climate change, more than diddly-squat has happened. The Infrastructure Bill includes $65 billion for clean energy and electric grid improvements (which are an important and historically underfunded part of being able to generate clean energy where there is lots of wind or sun but few people, and transport it to where the demand is). $7.5 billion for electric car charging stations, which should boost electric car uptake. Tens of billions more for climate resilience.
Meanwhile, last week the EPA boosted fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks to 55 mpg by 2026. The light truck part being quite important. Admittedly it's not that much of a boost over what Obama planned, but it should go a long way towards encouraging auto manufacturers to make electric cars or at least hybrids.
There's a lot more to be done, not least passing the Build Back Better Act, which will have more resources for fighting climate change. But with a 4-vote margin in the House and a 0-vote margin in the Senate, Biden's done more than diddly-squat.
The resistance from Manchin and Sinema in the Senate is problematic, but at the same time, Biden got infrastructure done despite 6 members of his own party voting against it in the House, and the House letting it sit idle for months trying to get 218 Democrats to sign off on it. Which never happened; only 216 Democrats voted for it. It's frustrating there hasn't been more done yet, but it's a very thin needle to thread. And Manchin has expressed one of his main concerns being that the Build Back Better Bill is funding a lot of things for a short time, preferring fewer things for a long time. That would require picking and choosing which items to fund, but doesn't mean it's dead. It just means Democratic leadership is going to have to make some tough choices in the new year and decide what's really a priority, and what can wait. A dilemma that businesses run into all the time, and being able to make good decisions in those cases and not just pretend everything is a priority often separates the successful businesses from the unsuccessful or less successful ones.
If they can do that, and if they can message the campaign around infrastructure + BBB (I agree that "the other guy is really bad" is a bad campaign strategy, that only really works when the other guy is extremely bad), the Democrats might have a chance in the midterm. But they have to be able to say, "We did a decent amount even with super thin majorities, imagine what we can do when we don't have to get all 50 Senators in agreement, and don't occasionally need GOP votes in the House."
If doing your job well were enough, you'd think Winston Churchill would have won the election in the summer of 1945, just after defeating the Germans in WWII. But he lost. The next election cycle, the voters tired of Labor, and voted Churchill back in.
And if you aren't good at your job, it becomes increasingly more difficult to blame your predecessors the longer you are in office. Putin can't very well blame Yeltsin or the collapse of the USSR for Russia's economic challenges anymore - though he could when he was new in office.
Trump, Bolsonaro, BoJo, and Erdogan are all fairly reliably not good at their jobs; I'd order them as I did worst-to-least-worst. Morrison, I don't know, at least from across the ocean he seems somewhat competent. He at least is better at listening to his scientific advisors than Trump and Bolsonaro.
On the other hand, if you are good enough at your job and can do your PR well, being in office can perpetuate itself. Look at FDR, and the Democratic Party in general from 1933 to the 1960s. Hoover and the Republicans obviously failed to resolve the Great Depression, FDR and the Democrats got elected and started making major changes right away, the electorate say progress, and gave the Democrats a larger majority in 1934 than in 1932. For the next several decades, the Democratic Party was predominant across the U.S., and in most parts of the U.S. Even when Eisenhower became president, he was a moderate Republican, who campaigned on foreign policy, and who continued to make significant government investments domestically, like FDR Democrats and unlike Hoover Republicans.
I don't think any campaign manager is going to recommend intentionally losing so the public can see just how bad the other guy is, but displaying incompetence can encourage the public to vote you out of office.
Narz said:
On a long enough timeline, you'll end up with an authoritarian regime with Trump. Possibly by the end of 2023, had he won in 2020. We'll find out if American democracy survives long term, but it at least has a fighting chance thanks to Biden winning.
As for climate change, more than diddly-squat has happened. The Infrastructure Bill includes $65 billion for clean energy and electric grid improvements (which are an important and historically underfunded part of being able to generate clean energy where there is lots of wind or sun but few people, and transport it to where the demand is). $7.5 billion for electric car charging stations, which should boost electric car uptake. Tens of billions more for climate resilience.
Meanwhile, last week the EPA boosted fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks to 55 mpg by 2026. The light truck part being quite important. Admittedly it's not that much of a boost over what Obama planned, but it should go a long way towards encouraging auto manufacturers to make electric cars or at least hybrids.
There's a lot more to be done, not least passing the Build Back Better Act, which will have more resources for fighting climate change. But with a 4-vote margin in the House and a 0-vote margin in the Senate, Biden's done more than diddly-squat.
The resistance from Manchin and Sinema in the Senate is problematic, but at the same time, Biden got infrastructure done despite 6 members of his own party voting against it in the House, and the House letting it sit idle for months trying to get 218 Democrats to sign off on it. Which never happened; only 216 Democrats voted for it. It's frustrating there hasn't been more done yet, but it's a very thin needle to thread. And Manchin has expressed one of his main concerns being that the Build Back Better Bill is funding a lot of things for a short time, preferring fewer things for a long time. That would require picking and choosing which items to fund, but doesn't mean it's dead. It just means Democratic leadership is going to have to make some tough choices in the new year and decide what's really a priority, and what can wait. A dilemma that businesses run into all the time, and being able to make good decisions in those cases and not just pretend everything is a priority often separates the successful businesses from the unsuccessful or less successful ones.
If they can do that, and if they can message the campaign around infrastructure + BBB (I agree that "the other guy is really bad" is a bad campaign strategy, that only really works when the other guy is extremely bad), the Democrats might have a chance in the midterm. But they have to be able to say, "We did a decent amount even with super thin majorities, imagine what we can do when we don't have to get all 50 Senators in agreement, and don't occasionally need GOP votes in the House."
