The problem with this claim is that we had a massive economic catastrophe in the final year of Trump’s first presidency and it literally didn’t seem to affect him much at all, and then Biden had a booming economy and people just didn’t seem to notice - ThreadSky

whstancil.bsky.social • 1 day ago

The problem with this claim is that we had a massive economic catastrophe in the final year of Trump’s first presidency and it literally didn’t seem to affect him much at all, and then Biden had a booming economy and people just didn’t seem to notice

Reposted from Urban Land Rent 🚰

Stancil’s idea that nothing matters but media ecosystems is wrong and I think bird flu/ tariffs/ disruption of federal programs will prove it wrong.

People are not mindless automatons. They notice when things get expensive or friends and family can’t find work! They know who the president is!

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jorgejones2024.bsky.social•1 day ago

Covid was treated as "an act of God" so Trump escaped blame for the resultant economic downturn. The pre-covid economy was fine, and voters gave Trump credit. This time he can't escape blame for crashing the economy , he already has his lowest economic approval numbers across both terms

nobutfr.bsky.social•1 day ago

The problem is the administration’s near-explicit compact of shared sacrifice for the goal of finally putting minorities in their place, and that no one knows if there’s a breaking point for that. And unless Nazi Germany was well known for affordable eggs that should be obvious.

rickgigger.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yes.

“They notice when things get expensive”. Correct but who do they blame for it!? People are open to a variety of narratives when deciding the answer to that question.

boarders.bsky.social•1 day ago

Do you have an empirical prediction about what will come from this? You seemed to indicate that you think controlling social media narratives would mean that material constraints don’t matter and that is proving to be very far from the whole story

owenpick.bsky.social•1 day ago

If you think Biden's economy was good, you can't say the COVID economy was a massive catastrophe.

Homeownership up
Lots of people saw their incomes increase with emergency measures
Incredible stock run

ealluia.bsky.social•1 day ago

I did an annualized calculation on the S&P from Feb 2020 to Oct 2020 as our definition for the post-COVID Trump presidency and it was 6.55%, which isn't exactly an incredible run. Of course, within that, there was a terrifying collapse and rally, but public sentiment was relatively resilient.

ealluia.bsky.social•1 day ago

I think that's because the information available did a good job contextualizing and reassuring around the catastrophic collapse, but I think that fact speaks to the power of information to shape attitudes and expectations even when circumstances are in free fall.

owenpick.bsky.social•1 day ago

It always just depends what time frame you randomly choose.

So if I randomly pick March 20th - Nov 5th I can show almost 100% return.

ealluia.bsky.social•1 day ago

I didn't pick a random point, though? I picked the plausible start of the pandemic as far as the US is concerned, right before markets starting getting spooked, and ended right before the election. This was to avoid arbitrary cherry-picking of a volatile market.

owenpick.bsky.social•1 day ago

Your decision of what is and isn't arbitrary is arbitrary.

pandasophist.bsky.social•1 day ago

I mean...he lost the election. He very likely (I would say certainly, but one can never be sure) would have been re-elected but for COVID and the economic crash. It absolutely hurt him.

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

Absolutely without doubt regime media in Venezuela is insisting things are fine and when they’re not fine it’s someone else’s fault.

Also a quarter of the population has fled the country

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

Media is very influential but the idea that it can make literally anyone believe literally anything at any time no matter what else is going on is obviously wrong

nparikh.org•1 day ago

It’s not about literally everyone it’s about key groups of people. You don’t need to convince opponents of Trump that things are shit but those people who may flee come only from those groups

nparikh.org•1 day ago

Which of course makes the media problem even harder because the Trumpers are a larger percentage then. Anyone left in Russia is probably not awesome

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

true! But it’s not like they have robust independent media ecosystems in these godawful dictatorships to get the message out about how bad things are to the people primed to believe it. They hear it from others, notice things in daily life, some samizdat

conjurial.bsky.social•1 day ago

I don’t want to claim everyone is equally likely to sour on a bad government but that people don’t just robotically believe whatever the prevailing media tell them, which I think is what Stancil is saying amounts to

adistantdream.bsky.social•1 day ago

People successfully noticed Trump's terrible economy but correctly determined that it had nothing to do with him because COVID was the elephant in the room. Biden had no such scapegoat besides gesturing at worldwide inflation and honestly I don't recall him even doing that.

iveseenfootage.bsky.social•1 day ago

A lot of people on this site forget we have a representative government. We have all of our collective bargaining power to a few hundred people and now half of them are attacking us and the other half are watching saying "the American people should do something about this" and it's bullshit.

aladdintings.bsky.social•1 day ago

Also, Biden decided to yolo the pandemic and liberals were just like “cool I guess it’s over and everybody just gets mystery illness all the time now”

justinsf1.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yes, a staggering display of economic and policy competence will not be rewarded.

daleratner.bsky.social•23 hours ago

His ratings are starting to go down. Trump’s superpower is that liberals think he is invincible

drizzlers.bsky.social•1 day ago

That’s because as horrible as the pandemic was, the government was throwing money at people left and right and the stock market recovered almost instantly (and then Trump lost btw).

This isn’t gonna just go away this time.

steely-jeff.bsky.social•1 day ago

It actually worse than that. A lot of voters seemed to think that Covid happed during Biden’s term

moreacomment.bsky.social•1 day ago

Actually it’s true that there was an explicit expectation that Covid will go away fast once Biden got in and its persistence through ‘21 hobbled Biden considerably. In fact this persistence might be the key to our current disaster.

steely-jeff.bsky.social•1 day ago

Possibly. But the market crash and all “lockdowns” happed under trump but many people seem to think that happened under Biden.

andros-haldane.bsky.social•1 day ago

[citation very much needed]

eschertv.bsky.social•1 day ago

He lost the election.

kearseymorton.bsky.social•1 day ago

trump lost by 7 million votes, so i am quite sure people noticed something
and last election is the result of Biden hanging on for too long, the absence of dem primaries resulting in an unpopular candidate

redblackhistoryman.bsky.social•1 day ago

People just don’t blame Trump for COVID

suppervillain.bsky.social•1 day ago

MAGA and reactionary centrists will cope with any hardship by claiming having democrats in power would be worse.

bigalincal.bsky.social•1 day ago

I believe the clear majority opinion, according to the "polls" is that Barak Obama was responsible for the 2008 mortgage fiasco, which occured over a month before he was elected. The power of the Big Lie

badgersnmaps.bsky.social•1 day ago

This person is a twit. The average Republican voter will protect their ego and self concept before anything else. Their dogma is that they are responsible, sensible, patriotic, god fearing everymen. Yeah they may hurt but they’ll be given a narrative that protects their self concept and cling to it.

amethystmedicus.bsky.social•1 day ago

Two things:

A deranged legacy media atmosphere pumped propaganda down the entire public's throats - and then Musk bought Twitter.

All of the "Democrat who voted for Trump" buyer's remorse anecdotes paint a picture of an economy that wasn't actually great for normal people.

amethystmedicus.bsky.social•1 day ago

(e.g. the stock market isn't the economy, gig and part-time work aren't good jobs, capping the price of 5 drugs doesn't go nearly far enough, etc)

bike2beer.bsky.social•1 day ago

Trump lost that election

corax42.bsky.social•1 day ago

"People are not mindless automatons"

That claim lost a lot of its persuasive power on November 5th

giffybun.bsky.social•21 hours ago

anunstablegenius.bsky.social•1 day ago

This is why I've always blamed media complicity more than anything else.

Constant doom and gloom over Biden's recovery and refusal to cover his successes, coupled with disproportionate airtime for Trump's lies and ludicrous amounts of sanewashing. Failure to inform got us here.

pjkaz.bsky.social•1 day ago

It’s an interesting argument and counter argument. I think social security checks and tariffs might just be a big enough shock to break through

brewster.bsky.social•1 day ago

people may not be mindless automatons but they’re pretty fucking stupid nonetheless.

bad-butterfly.bsky.social•1 day ago

Can I synthesize these two opinions?

"What's going on matters, but not that much."

mshvan.bsky.social•1 day ago

Hurray for all the corporations who gouged Americans for record profits with full approval and cover (Biden kept blaming Russia) for gouging, price fixing and profiteering. There’s the Economic Miracle®️ you spent a year telling people they were too stupid to grasp https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/11/companies-inflation-price-gouging

mshvan.bsky.social•1 day ago

Booming for companies. Jesus Christ will you ever get off your bullshit?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

grahamiancummins.bsky.social•1 day ago

The economic crash in 2020 is probably all that saved us from a second Trump term then, and that happened even though he did have a somewhat decent excuse (global pandemic, which he mismanaged like mad, but at least didn't cause)

seanmacrae.bsky.social•1 day ago

he is *this* close to understanding that biden’s economy as an incumbent is disproportionately experienced and you need more than gdp and unemployment rate to tell the story (when 25% of people earn poverty wages and inflation burning hotter than normal)

r--d.bsky.social•1 day ago

what about biden's economy was booming? trump oversaw one of the largest wealth transfers after covid in decades, and importantly, this trend continued into biden. working class americans are in objectively worse economic positions than they were under trump, and even less under obama, etc...

bookhouse.bsky.social•1 day ago

The catastrophe you're talking about was downstream of COVID, which had a massive rally-round-the-flag effect for incumbent gov'ts everywhere in 2020 - and the US had among the most generous economic supports worldwide, courtesy of a Democratic Congress. Neither of those things apply here

bookhouse.bsky.social•1 day ago

He won a weak victory based on a demoralized opposition, he turned the government sideways, and now people are scared to fly. Media bubbles and algorithms do a lot, but they don't speak as loud as empty shelves and job loss

cornlover.bsky.social•1 day ago

The media ecosystem is important but it's important to note the timing of inflation. Trump partially got voted out because of COVID and inflation but there was just as much inflation under Biden (even if the economy was booming and wages did keep pace with inflation) that he caught flak too.

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