What Is “Real”? (The Secret Podcast PREVIEW)

Hey there. It’s j v l. On the Secret Show with Sarah Longwell today, we talked about the weird disconnect between the vibes about the economy and the actual real state of the economy. Here’s the show. So did you like it?

So I saw the headline.

Mhmm.

It’s the economy stupid. I wanna say to stupid people.

I want to tell the stupid people that it’s the economy stupid.

Okay. And I said, angry do I want to get at Jamie out tonight? And I decided not that angry, it was not that kind of day. And so I skipped it, but I would love for you to tell me about it now. But I did.

But I I still clocked it. It still like went into I I I don’t even need to read it. I know what you said. But so we did a focus group last night where I asked a lot of two time Trump voters about how they were feeling about the state of things to try to get at this like disconnect. So, You tell me about your triad and then I’m I’m gonna tell you about the folks group.

Okay. So we got our inflation numbers this week, and inflation can continues to decline. It’s been declining since May of twenty twenty two. We are now at for the second month in a row, the lowest rate in a year no. I’m sorry.

The lowest rate in two years. We are getting very close to the inflation rate of twenty twenty. And twenty nineteen back when the economy was so great. The Dow Industrial Average is right around thirty five thousand. People love seeing their four zero one k’s doing well.

This is seven thousand points higher than it was on election day in twenty twenty, and in fact, higher than it was through much of Donald Trump’s presidency. The unemployment rate still incredibly low. Impl unemployment is great. In fact, Unemployment is lower than it was through much of Donald Trump’s presidency. Essentially, things great.

Let me let me read to you a little little bit from from Eric Levitz at New York magazine. Thanks to the abundance of employment opportunities, lower income workers have recovered roughly twenty five percent of increase in wage inequality that accrued during Ronald Reagan’s election from I’m sorry, accrued between Reagan’s election and Joe Biden’s A gallon of gas costs roughly thirty percent less than it did a year ago. One popular gauge of the economy’s strength is the misery index which simply adds together the unemployment and inflation rates. That index is lower now than it’s been during eighty three percent of all months since nineteen seventy eight. Manufacturing plant construction has doubled since the end of twenty twenty one, foreign leaders are fuming as the president’s subsidies, persuade overseas firms to shift production to the United States, At the same time, the president’s policies have lowered prescription drug costs for seniors and health insurance premiums for those who purchase coverage over the individual.

Market. Things are going okay. And as I as I tried to lay out, we have this weird dichotomy where people seem to say, the economy was great under Trump. Now my understanding of the American people is that they are not sophisticated and that they are a what have you done for me lately kind of people. Right?

They they they remember the last thing you did and they don’t care if it was really your fault or not your fault. They care about results. Would you say this is a fair way of characterizing the American

people? Yeah. I think they care about their personal experience. Sure.

Sure. With Trump, they discount the last thing they saw from him, which was the horror show of twenty twenty. And they have a very sophisticated understanding of why the twenty twenty economic economy was a horror show. And it was simply because there was this exhaust event and they don’t blame Donald Trump for it. And they believe that the real economy was everything that happened from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen.

On the other hand, we have Joe Biden. And with Joe Biden, the real economy right now is is very good. The real economy is his first year. Of twenty twenty one was excellent. We did have a rough twenty twenty two, which is when inflation took off.

But that is now under control. And even when inflation took off, it never got terribly bad. What we did was we saw a cost of living sort of outpacing wage growth a little bit. But for Joe Biden, they look at it and they say, the real Joe Biden economy was that thing that happened last year. It’s not what’s happening now.

And and I I don’t know why it happened. I don’t know where inflation came from. Couldn’t have come from supply chain dislocations of know, a global campaign there. But we blame Joe Biden for it, and that’s the Biden. And so they’re they’re comparing not the economy now, but the economy of twenty twenty two under Biden with the economy of twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen for Trump, and I don’t understand it.

Okay. Can I read you a few of the quotes from the focus group last night?

Oh my god. Yes. Should I mute myself? So that you can only see my horror, horrified expression?

I can’t wait I can’t wait to read these to you.

Oh my god. Okay.

When Trump was president, we used to be able to buy food, and like meat. I mean, we’re living I love this quote. I mean, we’re living like vegetarians now or we can barely afford anything anymore. Here’s the thing, I am not laughing about Because I just I think it’s really funny that they’re living like vegetarians. I don’t think I don’t think that’s probably the case.

But, anyway, sorry, I’m gonna read this again. This is an Iowa voter. When Trump was president, we used to be able to buy food and like meat. I mean, we’re living like vegetarians now, we can barely afford anything anymore. Port prices in CAL is another Iowa voter.

Pork prices in California will rise twenty five percent next year. If not over the whole United States because of what they’re forcing us to do, how they’re dictating, we raise our livestock. Inflation is crazy. I mean, this is a voter from New Hampshire. Inflation is crazy.

I mean, my electric bill is three hundred my electric bill is three hundred and seventy five dollars last month, and I haven’t even didn’t even run the ACs, like hardly at all. And this is when we just asked, we just broadly, how are things going in the country? And when we ask that question, I talk to you about this a lot, especially among two time Trump voters, there’s a fair amount of Like, people do not think things are going well. And there’s, like, we’re living like vegetarians now, that is, there’s a catastrophizing around the economy. And I’m, I never, I sort of didn’t mean to laugh, I just think like we’re we’re all living like vegetarians now.

It’s like a funny thing to say. But like, if if If this, if people feel like they can’t buy meat, there’s another person in the group. This quote’s not in here, but they said something like, I wanna go visit my friend, like, in the next town over, but I can’t because of gas prices. So, just hold on a second. Now, just stop your face.

I see your face. Yeah. I know. The the voters, there’s I think there’s two things going So, I agree with you a little bit, in the sense that I think there is a partisan psychology to the economy now, right, where people have spent such a long time catastrophizing about Joe Biden, like, one of the thing what people take for granted in a focus group with a bunch of other Republican voters is the idea that Joe Biden has been a catastrophically bad president. Like, they all just say, well, obviously, like, Joe Biden, this has been a disaster Like he’s been a disaster president.

And that is, that’s sort of a Republican triangle of doom stuff, right? Like, all the right wing media outlets take it for granted. Joe Biden has dementia. Joe Biden’s been a catastrophic president. Look how terrible things are.

Look how bad inflation is. You can hear it in the Republican candidates that are running. They sort of echo this. Like, can you believe economy, how terrible it is. Can I

can I ask you a question?

Uh-huh.

What do you think the response of these people would be, if you asked them, has Joe Biden been worse than Barack Obama? Do you think they would say because here’s what I would be interested in knowing. I would say I’d

say that they’d say yes.

Follow-up questions. Has Biden been worse than Obama? And then has Biden been worse than Clinton? Because I would be interested to say, to see where they would place Biden in the continuum of terrible Democratic presidents who were threats to America. Well, I’ll

tell you something interesting. Thing. When you do the non college two time Trump voters, the chances that there is an Obama voter in the group is pretty high. In the last Iowa one I did when I was out in Iowa doing them, there was an Obama voter. You know, I think there is a fair number.

And another thing, this is now just broadly speaking about the groups. One of the things we’ve been asking is like, do you feel like you’ve gotten more or less conservative about acknowledging that the word conservative has lost all meaning to people like you and me, but to them, like people say more. And like, they recognized that they have changed to feel more, they would call it conservative, but what they mean is like more anti democrat, right, more

—

Yeah. — more conviction on the things.

They hate dens more.

Yeah, and also establishment Republicans. Yeah. And people who who compromise I will ask that. I’d be interested to I bet they would say Joe Biden’s way Like, I bet they would say things like, well, at least Obama, like, his brain was there, you know, or something. Like, I didn’t agree with him.

I I their feelings about Joe Biden. Like, the media environment’s so much more intense around how important it is to say that Joe Biden, is an extremely bad president. So that is, so I think there’s two things going on. So one, I think that genuinely genuinely for voters when it comes to the economy, the voters are going to be a lagging indicator as the economy approves. Right?

They are still I was just talking to somebody, this is just like a friend of mine. I might have mentioned I might have already said this but he was like, my rent went up six percent, like, because of inflation. Right? So people are still he’s renewing his lease, is right one up six percent. It’s a steep increase.

It’s been going up steadily, and now he’s like, I’m paying, you know, twenty five hundred dollars for you know, what I assume is like a one bedroom somewhere. And so I think that there’s I think that there’s real And and and also I think like, it’s one thing if you you can pick out. You can cherry pick indicators. But I think people’s grocery bills are still And I also think, somebody made this point in an article I read recently about how the pandemic like warped our perceptions of so many things. Right?

Because we spent so much less and people were being given free money, and like you weren’t spending, you weren’t driving and seeing people as much, whatever. And so like, everything costs now quite a bit more than it did for a couple years, and I think that that just shifted people’s impressions. So I think there’s a fair amount of going on. And so, I think that it’s important not to dismiss the real cost that people are facing and the way that they are experiencing the inflationary economy, and that they won’t experience the cooling of that for like a period of time, right? They’ll be a lagging indicator.

So, I think on that front, I don’t think they’re stupid. I think they are experiencing not macroenvironment. That’s one. On the flip side is the other thing though I was talking about where I do think that there is a partisan psychology now around the economy, where Democratic voters are much more willing to be like, but things are good, Look at these indicators, inflation’s coming down, at least from Democrat elites, people who are writing for newspapers. I think for Republicans, like there’s not the tribal nature is like, they’re gonna cherry pick the bad news for as long as they can.

Right? I do think that there is probably some element of we’re not giving Joe Biden an inch on the idea that things are good. Like, and this is where I have some I think that Joe Biden and the Democrats need to take these macro factors, and I think they need to shout them from, I think that they actually, I think the Democrats tend to be a little too, What would it be like? Forgiving of the of of what I talk about with the voters where it’s like, they’re still experiencing sort of real pain. And so they don’t wanna say that things are good because people are still having a hard time.

But like Donald Trump didn’t care how any individual was experiencing the economy. He went out there and said, best economy for black people, best economy for women, buddy. How’s your four zero one k doing? And I think the Democrats need a little bit more of that, because I do think that there’s an overall psychology around the economy. Like, people when we talked about the recession a time, even though we never went into it, for real, the talking about it, like half the country believes we’re in a recession.

And so I think that saying to people like, we never went into a recession. And like, don’t talk about the inflation or use language people can understand like, we never went into a recession. We’re like, economy is growing, manufacturing is growing.

Price of meter down. Right? I mean, this is yeah. Take through all of the things?

I think that that has got to become much more they’ve got to get surrogates out there talking about that left and right.

Boy. You

don’t count as a surrogate.

I I guess. I mean, I’m not a surrogate. I just I just don’t understand people. Explain to me the Trump thing then. So here’s okay.

If I if I was a Republican voter whose lived experience of the world was that things were just still too terribly hard for me. And I needed a handout from the government. I needed the government to make my life better because I am capable of, you know, pulling myself up by my bootstraps. If I was that sort of a Republican, Why would I say that Donald Trump’s economy was great? When again, the last year of that was a harsher, why would I not instead be interested in a fresh face.

Like, we gotta give this Tim Scott a try. We gotta give Ron DeSantis a try. This is do you see what I’m saying? Like, the the weird, reflective, like, oh, don’t count the twenty five percent of of Trump’s tenure at the end that was bad because that wasn’t his fault. Why not go to things are so bad.

Things were bad in twenty twenty. They’re tear they’re even worse now and we need a fresh face like a Ron DeSantis or a Glen Youngen or some

Okay, I can answer this. It’s because people saw the pandemic as an anomaly outside of Trump’s control, and that especially Republican voters, especially now when they remember the pandemic, the way that they view it is all the ways that not Donald Trump screwed it up, but all the way, Democrats, the health community, that they made it much harder on all of us than it had to be. Right? That’s the and you This is like very much in the water. You can read it.

That is how Republicans have experienced it. And I do think part of it too is like Democrats, now, fair enough, we were talking to Jen Saki, oh,

You can say it. You can say it. You can say it. We were

doctor Jenasaki for the Sunday show, and Tim, one of his rapid fire questions was like, what were Republicans right about? And one of the things that she said was that, like, schools were closed for too long, and like stuff was shut down for too long. And, so, like, there’s that is why I think people do not blame Trump for the economy. What they remember, because Trump was so good at sticking to that communication strategy is that the economy was good, how good it was prior?

I have another question for you. Okay. So you can ask Jamasaki what were the Republicans right about, and she’ll give you an answer. What happens if you ask Republicans? What were the Democrats right about in the pandemic?

Yeah. I don’t think they would give give a lot of credit.

Why is the again, and this this gets

to that fundamental What word democrats write about? What would how would you answer that?

Almost everything, the the need to the need to close down a bunch of stuff. The need to have masking mandates in many situations, not all of them, but in many situations. The desire to push the rollout of vaccines as quickly as possible and to try to push people into getting vaccines as quickly as possible. Now these are not, like, democrat things. These are because again, the Democrats weren’t in power.

Right. These are, like, medical community things. But we now all associate medical community things with Democrats.

That’s true.

And it is amazing to me. Again, the fundamental asymmetry is that you can talk to Democrats, and they’ll say, yeah, you know, the Republicans are right about this or that. But and you talk to a Republican, like, Democrats have been wrong about everything for all the history of all time, and they’re the worst people ever and they’re evil and blah blah blah. And I don’t understand how we I don’t understand why that asymmetry exists. I have theories, but I don’t I don’t know for sure.

What’s your theory?

Hey again, it’s j v l. The conversation goes on from there. If you want to hear the rest of the show, head on over to the Bulwark dot com and subscribe. We’d love to have you.