Tom Bonier, The Red Wave Mirage, and Where We Are Now

*Published with the generous permission of Simon Rosenberg. Read more of his important work on his Hopium substack.

By Simon Rosenberg

Tom Bonier and I sat down and talked polls, elections, data. For anyone wanting to do a deep dive on US politics it’s a great hour. Hope you enjoy it.

Here’s a link to some of the data and analyses we discuss. The bottom line on it all - since the spring of 2022 Dems keep overperforming in elections. Republicans awfulness and extremism has created an historic opportunity for us to expand and grow, and take demographic and geographic real estate away from them which is now available to us - or as I call it, get to 55 - as we’ve been doing in elections across the US this year.

Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. The Democratic Party is strong and keeps winning elections across the US. And they have Trump, MAGA, Dobbs, corruption, insurrection and treason. In every way imaginable we would much rather be us than them as we head into 2024.

Some Economic Data To Chew On - In the talk with Tom we discussed the need to go deeper on data than our commentators often do. I’ve written about how we need to rethink how we poll and talk about the economy. Let me show you what I mean with some data I pulled this morning from this weeks’ YouGov/Economist poll. All results are from registered voters.

Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the way things are going in your life today? Satisfied 64%, Dissatisfied 35%

How happy would you say you are with your current job? Great deal/somewhat 80%, A little/not at all 19%.

Do you think your family income will increase or decrease in 2024? Increase 45%, stay the same 41%, decrease 15%.

Do you consider yourself paid fairly or underpaid in your job? Paid fairly 56%, Underpaid 38%.

So, not big angry, or dissatisfaction with life, work, income, and not an expectation that things will get worse next year. It’s consistent with this data I’ve been sharing in recent months showing that last year despite it all we had the highest job satisfaction ever recorded in one influential survey:

But look at what happens when you ask questions about the overall economy:

Do you think the economy is shrinking or growing? Growing 22%, staying the same 25%, shrinking 37%.The economy has grown at 3% on average under Biden, the highest for any President since Clinton.

How would you describe the current state of the American economy? Excellent/good 30%, fair/poor 64%. Strongest recovery in G7, fastest job growth perhaps ever, very strong GDP growth, inflation is way down, wage growth is very strong, deficit is way down from Trump…..
Are the number of jobs in the United States…. Increasing 42%, staying the same 36%, decreasing 22%. Under Biden 14m new jobs have been created, and we’ve had the fastest job growth rate of any President since WWII.

So only 22% know the economy is growing, 58% don’t know jobs are increasing, and 64% think the economy is fair/poor. Ugh.

How do we reconcile this data with both reality, and the far happier data above? It’s not easy to reconcile it, which is why I think we need a big rethink in how we look at and discuss the economy and our lives together. Things are better here than we understand, and we have to have the courage to say it, loudly, again and again and drive out the voices of pessimism, doubt and fear - MAGA.

Keep working hard all - Simon