Republicans don’t actually want you
to remember 4 years ago
Reagan's question does not
reflect poorly on Biden. On the contrary.
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“Are
you better off today than you were four years ago?” Rep. Elise Stefanik asked during a news
conference last week. She answered her own question by saying “the answer is a
resounding no.” Lara Trump, the new co-chair of the Republican National
Committee, said virtually the
same thing to Sean Hannity on Tuesday. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott echoed that
sentiment on Fox News as well, saying, “We have to go back to that future,
2017-2020. We want those four years one more time.”
The
“better off” question become part of our political lexicon after Ronald
Reagan posed it to Jimmy
Carter during their sole 1980 presidential debate. It was effective for Reagan
because Carter’s presidency ended in the middle of a severe recession and a
second year of double-digit inflation. Most people in 1980 had in fact been at
least somewhat better off before Carter’s presidency.
Today,
though, to argue as Republicans are that most people are better off than they
were four years ago requires a bizarre form of political, social, and economic
amnesia. Four years ago, in March 2020, the covid pandemic was rampaging across
the world and country as the president desperately tried to wish it away.
People were getting sick, many were dying, and the economy was shutting down as
a result. It’s not a time to look back on with nostalgia.
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This whole thread is
worst revisiting to remember the bleakness of March 2020. (Souce: twitter)
Republicans
hope voters have cloudy memories. More broadly, they hope people don’t remember
what Trump’s presidency was like. Just to keep a grasp on reality, it’s worth
reminding ourselves just how wretched that year was.
It’s
also important, though, to realize that when they say, “Were you better off
four years ago?” Republicans are not asking for a comparison of Biden and
Trump. They’re asking instead for a referendum on Biden that deliberately
denies and erases who his opponent is.
The
GOP wants to run on negative partisanship and Biden hate alone. To do so they
try to evoke a magical, imaginary past that never happened. That’s, after all,
what the slogan, “Make America Great Again” has always meant.
It
was, in fact, the worst of times
It’s
not much of an exaggeration to say that March 2020 was among the worst months
in the history of the American republic. The Bluesky account “Four Years Ago Today” is
a bleak reminder of the fear, panic, and despair of that time.
On
March 11 — exactly four years ago this past Monday — two NBA players tested
positive for covid and the season was suspended. Tom Hanks and his wife were
hospitalized. The next day, March 12, airports were in chaos as crowds rushed
to try to get home before the travel ban; unmasked travelers from across the
globe were crammed together in airport corridors, a perfect scenario for the
spread of plague. The Dow fell 10 percent, its worst drop in 33 years. By March
24, 16 states had closed their
schools. But New York schools were still open, even though the city had already hit
15,597 cases and 192 deaths.
Things
only got worse as the year dragged on. In April, as terror of infection spread
and businesses and schools shut down, unemployment skyrocketed to 14.8
percent, the worst number recorded since data collection began in 1948. By
year’s end, 351,000 Americans had died of covid,
boosting overall death rates from 715 per 100,000 in 2019 to 835 per 100,000 in
2020. Life expectancy dropped 1.8 years.
Donald
Trump, as president, famously did little to fight the
pandemic and much to make it worse. Before the crisis started, Trump had
radically cut funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then
the administration was slow to ramp up testing and dragged its feet on
stockpiling PPE. Trump refused to subsidize state and local governments, which
could have kept employees on the payroll and substantially reduced unemployment
and hardship. The Paycheck Protection Program was poorly run and funneled money
to larger companies rather than to the small businesses it was supposed to
help.
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Remember when Trump
thought testing was the problem? (Source: twitter)
And of
course Trump increased chaos by pushing quack covid
cures like hydroxychloroquine and musing during a nationally televised news
conference about people injecting bleach.
He also mocked wearing
masks — and his refusal to take proper measures to avoid infection
probably contributed to his
own serious hospitalization with covid in October.
Of
course, covid continued to be a serious health threat in Biden’s presidency; it
remained at crisis level through 2022. However, vaccinations and better
treatments led to a precipitous decline in
mortality in 2023.
In
addition, thanks to substantial stimulus spending, Biden managed to usher in a
remarkable economic recovery. Unemployment has been under 4 percent for
two years, the longest stretch in a half a century. Inflation, after a spike
early in Biden’s presidency, is now largely under control, and as a
result wages are outpacing inflation. In
four years, we’ve gone from one of the worst economies in US history under
Trump to one of the best under Biden.
It
wasn’t just covid
Covid
poisoned everything in the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. But even if
you could somehow bracket the pandemic, there are plenty of reasons not to look
back on 2020 with longing.
During
Trump’s entire presidency, the United States was at war; there were 45 US combat deaths in
Afghanistan under Trump’s tenure. Trump rolled back rules limiting airstrikes
in Afghanistan, and as a result civilian casualties during his presidency increased by 330
percent. Airstrikes killed some 700 civilians in Afghanistan in 2019, more than
any year since 2002.
Trump
also ramped up the drone war and removed almost all checks and accountability
from the program. In the first half of 2020, the US launched 40 drone
airstrikes just in Somalia. That was only one less than Presidents Bush and
Obama flew in Somalia from 2007 to 2016.
In
contrast, Biden ended the war in Afghanistan. That withdrawal was messy, and
Biden was much criticized for
its failures. But the fact remains that US forces are not currently at war in
the country, which means US troops are not dying there, and we are not killing
civilians. Biden also virtually ended the drone war
early in his presidency.
Back
at home, 2020 was the year police in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd,
sparking nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. In response,
Trump told police and
military leaders that they should “beat the fuck out” of protesters and
encouraged authorities to “just shoot them.” In line with those sentiments,
National Guard troops tear-gassed protesters
in DC’s Lafayette Square while Trump staged a photo-op at a nearby church.
Republicans
want to make 2024 a referendum on Biden
None
of this is to say that everything is perfect in the United States in 2024.
Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court picks, the United States gutted abortion rights
in 2022, with devastating results for
maternal mortality and women’s health. The GOP has launched escalating and
terrifying attacks on trans people’s rights and health care. Russia invaded
Ukraine in 2022, and the war has dragged on as US political gridlock hinders military
aid to Ukraine.
Most
recently, Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and
taking 240 hostages. Israel retaliated with an indiscriminate bombing campaign,
turning most of Gaza into a ruin and killing a horrific 30,000 people,
including more than 12,300 children. Humanitarian agencies have charged Israel with
numerous war crimes, but Biden has so far refused to place conditions on
military aid to the country.
Biden
isn’t responsible for all of these crises. But he’s president, so people look
to him for leadership and will blame him when there are troubles at home and
abroad. That’s why, when an election is a referendum on the incumbent, the
incumbent often struggles. People are almost always (rightly!) angry about many
problems in the country, and if the election is a question of whether they are
angry, they’ll often vote against the guy in charge.
Trump
and his minions want the election to be a referendum rather than a choice
between Biden and Trump. That’s, contradictorily, why they keep assuring people
they were better four years ago even as they carefully avoid mentioning
anything that was actually happening back then.
“Are
you better now?” isn’t a call for people to think about Trump vs. Biden. It’s
meant to get people to just think vaguely that Biden is bad, while looking back
to a mythical pre-Biden Eden, when America was great in a nonspecific,
generalized way.
The
GOP’s messaging also reflects the huge partisan bias among Republicans when it
comes to evaluating the economy. Democrats and Republicans both tend to see the
economy as better when their president is in power. But the partisan bias is a
full 2.5 times greater for Republicans.
That
means that when you ask Republicans if they were better off four years ago
under Trump, they’ll almost always say “yes” because their evaluation of the
economy is skewed based on whether or not their guy is in office. Reagan used
“Are you better off four years ago?” as a way to appeal to undecided voters.
Republicans are mostly using it to appeal to their base.