You probably don’t remember what happened in 1946. I wasn’t there either, but I’ve read up on it.
America was plagued by rampant inflation, and the Republicans, gearing up for the ’46 midterms, blamed it all on Democratic President Harry Truman. Their winning slogan – a darn good one; even then, they knew how to give good message – was tart and succinct: Had Enough?
It didn’t matter that they marketed a blatant lie, that Truman was a prisoner of circumstances beyond any president’s control, that in truth there was a pent-up postwar surge in consumer spending, that the demand for domestic products previously scarce in wartime far outstripped the supply. It was basic capitalism – too much money chasing too few goods – and Truman, thanks to FDR’s demise, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Voter-consumers decided they’d “had enough,” and delivered Congress to the GOP.
You know where I’m going with this.
On the cusp of the ’22 midterm congressional election season, some voters are reportedly blaming high gasoline prices on President Biden, supposedly because he drained supplies by taking the Keystone Pipeline out of service. They apparently don’t know that the Keystone Pipeline, at least check, was roughly eight percent built. Other voters are complaining that gas prices are spiking because Biden has canceled oil drilling on public lands, but that’s wrong too.
It’s appalling how often ignorance reigns, how any dolt with a partisan bent can suddenly decide that he or she is a whiz at economics.
It takes roughly five minutes of research and mental cognition to learn, for instance, that what the Republicans are eagerly calling “Bidenflation” is actually a series of pandemic stresses on the economy. Everybody was stuck at home last year, therefore demand for gasoline was down, therefore OPEC cut production; now people are back in their cars and OPEC production is trying to catch up with surging demand.
Indeed, the higher prices for new cars – key metrics in the Consumer Price Index spike – can be traced to the shortage of computer chips that are routinely shipped from Asia. But shipments of the chips have been erratic because the global supply-chain has been racing to catch up with rebounding consumer demand. As a key financial outlet, the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements, recently explained, “As the global recovery gains traction, demand for raw materials, intermediate inputs and logistical services has outstripped available supply, leading to rising and volatile prices and delivery delays.”
How hard is all that to understand? Apparently too hard, as evidenced by a new CBS News-YouGov poll which says that 67 percent of Americans don’t like how Biden is handling inflation.
In fact – and oh the irony of it all – the current inflation has actually been fed by two positive developments: (1) The global economy, at least in the west, has rebounded faster than many anticipated precisely because of the blessedly swift development and rollout of the Covid vaccines. (2) In America, the surge in consumer demand has been fed in part by the fact that, last spring, President Biden and the congressional Democrats put money into pandemic-stricken citizens’ pockets via the American Rescue Plan. Like, to help people out in time of need. Like, to do what government is supposed to do.
But if history and human nature are any guides, Biden and the Dems will get waxed in the ’22 midterms anyway. When prices go up, voters who lack the time or interest or brains to grasp economic nuances tend instead to blame the party in power – particularly if the party in power is the one that believes in “big government.” That’s the knee-jerk electoral impulse, and it doesn’t matter that a lot of businesses are hiking prices in order to make up for revenue they lost during a pandemic that Biden didn’t cause and that indeed he’s been trying to curb.
Perhaps the economic indicators will improve in less than a year. Perhaps voters would notice. Perhaps Biden’s social safety net bill (passed last Friday by the House) will wind up on his desk, and that its benefits for middle class and blue-collar working folks will offset inflation concerns. And perhaps a grateful electorate will override all the gerrymandered House seats currently being created in Republican-run states.
And perhaps unicorns will gambol down the street where you live.
But hey, whoever said life was fair?
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Meanwhile, here’s the quote of the week (so far). Read to the bottom:
In Washington, one of the insurrectionist goons pleaded guilty for his Jan. 6 vandalism. The presiding federal judge, Republican appointee Reggie Walton, hit him with this: “What concerns me, sir, is that you were gullible enough to come to Washington, D.C., from Florida based on a lie, and the person who inspired you to do what you do is still making those statements, and my concern is that you are gullible enough to do it again…Al Gore (in 2000) had a better case to argue than Mr. Trump, but he was a man about what happened to him. He accepted it and walked away.”