SATURDAY: Are we locked in a type of tribal denial?

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2024

Only time will tell: In private, is President Biden "perfectly lucid, with a good grasp of events?" 

Beyond that, does the president exercise good judgment concerning major policy matters?

In this brief post, Paul Krugman answers those questions in the affirmative, based upon an hour-long conversation with President Biden last August. 

We know of no reason to doubt what Krugman says about his conversation with the president. That said, we've been asking a different question at this site. The question we've asked has been this:

Will Candidate Biden be able to campaign, with vigor and clarity, on his own behalf?

Rightly or wrongly, we see no sign that Candidate Biden will be able to do that. In our view, Thursday night's press event only drove that point further home.

This brings us to what President Roosevelt said he saw when he looked out at the nation. "Here is the challenge to our democracy," he said in January 1937, in his second inaugural address: 

Here is the challenge to our democracy.

In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

[...]

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished...

Everywhere that president looked, he saw "one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." In his view, that was the challenge to our democracy at that point in time.

That's what Franklin D. Roosevelt saw. Everywhere we look today, we see roughly that same percentage of the population trapped in something which looks to us, perhaps mistakenly, as a form of wishful thinking / denial.

Friend, did it look to you, on Thursday night, like President Biden will be able to drive a vigorous campaign? We can only remind you of this:

This very week, two days before that press event, a new NBC News survey emerged with these dispiriting results:

Biden’s age and fitness top the list of voters’ concerns, poll finds

Three-quarters of voters, including half of Democrats, say they have concerns about President Joe Biden’s mental and physical health, according to the latest national NBC News poll.

That compares with...less than half of voters who have concerns about [Trump's] mental and physical health.

More precisely, 76% of respondents voiced that concern with respect to Biden's mental and physical health, as opposed to 48% of respondents with respect to Trump. 

(Back in mid-January, similar numbers emerged from this survey by ABC News.)

That NBC News survey question is somewhat imprecise. That said, the Fox News Channel doesn't reach that many voters, and it certainly doesn't reach that many Democrats. 

Many respondents seemed to think they'd seen some point of concern in the case of President Biden. Dating to his first speech in Lanai last August. we count ourselves inside that camp. 

Other people can't seem to see any such thing. In the end, there's no way to say who is "right," but those survey numbers continue to speak loudly all by themselves.

Everywhere we look today, we think we might be looking at a type of group denial. Examples:

At this site, a favorite blogger links to a tweet by Josh Marshall and complains about the treatment of the Thursday night event in the online New York Times. The print edition of Friday's Times is said to have made more sense.

Fellow citizens, please! The event in question took place at 8 p.m. Thursday night. It's surprising that the event got reported in the next day's print editions at all, let alone above the fold on the New York Times front page, which is where it landed.

The second layout, from the online Times, is timestamped 9 o'clock Friday morning. By then, the topic had gone thoroughly viral. It's hardly surprising that the Times was now providing substantial coverage.

There's nothing to see with President Biden! The New York Times is being unfair! Is that perhaps the way it goes when a poorly functioning political tribe may begin to smell defeat in the air?

Our tribe continues to praise the Goldilocks Biden economy. Then, we wonder why the others aren't as thrilled with it as we are. 

That approach conveys pleasure, and seems to make sense, until you watch the PBS NewsHour and encounter a report like this one from Thursday night:

Half of American renters pay more than 30% of income on housing, study shows

Rental prices are unaffordable for a record number of Americans with half of all renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Stephanie Sy reached out to renters across the country to hear how these soaring prices are impacting their lives and discussed their issues with Whitney Airgood-Obrycki. 

In our view, the report is more sobering than that synopsis suggests—and it seems to suggest why a lot of good, decent people are possibly less than thrilled with the economy our blue tribe's tribunes praise.

For a news report in the Washington Post about that same Harvard study, you can just click this. The report appeared three weeks ago, then rapidly disappeared:

Rent has never been less affordable, especially for the middle class

Rent has never been less affordable—for tenants with high and low incomes alike—even while costs for new leases are finally cooling off.

Half of American renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs—a key benchmark for affordability—with the financial strain rising the fastest for middle-class tenants. That’s according to a new report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, which found that the number of such renters, considered to be “cost-burdened,” hit a record 22.4 million in 2022—up 2 million from just three years before. And of those households, 12.1 million had housing costs that ate up more than 50 percent of their income, an all-time high for those with “severe burdens.”

As we recently noted, we often read blue tribe reports about how great the economy is. But when we click the link to the source for the upbeat report, we see horrible news about housing costs—for rental housing and home purchase—which the upbeat tribune has simply failed to mention.

Could that be the way it goes as a very large political tribe starts to fear the worst?

Last night, Bill Maher suggested that the Democratic Party may need to find a way to replace Candidate Biden, perhaps at the party's convention. (We know that because they played the tape of what Bill said on this morning's Fox & Friends.)

If we knew of any viable replacement, we might even buy onto that pipedream-adjacent idea. That said, we know of no such possible candidate.

It may be that President Biden will turn things around and begin to campaign with vigor and clarity. For ourselves, it looks like the president may be caught in a type of decline.

We see no sign that he'll be able to campaign in the vigorous way which will be needed. Of course, our perception could turn out to be wrong.

Could Candidate Trump actually get elected again this year? Yes, of course, could! 

He could also crash and burn during one of his three million court cases. That said, Candidate Trump could get elected again—and if that happens, our own blue tribe will be facing a long, hard comeback road. 

In our view, our self-impressed tribe has often worked quite hard to earn its way out. Everywhere we look today, we see one-third of a deeply challenged, struggling nation which seems to be in something resembling group denial.

Joe Biden may fight back! That said, we're not sure that the Biden of even a few years ago is still with us today. His private functioning may be strong, as Krugman says, but he may struggle out on the stump.

On Monday, we expect to start exploring the armies our own blue tribe has in the field as the siege of the White House begins. In our view, our tribe's elites have frequently worked fairly hard to earn our way out.

That doesn't mean that we're bad people. It only means that we're people people.

As in Casablanca, so too here! Human beings that we are, we may be inclined to head down to Rick's Cafe, where we can gambol and play.