Media stories are driven by trajectory.
Things get better or worse. People ups and downs. There may be an emerging feeling threatening the establishment. There can be a spectacular fall from grace. There may be a return. Regardless of the story, the direction of movement is what matters.
Joe Biden is stuck in one of those stories: that things are going badly and people are losing confidence. Then, of course, the polls corroborated that story, providing a clear proof.
But the truth is that news reports and opinion polls are symbiotic. Narratives help shape what people believe, are then captured by polls, and those poll results are then fed back into news reports as a separate, guest fact. concerned and independent.
“Joe Biden can’t take a break” is a short story. Every new disappointing data point fits into it. But reality does not follow the rules of communication. It is usually more nuanced.
As legendary football coach Lou Holtz once said, “You’re never as good as people tell you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”
Sure, Biden has had some bad months, but there’s no way to get over the fact that the last month or so has been a great one for the administration.
On the economic front, as of Wednesday, gasoline prices have fallen for 50 consecutive days, down 86 cents from an average record high of $5.02 on June 14, according to the report. CNN. The job market also shows incredible resilience. Friday’s jobs report alone beat expectations.
There are challenges. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation get a raise “9.1 percent in the 12 months ending in June, the biggest increase in 12 months since the period ending in November 1981.” This does not invalidate that Biden had a good month; it just emphasizes the complexity of any news story.
Legislatively, in June, Biden signed the most significant federal gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. Two weeks ago, his big spending bill, Build Back Better, which everyone assumed was dead, revived in a shortened form of the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, all the Democrats in the Senate are behind the bill and it has passed in that body. These developments don’t erase legislative frustrations like the failures of the voter protection bill or the police reform bill, but they are triumphs nonetheless.
There are foreign policy victories, like the killing of the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghanistan, and the overwhelming vote in the Senate in favor of expanding NATO to include Finland and Sweden, a direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And the Russians have suggested that they are open to discussing a prison swap to free Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, both of whom are still being held in Russia. Here, again, there are challenges. For example, tensions are heating up with China, especially after the visit to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Then there’s the matter of the Supreme Court’s uber deprivation of the right to abortion. This has been a huge disappointment to liberals, and many have accused the White House of not reacting strongly enough.
But it looks like the issue has stirred up some uninterested or uninterested voters and could help Democrats stem the tide of big Republican wins midterm. We need look no further than Kansas, a state that voted strongly for Trump in 2020, but last week voted even stronger to keep abortion rights in the state Constitution.
Biden’s winning streak may still not be enough to move his story from spiral to rebound, but a close reading of recent events requires some tweaking.
The White House must also shift its message, from defense to attack. I never really bought the argument that Biden’s poll was bad because he simply didn’t do enough to showcase his achievements. There are certain periods where the disappointment really weighs more than his achievements.
But that is not the case now, and the administration must seize the moment, and not be afraid to shout about its victory.
This is one area where Donald Trump has been successful: bragging. When he campaigned in 2016, he claimed that if he were elected, people might even be “win-weary.” When he spoke, people would say, “Please, please, win too much. We can’t stand it anymore. Mr. President, it’s too much.” He said that he would answer: “No, it is not. We have to keep winning. We have to win more.”
He will spend his tenure bragging about how things happen on his watch are the biggest and the best.
We now know that Trump’s presidency was a disaster that almost destroyed the country, but, if a loser like Trump can refute all that he has done, even if the evidence wasn’t there, then surely Biden could find a way to make a bit of a croak of his own, especially during one of the most successful periods of his presidency.
Biden, you made it. Proud of it.
