They're Stepping Up the Campaign, But Not Stepping Up the Game

Is it any wonder that Donald Trump is winning in key swing states, and not just by a little? It's by a lot. At the same time, one demographic, the black vote, that Democrats heavily rely on, is showing signs of deep attrition. They are also losing Hispanic votes. And let's not ignore the reality that they lost the blue collar vote to Trump before, and they really haven't gotten it back since.

And it's not just on one issue that the Biden administration is flailing. Bidenomics has been an abject failure as a campaign centerpiece because no matter how hard they try to sell Americans on the idea it has worked, people aren't seeing the results when they open their wallets or pay their bills.

Then there's the border crisis, ongoing supply chain disruptions, and of course billions of taxpayer dollars being sent over to Ukraine to aid them in what can only be classified as a losing battle.

People are also seeing all of the chaos that seems to be rampant across America, and they are blaming Biden largely for most of it.

Protests are happening on nearly every street corner from every issue imaginable. LGBTQ+ flags being displayed on the White House, even in one case overshadowing the American flag, doesn't sit well with most Americans, despite the Democrats and the media trying to convince us it's a "mainstream movement." We have had multiple disasters in infrastructure and travel from train derailments to bridge collapses and in-flight mishaps. The same guy heading these disasters is still there and they say he's doing a good job. Crime rates in nearly all metrics have risen, and dramatically.

Very little is good, right now.

Of course, as poll numbers continue to be abysmal for the Biden administration, they are ramping up efforts to try to convince people that voting for them is the answer to all of the problems we are faced with now.

The question is, how do you sell this? It wasn't like this four years ago when Donald Trump was president, and everyone knows it. Even some staunch Democrats. If they don't know it, they have their heads buried in the sand. 

To top it off, everyone knows who is at fault for all of it as well. And it's not Donald Trump. The issues we have now that are important to the American people to be solved were caused by the Biden administration and their policies. 

Interestingly, Biden isn't doing much of this campaigning. They are sending out Kamala Harris to make the appeals. The problem is, she is disliked more than Biden is. How is her message going to resonate when she is considered to be worse, and moreover, when Americans have to consider that if Biden wins, she may well become the president?

The thing that the Biden administration seems to have missed in all of this is that in order to win elections—at least to fairly win one—you have to deliver the goods. They haven't done that. In other words, it's too late. The record is the record and it's not a good one. You can't sell a man a car with no wheels and suddenly convince them you can make it drivable.

The damage has already been done. Beyond that, to have a situation where it is clear their ideas weren't better than Trump's makes it even harder to convince people, "Well, now we've got it. Just give us another four years to prove it."

One key issue Kamala has been sent out to address is the economy. Especially into the black communities where they are trying to shore up some of the attrition. It's a disaster, though. And it's that way because of their policies and their actions. 

And what is she going to do? She's going to try to talk up Biden's initiatives and plans for the future. Except, those initiatives and plans already caused the economy to be an issue Americans are concerned about. It's already siphoned off wealth and opportunity. 

You mean you want to do more of what hasn't worked? And even if you come up with a different plan, if you had no idea the cause and effect of the old one, what makes us believe now you have the right idea this time?

I think the bottom line is that all the campaigning in the world can't and won't undo what they have already done. Like I said before, it's just too late. Going out now and promising gold and silver in the next four years is a moot effort, because your effort should have been exhausted in the last three years with provable results to show for it now.

Voters are essentially thinking, "You keep telling us things will be better. We keep waiting for you to show us that."

Meanwhile, at the same time they keep promising results, they aren't doing the actual work that will produce them. And voters haven't missed that little point either. It's one thing to say what you are going to do. At some point you have to actually do it.

It seems that what their campaign has been reduced to is, "But, but, but." They are going to make excuses for their failures, pass blame unfairly for the problems, overstate the dangers if they don't win, and promise more "solutions" they don't actually have.

The question is not really, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" It's, "Why aren't we better off now?"

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When it Comes to the Economy, The Democrats Did That

"What magic wand do you have?"

That was the question posed by Barack Obama in response to Donald Trump in the 2016 election when Trump said he could restore the economy and bring back American manufacturing. Of course, this was after eight long years of a virtually no-growth economy under Obama's reign, and it was his contention that the United States was simply transforming into a new economy.

What it was, essentially, was his excuse to try and explain what he was never able to do, and that was to lift the economy out of the throes of the economic crisis he faced when he took his first term in office. "Some of those jobs just aren't going to come back," he said. "Well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal. How are you going to do that?"

Of course, President Trump did in fact, negotiate better deals. Granted, it can be up for debate what real impact some of these deals had on actually bringing back manufacturing in a significant way, but many jobs did return, and certainly the policies that were implemented by Trump had a major positive impact on the economy itself.

Obama's comments signaled, to me, a capitulation and an admission (although quietly) that he had no idea how the economy actually worked, or how to fix it. It certainly showed in his results. And time and time again when he was asked about why the economy was experiencing one of the slowest recoveries in history, he simply pointed blame back at the Bush administration before him.

He blamed Republicans for the economic crisis in 2008 that was largely a result of Bill Clinton's, "Every American should be able to own a home," and blamed Republicans for hurting his economic efforts, and of course went on to simply blame the "new economy." 

It was very clear that he felt that this was just the way things are now, and we're going to have to accept it and adapt to it. That was the capitulation part. "I can't fix what can't be fixed. We now just have to deal with what we have."

Only to turn around when Trump's economy soared and proved Obama very wrong and claim, "I did that."

Now Democrats are fit to claim that all of the economic woes we face today are the result of Trump's policies coming back to bite us in the butt. So, which is it? 

On top of that, what Democrats are doing now is outright dismissing the first three years of Trump's rapid economic successes and only pointing to the last year. "See what he did? See what his policies left us with?"

Only it misses one big point. Covid. Because that was what sunk the economy in Trump's final days. But not through his policies. But through the recommendations of people like Dr. Fauci and Democrat leadership that insisted that businesses be shuttered, and the country should be locked down.

Of course it killed the economy. How could it not? Suddenly we had to print all sorts of money we didn't have to shore up business owners and workers who were sidelined by the shutdowns. It set the wheels in motion to face one of the biggest supply chain crises we've seen in decades.

The odd thing is that right before Trump left office, we actually began to see a massive uptick in the economy. It can only be argued that policies were implemented quickly by Trump to ensure we could get things moving again post-pandemic. They would have worked.

But Biden turned it around and stopped it in its tracks with new policies that made no sense, such as introducing the American Rescue Plan and reversing Trump's energy policies, both actions which catapulted us into 10% inflation by the end of 2021.

Whose fault is it we're in the boat we're in now? According to Biden and the Democrats it's Trump's fault. 

It's the usual Democrat game. Blame someone else when things are bad and take the credit when things are good. Only there's one big problem here.

If Barack Obama wants to claim that Trump's stellar economy was a result of Obama's policies, and Biden won the election in 2020 and essentially continued Obama's policies, why is the economy not ten times better today instead of ten times worse?

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Even the Democrats Themselves Aren't Falling For Bidenomics

It would seem that not only is the Biden/Harris administration continuing to pursue this fantasy of glowing economic policy they call Bidenomics, but they are also doubling down on it. They really believe that all of their comparisons to purposely monikered Maganomics is true.

But of course, Americans are not buying it. And the reason is simple. Because Americans both experienced Trump's economy and are now living in Biden's.

Naysayers of Trump can say what they want about Trump as a president in general. Even outwardly they can tell their friends, "Things are much better now economically." But behind the scenes and behind closed doors, as they sift through their utility bills and monitor their stock accounts and see directly the dwindling values of every dollar they earn, penny after penny being siphoned away by the higher cost of everything, the truth simply cannot be denied.

Bidenomics does not work. And it is definitely not working for the hard-working Americans it wants to reach to prove that it does.

The problem is that while you can easily tell a lie, there has to be at least some sense that it can be true in order to sell it. Take fiction. Especially fantasy, horror and science fiction. There is something that a writer must do in order to convince readers, even for just a moment, that ghosts and goblins and dragons do actually exist.

Suspend their disbelief.

When it comes to the economy, one look at one's grocery tab and it's all bets off. Every trip to the gas pump, and it's an instant yanking back to the reality that the dragon is just a thing created out of a wild imagination.

You simply cannot, by any stretch of the imagination try to sell a booming economy when the people living it can't see it or feel it or touch it in some way.

And the democrat party who badly wants to win a reelection knows it's a bad idea, and through backchannels, many prominent democrats are urging the White House to ditch it. Or to at least reframe it. 

"The voters aren't buying it," is what they are essentially saying. And if you (the Biden/Harris administration) keep on trying to sell it, the voters are going to rightly wonder what else you might be lying about. Your entire presidency becomes open to criticism, deeper examination and scrutiny.

Even from your own side. And maybe particularly so.

Because not only do democrats want to win. They want to be right. They want to be able to prove that they have the better ideas and can offer the best alternative in real solutions. Not that it's their favorite thing to do, but dammit they want to be able to say, "See? I told you so."

Bidenomics is falling flat. As a policy, as a plan, as a campaign slogan. It's just bad for everyone and especially bad for the person behind it who can't prove it to be anything more than a simple man dressed in a zippered dragon costume.

And by the way, how do you even reframe it? Why would you even necessarily want to? What? Just to make the lie sound a little better? A little more believable?

Why not just be straight with the American people and admit, "We messed it up," and then tell the American people what you got wrong and how you plan to actually fix it? It's like the border crisis issue that everyone knows is real. You will never gain the trust of the American people by outright lying to them.

Especially considering people are about to be fed up if they aren't already. We had to suffer through the 2-years of shutdowns during the Covid pandemic, having our lives entirely upended and halted, only to come out of it with new problems to face regarding our lives and money. And wait, it's not over. A recession may soon be coming, and that's just going to mean more months and months of economic pain.

Perhaps the Biden/Harris administration simply feel they've got this election in the bag. If it's down to them vs. Trump it's a shoe-in. And Lord knows they've done their very best to try to make Trump out to be the villain of all villains—a villain to make even the worst enemy of Gotham City look like a friendly circus clown with just a little benign nervous tick.

But even with that effort, is the public at large buying into it? Polls indicate maybe not. And just like the earlier example of people outwardly saying the economy is fine, behind closed doors when it comes to Trump, people know deep down they are being played for fools. They know there's a lot more going on behind the scenes that so much energy is being spent on someone they (the democrats) insist is no threat to their power.

In other words, there's no reason to try to get rid of Trump if the left thinks he's such bad news no one could even remotely consider him to be a serious candidate for the other side. Or even independents.

And speaking of polls, that's the other problem of course with Bidenomics. On the very issue Bidenomics is trying to sell is great, all the polls clearly show that the economy is one of Biden's worst performances. No one is buying it. Not even democrats. 

What's worse is that it does just the opposite of what I think the democrats want it to do. That is to put the economy front and center for the American people to think about every time they say it. Because again, it just serves as a constant reminder that the economy is not as good as they say it is, is not recovering at the fast pace they want people to believe, and worse—like with the border crisis—if you don't even know it's a problem how do we ever make it right?

How do we trust you have the goods to make it right?

Will the Biden/Harris administration ditch the slogan? Probably not. And part of the reason for that goes into something a bit deeper than the problems we face with the economy and frankly with every other serious issue facing America today.

Who is actually in charge?

Is it a single person? Is it a collective? Has the bureaucracy finally tendered the reigns of the big white chariot in Washington? One can never know. But the one thing we do know is that whenever we find ourselves in a situation where there are too many chiefs in the room, all goes haywire very quickly, one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing, too many hands are fighting for the final say, and nothing of value ever gets accomplished. 

And of course, with so many chiefs, not a single one of them thinks there's a problem that needs to be solved. And you can shout the problem as loud as you want, but the chiefs aren't listening. They can't hear you. And the Biden/Harris administration can't hear you. The American people. Even their own party. 

They are simply too busy focusing on winning than anything else. For them, it is all that matters. Meanwhile, as far as Bidenomics goes? Well, you're just going to have to take their word for it.

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