Against the Grain II
By Vaughn Wilson
If you let the right wing, tell it, Joe Biden is ruining America. America has to be saved. We need to get back to old values and old political maneuverings. The Republican party has a well-oiled media machine that can run with both lies and truths and force them into the general media cycle to where opinion is believable as truth.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is asleep at the wheel. When something goes wrong, they are purely reactionary and not very effective. More importantly, when things are going well like most economic indicators in the United States, which signals effective leading of the country by President Biden, they are not good at promoting it. It is allowed to be disseminated through normal media channels with no sense of urgency to the point where the average busy American will never see it.
As of December 2023, U.S. unemployment is down to 3.7-percent. That is its second-lowest rate since the start of the pandemic in 2020. The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that the U.S. economy is growing faster than expected for the year and the final quarter of 2023. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the U.S. grew 3.3-percent, while the country added 2.3 million jobs in 2023. Americans are flaming the economy with a 4.9% boost in retail spending. Additionally, personal saving rates increased 4.5-percent.
This is a tremendous recovery for the U.S. Economy is not translating to the everyday citizen. A Fortune magazine article stated that “Booming stocks and cooling inflation have convinced 35% of Americans the economy is going well-but that’s still not boosting Joe Biden.” This is proof-positive that the Democratic party is failing at promoting their prime candidate, the President of the United States.
For the last few decades, the GOP had dominated the media cycle. It runs rings around the Democratic party. In a critical election year, they are not contributing to the success of Biden’s run to retain the presidency. The narrative of “Sleepy Joe” and “Creepy joe” has continually been released by Republican strategists as well as Fox News to control the narrative. A quick perusal of the Fox News Website today saw not a trace of the positive economic news that Americans are enjoying. Instead, there were trivial references to irrelevant stories meant to put Biden in a bad light.
Donald Trump is a master at controlling the media. He has catapulted his presidency into becoming a symbol of patriotism for many Americans. His mage even bears more weight than his actual life. He is financially unstable after squandering billions of investments, a multitude of lawsuits and a bevy of legal issues. Most recently he was on the losing end of a defamation suit in which the judge’s ruling ordered him to pay the plaintiff $83 million. This on top of nearly one hundred cases brough against him in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump has found ways to skirt the law and remain a free man, when most others would have been locked away with the key thrown away. Through the sexual harassment suits and plethora of accusations and cases, he is far-and-away the presumptive Republican party candidate. While those on the outside see him as a tainted candidate, the GOP sees him as their best hope to return to the president’s seat and nothing more. They understand that he is damaged good, but the momentum he built up for the Republican party is something the party wishes to recapture.
Meanwhile, we’ve got one of the best performing presidents ever sitting in the seat at the White House and the Democratic Party can’t seem to figure a way to effectively tell the story. Biden has even drilled down to student loan forgiveness which touches actual finances in Black households. Not only does it affect monthly funding for those struggling to repay those loans, the hit on their credit ratings as a result of these loans often contributes to prolonged financial struggle. Biden directly attacked that issue. It was a clear signal that his administration had an ear to the pulse of the black family. It was a more direct form of relief than many of the packages of relief offered by the U.S. Government. Still, the Democratic Party sits by and watches instead of developing a media machine that can help with detailing the successes of its own presidential candidate.
