Donald Trump would be on track to win a historic landslide in November — if so many US voters didn’t find him personally repugnant.
Roughly 53 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the former president. And yet, when asked about Trump’s ability to handle key issues — or the impact of his policies — voters routinely give the Republican candidate higher marks than President Biden.
In a YouGov survey released this month, Trump boasted an advantage over Biden on 10 of the 15 issues polled. On the three issues that voters routinely name as top priorities — the economy, immigration, and inflation — respondents said that Trump would do a better job by double-digit margins.
Meanwhile, in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 40 percent of voters said that Trump’s policies had helped them personally, while just 18 percent said the same of Biden. If Americans could elect a normal human being with Trump’s reputation for being “tough” on immigration and good at economics, they would almost certainly do so.
Biden is fortunate that voters do not have that option. But to erase Trump’s small but stubborn lead in the polls, the president needs to erode his GOP rival’s advantage on the issues.
I’ve been working for three decades. In that time, we’ve had some legitimate financial crises such as 9/11, 2008, and COVID.
Those aside, what I’ve mainly witnessed is people who fail in business or lose their job via incompetence never say, “Man, I should’ve hired a legitimate bookkeeper and stopped using my corporate card to cut rails in the strip club bathroom,” or, “Man, maybe I should’ve shown up to work more than twice a month and maybe I shouldn’t have slapped the receptionist on the ass when I did show up.”
No. It’s always, “My business failed and I lost my job because of the economy”
“The economy” is some great catch all bogeyman scapegoat that has very little basis in meaning when used in daily conversation, especially as it pertains to personal finance.
We can talk about corporatocracies or consolidation of wealth or two tier justice because those things are real and should be addressed, but they are rarely what people are referring to when they blame “the economy.”