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**SEPTEMBER 25, 2023**
On the Prospect website
* David Dayen on breaking the Menendez Cycle
* Harold Meyerson on how the GOP is coming to resemble Europe's far
right
* Jarod Facundo on the rural push to decertify unionized postal workers
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Working-Class Joe
Biden is truly helping working people. What will it take for more voters
to get that?
Tomorrow, Joe Biden will join striking UAW workers on a picket line, the
first president ever to do so. I'm told the decision was controversial
among Biden advisers-isn't the president supposed to be a neutral
broker?-but it was the right decision.
The auto companies, like most of corporate America, are awash in
profits, while workers are losing jobs, wages, and economic security.
Biden's entire program aims at righting that imbalance. So why not
display that class solidarity in the most vivid fashion possible?
It's also smart and overdue politics. There are more workers than
bosses. Biden is underwater in most polls, especially on the economy.
This, despite the fact that inflation has been tamed, the economy is at
full employment, and wages on average are up slightly. But for most
voters, the basics haven't changed for the better. The exception to
that, however, is unionized workers.
Biden's several public-investment laws serve as a full-employment act
for the building trades, extending into much of the next decade. In
Biden's TV ads, how about a real-life construction worker, and a
real-life autoworker, telling what Biden has done for them and why they
support him. How about a stressed parent telling how much difference the
Child Tax Credit made in their lives, and why a vote for Biden and a
Democratic Congress is a vote to restore and extend it.
"Our House, Senate, and state legislative candidates are significantly
outperforming Biden and make every branch competitive in 2024," pollster
Stan Greenberg told me. "The polling in the battleground states shows
him running significantly better than 2020. Critically, he can run
stronger if he stops talking about their accomplishments and makes the
election a future choice with the Republicans, on the very same issues
he has been speaking about."
Getting this right is urgent. The most recent
**Washington Post**/ABC poll
,
if accurate, suggests the risk of a catastrophe in 2024 for Democrats.
Not only is Biden's approval rating down to 37 percent favorable and
56 percent unfavorable. His rating on the economy is even worse, 30
percent positive to 64 percent negative.
The
**Post** poll is something of an outlier. It shows Biden trailing Trump
by ten points while other polls show the race as a dead heat. And it
shows Trump as more popular now than when he left office. It even shows
that more voters hold Democrats than Republicans responsible for the
budget impasse.
But even if the
**Post** poll overstates these trends because of sample error, there is
a useful warning here. The Trump years are remembered by many voters as
better than the Biden years-no inflation, low interest rates, no war
in Ukraine, no pandemic until 2020. This is grossly unfair, but life is
unfair; and Trump will work to maximize this perception.
The risk is that the public's view of Biden gets hardened to the point
where almost nothing can alter it. A great many Democrats wish that
someone else were their candidate in 2024, someone younger and more
vigorous who can make Trump look like the geezer in the race.
This pessimism feeds on itself and depresses organizing and fundraising.
Biden has a few months to dramatically change that equation. If he
doesn't, the calls from within his own party will grow for him to
stand aside before he is shunted aside in the 2024 election.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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Breaking The Menendez Cycle
He's indicted for public corruption, he beats the charges thanks to
the Supreme Court, Democrats restore him to a position of power, and
he's indicted again. But this time, Democrats aren't as welcoming. BY
DAVID DAYEN
The GOP Is Beginning to Look Like Europe's New Far-Right Parties
Holding their working-class base with racist, nativist demagogy may also
require a little less laissez-faire. BY
**HAROLD MEYERSON**
Rural Letter Carriers Push for Union Decertification
Substantial wage losses from a controversial evaluation system have left
workers frustrated. But there's concern that the proposed cure is
worse than the disease. BY JAROD FACUNDO
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