Biden’s economic message doesn’t really matter

There’s a deep right wing media ecosystem expressly dedicated to convincing conservatives that the sky isn’t blue and that Democrats are pure evil

President Joe Biden is risking his political future, and that of the Democratic party’s control of Congress on the fact that the economy now is stronger than it has been in a long time, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

His administration’s policies have near universally been targeted at economic growth as the US continues to recover from the pandemic’s initial economic impact along with the mass death of over 1 million Americans from the virus. The Centers for Disease Control even went so far as to grant an airline CEO’s wish to shorten the recommended time for non-symptomatic employees who test positive to return to work, without providing any scientific justification or citation.

It’s a risky move for a president suffering from an alleged image problem. If the pandemic eases further, and a new variant requiring a new shutdown doesn’t develop between now and November.

But even if that happens and the economy continues to boom, Biden’s message still isn’t likely to be an electoral winner.

That’s because there’s a deeply layered right wing media apparatus dedicated to outright lying in the hopes of convincing conservatives that Democrats are pure evil. And mainstream media outlets seem immune to perceiving this political reality.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press published a reported piece about rural Democrats. The piece went into detail, talking to rural Pennsylvania Democrats who feel afraid to exist publicly in their hometowns. Democrats have removed bumper stickers and are forced to take political signs in at night to avoid vandalism.

It’s a dire story.

But the story carries an odd framing, blaming national Democrats for local Republicans threatening violence against political opponents. Former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp seemingly blamed all of this on a Democratic messaging problem, suggesting that national Democrats need to more vocally push back against “far-left” policies like defund the police. Only, very few national Democrats actually support defunding the police, instead posturing the opposite direction and increasing police funding.

However, it’s laughably absurd to believe that rural Republicans are storming school board meetings, and vandalizing their liberal neighbors’ property because of “defund the police.”

But this framing pervades mainstream media.

The actual reality is that there’s a vast right wing media system expressly dedicated to demonizing Democrats and there’s no meaningful way for liberals to push back on any of it as mainstream media outlets gaze longingly at the social media engagement numbers of right wing media outlets.

One of the biggest issues for Biden and electoral Democrats is that what they say doesn’t really matter. The right will take any small, tiny social media anecdote and blow it up into a near global crisis painting “the left” as out of control.

A recent example of this was an alleged controversy over comments made by Adele at the British Music Awards. I go into more detail on that here, but the details are that three total people tweeted about Adele’s comment that she’s “proud to be a woman.” One was clearly an anti-trans troll, and two people worried that she might be a TERF or “trans exclusionary radical feminist.”

But the morning after, The Daily Mail in the UK ran a story alleging that the entire trans community was up in arms and angry at Adele, leaving trans Twitter befuddled. Literally no trans people got mad at her over the comments and many, like me, are also “proud to be a woman.” Nonetheless, the story filtered through the right wing media system, showing up in the New York Post, then the thousands of blogs and other conservative websites. Fox News did a hit on it, and finally it reached Joe Rogan’s podcast.

A totally manufactured story with absolutely no basis reached millions of eyeballs. Now any Democrat that breathes a word of support for trans rights can and will be accused by Fox News of hating Adele. This is how propaganda is supposed to work.

Now take this Adele story and multiply it by thousands, with right wing media accusing Democrats of murdering newborns, of running international pedophilia rings, of performing Nazi-style surgeries on children, and of indoctrinating children into Marxist ideology.

No wonder rural conservatives feel motivated towards violence. If any of that were true, of course a logical thinker would be angry at Democrats. The problem is that they are all lies, and there’s no counter force to rebut any of the lies.

Mainstream media is more obsessed with appearing to be fair between the Democratic party and the party that encourages violence, lies, and electoral manipulation to maintain power.

So in the end, whatever Joe Biden and other Democrats say about the economy won’t reach the ears of conservative and many independent voters. The economy could be booming like it was just after World War II, but some conservative somewhere will take a picture of a seasonal retail display being changed from Christmas to Valentine’s Day and it will spread to millions of voters as “evidence” of Biden’s failed economy.

And the economy still won’t make up for the fact that Biden personally runs a child jail out of the White House, or whatever lie conservatives come up with next. We’re nine months out from a critical election by the way, which means we should start hearing about another George Soros refugee convoy any day now. It’s clockwork.

No amount of Democratic left-bashing will change any of Rupert Murdoch’s lying tactics.

It’s no accident that we are where we are now with conservatives. It’s a project decades in the making and was done and continues to be done purposefully. Biden is often fond of saying that the country needs a strong Republican party.

Look around Joe, there is already a strong Republican party, and they are lying about you.