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One persistent theme of political coverage, even as the economy breaks records for job growth and increasing wages, is that the public distrusts Democrats and supports Republicans when it comes to economics.
Democrats won important referenda and statewide elections in multiple states the last two years, but success was based more on women’s rights and democratic values than economics.
Popular frustrations about the economy are indeed concerning because when American families lose status political turmoil grows. Republicans offer no solutions but prey instead on the frailties and prejudices of the human condition to target anything other than corporate dominance as the cause of middle-class insecurity.
A similar phenomenon occurred after the Great Recession of 2008-09 when for months major media at first critiqued Wall Street for malfeasance. But by the 2010 election, coverage pivoted to embrace right-wing critiques that blamed the pensions and benefits of working men and women for the economic downturn. It was one of the great disinformation campaigns in history. As if programs that support the middle class led to Wall Street corruption and near-global collapse.
After Obama’s victory in 2008, Republicans exploited economic uncertainty to demonize Black Americans whom, they suggested, held too much power, and public sector employees who had benefits that other workers did not.
Long in decline, America’s social contract was shredded after the Great Recession. Major corporations off-loaded costs for health care and retirement onto working men and women, reducing take-home pay.
The chasm between private-sector despair and public programs had become too great for reasoned debate. Instead of expanding essential benefits, Republicans attacked those who had a modicum of fiscal security. In Wisconsin, they did so by desecrating our state’s once renowned systems of public education and civil service.
And the ploy worked. With families having lost their jobs and homes and benefits in a realigned private sector that once supported them, popular discontent was easily directed to attack public programs that supported middle-class standards for those workers.
Republicans then used their new majorities to rig political control with severe gerrymandering at state and congressional levels. A recent study of primary elections found that Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, only received 17% support of registered voters in their Republican districts, but gerrymandering guaranteed they would win a seat in Congress anyway.
Since Republican electoral gains in 2010, economic inequality has skyrocketed with massive tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthy moving the nation’s abundant riches disproportionately to the top, with the transformation also assisted by attacks on the individual rights of workers.
Despite Biden’s economic achievements many Americans are struggling to improve their lives, a salient political reality. Recent hardships have resulted from: rebooting the economy after a two-year shutdown, when demand for insufficient supplies increased costs; corporate price gouging that used supply issues as cover to further perpetuate cost increases; and the growing ill effects of private equity on working men and women.
But instead of debating these formative issues, we play today a dangerous game. As Republicans erroneously attack the public sector as the cause of economic inequities, the media equivocates to appease them, ignoring the reality of private sector behavior.
Increasing costs in rent, health care, utilities and groceries are often generated by mergers and the concentration of markets. Last year, top U.S. oil producers generated record breaking profits by shipping their products overseas instead of keeping prices lower at home by providing the U.S. with ample supplies.
Grocery store conglomerates and meat packing are concentrated as well, and costs for U.S. health care are much higher than for other nations internationally. Private equity firms are buying tracts of properties, to the detriment of many as homelessness increases with every hike in rent.
Democrats attempt in piecemeal fashion to address economic injustice, but they are not well focused. The core issue of the 2024 election is the economic status of American families. Democrats stand to fail if they fall into the Republican playbook by focusing instead on culture war debates.
Biden, to his credit, is cautiously moving in this direction with his support of labor, negotiations to control pharmaceutical prices and other actions. But nationally Democrats need a much stronger bully pulpit to address family economics as a singular, specific issue. The word is not getting out.
The general public needs to know that somebody is on their side or frustrations will mount. We’ve seen this play out before, with the consequences threatening to split our nation apart.
Jeffrey Leverich, of Stoughton, is a former senior researcher for WEAC.
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