President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.
“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.
“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.
Health care is actually hugely underestimated, here. Health costs have been going up decade over decade and people’s health problems have been stacking up. While in the '70s and '80s people could get treatment, someone born in those years started out with the ability to get medical care but has increasingly lost access as they’ve gone through their lives.
Those people are getting older, now, and it’s getting to the point where they can’t just ignore the stuff they can’t afford. Conditions that would have been easy to treat (but often rare/expensive) are becoming chronic, fatal, or debilitating.
Life expectancy is starting to drop and while that drop is largely due to COVID (which, by itself, is an insane thing) it’s also a warning sign about what’s to come.