The peculiar persistence of ‘Trumppostalgia’

Lately I have seen people repeat Ronald Reagan’s famous question—“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”—many of them believing that this closes the case for Donald Trump’s return to power. However, if you take the question at face value, the answer is almost absurdly favorable to President Joe Biden. After all, four years ago, thousands of Americans were dying every day from Covid.

Leaving aside the increase in deaths, four years ago more than 20 million Americans were unemployed; Trump left office with the worst job record of any president since Herbert Hoover. Furthermore, the country was gripped by a crime wave and murders had skyrocketed. Now, on the contrary, we have just experienced the longest period of unemployment below 4% since the 1960s, and violent crime wave has receded rapidly.

So how can anyone think Reagan’s question favors Trump? Spoiler alert: I don’t have a full explanation. But, at the very least, we have to recognize that something very peculiar is happening.

A common explanation of the Trumpostalgia is that many people give the former president a second chance by forgiving him for 2020 and attribute everything bad that happened in his last year to the Covid pandemic (ignoring the extent to which Trump’s botched response to the pandemic increased the death toll). That is, when they say “four years ago,” they really mean “before the pandemic.” That surely explains part of what’s happening.

But this story also has its drawbacks. If Trump gets a pass when it comes to the economic and social damage inflicted by the pandemic, why shouldn’t Biden get a similar pass for the problems that manifested themselves during his term, but surely reflected delayed effects of the disruptions it caused the covid?

For example, the ripple effects of the pandemic clearly explain much of the rise in inflation in 2021-22. How do we know? Because prices went up almost everywhere. Each country measures inflation somewhat differently, but if we look at the Harmonized Consumer Price Index (HICP), which is available for a number of countries, we see that accumulated inflation since the beginning of the pandemic has been almost eerily similar in the United States and Europe.

Furthermore, Trump fans are inconsistent in sending 2020 down the memory hole. Trump claimed that with him gasoline cost less than 2 dollars per gallon (3,785 liters)but this was true only for a couple of months in 2020, a period when global oil prices were low because the pandemic had tanked the global economy.

What’s more, by almost every indicator I know, most Americans are, in fact, better off now than they were in late 2019 or early 2020. Yes, prices are up a lot, but incomes are up even more. Real per capita incomes, although lower than when the Government distributed stimulus checks, are higher than before the pandemic. And the wages of most workers have risen considerably more than inflation.

But, you will say, people have the feeling that they are worse off—I agree that this idea is circulating around—but in general that is not the case. I’ve written before about polls in some swing states in which solid majorities of voters say the economy is doing poorly, but at the same time, comparable majorities say that they, personally, are doing well. The oft-cited Michigan survey asks respondents whether their financial situation is better or worse than it was five (not four) years ago: 52% say better, 38% say worse. And if Americans feel like they’re in a tough economic situation, why is consumer spending so high?

Negative assessments of the economy, as opposed to personal well-being, may partly reflect a well-known, if frustrating, consequence of inflation: when prices rise along with wages, people tend to think that they have achieved wage gains on their own. so that inflation takes them away.

And again, when voters are asked about their personal well-being as opposed to the state of the economy, they are relatively optimistic, although even in this case, partisanship colors the answers. Interestingly, some polls in swing states not only show that registered Republicans have a much more negative opinion of the economy than Democrats; They also show that Republicans rate their personal finances much worse, suggesting that at least some people weren’t answering the question they were actually asked.

Having said all this, Trumpostalgia is, without a doubt, a powerful force.

Biden has helped us through a time of turmoil — much of which occurred even before he became president — to a pretty good place, with very low unemployment, fairly low inflation, and declining inflation. delinquency. But it seems that many Americans are unaware of the good news; For example, the decline in crime does not seem to have penetrated the public consciousness at all. And there seems to be a romanticized view of what things were like under Biden’s predecessor, which, in some ways, omits the terrible things that happened in 2020.

So are they better off than four years ago? For most Americans, the answer is obviously yes. But for reasons that remain unclear, many seem unwilling to believe it.

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