Biden pc low – economy fights

Importantly, authoritarianism does not depend on solving people’s problems to succeed politically; indeed, its genius is to harness and feast on unhappiness without trying to reduce it. In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, Trump spoke openly to this pain and offered the satisfaction of revenge: “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

This challenge will not be solved, as the Biden Administration seems to be realizing, by industrial policy or progressive economic policy alone. Although the wave of unhappiness is partly the result of neoliberalism, the cultural response has acquired its own force and exercises a powerful influence on social identities and modes of living, thought, and feeling. People who do not conceive of their unhappiness as a product of economic forces and seek solutions in other spheres of life are unlikely to be moved by an economistic response, however worthy it may be and even if they agree with specific policies. Biden has spent much of his political capital in his first term on delivering economic wins, while deprioritizing issues like racial justice, voting rights, immigration reform, and reproductive rights that have a deeper connection with people’s most salient identities. But his reelection campaign’s pivot toward defending personal freedoms and denouncing MAGA extremism signals a recognition that deliverism is not a viable political strategy.