The Trump and George W. Bush tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001. They’re responsible for more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID and the Great Recession are excluded.
Under Biden, the national debt has grown at a far slower pace.
Under Trump, the number of Americans lacking health insurance rose by 3 million. Under Biden, it’s been just the opposite. Enrollment in Obamacare has surged from 12 million in 2021 to 21.3 million today. To address consumer prices, the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by President Biden expanded and extended the refundable tax credits that help Americans purchase health insurance.
Meanwhile, the actual prices of goods and services is lower today than it was four years ago under Trump, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That’s because incomes have grown faster than prices over that four-year period.
Biden’s investments in infrastructure, semiconductors, and green technologies are rebuilding the middle class. While Biden is making the biggest investment in infrastructure in 60 years, Trump talked about investing in infrastructure (his “infrastructure weeks” became a late-night TV joke), but he never did.
Spending on new factories has almost tripled over the past three years, as companies rush to locate in the U.S. market. Construction employment in April hit an all-time high of 8.2 million workers.
The CHIPs Act is creating large numbers of manufacturing jobs. It also activates the Davis Bacon Act, requiring that contractors and subcontractors pay the prevailing wage. It commits companies receiving grants to allow workers to unionize. It builds new plants in areas that have suffered job losses and decline. And it commits companies getting grants to include daycare facilities in their new plants.
Trump and other Republicans pretend to be on the side of average working Americans, while promising their big corporate backers even more tax cuts. Trump cut taxes on big corporations and the wealthy. He reduced the threshold salary for overtime pay.
By contrast, Biden has said he will not extend Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. Biden raised the threshold salary for overtime pay and made it easier to unionize. He was the first president in history to walk a picket line.
Trump’s record on antitrust enforcement was abysmal. By contrast, Biden has been the most activist trustbuster in a half-century.
In terms of the core goal of rebuilding the middle class, Biden’s administration has been the most successful of any administration over the past 40 years. Trump’s was the least successful.
Oh, and let’s not forget: Trump mounted an attempted coup against the United States government, seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election and encouraging his followers to riot at the Capitol.
2. Why isn’t any of this getting through?
Partly because Americans suffer from a form of collective amnesia. There’s simply too much going on. We’re also very vulnerable to the power of suggestion — things we learn after the fact that become incorporated into our memory, fooling us into thinking they were real.
Our memories are also affected by our biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and what our friends and associates believe. When we retrieve a memory, these biases influence what information we actually recall.
Anyone who watches a lot of Fox News or hears lots of right-wing radio is vulnerable to both suggestion and bias.
But there’s something else.
The media lives off conflict. And Trump is nothing but conflict. He bloviates, lies, exaggerates, takes credit, avoids blame, and belittles and excoriates opponents.
So he gets a lot of airtime.
Meanwhile, Biden does the hard work of getting stuff done. But editors and publishers don’t find this particularly exciting. Biden doesn’t lash out. He doesn’t ridicule his opponents or call them names. He doesn’t intentionally lie. He doesn’t exaggerate his successes or minimize challenges ahead.
So few people know what Biden is doing or has accomplished.
Look, I’ve had my disappointments with Biden. I wish he had confronted Netanyahu more forcefully and refused much earlier to supply American weapons to Netanyahu’s right-wing government. I wish he had headed off the bloodbath in Gaza. I wish he would continue to hold back armaments.
Biden did warn Netanyahu publicly, and early on, that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be a “big mistake.” And while Republicans bellyached that Biden had no policy for the Middle East, he negotiated the beginnings of a Saudi-Israeli peace pact that would have made considerable concessions to Palestinians. It was the single best opportunity for a more ordinary life for Palestinians and Israelis since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar Sadat by Israelis and Arabs opposed to peace. Tragically, it may never happen now.
Anyone who thinks Trump would be better on Israel and Gaza is living on another planet.
Looking at the larger picture, Biden is an adult. He quietly and competently does the work of governing the nation. His Cabinet is talented and committed. His White House staff is one of the best I’ve seen.
Trump is a wildly narcissistic child.
When voters tell pollsters they think Trump is “stronger” than Biden on foreign policy or the economy, the “strength” they feel comes from the emotions Trump stirs up — rage, ferocity, vindictiveness, and anger. These emotions are connected to brute strength.
Biden projects strength the old-fashioned way — through mature and responsible leadership. But mature and responsible leadership doesn’t break through today’s media and reach today’s public nearly as well as brute strength.
3. So what’s the answer?
Not for Biden (or his Democratic allies and surrogates) to abandon facts, data, analysis, and reasoned argument.
Their best response is to draw the starkest possible contrast between Trump’s unhinged childishness and Biden’s competent adulthood. Rather than sell Biden’s policies, sell Biden’s character. Rather than dispute Trump’s arguments, condemn his temperament.
Point out the many ways Biden is sticking it to big corporations and Wall Street (through antitrust litigation, labor law, tax policy, noncompete agreements, and so on), in contrast with the tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks Trump gave big corporations and Wall Street — which is why corporate America and Wall Street are putting big money into Trump’s campaign.
And ask Americans the following question, repeatedly: Do they want a sociopathic infant at the helm again, or a sane grown-up?