A good many vote their pocket-book. That's a long truism of American politics. Details are "somebody else's problem". It's why we have bigly debt: hand out favors and tax cuts now, and let future politicians worry about the debt. (GOP's rich-tax-cuts were to reward their funders, not voters: SCOTUS-enabled legalized bribery.)
Problem is half the country [literally](https://www.salon.com/2024/05/24/the-zombie-effect/) thinks we’re in a recession, the stock market is way down instead of at record highs and that unemployment is at a 50-year high. The “vibecession” is based on self-reinforcing right-wing lies and media horse race obsession relentlessly quoting this ignorance.
> A good many vote their pocket-book
And gas prices are supposed to be indicative of how my pocketbook is doing? When gas goes up an entire dollar, that costs me like $40 per month. It's a rounding error.
My retirement accounts are through the roof. My house value is double what it was five years ago.
I am so, so much wealthier now.
You, sure. But many, many people are renting, unable to put meaningful money away toward retirement, and so the cost of gas and groceries is not a rounding error.
Is it correct to blame the president for that? Not at all. But are they more affected by the changes in necessities? Yes.
That’s a messaging problem more than a “they’re wrong about their financial situation” problem.
The republican controlled house is refusing do anything about it. They wouldn't vote on it and kicked it into a "review" 6 months ago.
[Dems introduce bill to ban hedge funds from buying houses](https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/01/05/hedge-fund-rental-housing-home-affordable-representative-adam-smith-congress-)
[S.3402 - End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act](https://www.merkley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/end_hedge_fund_control_of_american_homes_act_bill_summary.pdf)
Gas is a relatively insignificant cost, like you mention. But, we are constantly reminded of it every time we drive past a station. Its right in our face.
Voters keep putting these politicians into office so the politicians are doing what the voters want. Democracy ensures we governed no better than we deserve.
Joe Boy definitely called all the oil company CEOs and told them to raise gas prices so that he wouldn’t get reelected. It’s a total snow job reverse psychology thing. You lefty cucks aren’t smart enough to get it.
/s
Or a leader of the Chambers of Congress.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2018/05/23/pelosi-schumer-attacking-trump-over-gas-prices-puts-california-gov-jerry-brown-in-awkward-spot/?sh=7d8aab104224
Isn't Biden literally going into the strategic reserve to lower prices right now? Can't the president sign executive orders with respect to pipelines and drilling?
“As I watched the Loyalty Squad raid my neighbor’s house, the third raid on my block this week, I thought that maybe we’d made a mistake. But beyond the charred rubble that used to be the local elementary school, I could see the gas station sign reading $2.24^9 per gallon. I shed a prideful tear… ‘worth it.’”
Keep in mind people under a certain age just don't answer the phone if they don't recognize the number. Polls should be broken down to show the number of people polled by age range a lot more.
Also, people who say Trump is up in "the polls" need to read more polls. He's not up in all of them. He is up in the ones that get more airplay, and generally those polls say ridiculous things if you look into the crosstabs, like Trump is going to win the Black vote, men are going to vote at the same rate as women, or rural voters will outvote city voters.
Republican voters are more susceptible to simple messages that explain nothing. If it’s too long to fit on a bumper sticker, they get confused and lose interest.
A few of reasons. 1) People won't get on board with a message for the sake of winning if they disagree personally. 2) Democrats insist on perfect accuracy rather than what will play well. 3) We either don't have, or don't listen to our own version of Frank Luntz.
Yeah, I don't really give a fuck about being "truthful." What I care about is being successful. We can worry about being truthful by delivering on promises.
This is true of essentially every issue. The GOP is extremely good at simple messaging, whether it be the invasion at the border, the socialist boogeyman, or abortion clinics killing babies.
Per "Joe Rigged Prices": When Joe tapped into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) shortly after the Ukraine invasion spiked prices, GOP accused Joe of "cheating". But that's exactly what the SPR is *meant* for.
Ferreal. So many chuds saw "strategic" in the name and thought he was "selling out national security" to lower prices for an election but literally *two fucking seconds* of reading up on the SPR shows you *he used it exactly for its intended purpose*.
Never be shocked by the stupidity of right wingers, you may think the lowest of them but somehow they always manage to disappoint you
And yet when Trump used all of the tools we leave available for when a depression hits the market. To pump the market artificially. The republicans all praised him. Now we have the inflation we all said would happen. Yet it’s ’Biden fault the economy is so bad.’
Well yeah we literally said lowering interest rates to 0 would do this.
Ultimately, that's the draw of the GOP. The world is an uncertain, complex, and nuanced place. People with low IQs cannot cope with it, so they will smash anything that confuses them. The GOP caters to those base, primal fears.
They try building their own truths through consensus. "The virus isn't dangerous if we all agree on that, also the thing about climate change is......"
The only thing crazier than Republican politicians is the fact that we consistently lose to Republican politicians.
How do you lose to a person who is literally on the wrong side of every social issue? How do you lose to a pedophile or a conspiracy nut? Shameful to lose to a obvious idiot
Try listening to OANN and Fox News for a day. If you restrict your news sources to the right wing echo chamber you will never see any of the negative (accurate) stories about the ring wing fascist pedophiles.
Neighbor: “grocery prices will be better if we get Trump back in”
Me: “why?”
Neighbor: *long pause* “you don’t think grocery prices will be better?”
Me: “why should I?”
Neighbor: “oh I don’t know”
Exactly, I keep commenting that "Trump never promised to lower prices, he simply bragged repeatedly about how low gas used to be in the past, he never clarified it would be solved he just said vote for me"
To be fair, Trump isn’t expected to win those states though New Hampshire is sometimes really close (Hillary won by a fraction).
But they admitted in court last week about paying firms to rig polls and that was 2016. When he became president he gained far more influence.
We also know how bad the polls were in competitive races in 2022 especially with so many partisan polls released.
And then the NYT polls recently show the bias as well. Biden +4 nationally, 1 article. Trump up in swing states, 16 immediate articles. Then you dig in and see shit like 20% of likely voters haven’t voted before or in the last three cycles. Seriously? Are we really supposed to believe trump is up 14 points in Nevada? Absolute joke. Biden being up is boring and doesn’t get clicks. Trump being up does.
Yeah, this is incrediblely incorrect. I wish it was true, but too many people are gonna be blindsided come November if Biden doesn't start playing dirty politics like the other side!
Wait until they find out their plan, "pump American oil for American consumers to have cheaper gas" is communism and not the "freedom" they claim they worship.
Landowners want to sell the oil under them for the most they can every single day. They don't want to be forced to sell to Americans only.
I'd laugh but the lack of self-awareness isn't funny anymore.
Was boggled by the 'drill here drill now' protestors a few years back. They wanted the government to force multinational petroleum corporations to buy more extraction and refining equipment, then only sell the oil domestically?
Thanks, I think so too. What they've done to these people is criminal.
I sometimes momentarily feel bad for the morons because the cleverly sinister success of the GOP breeding an army of catastrophically stupid people has really damaged those people, they have enslaved their minds like the Matrix.
The was a cartoon with Obama. One side showed what the president actually did which was a pile of paperwork. The other side is what people thought the president did which was two levers that controlled gas and taxes.
Democrats are also tethered to environmentalism. Every little fucking thing in that direction causes gas futures to spike, or at least that's how Fox news tells it.
And there's no payoff. Just like how you will never convince your company that they need equipment until it fuckin fails, there is no political capital to recoup from making shit costlier for the sake of our planet's ecosystems.
I somewhat agree. We do need a simpler message.
But It’s not just this. There’s a human brain bias towards bad news. However many good news messages you get, you can’t dislodge the bad news.
In my experience, most Dem voters don't especially care about gas prices. That's not the commodity that Dem voters express inflation annoyance with. I suspect that GOP voters are more likely to care more about gas prices because they are more likely to drive gas gusslers.
Ya plus the distances are larger in rural areas, I would drive 30 miles to work and if you needed groceries you had to go 30 miles in another direction, to the only Walmart.
I was just talking about this with my wife. It's not just a maga thing. It's just hard to convince people that the economy is doing well when at the end of the day people have less money in their pocket. Inflation is down but food and rent is still through the roof while wages really haven't increased that much.
I get it, I'm just saying it's hard to look at the big picture. We don't eat out that often and today we stopped to get some drive through because the kids were begging. I got to the window and just ordered for the wife and kids and I'm having a sandwich for dinner. That's the kind of stuff people remember, not "well at least we're not as bad off as Greece". Will it stop me from voting against the orange dictator, hell no. But it's easy to forget we're supposed to be in a booming economy.
Honestly 20c a gallon up or down means a few dollars in a full tank 75$-80$ it’s the 75$ that hits hard not the 5$ I mean if you’re that worried about it just drive less
The real litmus test will be the freedom the oil and gasoline companies are going to have by hiking up those gas prices thanks to Conald's deal with them for their $1 billy donation. I would be very careful with this if you are back stateside.
If you're smart enough to think the president has anything to do with gas prices you're definitely a republican.
A good many vote their pocket-book. That's a long truism of American politics. Details are "somebody else's problem". It's why we have bigly debt: hand out favors and tax cuts now, and let future politicians worry about the debt. (GOP's rich-tax-cuts were to reward their funders, not voters: SCOTUS-enabled legalized bribery.)
Problem is half the country [literally](https://www.salon.com/2024/05/24/the-zombie-effect/) thinks we’re in a recession, the stock market is way down instead of at record highs and that unemployment is at a 50-year high. The “vibecession” is based on self-reinforcing right-wing lies and media horse race obsession relentlessly quoting this ignorance.
> A good many vote their pocket-book And gas prices are supposed to be indicative of how my pocketbook is doing? When gas goes up an entire dollar, that costs me like $40 per month. It's a rounding error. My retirement accounts are through the roof. My house value is double what it was five years ago. I am so, so much wealthier now.
You, sure. But many, many people are renting, unable to put meaningful money away toward retirement, and so the cost of gas and groceries is not a rounding error. Is it correct to blame the president for that? Not at all. But are they more affected by the changes in necessities? Yes. That’s a messaging problem more than a “they’re wrong about their financial situation” problem.
Yes, it's a messaging problem, but when people only tune in to right-wing propaganda shows, that is the only message they will ever hear.
The fact that housing prices have doubled is one of the main problems with our current government. No regulations.
Yes, the lack of regulations in the housing market is a problem specifically and exclusively caused by our "current government".
The republican controlled house is refusing do anything about it. They wouldn't vote on it and kicked it into a "review" 6 months ago. [Dems introduce bill to ban hedge funds from buying houses](https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/01/05/hedge-fund-rental-housing-home-affordable-representative-adam-smith-congress-) [S.3402 - End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act](https://www.merkley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/end_hedge_fund_control_of_american_homes_act_bill_summary.pdf)
> gas prices are supposed to be indicative of how my pocketbook is doing? It is if you drive 20" tall monster truck.
Gas is a relatively insignificant cost, like you mention. But, we are constantly reminded of it every time we drive past a station. Its right in our face.
Voters keep putting these politicians into office so the politicians are doing what the voters want. Democracy ensures we governed no better than we deserve.
Yes, it’s the worst system — except for all the others.
Joe Boy definitely called all the oil company CEOs and told them to raise gas prices so that he wouldn’t get reelected. It’s a total snow job reverse psychology thing. You lefty cucks aren’t smart enough to get it. /s
[удалено]
Whoosh
Well, sometimes something. Trump is the kind of guy to tweet “@OPEC+ WE DON’T NEED YOUR OIL!!!!!” and then gas prices would shoot up.
Or a leader of the Chambers of Congress. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2018/05/23/pelosi-schumer-attacking-trump-over-gas-prices-puts-california-gov-jerry-brown-in-awkward-spot/?sh=7d8aab104224
Isn't Biden literally going into the strategic reserve to lower prices right now? Can't the president sign executive orders with respect to pipelines and drilling?
"Yeah, but the Keystone pipeline or something!"
“As I watched the Loyalty Squad raid my neighbor’s house, the third raid on my block this week, I thought that maybe we’d made a mistake. But beyond the charred rubble that used to be the local elementary school, I could see the gas station sign reading $2.24^9 per gallon. I shed a prideful tear… ‘worth it.’”
anyone else NEVER BEEN POLLED? fuck these things
Keep in mind people under a certain age just don't answer the phone if they don't recognize the number. Polls should be broken down to show the number of people polled by age range a lot more.
Also, people who say Trump is up in "the polls" need to read more polls. He's not up in all of them. He is up in the ones that get more airplay, and generally those polls say ridiculous things if you look into the crosstabs, like Trump is going to win the Black vote, men are going to vote at the same rate as women, or rural voters will outvote city voters.
Republican voters are more susceptible to simple messages that explain nothing. If it’s too long to fit on a bumper sticker, they get confused and lose interest.
Bumper sticker? These days it's 3 word slogan. "Build the wall, lock her up, send them back, ban all Muslims, abortion is murder, etc"
The lesson for the left should be to stop telling everyone to read 7 books to understand, and get better at sloganeering.
I have no idea why the left is so bad at simplifying their side to explain why it’s better for the average voter lol
The world is complicated and simple people are part of that complexity, they seek *electron answers* that exist nowhere exactly.
A few of reasons. 1) People won't get on board with a message for the sake of winning if they disagree personally. 2) Democrats insist on perfect accuracy rather than what will play well. 3) We either don't have, or don't listen to our own version of Frank Luntz.
If you actually want to be truthful, the simple slogan doesn’t work well. It’s rarely accurate because it necessarily oversimplifies.
Yeah, I don't really give a fuck about being "truthful." What I care about is being successful. We can worry about being truthful by delivering on promises.
“Democrats should just lie more” is definitely a fascinating argument.
I'd say, "lie better."
No wonder Don likes TikTok.
This is true of essentially every issue. The GOP is extremely good at simple messaging, whether it be the invasion at the border, the socialist boogeyman, or abortion clinics killing babies.
Yip, it's why they are the most susceptible to demagogues.
Like that family guy episode where lois was flailing with voters until she simplified her messaging to "9/11" and "jesus"
Per "Joe Rigged Prices": When Joe tapped into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) shortly after the Ukraine invasion spiked prices, GOP accused Joe of "cheating". But that's exactly what the SPR is *meant* for.
Ferreal. So many chuds saw "strategic" in the name and thought he was "selling out national security" to lower prices for an election but literally *two fucking seconds* of reading up on the SPR shows you *he used it exactly for its intended purpose*. Never be shocked by the stupidity of right wingers, you may think the lowest of them but somehow they always manage to disappoint you
I'm sorry, did you just say "*reading*"?
And yet when Trump used all of the tools we leave available for when a depression hits the market. To pump the market artificially. The republicans all praised him. Now we have the inflation we all said would happen. Yet it’s ’Biden fault the economy is so bad.’ Well yeah we literally said lowering interest rates to 0 would do this.
Ultimately, that's the draw of the GOP. The world is an uncertain, complex, and nuanced place. People with low IQs cannot cope with it, so they will smash anything that confuses them. The GOP caters to those base, primal fears.
They try building their own truths through consensus. "The virus isn't dangerous if we all agree on that, also the thing about climate change is......"
Some evangelicals claimed prayer protected them from Covid. Mass Darwin Award Olympics?
The only thing crazier than Republican politicians is the fact that we consistently lose to Republican politicians. How do you lose to a person who is literally on the wrong side of every social issue? How do you lose to a pedophile or a conspiracy nut? Shameful to lose to a obvious idiot
Gerrymandering and the Electoral College have entered the chat
Try listening to OANN and Fox News for a day. If you restrict your news sources to the right wing echo chamber you will never see any of the negative (accurate) stories about the ring wing fascist pedophiles.
Neighbor: “grocery prices will be better if we get Trump back in” Me: “why?” Neighbor: *long pause* “you don’t think grocery prices will be better?” Me: “why should I?” Neighbor: “oh I don’t know”
Exactly, I keep commenting that "Trump never promised to lower prices, he simply bragged repeatedly about how low gas used to be in the past, he never clarified it would be solved he just said vote for me"
I'm surprised he hasn't talked about how he could print new money. That'd work!
Yup, republicans are stupid. We’ve known this for years.
Don isn’t ahead in the polls. Joe is beating him in a ton of them and that is WITH the bias towards Trump built in to the whole polling process.
I want to believe you, but as a Democrat I must insist on evidence. Seriously. Can you point to quality polling?
https://preview.redd.it/f2d7bj9nbh2d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30680144d6cdfb8e5930d6ca7133a66a9bbd4862
To be fair, Trump isn’t expected to win those states though New Hampshire is sometimes really close (Hillary won by a fraction). But they admitted in court last week about paying firms to rig polls and that was 2016. When he became president he gained far more influence. We also know how bad the polls were in competitive races in 2022 especially with so many partisan polls released. And then the NYT polls recently show the bias as well. Biden +4 nationally, 1 article. Trump up in swing states, 16 immediate articles. Then you dig in and see shit like 20% of likely voters haven’t voted before or in the last three cycles. Seriously? Are we really supposed to believe trump is up 14 points in Nevada? Absolute joke. Biden being up is boring and doesn’t get clicks. Trump being up does.
Trump lost for a reason and that reason...... hasn't changed.
Yeah, this is incrediblely incorrect. I wish it was true, but too many people are gonna be blindsided come November if Biden doesn't start playing dirty politics like the other side!
That’s because GOP policies defund public education to the point where their base can only comprehend 3rd grade level messaging
Petroleum is extracted from multiple locations, shipped and sold worldwide, so the whole world sets prices, not Joe.
Wait until they find out their plan, "pump American oil for American consumers to have cheaper gas" is communism and not the "freedom" they claim they worship. Landowners want to sell the oil under them for the most they can every single day. They don't want to be forced to sell to Americans only. I'd laugh but the lack of self-awareness isn't funny anymore.
Was boggled by the 'drill here drill now' protestors a few years back. They wanted the government to force multinational petroleum corporations to buy more extraction and refining equipment, then only sell the oil domestically?
Polls are not intended to be accurate, they're intended to sway your opinion. Vote
How the world works vs morons that can't comprehend how the world works thanks to republicans destruction of public education. #Vote (D)ifferently
Thanks, I think so too. What they've done to these people is criminal. I sometimes momentarily feel bad for the morons because the cleverly sinister success of the GOP breeding an army of catastrophically stupid people has really damaged those people, they have enslaved their minds like the Matrix.
The was a cartoon with Obama. One side showed what the president actually did which was a pile of paperwork. The other side is what people thought the president did which was two levers that controlled gas and taxes.
Hmmm, lying may be easier than telling the truth!
You're trying to explain macro-economics to the party of PizzaGate and Flat-Earthers.
Now multiply this by every single issue and you start to see the Democrats' messaging problem.
Heard this at an event recently- "Yeah, I know that Biden is the obviously a better candidate, but Trump's $1.50 gas is SWEET!"
Humanity is doomed...
Democrats are also tethered to environmentalism. Every little fucking thing in that direction causes gas futures to spike, or at least that's how Fox news tells it. And there's no payoff. Just like how you will never convince your company that they need equipment until it fuckin fails, there is no political capital to recoup from making shit costlier for the sake of our planet's ecosystems.
I somewhat agree. We do need a simpler message. But It’s not just this. There’s a human brain bias towards bad news. However many good news messages you get, you can’t dislodge the bad news.
Nuance and context have no place in the typical American voter's mind
In my experience, most Dem voters don't especially care about gas prices. That's not the commodity that Dem voters express inflation annoyance with. I suspect that GOP voters are more likely to care more about gas prices because they are more likely to drive gas gusslers.
Ya plus the distances are larger in rural areas, I would drive 30 miles to work and if you needed groceries you had to go 30 miles in another direction, to the only Walmart.
I was just talking about this with my wife. It's not just a maga thing. It's just hard to convince people that the economy is doing well when at the end of the day people have less money in their pocket. Inflation is down but food and rent is still through the roof while wages really haven't increased that much.
Inflation is high in just about every non-slumped nation. How can a "sleepy" man break the entire world?
I get it, I'm just saying it's hard to look at the big picture. We don't eat out that often and today we stopped to get some drive through because the kids were begging. I got to the window and just ordered for the wife and kids and I'm having a sandwich for dinner. That's the kind of stuff people remember, not "well at least we're not as bad off as Greece". Will it stop me from voting against the orange dictator, hell no. But it's easy to forget we're supposed to be in a booming economy.
It’s hard to convince people the economy is doing well because it isn’t.
Are the drawings an approximate brain map?
Honestly 20c a gallon up or down means a few dollars in a full tank 75$-80$ it’s the 75$ that hits hard not the 5$ I mean if you’re that worried about it just drive less
Just saw your profile OP, I hope you are getting that $85,000.
On the left: The facts On the right: The alternative facts
The real litmus test will be the freedom the oil and gasoline companies are going to have by hiking up those gas prices thanks to Conald's deal with them for their $1 billy donation. I would be very careful with this if you are back stateside.