By Catherine Rampell
Columnist |
Updated November 1, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT|Published November 1, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
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Voters are mad about inflation and crime, which have both climbed on Democrats’ watch. Perhaps understandably, Americans appear tempted to try Republican leadership again.
Yet if voters do a little research, they’ll learn they’re still better off with the devil they know than the one they don’t.
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The signs are ominous: A recent CNN story featured an undecided voter in Arizona being aggressively courted by Republicans. “Biden promised many things, but I feel like he hasn’t delivered,” the woman, Maria Melgoza, said through a translator. “And the other party, I don’t know much about it.”
In just a few words, Melgoza summed up the 2022 campaign season: widespread discontent with the Democrats; little familiarity with what the GOP might do differently; a core willingness to believe that whatever Republicans have in store, it has to be better than today’s situation.
This is a very bad assumption.
Anger over current conditions is reasonable. Inflation remains painfully high, and Democrats played down its consequences for far too long. Democrats have been slow to deploy what few tools they have available to modestly reduce price pressures (e.g., tariff repeal; waiving restrictions that limit which ships can transport oil and other products; fixing backlogs in the legal immigration system, which contribute to worker shortages).
Instead, Democrats are preoccupied with strategies that will not lower prices: demagoguing about “corporate greed” (an apparent effort to shame companies into more altruistic pricing); demanding price controls; or haranguing the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates.
Likewise, Democrats have been too dismissive of concerns about crime, blaming the media for stoking citizens’ fears.
The main drivers of these problems, however, are largely beyond the control of the president or federal lawmakers. As I have long argued, presidents get too much credit when the economy is good and too much blame when it’s bad. Yes, Democrats could have made last year’s vaunted American Rescue Plan smaller, which would have led to lower demand and slightly less-bad inflation.
Even so, inflation would still likely be high by historical standards. It is at multi-decade highs in much of the world. The broader macroeconomic and geopolitical forces driving, say, gas prices are generally outside the president’s or Congress’s purview.
Likewise with crime, which spiked nationwide at the beginning of the pandemic — in both rural areas and urban ones, and in both red states and blue. Most of the cities with the 10 highest murder rates, or biggest increases in murders this year, are in red or purple states. New York City gets a bad rap, but it is unusually safe compared with both other cities and rural areas in per capita terms.
More to the point for the midterms: Americans might think Democrats’ record is lousy, but the question is — lousy compared to what?
Republicans have no counterproposals for dealing with these problems. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to say what his party would do if it regains control of Congress. National Republican Senatorial Committee head Rick Scott (Fla.) went rogue this winter and released his own agenda, which included sunsetting Medicare and Social Security; it was so unpopular, he walked it back.
No Republican official has revealed any strategy for curbing inflation, aside from scaremongering about socialism and blaming Democrats for “closing” an oil pipeline that had never opened. What little of the GOP economic agenda Republicans have revealed would likely worsen inflation (more tax cuts) and potentially cause a global financial crisis (refusing to raise the debt ceiling).
On crime, Republicans say they will undo Democrats’ decisions to supposedly “defund the police” — but that is not actually a plan because the alleged “defunding” did not happen. Democratic leaders, including President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have explicitly rejected activists’ calls for defunding the police; in fact, Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly voted to give states and localities more money for law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders and right-wing commentators amplify rhetoric and conspiracy theories that seem likely to encourage more political violence.
That is, the ostensible “law and order” party continues to provoke lawlessness.
Somehow, Republicans have made this election an up-or-down vote on Democrats rather than a choice between two parties’ concrete, alternative strategies for governing. But it is foolish to assume, absent evidence, that the GOP will do any better than Democrats have. In fact, the clues available so far suggest things are likely to be much worse.
Why have voters (and many journalists) largely given the GOP a pass? Partly because Republicans benefit from low expectations. Truly, if a Republican politician does the bare minimum — such as acknowledging that the candidate who receives more votes should win the election — they are hailed as a moderate hero. A champion of democracy!
By all means, voters should press Democrats to do better. But throwing the bums out, without properly vetting the potential replacements, carries grave risks Americans have not yet begun to contemplate.
Columnist |
Updated November 1, 2022 at 8:00 a.m. EDT|Published November 1, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Share
Voters are mad about inflation and crime, which have both climbed on Democrats’ watch. Perhaps understandably, Americans appear tempted to try Republican leadership again.
Yet if voters do a little research, they’ll learn they’re still better off with the devil they know than the one they don’t.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
The signs are ominous: A recent CNN story featured an undecided voter in Arizona being aggressively courted by Republicans. “Biden promised many things, but I feel like he hasn’t delivered,” the woman, Maria Melgoza, said through a translator. “And the other party, I don’t know much about it.”
In just a few words, Melgoza summed up the 2022 campaign season: widespread discontent with the Democrats; little familiarity with what the GOP might do differently; a core willingness to believe that whatever Republicans have in store, it has to be better than today’s situation.
This is a very bad assumption.
Anger over current conditions is reasonable. Inflation remains painfully high, and Democrats played down its consequences for far too long. Democrats have been slow to deploy what few tools they have available to modestly reduce price pressures (e.g., tariff repeal; waiving restrictions that limit which ships can transport oil and other products; fixing backlogs in the legal immigration system, which contribute to worker shortages).
Instead, Democrats are preoccupied with strategies that will not lower prices: demagoguing about “corporate greed” (an apparent effort to shame companies into more altruistic pricing); demanding price controls; or haranguing the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates.
Likewise, Democrats have been too dismissive of concerns about crime, blaming the media for stoking citizens’ fears.
The main drivers of these problems, however, are largely beyond the control of the president or federal lawmakers. As I have long argued, presidents get too much credit when the economy is good and too much blame when it’s bad. Yes, Democrats could have made last year’s vaunted American Rescue Plan smaller, which would have led to lower demand and slightly less-bad inflation.
Even so, inflation would still likely be high by historical standards. It is at multi-decade highs in much of the world. The broader macroeconomic and geopolitical forces driving, say, gas prices are generally outside the president’s or Congress’s purview.
Likewise with crime, which spiked nationwide at the beginning of the pandemic — in both rural areas and urban ones, and in both red states and blue. Most of the cities with the 10 highest murder rates, or biggest increases in murders this year, are in red or purple states. New York City gets a bad rap, but it is unusually safe compared with both other cities and rural areas in per capita terms.
More to the point for the midterms: Americans might think Democrats’ record is lousy, but the question is — lousy compared to what?
Republicans have no counterproposals for dealing with these problems. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has refused to say what his party would do if it regains control of Congress. National Republican Senatorial Committee head Rick Scott (Fla.) went rogue this winter and released his own agenda, which included sunsetting Medicare and Social Security; it was so unpopular, he walked it back.
No Republican official has revealed any strategy for curbing inflation, aside from scaremongering about socialism and blaming Democrats for “closing” an oil pipeline that had never opened. What little of the GOP economic agenda Republicans have revealed would likely worsen inflation (more tax cuts) and potentially cause a global financial crisis (refusing to raise the debt ceiling).
On crime, Republicans say they will undo Democrats’ decisions to supposedly “defund the police” — but that is not actually a plan because the alleged “defunding” did not happen. Democratic leaders, including President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have explicitly rejected activists’ calls for defunding the police; in fact, Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly voted to give states and localities more money for law enforcement.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders and right-wing commentators amplify rhetoric and conspiracy theories that seem likely to encourage more political violence.
That is, the ostensible “law and order” party continues to provoke lawlessness.
Somehow, Republicans have made this election an up-or-down vote on Democrats rather than a choice between two parties’ concrete, alternative strategies for governing. But it is foolish to assume, absent evidence, that the GOP will do any better than Democrats have. In fact, the clues available so far suggest things are likely to be much worse.
Why have voters (and many journalists) largely given the GOP a pass? Partly because Republicans benefit from low expectations. Truly, if a Republican politician does the bare minimum — such as acknowledging that the candidate who receives more votes should win the election — they are hailed as a moderate hero. A champion of democracy!
By all means, voters should press Democrats to do better. But throwing the bums out, without properly vetting the potential replacements, carries grave risks Americans have not yet begun to contemplate.