Republicans don’t actually want you to remember 4 years ago
Reagan's question does not reflect poorly on Biden. On the contrary.
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“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Rep. Elise Stefanik asked during a news conference last week. She answered her own question by saying “the answer is a resounding no.” Lara Trump, the new co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said virtually the same thing to Sean Hannity on Tuesday. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott echoed that sentiment on Fox News as well, saying, “We have to go back to that future, 2017-2020. We want those four years one more time.”
The “better off” question become part of our political lexicon after Ronald Reagan posed it to Jimmy Carter during their sole 1980 presidential debate. It was effective for Reagan because Carter’s presidency ended in the middle of a severe recession and a second year of double-digit inflation. Most people in 1980 had in fact been at least somewhat better off before Carter’s presidency.
Today, though, to argue as Republicans are that most people are not better off than they were four years ago requires a bizarre form of political, social, and economic amnesia. Four years ago, in March 2020, the covid pandemic was rampaging across the world and country as the president desperately tried to wish it away. People were getting sick, many were dying, and the economy was shutting down as a result. It’s not a time to look back on with nostalgia.
Republicans hope voters have cloudy memories. More broadly, they hope people don’t remember what Trump’s presidency was like. Just to keep a grasp on reality, it’s worth reminding ourselves just how wretched that year was.
It’s also important, though, to realize that when they say, “Were you better off four years ago?” Republicans are not asking for a comparison of Biden and Trump. They’re asking instead for a referendum on Biden that deliberately denies and erases who his opponent is.
The GOP wants to run on negative partisanship and Biden hate alone. To do so they try to evoke a magical, imaginary past that never happened. That’s, after all, what the slogan, “Make America Great Again” has always meant.
It was, in fact, the worst of times
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that March 2020 was among the worst months in the history of the American republic. The Bluesky account “Four Years Ago Today” is a bleak reminder of the fear, panic, and despair of that time.
On March 11 — exactly four years ago this past Monday — two NBA players tested positive for covid and the season was suspended. Tom Hanks and his wife were hospitalized. The next day, March 12, airports were in chaos as crowds rushed to try to get home before the travel ban; unmasked travelers from across the globe were crammed together in airport corridors, a perfect scenario for the spread of plague. The Dow fell 10 percent, its worst drop in 33 years. By March 24, 16 states had closed their schools.
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Things only got worse as the year dragged on. In April, as terror of infection spread and businesses and schools shut down, unemployment skyrocketed to 14.8 percent, the worst number recorded since data collection began in 1948. By year’s end, 351,000 Americans had died of covid, boosting overall death rates from 715 per 100,000 in 2019 to 835 per 100,000 in 2020. Life expectancy dropped 1.8 years.
Donald Trump, as president, famously did little to fight the pandemic and much to make it worse. Before the crisis started, Trump had radically cut funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then the administration was slow to ramp up testing and dragged its feet on stockpiling PPE. Trump refused to subsidize state and local governments, which could have kept employees on the payroll and substantially reduced unemployment and hardship. The Paycheck Protection Program was poorly run and funneled money to larger companies rather than to the small businesses it was supposed to help.
And of course Trump increased chaos by pushing quack covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and musing during a nationally televised news conference about people injecting bleach. He also mocked wearing masks — and his refusal to take proper measures to avoid infection probably contributed to his own serious hospitalization with covid in October.
Of course, covid continued to be a serious health threat in Biden’s presidency; it remained at crisis level through 2022. However, vaccinations and better treatments led to a precipitous decline in mortality in 2023.
In addition, thanks to substantial stimulus spending, Biden managed to usher in a remarkable economic recovery. Unemployment has been under 4 percent for two years, the longest stretch in a half a century. Inflation, after a spike early in Biden’s presidency, is now largely under control, and as a result wages are outpacing inflation. In four years, we’ve gone from one of the worst economies in US history under Trump to one of the best under Biden.
It wasn’t just covid
Covid poisoned everything in the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. But even if you could somehow bracket the pandemic, there are plenty of reasons not to look back on 2020 with longing.
During Trump’s entire presidency, the United States was at war; there were 45 US combat deaths in Afghanistan under Trump’s tenure. Trump rolled back rules limiting airstrikes in Afghanistan, and as a result civilian casualties during his presidency increased by 330 percent. Airstrikes killed some 700 civilians in Afghanistan in 2019, more than any year since 2002.
Trump also ramped up the drone war and removed almost all checks and accountability from the program. In the first half of 2020, the US launched 40 drone airstrikes just in Somalia. That was only one less than Presidents Bush and Obama flew in Somalia from 2007 to 2016.
In contrast, Biden ended the war in Afghanistan. That withdrawal was messy, and Biden was much criticized for its failures. But the fact remains that US forces are not currently at war in the country, which means US troops are not dying there, and we are not killing civilians. Biden also virtually ended the drone war early in his presidency.
Back at home, 2020 was the year police in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd, sparking nationwide protests against police brutality and racism. In response, Trump told police and military leaders that they should “beat the fuck out” of protesters and encouraged authorities to “just shoot them.” In line with those sentiments, National Guard troops tear-gassed protesters in DC’s Lafayette Square while Trump staged a photo-op at a nearby church.
Republicans want to make 2024 a referendum on Biden
None of this is to say that everything is perfect in the United States in 2024. Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court picks, the United States gutted abortion rights in 2022, with devastating results for maternal mortality and women’s health. The GOP has launched escalating and terrifying attacks on trans people’s rights and health care. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the war has dragged on as US political gridlock hinders military aid to Ukraine.
Most recently, Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. Israel retaliated with an indiscriminate bombing campaign, turning most of Gaza into a ruin and killing a horrific 30,000 people, including more than 12,300 children. Humanitarian agencies have charged Israel with numerous war crimes, but Biden has so far refused to place conditions on military aid to the country.
Biden isn’t responsible for all of these crises. But he’s president, so people look to him for leadership and will blame him when there are troubles at home and abroad. That’s why, when an election is a referendum on the incumbent, the incumbent often struggles. People are almost always (rightly!) angry about many problems in the country, and if the election is a question of whether they are angry, they’ll often vote against the guy in charge.
Trump and his minions want the election to be a referendum rather than a choice between Biden and Trump. That’s, contradictorily, why they keep assuring people they were better four years ago even as they carefully avoid mentioning anything that was actually happening back then.
“Are you better now?” isn’t a call for people to think about Trump vs. Biden. It’s meant to get people to just think vaguely that Biden is bad, while looking back to a mythical pre-Biden Eden, when America was great in a nonspecific, generalized way.
The GOP’s messaging also reflects the huge partisan bias among Republicans when it comes to evaluating the economy. Democrats and Republicans both tend to see the economy as better when their president is in power. But the partisan bias is a full 2.5 times greater for Republicans.
That means that when you ask Republicans if they were better off four years ago under Trump, they’ll almost always say “yes” because their evaluation of the economy is skewed based on whether or not their guy is in office. Reagan used “Are you better off four years ago?” as a way to appeal to undecided voters. Republicans are mostly using it to appeal to their base.
Democrats will spend a lot of time and money this year reminding people of just how awful the Trump presidency was. Republicans for their part are going to try to praise Trump without actually talking about what happened four years ago when he was president. Anyone who clearly remembers his presidency has to hope they fail.
That’s it for this week
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We’ll be back with more Monday. Until then, have a great weekend.
What we need to do is REMEMBER to vote in November! The choice is clear: Biden or Dictatorship!
“We have to go back to that future, 2017-2020. We want those four years one more time.”” No we don’t, because 4 years ago we had refrigerated trucks and mass death. How stupid do these corrupt f*ckers think their voters are? Are they really counting on mass amnesia to simply wipe away the malicious indifference that allowed a million deaths? These sociopaths seem to have no agenda beyond killing off people they don’t like and keeping everyone else as sick and desperate as possible.