There is definitely something weird about Donald Trump and his supporters constantly asking Americans whether they were better off four years ago. Almost no one in America was better off four years ago in April than they are now: Most of the country was still in the midst of the restrictions implemented at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, and even those who weren\u2019t were at risk of catching the virus.<\/p>\n
What Trump could say, instead, is something that most presidential challengers haven\u2019t been able to: Were you better off when I was president? That\u2019s the subtext to the \u201cfour years ago\u201d question, of course, but in this case, the former is preferable for a very potent reason.<\/p>\n
Four years ago, the election was roiled by specific issues that were unquestionably bad for Trump.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the Associated Press published new polling data collected by NORC. On a range of issues, Americans indicated that Trump\u2019s presidency was more helpful than Joe Biden\u2019s.<\/p>\n
On abortion and climate change, people were more likely on net to say President Biden helped than they were to say that Trump did. Same with voting rights and election security. But on health care, cost of living, creating jobs, foreign policy and the border? Trump had the advantage.<\/p>\n
Comparing results within their own parties, Trump\u2019s advantage was much larger. Democrats said that Biden was more harmful on net when considering cost of living and the border. Even on the issue of creating jobs, where \u2014 assuming we\u2019re talking about job growth, the usual metric \u2014 Biden has outpaced Trump\u2019s presidency, Trump has a wide advantage within his party.<\/p>\n
But what isn\u2019t included here are the things that were potent four years ago, like the pandemic and social-justice protests. There\u2019s good reason not to include them, of course: The coronavirus, while still dangerous and widespread, isn\u2019t the threat or the public focus it was in April 2020. And there have not been widespread protests triggering the back-and-forth we saw during summer 2020. Including a question about the pandemic would have been interesting, certainly, but it\u2019s obvious why it wasn\u2019t, given the realities of fielding a poll.<\/p>\n
The extent to which the included questions are salient to the election, of course, is a question of its own. Climate change is a big issue for a lot of voters, for example, but tends to be ranked low on lists of importance overall. What\u2019s more, not all of these issues are created equal. Sure, Trump has a big advantage on most of these issues, and Biden, while faring better than Trump, is underwater on abortion \u2014 but Biden\u2019s advantage on abortion will almost certainly play a more significant role for many voters.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press poll also asked people to evaluate how each president did in helping a number of identified groups by religion, gender, race and income. Respondents thought that Biden had done more for Black people, Hispanic people and women. Trump was given the advantage among most groups, especially rich, White men.<\/p>\n
Notice the views of how the presidents fared in helping Muslim people. Biden has an advantage over Trump \u2014 but a plurality said \u201cneither\u201d president had been helpful.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t Muslim respondents offering that assessment. But it is nonetheless a reflection of the political moment, or at least of how the moment is perceived. It is a moment that is far less advantageous to Biden than the moment was four years ago.<\/p>\n
The perils of being the incumbent. Now Trump can simply lob rhetoric from the outside, insisting (as he often does) that he would have handled everything much better than Biden does. A lot of Americans respond positively to that. But it\u2019s also why Trump might want to stop comparing the moment now to four years ago \u2014 when he was the incumbent and the situation was far more dire.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There is definitely something weird about Donald Trump and his supporters constantly asking Americans whether they were better off four years ago. Almost no one in America was better off four years ago in April than they are now: Most of the country was still in the midst of the restrictions implemented at the outset […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}