Is there some fuckery going on with the creation of this poll? Or can this just be attributed to the majority of Americans being jingoistic morons?
Republicans talk a good economy game because neoclassical economics is basically the reigning paradigm. Everything has to be justified in terms of market efficiency, hence why all government action seems unjustified.
And as long as Americans (foolishly) believe in market efficiency above all else , the more they’ll buy the Republican con game.
And the problem is that the Democrats don’t offer an alternative vision. Especially since Clinton and the Third Way, Dems have felt that they also need to double down on the same kind of laissez-faire economic policies. The same thing happened in the UK. After getting their asses kicked by Reagan and Thatcher, the mainstream left moved to the economic right and agreed with Thatcher that “There is no alternative.”
I’m not doing a “both sides” argument here. Democrats are clearly better for the economy along all timescales just based on historical performance. The problem is that by not challenging the dominant paradigm, and by not changing the domain of discussion (eg, family values means making sure families have food and housing security and can have representation in the workplace as well as the government), they’re surrendering the field to the republicans.
I suspect that, like with climate change, there’s just too much money at stake for anyone to want to take the risk of calling out the elephant in the room. I hoped that Greenspan admitting that the flaw in his model was that markets would behave efficiently to control risk would be the start of the re-evaluation. Instead, we just went back to doing it all the same.
It’s incredible that the “no difference/no opinion” line goes steadily down just as the neoliberal turn began in-earnest. There’s basically no difference in economic policy between the two parties since the Reagan years, and yet that’s the period of greatest polarization of opinion. We’re looking at the high-level results of a pure propaganda war.
Actually, I think I’m in that category too. For a very specific reason.
When D is in power, they attempt to cooperate with R, who spends their time trying to undermine every positive thing D attempts to do.
This results in a short-term downturn in the economy.
When R is in power, they steamroll over D where they can, and cooperate with them when they must. This results in a stable economy. They also tend to give handouts to their voting base.
In the long term, the R strategy will destroy the country, but over 4 years it can produce a more predictable economy that appears prosperous to the people that tend to fill out these polls.
There’s one issue though: that “keep the country prosperous” bit — the country would have to be prospering for this question to even be applicable.
