The Daily Beast Podcast - Has Social Media Brainwashed You to Think the Economy’s Bad?

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist and the chief data reporter for the Financial Times, joins The New Abnormal this week to unpack why people feel so bad about what is an objectively strong economy. Then, the newly appointed president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Heather Williams, talks about the party’s plan to win down-ballot races. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Heather Williams, the new president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, talks to us about what Dems should be doing to win in 2024. Then we'll talk to Financial Times data reporter John Byrne Murdoch about why the polling in people's economic anxieties aren't lining up. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, it's here. The moment we've been waiting for. Hmm. The big one. The one that is going to totally change American democracy.

Oh, my. I'm speaking, of course, of the impeachment of President Joe Biden. This is the most ridiculous thing possible, I think. I hesitate to say that because by tomorrow something more ridiculous will have happened. Along party lines, the House voted to formally open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. What are the charges? We don't know. Is that the Christmas surprise? Are we waiting on a Christmas surprise? Are we going to open it on Christmas? The charges seem to be that we need to find some charges. This is the kind of thing where anyone with at least half a brain knows that this is

insane and that is 100% political. And the problem is that if you look at the MAGAR folks, so the ones with half a brain know this and don't care. This is the point for them. That leaves the ones left with less than half a brain. And they all think that this means that the Biden crime family is going down. I just have a quick question, just a point of clarification. Yeah, sure. Which are the ones with the half? a brain that we think. Like, I'm just curious because it was a vote of what, 221 to 22. Who are you talking about? I'm talking about like the Steve Bannons and the people like that. The people who, they can dress themselves. Well, not well. Right, because he wears six shirts.

But, okay. I know. I know. Okay. So let me, let me rephrase. Let me use a different metaphor. The ones who know that they're full of shit and the ones who know that there is nothing. here. People like Stephen Miller, Steve Bennett, these people are not brain dead. They're horrible, horrible, evil people, but they're not brain dead. And so they know this is all just a political ploy, and that's what they want. So I'm sort of separating them out from the rank and file who swallow all this shit. It's basically the grifters and the Marx is what I'm saying here. Ah, okay. Interesting. Okay, interesting. I like this distinction. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing that folks are saying, like, I think that the American people are smarter than the Republican

Maga Supremus Party gives them credit for, which is that how long have these motherfuckers had to come up with something on Joe Biden? They have had investigative committees. They have started a whole new committees. They have, you know, brought in the Merrick Garland and others to scream at them so that they have clips for Fox News. And in all of their ransacking closets and overturning furniture and rugs, they have come up with nothing. There is no grounds to impeach Joe Biden. And what makes this even more laughable, they've spent, I don't even know how long it is now, years, going after Hunter Biden, years about trying to make fetch happen with the Biden crime family. And when Hunter Biden goes ahead and calls their blow,

love and says, sure, I'll testify, bet, but I'm going to do it openly. I'm going to do it for the public so that there is no mincing words, there's no manipulation, there's no nothing just in exchange between us that the public can see. And as soon as the Republicans said no to that, we all knew what this impeachment inquiry was about. It's about muddying the waters for 2024 so that they can make their fucking filthy, toxic, you know, 91 counts, four indictments, criminal ass, alleged rapists like look better because, oh, look, Biden is under investigation too. And the fact is, is that in 2016, this worked when they did it with Hillary Clinton, right? It worked.

Oh, we got to open up the case again, October right before the election. But I don't think that it works this time, do you? I don't think it sticks. Yeah, I hope not. I don't know for the same reason, like you said, that it worked in 2016. Let me be very careful about how I phrased this. At least with Hillary, there was a little something there that could be spun in various different ways and ultimately did not rise to the level of anything 100% outrageous. But there is literally nothing here. And I want to actually give, we spent a lot of time bashing the mainstream media on here correctly. I want to give the New York Times a little credit here. Their headline on this story was,

was House approves Biden impeachment inquiry as GOP hunts for an offense. And then the subheadline is Republicans are pushing forward with a formal investigation, even though their year-long scrutiny of the president and his family has turned up no evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. Thank you. I would like to hold that in opposition to like CNN who simply say, House votes to formalize impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden with floor vote. Yeah, that's factual and it's correct. It's lacking a little bit of context that the New York Times at least supplies. And in graph three of the CNN story, they'll say, the probe has struggled to uncover wrongdoing by the president. Okay, maybe put that in your headline is all I'm saying. And, you know,

I was actually, I was a little shocked at the Times headline. I don't know if some of the editors are on vacation now or something and let that slide in. And for all I know, someone got fired over this. But it was nice to see. But I would like to think that, and again, let's talk of this amorphous group of, I guess, moderates or independent voters. I would like to think that most of them are smart enough to at least understand that there's nothing here. I just don't know. I would be lying if I said I had that kind of faith. I mean, I am ye of little faith at this point. And I know this is a time of year where we're supposed to, you know, be abundant with joy and faith and hope and all of that. But what I would like to believe is that Joe Biden has been

president for a couple of years now. Was vice president for eight years. You know, took on a shit economy, took on COVID that, you know, the former president told you to inject bleach for or shine a light somewhere in order to get rid of it. This is where Biden's age, I think, actually works in his favor. This man has been in public office longer than a lot of people have been alive that are about to vote. Some millennials, I think, turned 40. Joe Biden's been in public office for 42 goddamn years. If there was some type of alleged crime family, right, with all of the digging, all of, you know, the unearthing. And remember, up until the Obama administration, these were his friends. Like some of these people who now forget, you know, and kind of just go along with the Maga supremacy, have known

this man for four decades. So to all of a sudden turn around and say, this guy that's been taking Amtrak up and down Washington, D.C. to Delaware for four decades is somehow running somebody's crime ring is fucking ridiculous. And if we look at Hunter Biden right now, I just want to look in his bank account. Is the $2 billion from the Saudis there, or is it in Jared Kushner's account? Right. Right? Because what Hunter Biden got himself caught up in is a drug addiction that then prompted a bunch of bad choices. And do you know who's addicted to drugs? Millions of people that got addicted to opioids in this country who actually understand his story because it's part of their own. So I just like, I would like to believe that the American people

for all of the things, like if I'm the administration, this is where I would pull out the age card. Yeah. I agree with you, Danielle. And I think also just to button this up, a lot of Americans have also had experience with someone in their family having addiction. Mm-hmm. We're suffering from an addiction. And I think maybe even more than the age thing is the father thing. And being able to just say, this is a guy who loved his son, who was an addict and did nothing but try to be supportive of him and certainly didn't break the law doing it.

And I think a message like that hopefully will go a long way. There are people who will have Joe Biden's back on on that for that reason, which leads me to a question of whether or not the Supreme Court has Donald Trump's back. And as a vice headline put it, Trump got a big sign the Supreme Court doesn't have his back. The sign here is that the Supreme Court agreed to hear an urgent request from special counsel Jack Smith, and they agreed to fast-track it. And the issue at hand is an appeal that Trump's legal team has filed to declare him immune from prosecution in the D.C. criminal case. This is the election subversion case, for those of you keeping track of the cases at all. Basically, Trump's legal argument is that Trump is immune from

prosecution for actions that he took while he was president. And also that charging him in this case and trying him in this case is double jeopardy because he's already been impeached for the same actions, which, look, I'm not a legal scholar, but impeachment is not a legal proceeding. So I have absolutely no idea where this double jeopardy argument comes from. The argument here is that it's a good sign that SCOTUS decided to fast track this because they recognize the urgency to deal with this because the trial is now on hold. Judge Chutkin has put the case on pause while these appeals are in motion. And obviously the state, the prosecution, Jack Smith, would like to get the trial underway as soon as possible. And Trump would like to delay it in his mind, hopefully, until he's elected

God King. So hopefully what we're looking at here is a Supreme Court that despite being full of Trump appointees understands that this trial has to happen quickly. And that's why they've agreed to fast track it. I'm not entirely sure I buy the logic, but there it is. I don't trust this Supreme Court as far as I can throw any of them. Oh, now the faith is gone. Yeah. I mean, sure. Have they decided to not move at the, you know, at the pace of molasses on top of a sloth, maybe. And maybe they're doing that so they can actually act like real justices that look at court cases objectively and through the lens of law. But we know who these people are.

So I'm like, you know, they could be fast tracking it to give Trump a sigh of relief that, hey, you're above the law, right? And all presidents are above the law so long, by the way, that they are a Republican. We have to remember that three of these judges are McConnell, Trump, Maga, supremacist judges, that they were picked for this fucking reason, the same way that Cannon was put in place down in Florida, somebody with no experience at this level. I don't want us to all of a sudden believe that because the Supreme Court has decided to move with haste, that that means somehow bad news for Donald Trump because I mean, it's just like we've seen this redux before. There is no one. There's not another

person in this country that would have as much against them as Donald Trump and we still are at a 50-50 fucking coin toss-up on whether or not like a trial can move forward up against an election where he's telling people that he wants to be a dictator on day one and that he's going to be their retribution and that he's going to put his dissenters in jail when it comes to the Supreme court. These unelected nine people in black coats, I don't have faith because they are corrupt. Like Clarence Thomas, we're relying on him to do what exactly? Wait on his allowance. That's what he's doing. I don't know. I have less faith here than Tim McGraw on a boy's night. I get the argument, I guess, that the fast track is a good sign. But I agree with you. To me, this could just as easily

be, you know, a sign that, yeah, there's a bunch of justices that want to go ahead and rule in Trump's favor and sink this trial quickly so that he can run for re-election without it hanging over his head. Yeah. I would be very happy to be wrong here. I don't know how you look at the makeup of this court and, like you said, have any strong feeling that it's going to do the right thing. That brings us to another case that they have now agreed to here. And this involves the medical abortion drug, Mifipristone, which in 2016, the restrictions on how to get it and all that stuff were loosened, thanks to a bunch of lawsuits, and in particular, a ruling, an insane ruling by a district judge named Matthew Kismarach, a Trump appointee. His ruling was that he was to override

the FDA and end the approval of Mephypristone completely. The Supreme Court put a stay on that and said, hang on until we get a chance to review it. Then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals pushed back on some of Casmaric's ruling, but agreed with him that the eased restrictions on the drug should go. So now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case, and they'll hear it next year. Again, I don't know, particularly in a case involving anything that has to do with abortion. I don't know how you look at it as that being the probability. Them deciding to take this case up, not a great sign. And just a reminder to folks who think that they are safe in somebody's blue state cocoon,

that the decision that they make about this is going to have ramifications across all 50 states. So this whole bullshit ruse of state's rights is not what this has ever been about. It's been about a national abortion ban. And they won't stop there. When it comes to this unelected body, I am ye of little faith, because they have all been installed to do a job and they've done the first round of that hit job. This case is just about finishing it. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal for the very first time. The newly appointed president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee known as the DLCC.

Heather Williams joins us. Heather, congratulations on being named as president of the DLCC, an outfit that you've been a part of for many, many years in a variety of positions. So before we jump in, please give folks who may not be familiar with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee the purpose and mission of the organization. Yes, well, thank you. I'm delighted to be here and certainly very happy to be here in this capacity. The DLCC is the party committee responsible for state legislatures. Our work is to build power in the states, and we've been doing that successfully for the past few cycles. Amazing. I think that more so now than ever, I think that voters have become very clear on the importance of down-ballot candidates, meaning that with recent decisions that we have seen with the Supreme Court as it pertains to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as we're looking at the power in certain.

places that, you know, state legislatures have, the winning back of Virginia by Democrats, has the ability to now block Governor Yonkin's plan, which was to institute a 15-week ban on abortion. Talk to us about the kind of education, I guess, through fire in a lot of ways that voters have had about these local and state legislatures that are incredibly important in holding up our rights. So I've been in this work a long time and I've always understood and been able to tell the story, right, of how important states are. But to your point, right, the Dobbs decision crystallized this for so many people. Republicans in states were going to have an ability to roll back rights that everyone had assumed were very cemented, right? The Dobbs decision did that. And suddenly

people saw the connection to their action, their ability to vote. vote in states and their access to an abortion. We talked in Virginia a lot about Virginia had elections, right, November. We talked a lot about how if voters went to the poll on Tuesday and woke up on Wednesday with a Republican majority in their state house that there would be an abortion ban. That clear ability to connect an action of the legislature with an action that I could take, right, to go to the poll and vote has really sped up any education, anyone thought that they may need on how important the states were to our everyday lives. And I think that that is incredibly important

because as far as I can remember back when I was working on the Hill, living in Washington, D.C., and working in a variety of capacities, the attention by Democrats has always been at the top of the ticket. The attention has always been, you know, what is happening federally, as opposed to what is happening locally. And what we have seen is that Republicans have been able then,

because of our attention focused on the top, have been able to infiltrate in a lot of ways these state legislatures in order to hold and wield a lot of power. I mean, you know, folks don't have to go that far back to see what happened in Tennessee with the ouster and then reinstatement through special election to duly democratically elected state reps,

the justins in Tennessee, following their participation in a protest, following yet another school shooting. And so I just want you to be able to speak to again before we talk about 2024 in this upcoming cycle, what has been highlighted for people across the country in the South, on the coast about how important control in state legislatures are? Republicans have shown repeatedly. And I think there's just more eyes on it now than ever before that they are willing to secure their own or through any means necessary. and power, both the literal sense of I have an ability to control some, but it is also perceptive, right?

I can throw these members in the legislature because I dissing them and I want to show them, right? And that mentality is dangerous. That is not good right holistically for this country, but it also shows how important the states are and why we will only succeed as Democrats and frankly, we will only succeed in moving this country forward if we have both a state and a federal strategy. And our role, right, comes into the state side of things. We've always been here, but the attention and the ability to lift up the stories and to have the support to really tell it has been better than ever before. So one of the things that your outfit is going to be focused on in 2024 is maintaining the majorities that we currently hold in Michigan, Minnesota,

Pennsylvania, but also the ability to flip the Arizona House and Senate, the New Hampshire House and Senate, and the Pennsylvania Senate. You're looking at a spend of about $60 million this cycle. Talk about the focus on these places and what your strategy is in either maintaining or hoping to flip in the states I just listed out. Yeah, there was a great restatement of our goals for the cycle. That's really where the fight in the states are going to happen. You know, we've had a winning election in 2022, winning election in 2023. We come with a well-honed, strong strategy.

And what we know about state legislative races and this ballot level is that they are really dependent and built upon real conversations with voters. That the strength of where we sit in government and on the ballot is that our elected officials and candidates still live in their districts, right? They're still looking at voters when they go to the grocery store, when they drop their kids off at school, when they go get gas. And it is that dialogue, that willingness and ability to create a space for people to feel seen, to be heard and to engage in dialogue about hope, streams, wishes, fears, all of the things. And have a real idea of what representative government looks like, what Democrats look. look like when they lead has been such a critical pillar of our program. And we'll take that into

2024. Our role at DLCC, right, is to make sure that we've got really strong foundational work happening that we're investing early to set up the structures needed to be the most active participant in those conversations in that dialogue as we move through the election season and then, of course, into, you know, GOTV and election day. I want to talk about the dollar amount. because we have a lot of money thrown around and a lot of numbers. And we know that Republicans and the MAGA supremacy movement has extraordinarily deep billion dollar pockets. And we know that the presidential races, as a matter of fact, have hit billion dollar marks in terms of their spends. We've seen spends in the Senate hit tens of tens of millions of dollars just for one race.

So talk to us about the delineation of this 60 million. And if that, frankly, is enough. We are still striving, right, to close the gap of spend between federal races and state races. We've talked about this, I feel like a number of times, but using the Amy McGrath race as a marker. She spent nearly $90 million in what everyone knew was going to be an uphill battle at best, but earned the support of donors to have that kind of war chest against Mitch McConnell. And when we think about the impact that that could have across the country in state houses, it's enormous. So, you know, we continue to raise the alarm bells and tell the story of impact and opportunity.

But also, I think really highlight how much of our agenda, how much of the president's agenda is getting done in the states and how we need to be supported, resourced in a similar way. I agree wholeheartedly. And I think that on top of the money, the battle of money, there's also a messaging issue. And we talk about it on this show a lot that Democrats, you know, seemingly consistently have these wins, but have a messaging issue when it comes to how voters are actually feeling. As we're headed into 2024, I mean, we know and we say this and we've been saying it since Donald Trump entered into the political ring is that, election becomes more consequential than the last. Each election is, you know, the fate of our democracy is dependent on a few thousand votes. And so I want to know for you, obviously each state is

different depending on what the issues are of that state. But what is the overall messaging that you are going to try and hammer in that the DLCC will deliver in 24? When we look to 2024, we think about the message and sort of the concept of fundamental freedoms being on the ballot. And in state houses, what that means is not just reproductive freedom, but the freedom to be safe from guns in schools and in our communities, to be able to read the books that you want to read, to love and marry who you want to love and marry, to decide when and how you're going to have a family or if you're going to have a family, to be right, like financially free and have, you know, strong health care and make sure kids are fed in schools. This dynamic sort of nature of freedoms and making sure that we are securing them, access to the ballot box,

etc., is going to be an arc. And we saw this happen, these conversations happen in Virginia. And we are expecting that to be a driver as we move into 24. And I think that that's really important, you know, for far too long until probably the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Democrats never really wanted to utter the word abortion. And yet we now see that as a galvanizing issue to get women and people with uteruses to the polls. Because we understand, and I think progressives have known for quite some time, that Republicans were never going to stop with abortion. We just got news of Mitha Pristone, you know, being the next case that's going to be heard at the Supreme Court, which will affect people not just in red states with trigger laws, but in blue states as well. So across the country. And so while many people say to me, listeners of this show and others, that they don't want to vote from a place of fear, Heather, they say that they want to vote their values, that they're tired of being told that this election, any election hinges, you know, democracy hinges on it or doomsday is impending. And so how do you go about this kind of crisis fatigue that the American voter is facing when you're going to have to break through the noise? of the presidential, of the House and the Senate,

in order to get people to also pay attention to what is happening in their backyards. We are fortunate to have an incredibly dynamic, diverse set of people raise their hand to run for a legislative office. We are also really fortunate to have an incredible set of leaders in these chambers across the country that are moving, really impactful policy that has a deep effect on people's lives and they're moving it right through a lens of strong leadership and justice.

And because the nature of the state, right, is to be able to move legislation fairly quickly and a lot of it, we have excellent proof points of what not just democratic leadership looks like, but how we can chip away and start to move the needle on these very real problems that exist in our lives and in this country. And so when we look at the states, we don't just see this fear, right, and sort of take. terror environment that I think we're so used to. We also see real progress being made that is moving the needle and improving people's lives. And it is being able to do both of those things and talk about both of those things that really makes this ballot level fun and also resonate, right, with voters. And I think that that is absolutely what is needed. You know, I wonder for you, like one of the things that was mentioned in the political article that you were quoted in that talks about your appointment, your new position, is a fact that Americans are dealing with an incumbent that they're not excited about. And, you know, what we saw over this last cycle is that President Biden wasn't in these places that had major wins. He was actually very distant from them. How concerned are you that the lack of excitement for President Biden is going to,

to affect your candidates? What I think we see in 2024 is a real look at the ability to move legislation and to make progress on the issues we care about, right? And to be able to tell that story. I'm confident that the president and his team is going to create a winning strategy to return him to the White House. And we absolutely need Joe Biden back in the White House. I'm absolutely also confident that we have a winning strategy in the states and that we have to tend to both of those things. And that because we are making progress in the states and because we are moving legislation and issues are so close to people's lives that there is a motivating factor. You know, we've seen Democrats in 2023 already show up in these really small state legislative special elections

and use their voice to be heard. And we're going to carry that into 20, And the truth is, is that the stakes are very high, not just for the president, but in these, in these states. And it is our job, right, to make those clear and to continue to bring people into the process. Understood. Lastly, I do want to hammer it in this point that, you know, there are many people right now that are saying that they're going to stay home because of their frustration with this current administration, their crisis fatigue. And the staying home doesn't just affect the outcome of the presidential race. It affects the outcome of everything that is at stake.

What is your message to those people that right now, 11 months out, are saying, I may sit this one out? Without question, we have to earn people's votes. And it will be through very real conversations with members of these local communities and voters about hopes, fears, concerns. wishes and a real dialogue around solutions that is going to continue to move the needle. People need and want and deserve to feel heard in an environment where things feel frustrating. And it is state legislators that still live in your communities and still understand what people are going through. And it is through that conversation and the ability to act on and move policy quickly in states that creates a really good place to have those conversations

and to feel hurt in that. So I think we really need and want people to get involved at the state level. If you're tired of politics elsewhere or you're frustrated by the process, like come into the states, come into state legislatures. We may not have the most elected officials, but we absolutely have the people who will have very real conversations with you about about what's happening. And if you're interested in getting involved, we welcome you to come to DLCCC.org to learn more. Heather, thank you so much for the work that you've been doing. Congratulations on your new post. And I hope that you will make the time to come back and visit us again when you hit the ground running in 2024. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been

so fun. If you ask most economists, they'll tell you that the U.S. economy is in great shape. But if you ask most Americans, they'll say the opposite. A recent poll from the Associated Press, Norke Center for Public Affairs Research, showed that roughly three quarters of us would describe the economy as poor, and consumer confidence is at a six-month low. Here to hopefully explain what's going on is columnist and chief data reporter for the Financial Times, John Byrne Murdoch. John, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So, John, you recently had an excellent piece over at Financial Times that was headlined, should we believe Americans when they say the economy is bad? And I guess there's two ways to read that. The first is, are Americans correct

when they say the economy is bad? And the second is, are Americans lying when they say the economy is bad? So I want to talk about both of those, but let's take the first one first, because you've got an excellent chart based on a poll you commission that really caught my eye. Before I ask you about the individual data points. Tell us about this poll. Sure. So obviously, you know, people have been talking about this for a little while now, right? At least a couple of months in the US, this has been a big topic. And I've been really interested following that debate, but I thought, how can we sort of really get to the crux of this? How can we work out how much of this is sort of people's feelings, how much of it is facts, et cetera, et cetera. And so we commissioned this poll with a pollster called Focal Data. And we wanted to

get a couple of things. So first of all, We wanted to ask some sort of falsifiable questions. So asking questions about things like how the rate of inflation has changed, how average incomes have changed, how wealth has changed over the last year or a few years. So these are questions where people will have an answer and then we can check that against the actual statistics. Right. But the second thing I wanted to do was also to get a sense of how much of this could be, you know, sort of people, look, you know, not everyone, not everyone spends all day looking at US economy charts like me. Right. It's understandable that people might get some of these wrong, but I wanted to throw in some more questions, which is much sort of broader and hopefully much less likely for people to get wrong. So these are questions about progress over the last 30 years and things like incomes and wealth. So we wanted to get at that sort of question about how people feel right now and then questions about the sense of broader progress in the US.

Okay, so let's start with the questions about now. The first question in the poll is comparing today to one year ago, which has increased faster on average across the US, prices or wages? 90% of the respondents said prices. Is that actually correct? That is not correct. Over the last year, you know, we have seen steep inflation, but we've also seen solid wage growth. And so over the last year, wages have actually increased slightly faster than prices. Okay, so 90% of Americans incorrectly answered that prices have increased faster than wages and the actual answer is wages. Yeah. Okay. So the second question is, do you think the rate of inflation has gone up, down, or stayed about the same since this time last year? And 73% said it's gone up, that the rate of inflation has gone up since this time last year. Is that correct? That one again is, I'm afraid, incorrect. Okay, so we see this time and again in all these questions, and then you have the group that asked people to compare today to 30 years ago. That was really interesting to me. Tell me what you found

there. Yeah, so on this one, we asked people things like, do you think someone on a median income can afford a better lifestyle today than 30 years ago? So that's sort of getting at how incomes have changed and how the cost of living has changed and the balance between those two. And we asked a similar question about people's wealth. And in both instances, a majority of Americans said the average person could afford a better lifestyle 30 years ago. So that's in the 1990s compared to today. And that one just really struck me because there's just not really any measure on which that's even close to being true. You know, incomes and wealth have increased significantly over that 30 year period. And this was the part where I thought, look, you know, this seems to be

feelings dominating here. People feel like things aren't going well. And so, they're answering these survey questions based on, for one of a better word, vibes, how they're feeling about the situation. Nobody who's thinking about this in terms of, you know, any kind of sort of real measures of progress would say that lifestyles are worse today than 30 years ago. I guess you're not the first to use that the term, that the sort of the vibes-based thing has become, as you said, in the last couple months, we've been hearing a lot about that. I think it's absolutely important to point out when people are simply factually wrong about things. If wages have increased higher than prices, people need to know that. If inflation is down, the rate of

inflation is down from a year ago. People need to be told that. Absolutely. Vibes to me sounds, it's almost like a dismissive word. Like we say, oh, that's just vibes. And I'm wondering if maybe we shouldn't dismiss the whole idea of vibes. For example, people can be doing okay in the moment, but have a sense that they're one medical emergency away from not being able to pay their rent or mortgage. Or they can compare their rent or mortgage to what they paid, say, five years ago and look at how much higher that is. And then they can get this sort of feeling like, man, this economy sucks. So does that make sense or am I wrong here? No, totally. So I think there's a couple of interesting things here, right? So one is, I totally agree, like vibes, to the extent that vibes are a thing, they are reality. You know, people vote based

on how they feel, that people make actions. We all make actions every single day based on how we feel at a given a moment, not based on some sort of obsessive calculation of all the data. So I think, yeah, I'm not trying to dismiss vibes here as a sort of phenomenon. But the interesting thing is we've got other data, right, which shows what people are actually doing, what US consumers are doing, what consumers around the world are doing in terms of how much money are people spending, how cautious or confident are people actually being aside from what they're saying? And this, for me, is where we really get towards sort of slam dunk territory, which is in most countries around the world. People are feeling pretty cautious and they're also spending cautiously. So people in

France, Germany, the UK, where I am, for example, spending levels are still below where they were before the pandemic. And that's exactly what you'd expect when people are feeling a bit uncertain. They don't think the economy is looking very good. In the US, however, spending levels, I've not just got back on the pre-pandemic trend. They're above the pre-pandemic trend. So American consumers are going out and buying things just like they were four years ago. And that rate continues to increase, people are buying more stuff than ever before. And that just doesn't mesh with people saying they feel uncertain, they're worried about the economy. Like you said, maybe people feel like they're only one sort of missed paycheck away from ducking under

and going under and missing out on food, for example. So I'm again, not dismissing what people say at all. People's experiences their experience. But there is this weird disconnect with people saying they're worried, the economy's not great, but they're going out and buying, exactly the same things or even more things than they were four years ago. That's so interesting. If I came across as saying that you were being dismissive, that is not at all what I meant. I didn't think you were. All good.

I was just curious about what you thought about that. We've got people saying the economy is bad, but spending like the economy is good. So earlier I said that there's a way of reading your headline, the headline to your piece, which was, should we believe Americans when they say the economy is bad? there's a way of reading that as are they lying? And I bring this up because toward the end of your piece, you talk about something called expressive responding. What is that? This is a super interesting thing that I personally feel like we're going to be talking more and more about, especially in this election year coming up, but also beyond, which is this idea that

when you survey people, and it's when you talk to someone in any context, regardless of whether it's a survey, but particularly in the concept in the sort of field of surveying, when you ask someone a question. They're not treating it like an exam question, put it this way. So the poll that we just did, for example, when we're asking people, which rose faster, prices or wages, people aren't thinking about this as like, oh, this is a mathematical question. There's a right answer, wrong answer. I've got to nail this. They're thinking, how do I feel about the economy? How do I feel about the general concept here? And so expressive responding is when people answer a question, in their head, they're sort of answering a slightly different question to the one that you posed. So it's not that

people are sort of getting a right or wrong question wrong, they're just telling you something else. So the classic example of this, the study that, as far as I'm aware, first brought this out, was some researchers looking at how Republicans responded to the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration. That was the comparison of Trump with Obama and, of course, objectively speaking, there was no question that the crowds for Trump were much smaller than they had been for most previous US presidents. But a lot of diehard Trump supporters would look at you dead in the eye and say, Trump's crowds were bigger. Now, there is no question that these people could look at those pictures and they knew that the crowds were not bigger. But they were answering something else.

They were answering how much do you support Donald Trump? Do you like the way people are criticizing Trump? And I think it's not exactly the same here with the economy because there aren't those sort of same teams or tribes, as it were. But I think this is what we're seeing here. People are, they're hearing or reading questions about the economy. And kind of regardless of the specific terms that are in those questions, they're thinking, I don't feel good. really interesting. And I guess sort of leads to my next question, which is, is there a political split in terms of how people view the economy? Sometimes it's easy to say, well, Republicans say X and Democrats say Y. In a case like this, I do feel like the majority of people I know,

if you ask them, whether they're on the right or the left, they would say the economy is not doing well. But that's obviously a small sample size of people I know. Have you seen a political split in how people feel about the economy? Yeah, so this is another fascinating one. A lot of statistics we're talking about here come from a survey done by the University of Michigan. They ask people all sorts of questions about what they feel about the economy, and that's where we get our sort of overall consumer confidence and consumer sentiment figures from. But the great thing about this survey is they also ask people which political party they identify with.

So do they see themselves as a Republican, a Democrat, an independence, or something else? And what you see is, depending on which party is in power, the responses really differ. So in a broad sense, you can kind of see why this would be, you know, if someone asks you, how are you feeling about the economy at the moment and you've got a Democratic president, then Democrats are a bit more likely to say, you know, I'm feeling all right, or at least they're feeling less bad than Republicans. As Republicans look at things and think, regardless of the economy, they're not happy with their sort of schemes standing in the country, as it were,

until they're a bit more negative. And we see this really consistently. So every time there's a change of president in terms of the president's party, the people who support the new president suddenly start saying they feel, better about the economy, people who support the old president and start saying they feel worse. But now that's, that first of all, I think is just, is just super interesting. But the really interesting thing is that you even get this right down to very, very narrowly economic questions. So one of the other questions they ask on this survey is, do you think it is a good

time right now to be going out and buying big things like big household items? So say like a TV or a fridge freezer. So what they're trying to get out there is like, how do you feel specifically about the economy right now, about money, about interest rates, all of that. And what we saw in 2020 with this question was, when the pandemic hit, everyone, regardless of whether they were Democrat, Republican, Independent, started feeling a lot worse about buying big things right now. Now, that makes perfect sense, right? Pandemics hit, lockdown, people are losing jobs. Everyone feels like, you know, super uncertain, super worried. But then what was interesting is what happened in November 2020 when Biden won the election, which is that despite the fact that, you know,

pandemic is still raging, people are dying, people are still out of work. Democrats in their droves suddenly started answering that question saying, you know what, now actually it feels like a great time to go out and buy these expensive items. So that for me is just such a clear example that even with a very specifically economic question about buying conditions, people are still answering a different question. They're answering about how they feel in day-to-day life right now. And so, yeah, it's the politics, but it's also just this sense that people are answering questions about general feelings about how they think their team or their sort of the groups they have solidarity with are doing rather than answering that specific question.

That's so interesting. But then I look at a question, like, let's take the first question on your poll, where 90% of people thought prices have risen faster than wages. Something like that is cutting across, you know, pretty much every possible facet of the political spectrum. Absolutely. But I think there's a couple of things here, right? So we did find that in this poll, generally Republicans were more likely to give those incorrect negative answers than Democrats. So people in both parties were getting those questions wrong, but the Republicans were more wrong, i.e. Republicans were more negative because the Democrats are currently in power. But with that prices and wages thing, so as you say, I don't think this is necessarily the politics.

I don't think this is Republicans saying we're not in the White House, so we think prices of risen faster than wages. I think this is, again, just people generally feeling incredibly frustrated about price prices over the last two years. Every time they go to the store, every time they buy something online, it costs more than it used to just a fairly short time ago. And so the overwhelming feeling they have is that prices have risen faster than wages. Now, again, statistically, we know that that's not true, but I'm not, I don't think that that's, you know, people being done. I think that is, again, people have a sense that this super frustrating thing or, you know, maybe worse than frustrating, maybe like a serious problem

is happening in their lives. And so that is what dominates. And at the same time when people get wage increases just to keep it up with inflation or whether it's a promotion or that kind of thing, people tend to think of those as like, you know, that's just, I deserve that. You know, I've worked hard or prices are rising so much. It's about, it's about bloody time. I get a pay rise. So people evaluate those two things differently. So it's not that I was surprised by these answers, but I just think it's interesting seeing them in black and white. Oh, absolutely. How much of the disconnect between the truth about the economy and what Americans believe to be the truth can be attributed to them being lied to, much in the way that, and we see this here, every time there's an election year, Republicans in particular,

will start talking about how bad crime is. In surveys, people will tell you that violent crime is way up, when in fact, it's actually down. And so I'm wondering if you think there's a similar thing that is going on here, perhaps. Yeah, it's really interesting. Like, I suspect, you know, some of this could be people lying, like people deliberately setting out to ramp up concern about the economy, for example. And, you know, over the next 11 months, I'm sure we'll see plenty of that from Republicans. But again, the fact that these responses are, you know, we're talking 90% here. It's not sort of a small number of being persuaded.

Right. I suspect it's more just a sort of general media environment combined with people's day-to-day experiences. So by that, I mean, like, you know, the mainstream media, writing about inflation and those sorts of things. I mean people seeing this stuff at the store. And I also mean things like social media. So Will Stansill, who I'm sure some of your listeners will be aware of,

has been really sort of banging this for ages about the role of social media and all of this. And I see some people dismiss this and they say, you know, come on, people aren't being brainwashed by social media. People aren't just thinking that the economy is bad because of TikTok. And like I hear that. But on the flip side, we have recent surveys showing that young people certainly now get more of their news from social media. and mainstream news organizations. And if we're still going to dismiss that, then we're implicitly dismissing the mainstream media

as well. Like, people get their news where they get their news. So I think to the extent that there is a sort of negativity bias, both in the mainstream media and non-social media for saying things which are sort of concerning and alarming, that could certainly lead, whether it's intentional or not, it could lead people to have this feeling that things are going worse than they are. John, this was so fascinating. and I'm so glad you came on to talk about it because like I said, I really love the piece,

and I thought the polling that you did was absolutely ingenious. So thank you again, John Byrne Murdoch for being here, and maybe we'll be able to talk to you again as we had closer to the election here and see what the vibes are as that happens. Excellent. Thanks so much for having me. I love to come back on. Andy Levy.

Danielle Moody. Andy Levy, how are you closing out this extraordinary week in America with your fuck-that-go? I'm going to give a big fuck that guy to the U.S. government. How about that? Oh, okay. Have we ever gone that big? No, go off. All right. More narrowly, this is about the terrorist watch list. A new CBS investigation has found that in the past six years, the size of the government's terrorist watch list has doubled. It has gone from around a little over a million people on the watch list to now we have

two million people on a terrorist watch list. I might be okay. with this if I thought that anywhere close to those 2 million people were terrorists? You mean they're not? Well, for all I know, Danielle, you're on this watch list. Oh, wow. And for all I know, deservedly so. But also, there's a chance you're on there incorrectly. So we have this whole thing where the standard for being put on this list is reasonable

suspicion. If you try to drill down on that and say, okay, what do these reasonable suspicions have to be based on? they won't tell you. They also won't tell you if you are on the list or not. CBS talked to a guy named Russ Travers who said, I'm sure there are a lot of people that are in the database that are dead that we don't even know it. So that's comforting. Oh, my God. And we've seen instances of this where people are on this list incorrectly and it fucks with their lives and they get hit with a false positive and they can't get home from their

vacation because they can't get on a plane or they can't get a job, whatever. And we authorize lists like this when we're scared. And that's what we did in the wake of 9-11. That's what we did with the Patriot Act, et cetera. And when we're scared, we don't pass good laws. I don't give a shit if you are a liberal. I don't care if you're a conservative. I don't care if you're a communist. I don't care if you're a libertarian. Everyone needs to agree. Don't pass laws when you're scared. It's sort of the equivalent of sending an angry email. Don't do that in the heat of the moment. You know how they always like they'll say write up the email, but don't send it.

And then wait 24 hours and decide if you still want to say it. And lo and behold, most of the time you're like, yeah, I probably shouldn't say that. And you end up not sending it or you soften it or whatever. The same thing needs to apply with laws. Because we do this every down time. We do not learn from anything. And what happens is we snare a lot of innocent people. in nets that are supposed to be for the bad guys, and we shrug it off. And we somehow say, that's the cost of freedom, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. But we continue to do it. And we've done it with these watch lists. And anytime the government can up its security state apparatus, it's going to. And we keep letting them. And we have to stop letting them. And the fact that this list has doubled in the last six years is, I think, a pretty good sign that something

hinkies going on here. I'm also willing to bet there's a bunch of people who should be on this list, particularly on the right-wing homegrown terrorists who are not on this list for various political reasons. I think the list is just probably as close to an outright failure as you can get. But for that reason, and we'll make it for that reason alone today. The U.S. government gets my, fuck that guy. I'd like to see the racial makeup of the list. And I'd also like to see the actual makeup of the list. And I'd also like to see the ethnic makeup. I'd like to see the demographic breakdown along the lines of religion. Because something tells me that it doesn't look like the shades of white it should. Let me just, let me from Ekru to Eggshell. Something tells me it don't look right. So for that reason,

fuck those guys. Also, probably not enough women on it. You need more women terrorists. Oh, dear God. We laugh so we don't cry, folks. We laugh so we don't cry. All right, Daniel. Close out this week. Who's your fuck that guy? I mean, it's Vivek, but it really is CNN. Here's the thing, CNN as a network is my fuck that guy for so many reasons. But for today, it is because they thought that it would be a great idea to do a town hall with the biggest fucking clown, which is saying a lot. on the Republican presidential primary stage. And not only did it devolve as all things that involve Vivek do, but it's just like, here's the thing that we know that the C and CNN doesn't stand for.

Context, credibility, like any of, you know, any C word that I can think of a couple it does stand for. But it just, you know, it doesn't make any sense because I can't imagine that the fucking ratings that this brought in were like, yeah, we got them. You know, like the folks in the C-suite are just high-fiving themselves thinking like, you know, they made it happen. It's just a joke. And what it does is that it erodes credibility in that network. But in all news, when you decide to put up a class.

clown like this and give him, you know, 90 minutes of air time. It's like, what the fuck are you doing? If your job is to try and educate the American people like, this ain't it. This is not it. And so for that reason and so, so many others, but for this reason alone this week, CNN gets my fuck that guy. I think we should give a shout out to Oliver Darcy. He is a CNN senior media reporter. He took over when Brian Stelter was let go. And he has been much. Much better about criticizing his own network than Stelter ever was, which of course could mean that he criticized his own network once and he would still be better than Stelter was. In his newsletter, he took CNN to task for this for exactly what you're saying, Danielle.

And this is a new thing at CNN to have a media reporter who actually looks at CNN itself. And I'm really glad he's doing that. So I just wanted to give him a little shout out for that. But yeah, fuck them for doing this. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder.

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