Comment box Scope: some article summary, mostly personal take Tone: neutral, a little exasperated but trying not to let it show! Opinion: yes, a lot, but not being inflammatory (I hope)...
Exemplary
Comment box
Scope: some article summary, mostly personal take
Tone: neutral, a little exasperated but trying not to let it show!
Opinion: yes, a lot, but not being inflammatory (I hope)
Sarcasm/humor: none
Very USA-heavy post ahead. I do not know much about the interplay between public sentiment and policy in other countries. If you have relevant opinions, please feel free to share.
I'm someone who is interested in specific government policies. Policies define the actions that the bureaucracy takes, and they define the economic conditions that private corporations operate under. By extension, they define the actions that individuals make. I do not vote for people whose policies are actively detrimental to society (or if necessary I will vote for the candidate whose policies are more productive/less unproductive than the other candidate's). I don't care so much about the personalities who are enacting policies, but I think it's important and useful to credit politicians with productive policy work, which is why I cite Joe Biden and sometimes the 117th Congress by name almost every time I mention the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021) and Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
If someone says that the current administration has not enacted meaningful changes to the American economy, social safety net, transportation system, etc., they are objectively incorrect. I think the reason someone would hold this belief is because they do not follow news about policies. Instead, they follow news about personalities. And one's perception of a personality is subject to one's whims at any given moment - not data, and not facts.
There has been some commentary among left-leaning media outlets that Biden has not gotten any "credit" for the many very productive, beneficial, even once-in-a-generation pieces of legislation he and the 117th Congress enacted. In fact, control of the 117th Congress switched parties when it transitioned to the 118th, even though the 117th's majority party was pretty much exclusively responsible for all of this legislation. And now it seems like that same voter apathy (or randomness?) is at play with the executive:
You would, in other words, want something like letting Medicare negotiate prescription-drug prices. This would make drugs much more affordable for senior citizens—who vote like crazy—and, depending on the poll, it draws support from 80 to 90 percent of voters. The idea has been championed by both Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Turn it into reality, and surely you’d see parades in your honor in retirement communities across the country.
Except Joe Biden did turn that idea into reality, and he seems to have gotten approximately zero credit for it. Tucked into the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was a series of measures to drastically lower prescription-drug costs for seniors, including by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. And yet Biden trails Donald Trump in most election polls and has one of the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern American history.
In that respect, drug pricing is a microcosm of Biden’s predicament—and a challenge to conventional theories of politics, in which voters reward politicians for successful legislation. Practically nothing is more popular than lowering drug prices, and yet the popularity hasn’t materialized. Which raises an uncomfortable question: Politically speaking, does policy matter at all?
The author of this article lays out some potential reasons why Biden is not getting "credit" for his work. They include:
Voters care about stuff like Medicare drug prices, but they care more about inflation [read: they care about their perception of inflation, or they are just generally upset, reasonably or not]
Voters literally do not know what any particular piece of legislation does, even if it does something they support
Much of Biden's legislation is monumentally impactful, but is not immediately visible, like price caps on specific drugs and investments into transportation infrastructure megaproject construction and planning studies
Biden et al. do not talk about their accomplishments enough, or don't do so in an engaging/tangible way
Image problems with the Democratic party in general, apparently among moderates
The press/media does not write articles or issue video segments about actual policies. Instead, they focus on narratives and invent conflict that policy does not solve
Some, multiple, or all of these may be true.
Personally, I do read White House fact sheets and Congressional press releases. I don't know anyone else in my social circles who does that with any amount of consistency. And even I certainly don't read everything: I mainly pay attention to policy news coming from the Department of Transportation or the Federal Railroad Administration, or from Amtrak. Sometimes, I will also read press releases from the Environmental Protection Agency or NASA. I don't follow politicians on social media directly, so I wouldn't have heard about Medicare price caps if it wasn't being publicized by third-party media outlets.
I cannot comment on people's social media use in general, but here is a personal anecdote. My social circle is full of educated, progressive (or progressive-labeled) individuals who seem to care more about one specific war in one specific part of the world than any other set of domestic or international policies (including other wars, famines, continual human rights violations, etc). I understand the attention on said war -- it's a big deal and I generally agree (strongly) with their criticism of the current administration, but my social circle definitely hyperfixates. I have possibly never seen a single personal InstaGram story about cybersecurity, pedestrian/traffic safety, railroad infrastructure investment, renewable energy grids (except when it was topical for Texas), etc. It is comparatively rare to even see a story about any sort of environmental regulation, criminal justice reform, or support for clean agriculture or improvement to Medicare or mortgage fairness rules or governmental transparency regulations. Nothing. But there are literally (not exaggerating) tens or hundreds of stories per day about aforementioned regional conflict. There are general complaints (usually not actionable, mostly memes) about capitalism, or climate change, or various humanitarian concerns, but my social circle has tunnel vision about virtually all other specific policies of this administration. And I say this as someone who, generally speaking, puts a bit more emphasis on transportation, housing, and urban planning policies when I vote at the ballot box than I probably should - I am definitely at fault for fixating sometimes. Unfortunately I think that my social circle's habit of focusing so heavily on a particular negative aspect of the current administration (an aspect which probably won't change quickly) has the unintended side effect of making them apathetic about voting in general. Again, I understand, and the issue they are concerned about is an important voting issue for me too. But the apathy that results from fruitless hyperfixation is bad because voter turnout in a swing state like mine will potentially decide the election. And not only will Biden's opponent in November probably have even less favorable/more violent policy in the aforementioned regional war, there is a non-zero possibility that he will dismantle or injure some major democratic mechanisms in this country. I think that would probably be the single worst thing that could happen. This opponent's track record in the WH demonstrates a readiness to cripple major parts of the country over personal vendettas (see: withholding federal infrastructure funding from New York State because he didn't like the governor). Plus all the specifically counterproductive and harmful policy positions he has, like ignoring climate change. I won't get into all that. You know about it already.
That is all to say: I think that voters do care about certain policies (judging from the many InstaGram stories), but not necessarily at a granular level, and not more than one or two at a time. And I think even very educated voters (who should know better) artificially inflate certain issues more than they should and allow that to control their voting habits, ultimately leading to worse electoral outcomes when they end up NOT voting at all.
I don't think most people actually understand how the government works at a fundamental level. I also don't think they understand just how many stakeholders politicians are dealing with when they craft policy. I don't really expect regular people to know this stuff, because I'm a pretty in-the-weeds activist (at least on the local level) and most people aren't, but I think Dem voter base's biggest flaw is its tendency to give up and disengage when every desired policy change does not immediately happen, especially when they don't make an effort to understand why. Regardless, it's pretty much impossible to be a politician whose policies every single person agrees with. It's easier to be a personality. And unfortunately I think that Biden is only even OK at the 'personality' side of things because he can play up the horribleness of the personality he's running against.
It's disappointing that people choose to think this way instead of spending even a small amount of time critically evaluating policies without over-focusing on whatever happens to be topical in the media. But I think I will continue my behavior of focusing more on policies than on personalities; sharing relevant policies when they are enacted; and correcting people who do not know about or understand the impact of specific policies.
I think a lot of the issues with legislative tunnel vision is that media today is much more personalized and designed around user retention. If <regional conflict> is what gets people ranting...
I think a lot of the issues with legislative tunnel vision is that media today is much more personalized and designed around user retention. If <regional conflict> is what gets people ranting online and clicking more, media companies will force feed it to them.
This isn't just a social media issue. It's also the digital versions of traditional media publications. The NYTimes online front page is tailored towards each user, but the print version includes a wider range of topics to try to make a single front page appeal to as many people as possible. If you are a NYTimes subscriber check this page and compare it to the normal online home page. It's less targeted than TikTok, but it's still curated based on your perceived interests.
So I know recommendations and "read this next" are personalized, but you're saying the articles on the front page are personalized too?? I can't find much information about this. I know they A/B...
So I know recommendations and "read this next" are personalized, but you're saying the articles on the front page are personalized too?? I can't find much information about this. I know they A/B test headlines, but I'm not aware of the NYT changing which articles are shown on the front page.
Yep they do use algorithms to personalize the online front page. I think they have some manual curation for the top few articles, but it's algorithm based past the initial headlines.
This is something that's been really bothering me lately. Even in the not-completely-radicalized spaces that advocate voting for Biden that I frequent, I still people say things like "I don't like...
This is something that's been really bothering me lately. Even in the not-completely-radicalized spaces that advocate voting for Biden that I frequent, I still people say things like "I don't like him much at all, but he's better than Trump." And, like, it's your prerogative to not like Biden, but I almost never see people say what they don't like about him, at least not in terms of policy. In terms of progressive policy accomplishments, Biden has been the most effective President in my lifetime---I'd go so far as to say since LBJ. People act as if he represents business as usual for the Democratic party, but it's really not true at all. He represents a marked shift away from the neoliberalism of Clinton and Obama, and---from my perspective---a huge step in the right direction. Why does no one understand this?
This is my frustration as well. Can anyone tell me specific policy positions that Biden or Trump have? Can anyone tell me specific policies that Trump or Biden have passed that you like? It seems...
This is my frustration as well. Can anyone tell me specific policy positions that Biden or Trump have? Can anyone tell me specific policies that Trump or Biden have passed that you like?
It seems that a lot of the approval rating is based on Biden being a old, feeble 81 year old man while Trump is somehow a youthful, vigorous 77 year old young adult. This makes 0 sense to me that a 4 year age gap is what makes a world of difference in peoples' minds. They are both dinosaurs, but can someone tell me the last time fist fighting and lifting heavy objects was a presidential responsibility?
People also seem to get caught on the fact that because their 80 year old grandpa refuses to update their views, they believe that politicians will hold outdated views. Politicians use polling data to match the voters' positions. Ever notice how Hillary Clinton and Obama were against gay marriage in 2008, but somehow were strong supporters 4 years later? Biden is not out there sticking to what he believes in, he's running calculations to determine what views will get him reelected. This is a good thing.
Tell me what they have done, what they want to do, and how they plan to do those things. That's really all that should matter.
That's their prerogative, but I think Biden privately, and increasingly publicly, agrees there are serious problems. I don't know exactly what policies Biden could legally implement either. A lot...
That's their prerogative, but I think Biden privately, and increasingly publicly, agrees there are serious problems. I don't know exactly what policies Biden could legally implement either. A lot of people seem to think Israel is a puppet state or something...
My personal knowledge and memories go back to Carter. I aggressively disagree with how the Biden Administration withdrew the US from Afghanistan (not that he did it ... just how). I also...
My personal knowledge and memories go back to Carter.
I aggressively disagree with how the Biden Administration withdrew the US from Afghanistan (not that he did it ... just how).
I also aggressively disagree with US support for Israel, but that predates the current conflict by a decade or more, so it'd be unfair to blame Biden exclusively for that.
Mainly, though, I fault the Biden Administration -- and more broadly, the Democratic leadership overall -- for underselling their accomplishments since 2020, and similarly, for underplaying the existential threat to the world that the Republican Party has become ... and this is coming from a person who would lean Republican in a "normal" world.
Now ... all that said ... I agree, Biden is the best-and-most-effective President the US has had, for at least as long as I've been paying attention. And yeah, he's a 1000 years old ... but that also means he's got 900 years of experience, and it shows.
Ultimately, I think the real underlying problem is that Democrats like to think that they can disagree on specific issues and then Come Together when it really matters ... except, too many Democratic voters let themselves get hyperfixated on their personal Issue of Choice, and then just stay home because they aren't getting their way on that one issue. Meanwhile, the Republicans go all "Stepford Wives" and blindly support their guy, no matter what ... even when it's Donald Trump.
If US seniors are paying less for drugs, that's news to me. I don't even know how much my mother pays for hers. I'd assume not that much since she's in good health for her age? I know other people...
Tucked into the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was a series of measures to drastically lower prescription-drug costs for seniors, including by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
If US seniors are paying less for drugs, that's news to me. I don't even know how much my mother pays for hers. I'd assume not that much since she's in good health for her age? I know other people with more problems, but they don't talk about the financial aspect of it.
Did it ever come up on Tildes? This post isn't directly on point, but it's a pretty typical article about how US drug prices are too high:
Or maybe it hasn't had a real-world effect? It might just be too soon. From the article:
For the White House, the task of getting the word out may become easier in the coming months, as voters finally begin to feel the benefits of the administration’s policies. The cap on annual out-of-pocket drug costs kicked in only at the beginning of the year (this year, it’s about $3,500, and it will fall to $2,000 in 2025); presumably some Medicare-enrolled voters will notice as their medication costs hit that number. In September, just in time for the election, Biden will announce new prices for the 10 drugs currently being negotiated.
It seems rather unreasonable to blame people for not understanding this or not caring. Rather than articles blaming people for not getting it, I would rather see articles about the positive effects of Biden's policies. It's not something I know much about myself, and it would be good to know.
Comment box Scope: comment response Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Good point, although I think it's insufficient for us to only expect people to care about the realized effects of...
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Opinion: yes
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Good point, although I think it's insufficient for us to only expect people to care about the realized effects of policies. They should also care about the unrealized effects. This is because the effects of most policies come into being over a long period of time. I think it's remarkable how little people seem to care about things like education reform, infrastructure investment, etc. because it's isn't instantly gratifying. Most things just... take a long time. And that's how things are.
I had heard about Medicare price negotiation rules when the Inflation Reduction Act was being covered in the press in 2022, and at several points since then. I wasn't active on Tildes until sometime last year, and I guess I just didn't think to share anything about it. But actually I think the fact that not a single person on this entire website made a post about it goes to show how much everyone, including our community, is affected by this issue.
So, as you say, even the intelligentsia of Tildes seem to have only scant details about policies. Thus it isn't fair to just blame "regular" people who touch grass more often. I wonder why it is that, within a community which is (relative to the general population) so interested in systems, government, policy, and progressive ideology, there was not a single discussion about such an important issue in two whole years? The mainstream media has reported on it at least somewhat.
At a more fundamental level, I might propose this line of thinking: I believe that intellectual communities like this one are hyper-disseminators of information. This is the sort of place where people come to discuss ideas, not share memes, and by extension the kind of thing that gets shared here gets taken seriously by the userbase. Disseminator communities like this attract passionate people who will share engaging content with people (perhaps less technical, or less passionate, or less political) in their personal lives and workplaces. And it is those recipients (much greater in number) whose interpretation of said disseminated ideas eventually translates into polling figures.
People who visit this kind of website are probably somewhat more engaged with the world and their communities than the typical person simply by virtue of being, on average, wealthier and more educated and more critical; or at the very least they would be the type more likely to have a discussion with family, friends, peers, coworkers about something academic, technical, or political. And they are also more progressive, and subject to the cultural swings that progressives tend to have. At this time, the cultural swing is a bit of a distaste for the administration as a whole because of its foreign policy.
I postulate that the demographic of websites like Tildes have been most afflicted by voter apathy toward Biden in particular, probably influenced by more mainstream depictions of him, and have therefore deviated from a theoretical "baseline" behavior of sharing more granular or policy-based information. Compared with a topic like, idk, computer security and internet privacy (all the rage in ~tech), there is not an automatic urge among Tilderions to share policy successes from Biden specifically.
Whatever the case, I agree that simply making an effort to share more positive content about productive activities would be beneficial. I think Tildesians have a habit of focusing on negative articles (like many humans). I personally try to share these kinds of success stories, but I just don't have enough subject-matter expertise to do it in every field. So I am usually talking about some new policy push related to train infrastructure or urban planning. I can get a sense for medical and economic topics, but not necessarily enough to initiate conversations? So I think it really has to be a collective decision from the community to start posting more of this sort of thing.
With “unrealized effects,” I expect that there is a fair amount of uncertainty and even cynicism about how well the government will execute. For example, we won’t know the results of price...
With “unrealized effects,” I expect that there is a fair amount of uncertainty and even cynicism about how well the government will execute. For example, we won’t know the results of price negotiations until after they’re done and someone publishes a story about what happened.
For a lot of subjects we don’t have anyone paying close attention, in which case it will just be whatever articles people happen to see.
I care that two of my medications cost over a thousand dollars a month and my insurance won't cover them. But I'm not on Medicare, so even if that policy does have an effect it could be that my...
I care that two of my medications cost over a thousand dollars a month and my insurance won't cover them. But I'm not on Medicare, so even if that policy does have an effect it could be that my medication becomes more expensive.
I think that my personal answer to the question in the title is that people care, but they don't necessarily know what they should be caring about. A lot has been said about the death of local...
I think that my personal answer to the question in the title is that people care, but they don't necessarily know what they should be caring about.
A lot has been said about the death of local news and the effects it has had on society, but I think that the biggest problem is not the local businesses or journalistic ethics, but the fact that we have lost vital curators of information. The reason why newspapers have editors is because there's just too much information being produced in the world, and so the staff of a newsroom has to decide what is "newsworthy" and what isn't.
Democracy has a fundamental problem in that to run it well the voting members need to be knowledgable. That's not a realistic thing in any democracy I have ever seen. How many of you have ever attended a local government meeting of any sort, let alone regularly? If you are in the US, you would need to attend or otherwise observe every local town hall, county or parish board meeting, state assembly, and federal congress/senate session, and on top of that you'd have to read all of the documents that they produce and know all of the candidates for all of those offices. This is a sisyphean task. It should be pretty clear why a functioning newsroom would be necessary to perform that job on behalf of the public, and local newsrooms were necessary because they reflected the knowledge needs of the communities they served.
Comment box Scope: comment response Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Your point about curation is valuable and I agree with you completely. I don't know how to solve this problem on...
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Scope: comment response
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Sarcasm/humor: none
Your point about curation is valuable and I agree with you completely. I don't know how to solve this problem on a society-wide level.
I'm more active in my local government than probably 99% of people in this country. I go to town halls all the time, scrappy grassroots organization meetings in dank church basements, visit construction sites in person to keep track of progress that isn't published online, etc. And still, even just in my city, there is NO WAY I could possibly follow ALL news about ALL developments that were happening. The city is just so large that I need to rely on local newspapers and activist newsletters to understand problems that are happening just on the other side of town. And the other side of the state? Forget about it. I can't go to a town hall in Pittsburgh. It takes like 8 hours to get there.
Some democracies are more functional than others (the US is a "flawed democracy," and even within the US, I think voter behavior is quite different in a place like Vermont than it is in New York or Pennsylvania, even though they're very close to each other). In that sense, some places have much more educated voters than others. It's not immediately obvious to me what it is about those cities/states/countries that enables more robust voter education and by extension better voting culture. The Nordic countries with their very high democracy index and broadly better social services stand out, but... I couldn't tell you what specific policies affect their news media, educational systems, etc. to make them more functional democracies.
Better and less partisan newsrooms are certainly needed -- but the question I have is, on a governmental level (because anything else is ephemeral), what policies or systems can we enact in the United States to allow that culture of curated and constructive news to thrive instead of our current media?
I actually don’t think that partisan newsrooms are a problem. I think it’s a bigger problem that newspapers are thought to be objective arbiters of reality.
I actually don’t think that partisan newsrooms are a problem. I think it’s a bigger problem that newspapers are thought to be objective arbiters of reality.
Comment box Scope: comment response Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Hmm. I guess this speaks to a larger issue of teaching critical thinking in the education system (i.e. balancing...
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Scope: comment response
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Hmm. I guess this speaks to a larger issue of teaching critical thinking in the education system (i.e. balancing acceptance of authoritative sources with skepticism; and differentiating between healthy skepticism and anti-intellectualism). That is not my area of expertise. It is also a whole can of worms.
I wish I could say I had a solution to that, but I don't. It's too undefined a problem for me to comment on in any amount of depth. I think the answer has to do with funding for schools, but there is more to it.
I know we have some teacher people on this website. "kwyfre" I can't spell this person's name so I don't know how to @ them or even search for them. Maybe more informed opinions can be stated.
I would agree with what most people are suggesting - Biden has a PR problem, but is actually doing some really good things in the "background" that should be advertised better. One can certainly...
I would agree with what most people are suggesting - Biden has a PR problem, but is actually doing some really good things in the "background" that should be advertised better. One can certainly argue that news outlets get more traffic from negative headlines and clickbait that don't really benefit from talking about positives.
One thing I recall reading is how Biden did a lot of coordinating with companies on how to handle the rail strike. The public decision that was first put out made it seem like he was union busting, when the reality is that he determined rail worker rights were something that could be better discussed in the background with the rail companies themselves. (Probably as a trade off for future favoritism.)
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Very USA-heavy post ahead. I do not know much about the interplay between public sentiment and policy in other countries. If you have relevant opinions, please feel free to share.
I'm someone who is interested in specific government policies. Policies define the actions that the bureaucracy takes, and they define the economic conditions that private corporations operate under. By extension, they define the actions that individuals make. I do not vote for people whose policies are actively detrimental to society (or if necessary I will vote for the candidate whose policies are more productive/less unproductive than the other candidate's). I don't care so much about the personalities who are enacting policies, but I think it's important and useful to credit politicians with productive policy work, which is why I cite Joe Biden and sometimes the 117th Congress by name almost every time I mention the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021) and Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
If someone says that the current administration has not enacted meaningful changes to the American economy, social safety net, transportation system, etc., they are objectively incorrect. I think the reason someone would hold this belief is because they do not follow news about policies. Instead, they follow news about personalities. And one's perception of a personality is subject to one's whims at any given moment - not data, and not facts.
There has been some commentary among left-leaning media outlets that Biden has not gotten any "credit" for the many very productive, beneficial, even once-in-a-generation pieces of legislation he and the 117th Congress enacted. In fact, control of the 117th Congress switched parties when it transitioned to the 118th, even though the 117th's majority party was pretty much exclusively responsible for all of this legislation. And now it seems like that same voter apathy (or randomness?) is at play with the executive:
The author of this article lays out some potential reasons why Biden is not getting "credit" for his work. They include:
Some, multiple, or all of these may be true.
Personally, I do read White House fact sheets and Congressional press releases. I don't know anyone else in my social circles who does that with any amount of consistency. And even I certainly don't read everything: I mainly pay attention to policy news coming from the Department of Transportation or the Federal Railroad Administration, or from Amtrak. Sometimes, I will also read press releases from the Environmental Protection Agency or NASA. I don't follow politicians on social media directly, so I wouldn't have heard about Medicare price caps if it wasn't being publicized by third-party media outlets.
I cannot comment on people's social media use in general, but here is a personal anecdote. My social circle is full of educated, progressive (or progressive-labeled) individuals who seem to care more about one specific war in one specific part of the world than any other set of domestic or international policies (including other wars, famines, continual human rights violations, etc). I understand the attention on said war -- it's a big deal and I generally agree (strongly) with their criticism of the current administration, but my social circle definitely hyperfixates. I have possibly never seen a single personal InstaGram story about cybersecurity, pedestrian/traffic safety, railroad infrastructure investment, renewable energy grids (except when it was topical for Texas), etc. It is comparatively rare to even see a story about any sort of environmental regulation, criminal justice reform, or support for clean agriculture or improvement to Medicare or mortgage fairness rules or governmental transparency regulations. Nothing. But there are literally (not exaggerating) tens or hundreds of stories per day about aforementioned regional conflict. There are general complaints (usually not actionable, mostly memes) about capitalism, or climate change, or various humanitarian concerns, but my social circle has tunnel vision about virtually all other specific policies of this administration. And I say this as someone who, generally speaking, puts a bit more emphasis on transportation, housing, and urban planning policies when I vote at the ballot box than I probably should - I am definitely at fault for fixating sometimes. Unfortunately I think that my social circle's habit of focusing so heavily on a particular negative aspect of the current administration (an aspect which probably won't change quickly) has the unintended side effect of making them apathetic about voting in general. Again, I understand, and the issue they are concerned about is an important voting issue for me too. But the apathy that results from fruitless hyperfixation is bad because voter turnout in a swing state like mine will potentially decide the election. And not only will Biden's opponent in November probably have even less favorable/more violent policy in the aforementioned regional war, there is a non-zero possibility that he will dismantle or injure some major democratic mechanisms in this country. I think that would probably be the single worst thing that could happen. This opponent's track record in the WH demonstrates a readiness to cripple major parts of the country over personal vendettas (see: withholding federal infrastructure funding from New York State because he didn't like the governor). Plus all the specifically counterproductive and harmful policy positions he has, like ignoring climate change. I won't get into all that. You know about it already.
That is all to say: I think that voters do care about certain policies (judging from the many InstaGram stories), but not necessarily at a granular level, and not more than one or two at a time. And I think even very educated voters (who should know better) artificially inflate certain issues more than they should and allow that to control their voting habits, ultimately leading to worse electoral outcomes when they end up NOT voting at all.
I don't think most people actually understand how the government works at a fundamental level. I also don't think they understand just how many stakeholders politicians are dealing with when they craft policy. I don't really expect regular people to know this stuff, because I'm a pretty in-the-weeds activist (at least on the local level) and most people aren't, but I think Dem voter base's biggest flaw is its tendency to give up and disengage when every desired policy change does not immediately happen, especially when they don't make an effort to understand why. Regardless, it's pretty much impossible to be a politician whose policies every single person agrees with. It's easier to be a personality. And unfortunately I think that Biden is only even OK at the 'personality' side of things because he can play up the horribleness of the personality he's running against.
It's disappointing that people choose to think this way instead of spending even a small amount of time critically evaluating policies without over-focusing on whatever happens to be topical in the media. But I think I will continue my behavior of focusing more on policies than on personalities; sharing relevant policies when they are enacted; and correcting people who do not know about or understand the impact of specific policies.
I think a lot of the issues with legislative tunnel vision is that media today is much more personalized and designed around user retention. If <regional conflict> is what gets people ranting online and clicking more, media companies will force feed it to them.
This isn't just a social media issue. It's also the digital versions of traditional media publications. The NYTimes online front page is tailored towards each user, but the print version includes a wider range of topics to try to make a single front page appeal to as many people as possible. If you are a NYTimes subscriber check this page and compare it to the normal online home page. It's less targeted than TikTok, but it's still curated based on your perceived interests.
Politics is a different game than it used to be and seemingly to the detriment of society. Things have gotten so bad that you can't even find a candidate's policy positions on their website. I don't know what the solution is, but I miss being able to hear candidates talk about policy and dream of what could be if their vision comes true.
So I know recommendations and "read this next" are personalized, but you're saying the articles on the front page are personalized too?? I can't find much information about this. I know they A/B test headlines, but I'm not aware of the NYT changing which articles are shown on the front page.
Yep they do use algorithms to personalize the online front page. I think they have some manual curation for the top few articles, but it's algorithm based past the initial headlines.
This is something that's been really bothering me lately. Even in the not-completely-radicalized spaces that advocate voting for Biden that I frequent, I still people say things like "I don't like him much at all, but he's better than Trump." And, like, it's your prerogative to not like Biden, but I almost never see people say what they don't like about him, at least not in terms of policy. In terms of progressive policy accomplishments, Biden has been the most effective President in my lifetime---I'd go so far as to say since LBJ. People act as if he represents business as usual for the Democratic party, but it's really not true at all. He represents a marked shift away from the neoliberalism of Clinton and Obama, and---from my perspective---a huge step in the right direction. Why does no one understand this?
This is my frustration as well. Can anyone tell me specific policy positions that Biden or Trump have? Can anyone tell me specific policies that Trump or Biden have passed that you like?
It seems that a lot of the approval rating is based on Biden being a old, feeble 81 year old man while Trump is somehow a youthful, vigorous 77 year old young adult. This makes 0 sense to me that a 4 year age gap is what makes a world of difference in peoples' minds. They are both dinosaurs, but can someone tell me the last time fist fighting and lifting heavy objects was a presidential responsibility?
People also seem to get caught on the fact that because their 80 year old grandpa refuses to update their views, they believe that politicians will hold outdated views. Politicians use polling data to match the voters' positions. Ever notice how Hillary Clinton and Obama were against gay marriage in 2008, but somehow were strong supporters 4 years later? Biden is not out there sticking to what he believes in, he's running calculations to determine what views will get him reelected. This is a good thing.
Tell me what they have done, what they want to do, and how they plan to do those things. That's really all that should matter.
Most recently, I think a lot of people probably disagree with Biden on Israel.
That's their prerogative, but I think Biden privately, and increasingly publicly, agrees there are serious problems. I don't know exactly what policies Biden could legally implement either. A lot of people seem to think Israel is a puppet state or something...
My personal knowledge and memories go back to Carter.
I aggressively disagree with how the Biden Administration withdrew the US from Afghanistan (not that he did it ... just how).
I also aggressively disagree with US support for Israel, but that predates the current conflict by a decade or more, so it'd be unfair to blame Biden exclusively for that.
Mainly, though, I fault the Biden Administration -- and more broadly, the Democratic leadership overall -- for underselling their accomplishments since 2020, and similarly, for underplaying the existential threat to the world that the Republican Party has become ... and this is coming from a person who would lean Republican in a "normal" world.
Now ... all that said ... I agree, Biden is the best-and-most-effective President the US has had, for at least as long as I've been paying attention. And yeah, he's a 1000 years old ... but that also means he's got 900 years of experience, and it shows.
Ultimately, I think the real underlying problem is that Democrats like to think that they can disagree on specific issues and then Come Together when it really matters ... except, too many Democratic voters let themselves get hyperfixated on their personal Issue of Choice, and then just stay home because they aren't getting their way on that one issue. Meanwhile, the Republicans go all "Stepford Wives" and blindly support their guy, no matter what ... even when it's Donald Trump.
If US seniors are paying less for drugs, that's news to me. I don't even know how much my mother pays for hers. I'd assume not that much since she's in good health for her age? I know other people with more problems, but they don't talk about the financial aspect of it.
Did it ever come up on Tildes? This post isn't directly on point, but it's a pretty typical article about how US drug prices are too high:
Or maybe it hasn't had a real-world effect? It might just be too soon. From the article:
It seems rather unreasonable to blame people for not understanding this or not caring. Rather than articles blaming people for not getting it, I would rather see articles about the positive effects of Biden's policies. It's not something I know much about myself, and it would be good to know.
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Good point, although I think it's insufficient for us to only expect people to care about the realized effects of policies. They should also care about the unrealized effects. This is because the effects of most policies come into being over a long period of time. I think it's remarkable how little people seem to care about things like education reform, infrastructure investment, etc. because it's isn't instantly gratifying. Most things just... take a long time. And that's how things are.
I had heard about Medicare price negotiation rules when the Inflation Reduction Act was being covered in the press in 2022, and at several points since then. I wasn't active on Tildes until sometime last year, and I guess I just didn't think to share anything about it. But actually I think the fact that not a single person on this entire website made a post about it goes to show how much everyone, including our community, is affected by this issue.
So, as you say, even the intelligentsia of Tildes seem to have only scant details about policies. Thus it isn't fair to just blame "regular" people who touch grass more often. I wonder why it is that, within a community which is (relative to the general population) so interested in systems, government, policy, and progressive ideology, there was not a single discussion about such an important issue in two whole years? The mainstream media has reported on it at least somewhat.
At a more fundamental level, I might propose this line of thinking: I believe that intellectual communities like this one are hyper-disseminators of information. This is the sort of place where people come to discuss ideas, not share memes, and by extension the kind of thing that gets shared here gets taken seriously by the userbase. Disseminator communities like this attract passionate people who will share engaging content with people (perhaps less technical, or less passionate, or less political) in their personal lives and workplaces. And it is those recipients (much greater in number) whose interpretation of said disseminated ideas eventually translates into polling figures.
People who visit this kind of website are probably somewhat more engaged with the world and their communities than the typical person simply by virtue of being, on average, wealthier and more educated and more critical; or at the very least they would be the type more likely to have a discussion with family, friends, peers, coworkers about something academic, technical, or political. And they are also more progressive, and subject to the cultural swings that progressives tend to have. At this time, the cultural swing is a bit of a distaste for the administration as a whole because of its foreign policy.
I postulate that the demographic of websites like Tildes have been most afflicted by voter apathy toward Biden in particular, probably influenced by more mainstream depictions of him, and have therefore deviated from a theoretical "baseline" behavior of sharing more granular or policy-based information. Compared with a topic like, idk, computer security and internet privacy (all the rage in ~tech), there is not an automatic urge among Tilderions to share policy successes from Biden specifically.
Whatever the case, I agree that simply making an effort to share more positive content about productive activities would be beneficial. I think Tildesians have a habit of focusing on negative articles (like many humans). I personally try to share these kinds of success stories, but I just don't have enough subject-matter expertise to do it in every field. So I am usually talking about some new policy push related to train infrastructure or urban planning. I can get a sense for medical and economic topics, but not necessarily enough to initiate conversations? So I think it really has to be a collective decision from the community to start posting more of this sort of thing.
With “unrealized effects,” I expect that there is a fair amount of uncertainty and even cynicism about how well the government will execute. For example, we won’t know the results of price negotiations until after they’re done and someone publishes a story about what happened.
For a lot of subjects we don’t have anyone paying close attention, in which case it will just be whatever articles people happen to see.
I care that two of my medications cost over a thousand dollars a month and my insurance won't cover them. But I'm not on Medicare, so even if that policy does have an effect it could be that my medication becomes more expensive.
I think that my personal answer to the question in the title is that people care, but they don't necessarily know what they should be caring about.
A lot has been said about the death of local news and the effects it has had on society, but I think that the biggest problem is not the local businesses or journalistic ethics, but the fact that we have lost vital curators of information. The reason why newspapers have editors is because there's just too much information being produced in the world, and so the staff of a newsroom has to decide what is "newsworthy" and what isn't.
Democracy has a fundamental problem in that to run it well the voting members need to be knowledgable. That's not a realistic thing in any democracy I have ever seen. How many of you have ever attended a local government meeting of any sort, let alone regularly? If you are in the US, you would need to attend or otherwise observe every local town hall, county or parish board meeting, state assembly, and federal congress/senate session, and on top of that you'd have to read all of the documents that they produce and know all of the candidates for all of those offices. This is a sisyphean task. It should be pretty clear why a functioning newsroom would be necessary to perform that job on behalf of the public, and local newsrooms were necessary because they reflected the knowledge needs of the communities they served.
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Your point about curation is valuable and I agree with you completely. I don't know how to solve this problem on a society-wide level.
I'm more active in my local government than probably 99% of people in this country. I go to town halls all the time, scrappy grassroots organization meetings in dank church basements, visit construction sites in person to keep track of progress that isn't published online, etc. And still, even just in my city, there is NO WAY I could possibly follow ALL news about ALL developments that were happening. The city is just so large that I need to rely on local newspapers and activist newsletters to understand problems that are happening just on the other side of town. And the other side of the state? Forget about it. I can't go to a town hall in Pittsburgh. It takes like 8 hours to get there.
Some democracies are more functional than others (the US is a "flawed democracy," and even within the US, I think voter behavior is quite different in a place like Vermont than it is in New York or Pennsylvania, even though they're very close to each other). In that sense, some places have much more educated voters than others. It's not immediately obvious to me what it is about those cities/states/countries that enables more robust voter education and by extension better voting culture. The Nordic countries with their very high democracy index and broadly better social services stand out, but... I couldn't tell you what specific policies affect their news media, educational systems, etc. to make them more functional democracies.
Better and less partisan newsrooms are certainly needed -- but the question I have is, on a governmental level (because anything else is ephemeral), what policies or systems can we enact in the United States to allow that culture of curated and constructive news to thrive instead of our current media?
I actually don’t think that partisan newsrooms are a problem. I think it’s a bigger problem that newspapers are thought to be objective arbiters of reality.
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Hmm. I guess this speaks to a larger issue of teaching critical thinking in the education system (i.e. balancing acceptance of authoritative sources with skepticism; and differentiating between healthy skepticism and anti-intellectualism). That is not my area of expertise. It is also a whole can of worms.
I wish I could say I had a solution to that, but I don't. It's too undefined a problem for me to comment on in any amount of depth. I think the answer has to do with funding for schools, but there is more to it.
I know we have some teacher people on this website. "kwyfre" I can't spell this person's name so I don't know how to @ them or even search for them. Maybe more informed opinions can be stated.
I would agree with what most people are suggesting - Biden has a PR problem, but is actually doing some really good things in the "background" that should be advertised better. One can certainly argue that news outlets get more traffic from negative headlines and clickbait that don't really benefit from talking about positives.
One thing I recall reading is how Biden did a lot of coordinating with companies on how to handle the rail strike. The public decision that was first put out made it seem like he was union busting, when the reality is that he determined rail worker rights were something that could be better discussed in the background with the rail companies themselves. (Probably as a trade off for future favoritism.)
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/psM0I