U.S. President Joe Biden waits to speak during a meeting of his Competition Council in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 5.There’s a handy little metric that political scientists sometimes use to gauge a president’s likely re-election prospects. It’s called the misery index, and it’s calculated by adding the unemployment andrates – the lower the index, the better an incumbent’s prospects. U.S.
However, by looking to the future, he may yet have a path to victory. That’s because of a curious paradox revealed in the polls. When asked about the state of the economy and the direction of the country, people say it’s bad. But when asked about their own condition, they report themselves to be doing well.
But it may be that Americans aren’t as selfish as Mr. Clinton thought, or at least not as selfish as they were then. The same economic boom that produced AI, the Magnificent Seven and Tesla has led to a corporate concentration that has drained the life from many of the towns and small cities where Mr. Trump built his base. In place of the diners and malt shops they grew up with, people now see box stores, chain restaurants and boarded-up buildings.