Pocketbook Issues Keep Arising

Jan. 14, 2024

The big issue in this year’s election is not abortion, even as outraged as many women (and men) are.  It’s not climate change, no matter that it’s getting hotter and hotter.  It’s not the fate of the Gaza Strip.  Strangely enough, it’s not even the security of our own borders, though that concerns many.

All of these problems will surely factor into the outcome but the most recent public opinion survey commissioned by Our Common Purpose indicates the make-or-break issues are much closer to home.

It’s paying the rent, buying gasoline, making ends meet.  It’s the cost of medicine, the cost of health care for those who can find it.  It’s stretching the paycheck or the stipend from Social Security.  It’s about getting by.

The economy ranked as the country’s largest issue in the poll, with 89% either calling it critical or very important.  The poll, conducted for Our Common Purpose by Survey USA during the first week of December, surveyed 880 likely voters in the six key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The predominance of the economy is entirely consistent with other polls.  Even so, how it stacks up against other major issues of the day still comes as something of a surprise.  Abortion has been so argued about and climate change so worried about, but they take a backseat along with today’s other major policy questions.

The emphasis on the economy has left some commentators sputtering.  Isn’t Wall Street running at all-time highs?   Isn’t the joblessness rate about as low as it can go?  Didn’t the country avoid the hard kerplunk of a recession?

Certain op-ed columnists will go to their death beds wondering how the numbers could be so good and the vibe be so bad.  What they see as unwarranted pessimism has created what they call a “vibe-cession,” which they variously attribute to the lag time it takes for consumers to accept price increases to residual gloom from the pandemic to predictable partisanship.

The situation frustrates the President as well.  Why isn’t he getting more credit for the series of stimulus packages that kept the economy from tanking in the worst days of the pandemic?

From a macro perspective, all of them are right.  The economy is certainly humming along.  But “economy” is a catchall term that can encompass any number of connotations and intended meanings.

When respondents to the Our Common Purpose poll were given an open-ended opportunity to list in their own words what they saw as other important issues, their most frequent response was inflation.  In the words of one, “How we are gonna build the economy back to where a gallon of milk doesn’t cost $4?”

Mentions of inflation were followed in frequency by the cost and availability of health care, then by the generic response of “economy.”  These and the variety of related concerns can be grouped under the familiar heading of “pocketbook issues.”  Together they made up a near majority of the responses.

“Health, jobs, housing,” is the succinct summation of an older white woman, a Republican, from a small town outside of Atlanta.

“Everything that deals with our well-being,” is the way a young Black man, a political independent from Philadelphia, sums it up.

Their more micro perspective is where the op-ed commentators have it all wrong.  Pocketbook issues almost always come front and center in an election, and there are plenty of reasons for it now, as anyone who has been in a grocery store recently will be quick to tell you.

Prices for food, rent, and gas are higher.  Interest rates are higher.  Meanwhile, the stimulus checks and other forms of assistance from the pandemic have long since disappeared.

Of course, those worst hit are the most vulnerable, but it’s not limited to them.  Gallup began tracking the impact of inflation in November 2021.  The number of respondents reporting at least some financial hardship kept rising in a succession of Gallup polls, reaching 61% of all households in May of last year.

That inflation has slowed in recent months is like saying a dangerous storm has passed without recognizing the massive damage it left behind.  Higher prices didn’t suddenly go away.  They’re now permanently affixed to every item on the shelves.

One measure of the stress is that credit card debt has now topped $1 trillion.  The U.S. Government Accountability Office says that stimulus checks and other forms of assistance helped cardholders reduce their debt levels during the pandemic but inflation now has undone all that.  Making matters worse, the interest rate on unpaid balances has ballooned above 20%.

In this age of economic disparity, once again the rising tide is not raising all boats.  Solutions are hard to come by but the media, as well as the President, need to start by acknowledging the pain, rather than denying its existence, and then go on to forthrightly consider the ramifications.

Failing to do so, they risk missing the festering discontent that caught Hillary Clinton, pollsters and media observers by surprise in 2016.  The same could cost Joe Biden the election in 2024.

–Richard Gilman