Be careful about 2020.
It wasn't that bad for some people and the inflation that followed has been brutal.
I’ve recently seen analysis from frustrated Democrats arguing that there’s a kind of “collective amnesia” around the challenges of 2020, which is contributing to Donald Trump’s strong showing in the polls against Joe Biden. Here’s Paul Krugman:
So let’s set the record straight: 2020 — the fourth quarter, if you will, of Trump’s presidency — was a nightmare. And part of what made it a nightmare was the fact that America was led by a man who responded to a deadly crisis with denial, magical thinking and, above all, total selfishness — focused at every stage not on the needs of the nation but on what he thought would make him look good.
It’s important to acknowledge that despite 2020 being a terrible year for many — isolation, sickness, and the tragic loss of loved ones — a not insignificant number of people likely remember it as a year of relative socio-economic well-being and freedom compared to those that followed. If Democrats want to craft a strategy to beat Trump in November, an accurate understanding of how voters experienced the entirety of his presidency is important, because this is effectively a race between two incumbents.
Sorry, I feel like I need to repeat myself to avoid bad faith interpretation of my thinking.
Let me be crystal clear: 2020 was a tough year. I am not suggesting otherwise and I actually think exceptional pandemic politics were the primary reason that Biden was able to earn a narrow victory over Trump. That said, for privileged Americans — even a lot of not-so-privileged Americans who benefited the most from relief policies — it wasn’t that bad or it wasn’t as bad as 2022 and 2023 with brutal inflation and the termination of pandemic relief. Remember, voters will be asked to choose between Biden and Trump, so the question is “are you better off than you were four years ago?” Inflation and the end of pandemic relief policies during Biden’s presidency have resulted in a situation where quite a few voters — and Biden’s 2020 victory was extremely narrow — are telling pollsters “no.”
My intent here is not to minimize one of the most deadly and disruptive pandemics in global history, but to suggest that there is limited political value for Democrats in attempting to revisit 2020, especially given the immense socio-economic pain caused by subsequent inflation and high interest rates.
Think back to March 2020. In a country with some of the weakest social welfare policies in the rich world, the CARES Act was a surprisingly generous piece of legislation. For wage workers in “crappy jobs” (e.g. fast food, retail, etc.), expanded unemployment benefits — plus stimulus checks — often exceeded prior salaries. There was some bureaucratic nonsense as states struggled to process claims, but once those problems were resolved many Americans arguably received more generous cash benefits than Europeans who just had their existing salaries subsidized. In addition to cash, Americans received expanded food stamps, more paid leave, and continuous Medicaid enrollment from the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Perhaps most important of all, in a country where renters have very few rights, multiple federal and state eviction moratoriums provided non-homeowners with unprecedented security of tenure.
Here’s how one rural Georgia barber — a millennial man — remembers 2020:
“Bad as things were, people say they felt money was circulating with Trump in office, those stimulus checks,” he said. “Now there is no money circulating. Prices are up. The cost of food is up.”
Some commentators would later describe U.S. pandemic relief programs as functionally equivalent to a European-style welfare state. Personally, I think that characterization was hyperbolic, but it does speak to the transformative nature of the benefits provided. Ironically, it was an immensely disruptive pandemic that led to many poor and working-class Americans experiencing social and economic security for the first time in their lives.
A chart from the Federal Reserve’s May 2023 Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households report shows that 67% of high school graduates were “at least doing okay financially” in 2020. By 2022, that was down to 63%.
If many poor and working-class Americans experienced new kinds of financial and social security during 2020, what about white collar professionals? The so-called “laptop class” was freed from cubicles in vertical office park downtowns and invited to indefinitely work from home. For some parents, this led to the toxic stress of balancing remote work and virtual instruction, but for others — such as childless adults and more affluent Americans with large homes and babysitters — pandemic remote work policies were genuinely liberating. Research from the European Union found that remote work policies positively impacted work-life balance for many EU citizens:
Conversely, those aged <35 years, those without children at home, those living in the countryside and those living in northern EU countries perceived a positive impact from teleworking policies in terms of their professional-private life conflicts, with a limited or insignificant negative impact on their private-professional life conflicts and the extent to which they worried about work.
Given U.S. lockdown policies were less strict than European ones (i.e. no restrictions on outdoor recreation or domestic travel), Americans tend to have significantly larger homes (i.e. a spare room to take Zoom calls) and child care is outrageously expensive or unavailable, I suspect a comparable study would find even stronger well-being benefits from remote work policies on this side of the Atlantic. Some Americans even leveraged remote work policies to enhance notoriously stingy vacation policies with extended trips to Mexico, a country that never closed its borders to tourists during the pandemic.
Where are we in 2024? Employees — who moved far away from cities during shutdowns and have enjoyed paying less for commuting, crappy lunches and child care — are now strongly resisting the return to offices and being threatened with termination. In the last year of Trump’s presidency, many Americans were told to work remotely and replacing offices with their basements — or local coffee shops — was beneficial to their well-being and bank accounts, but throughout the Biden presidency employers have tried to end this appealing arrangement.
Insofar as collateral harms from 2020 lockdowns and restrictions hurt Americans from all backgrounds, they are probably more apt to assign blame for those policies to Democrats than Donald Trump, given he was reluctant to shut down the country and quickly reversed his position on lockdowns. Following the bipartisan panic in early March 2020 that led to state-based shutdowns, it was mostly Democrats loudly demanding even more draconian measures. In April 2020, the liberal Center for American Progress published a white paper demanding a national lockdown, including interstate travel restrictions. Later, in July 2020, the Democratic National Committee, Biden campaign, and Democrat-aligned advocacy organizations launched a coordinated campaign to attack Trump over his push to reopen schools. And Biden campaigned on a national mask mandate. Fair or not, many voters remember Trump sending them stimulus checks and Biden supporting restrictions, mandates, and school closures.
Voters now consistently tell pollsters they are most concerned about inflation and irregular immigration, two problems that are far worse today than four years ago. If Democrats really believe they should ignite memories of 2020 to help them beat a resurgent Trump, they may want to think twice. An electoral strategy centered on reminding voters about that complicated year is likely to be minimally effective at best and might even spectacularly backfire by reminding voters about a year when many had more, not less, financial security and well-being.
Somewhat off-topic, but the Biden foreign policy emboldened Putin, Hamas, & the Houthis, all of which have increased costs for Americans through higher oil costs & longer routes around previously safe shipping routes. There was a useful unpredictability to Trump where adversaries were never quite sure what he might do in response to a provocation.