Imagine being a parent on a budget, down to your last container of formula: You drive to four different grocery stores, two Wal-Marts, a Target and a Rite-Aid, racking up more than 60 miles in pursuit of nourishment for your child. You not only have zero luck finding anything to feed your baby; you have also used up a lot of gas.
Along that drive you likely also saw significant evidence of a drug problem — either in the gaunt, vacant faces on people walking along Main Street or the batch of new treatment centers that have popped up where they’d never been before — and you might begin to wonder: ‘When was the last time anyone in power has seen what’s going on in our communities?’
Meanwhile, it was recently reported the Biden White House spent six months coming up with the nickname “Ultra MAGA” to go after Republican candidates.
The people who run strategy for the White House seem to have forgotten how to place themselves in voters’ shoes and experience everyday problems that impact families and communities. For them it is nothing but political calculation: They went to strategy school, not governing school.
Youngstown State University professor Paul Sracic says Biden has become a sort of anti-Harry Truman: “Where Truman insisted ‘The buck stops here,’ Biden is constantly trying to shift blame onto others; from Putin to ‘ultra-MAGA’ Republicans, Biden is hoping that Americans don’t hold him and his party responsible for things like inflation, the baby milk shortage, or the border crisis.”
Mr. Biden’s calculation, Mr. Sracic says, will not work.
Truman’s phrase was not an offer to take responsibility, but an acknowledgement of reality: When things go well in America, the president gets credit, and when they go wrong, he also gets credit.
“With parents scrambling to track down formula following the collision of supply chain issues and a massive recall, they want answers on how this could happen with such a life-critical product,” said Mr. Sracic.
If you are not convinced this is a very real thing, go spend ten minutes in the baby aisle in any store across the country that has empty shelves; see the crestfallen faces of many working-class and minority parents — who don’t have the wherewithal to purchase cases online from Europe — and it’s hard not to imagine the hopelessness and instability they feel in that moment.
Aux tumbrils, citoyens!