I have long believed that winning the 2020 election resulted in Biden getting stuck holding the bag for the pandemic. It was a feeling of despair watching us gain just enough power to be held responsible while not having enough power to do anything truly good or consequential to help the American people. Winning elections is an almost fraudulent outcome in America where winning does NOT result in the power to govern. Government remains divided and the winners of elections get to sit back and watch the opposition !@#$ the bed.
Biden had NOTHING to do with the consequences of COVID. But rising prices immediately fell prey to Republican propaganda. And I have not heard Democrats fight back over that issue to reclaim the truth of the matter. Certainly not been present in the campaign. So when Americans ask themselves "are we better today than four years ago?" that answer IS damaging to Democrats. For no good reason other than it is a weapon for Republicans to issue undisputed lies.
It's much more complicated than saying Biden got stuck with the Covid bag.* I don't see many pundits saying that, and I'm not too sure that citizens feel that either. Perhaps you mean that Biden got unfairly stuck with the high
global inflation bag, and that's absolutely the case.
And you're wrong about Democrats not fighting back over pocketbook issues.
Bidenomics as a pitch has been an abject failure over the past two years, even as the economy has been very resilient and the
envy of G8 nations. The underlying problem is that voters, by and large, are dumb and they don't care how you fight back against misconceptions. At the end of the day, many people believe the 2019 national economy were the glory days and no amount of education will convince them otherwise. And to be clear, the problem isn't what MAGAts think about this. There are a lot of moderate voters that feel this way, and that's why Joe Biden's approval rating has been dismal for the past 3 years.
This isn't to suggest all is lost and that we give up. As wrong as these vibes are, they are a little better than they were 12 months ago. The vibes don't quite match up with the reality (4.1% unemployment, surging stock markets) but they've at least gotten closer.**
* I would add that DJT deserves to hold the Covid bag for marching hundreds of thousands of Americans to their premature deaths, but sadly the dumb electorate doesn't see things that way. Teflon Don indeed.
** Some might recall from the SOTU thread (March?) that even (D) voters here were talking shit about the national economy.