Dec. 19, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
06:55
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Steve Cortez has now founded the American League of American Workers and you may know him from any number of arenas from CNN is very very wildly popular and a very important preview video about the Charlottesville lie and and his writings so he has a piece up at real clear politics about the economy And | |
| your take is that this is the real jeopardy for a Biden re-election. | |
| Is that correct? | |
| Yes, exactly. | |
| That this is an economy right now which works very well for the top 1%, which, by the way, is paradox of politics, is unfortunately the norm for the progressives. | |
| The people who claim to represent workers, for example, actually represent the most connected, crony, moneyed interest in society. | |
| And to give you statistics to back that, not just sloganeering, J.P. Morgan just put out a study talking about excess savings. | |
| from the COVID lockdowns so because of those tyrannical and unscientific lockdowns there was a lot of artificial surplus savings created because people were literally forced to stay home so they almost couldn't help but save in addition to that of course very generous government checks were sent out to hundreds of millions of Americans A big part of what has fueled this inflation now. | |
| But regardless, there were excess savings. | |
| J.P. Morgan says for 80% of Americans, those excess savings are now gone. | |
| And they say at present trend, by the middle of next year, 2024, they will be gone for 99% of Americans. | |
| Meaning only the top 1% are now better off from a savings standpoint than they were before the lockdowns. | |
| And that kind of statistic also underlies the absolute crisis of confidence that we see right now in our country. | |
| And I don't think I've ever seen, at least in my life, a bigger chasm between, a bigger gulf between where the corporate media is, you know, we talked in the prior segment about the malfeasance of the corporate media, but where they are on the economy. | |
| Trying to spread narrative and propaganda to the American people that, oh, the economy is actually fine. | |
| You just don't know it somehow, even though you know your own life and you know your own budget and your own stress and your own anxiety. | |
| But a gulf between that narrative and then the reality. | |
| Of where people are on the ground. | |
| And so my organization, League of American Workers, is doing extensive polling of the battleground states. | |
| And our most recent polling polled the state of Wisconsin, which could well decide the presidency and other races in 2024. And in the state of Wisconsin, by the way, we got a straight down the middle polling sample. | |
| Literally half of our respondents said they voted for Biden in 2020, half said they voted for Trump. | |
| So we're not cooking the books here regarding the sample. | |
| And of that sample, we said, is America on the right track or the wrong track? | |
| Only 22% of Wisconsinites say that America's on the right track right now. | |
| And then we drill down to, okay, what are the reasons? | |
| Overwhelmingly, number one is the economy. | |
| We asked them about their approval of Joe Biden on the economy. | |
| In Wisconsin, Battleground State, only 17% say that they have a very favorable view of Biden on the economy. | |
| 47%, almost three times as many. | |
| Have a very negative view of Biden on the economy. | |
| So it is a tough slog out there for the vast majority of Americans economically. | |
| I'm smiling because I would love to meet, what did you say, 17% thought America is on the right track? | |
| Steve, I want you to know, if I could have an evening with any group in America, it would be with them. | |
| Right. | |
| I would love... | |
| I can't even imagine what they would say. | |
| Do you know what... | |
| No, I... Yeah, I think it's a combination of two things. | |
| It's some people who are just blinded by ideology, right? | |
| That's right, yes. | |
| Just willing to ignore reality, and they're blinded by their ideology. | |
| But then there are also a smaller group, but there are folks, you know, in that 1%, Dennis... | |
| Who are doing well in this economy. | |
| Yeah, but wait, wait, wait. | |
| I'm doing well in the economy, and I think that the country is in jeopardy of its demise. | |
| I don't know. | |
| You can't see beyond your own circumstance? | |
| Right, right. | |
| Well, we have to be able to if we want to be decent and honorable human beings. | |
| And if we want this republic to thrive, and this republic which I believe is nearing the edge of a cliff in a lot of ways, but including economically. | |
| I thought this was fascinating too, Dennis, and I think will be important to you because you care so much about the health of families. | |
| The worst numbers we got in this Wisconsin poll, the most depressing numbers of all regarding the state of the economy, their own personal affairs, etc., were parents with school-aged children. | |
| So when we broke it down and asked parents with school-aged children, people who quite literally have more mouths to feed, who are some of the most worried and stressed people in society today, if you're a middle-class person right now with several children, and particularly if you're trying to do it on a single income, This economy is miserable for you. | |
| And we saw that in the statistics. | |
| Let me give you a couple. | |
| When we asked parents whether they approve or disapprove, only 10% strong approve of Biden, 63% strong disapprove. | |
| So a 6 to 1 ratio, twice as bad as his overall bad ratio. | |
| And this was a really depressing number among parents, Dennis. | |
| We asked, is the American dream still attainable? | |
| A very straight-up question, not a leading question, right? | |
| And again, the sampling was exactly split. | |
| Trump and Biden voters, is the American dream still attainable? | |
| Among parents, only 28% said yes. | |
| That's it. | |
| Fewer than a third of parents of young children in America believe that the American dream is attainable. | |
| That's the level of despondency that is out there. | |
| That's the loss of hope, the loss of belief. | |
| So this goes beyond the stresses, which are very real, the kitchen table stresses of meeting the budget. | |
| That's bad enough, and that pain is acute. | |
| But even bigger than that, in my view, Dennis, even more worrisome to us and should give us a sense of urgency is this loss of belief, and it's not going to get better. | |
| It's not going to get better for my children, something that has generationally been a promise of America. | |
| We're losing that. | |
| So it's important for us to focus on the micro, you know, what matters here and now, this month, next month. | |
| But it's also, I think, important for us to focus on the big picture. | |
| And the reality is, from what we are getting from our polling, we're getting the data back that shows there's an absolute crisis of confidence. | |
| So while the Washington Post, and I cite this in my most recent piece in American Greatness, the Washington Post had the gall, their chief economics writer. | |
| Heather Long is her name, to actually say she said it was an economic miracle in 2023. An economic miracle. | |
| So while people sit in newsrooms in the Acela Corridor in Washington and New York and say that it's an economic miracle, regular Americans, hardworking citizens in places like Oshkosh, Wisconsin, are saying, I can't pay my bills, I've never been this worried, |
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