How our feelings about the economy are shaping the election

Make Me Smart March 28, 2024 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

Hello everyone, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Matt Levin 

And I’m Matt Levin in for Kai Ryssdal. Thanks everybody for joining us on this Thursday, March 28.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, we are almost through another month. And today we are going to listen to some audio from some stories that Matt and I have been working on and thinking about this week. And so, the first clip actually comes from Make Me Smart. Well, sort of, adjacent. Anyway. On Tuesday, we interviewed NPR’s Sarah McCammon on the show. And this is a clip from the book that she was talking about. Well, at least the audio book, “The Exvangelicals.”

Sarah McCammon 

“The crowd took on its own energy as Trump pointed toward the risers and cameras at the back of the room, complaining about those disgusting reporters who were the worst people. This quickly became part of his shtick, a highlight of every rally.”

Kimberly Adams 

So, I was listening to Sarah’s audiobook. And that clip, in particular jumped out at me because she was on the campaign trail with Trump in 2016 and was talking about how the language got increasingly violent and angry. And there were times when she was concerned that, you know, the crowd was going to turn violent. And sometimes folks were concerned about their safety. So, that jumped back to my mind earlier this week when I was digging into some archival tape on C-SPAN looking at old campaign rallies of George HW Bush from 1992. And I want to play a clip from that.

George HW Bush

“The guys with the cameras and the long boom mics and carrying the burden out there. They’re good guys. The traveling press with us, exempt them from the anger. But if you want to know who I really feel strongly about, it’s those Republican consultants and those democratic consultants on those deadly Sunday talk shows saying I don’t have a chance. We aren’t going to show them wrong.”

Kimberly Adams 

So, he didn’t show them wrong. He lost. But it really stood out to me. Here are two Republican candidates, both of them were complaining that they weren’t getting a fair shot from the media. Bush was complaining that the media wasn’t giving him enough credit for a good economy. And Trump complained about everything, but they were speaking about. So, they were both bashing the media, but did it in such different ways. And it really just kind of jumped out at me the difference.

Matt Levin 

Yeah. Well, I would say HW’s steak was much more nuanced and likely less vitriolic.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, to put it mildly. And it just, I was listening to it, and I was like, how nostalgic. A time when you could, you know, attack the media and not have people fearful for their safety.

Matt Levin 

Exactly. Exactly.

Kimberly Adams 

So, the reason I was looking at campaign rallies by George HW Bush from 1992 is because I’ve been doing some reporting on the difference between people’s economic beliefs and economic reality or economic perceptions and economic reality. However, you want to say it. Because the economy is always ranking pretty high as an important issue around election time, but sometimes the gap between what people believe about the economy and what’s actually happening is pretty significant. And one of the examples as I was talking to people that kept coming up was 1992 when the economy was doing better. We’d come out of a mild recession and the economic recovery was going well, but everybody still felt bad about the economy. And this young academic at the time, he was in his like, first or second year of graduate school. His name was Marc Hetherington, did some research looking at why even though the economy was doing well, Bush lost, and everybody thought it was a bad economy. And he found that it was because of the media, the more exposure to media that somebody had, the worse they felt about the economy. Now, that could draw some parallels with where we are now. But he did point out when I talked to him that there’s a key difference.

Marc Hetherington

“In 1992, Republicans thought the economy was just as dreadful as Democrats did. But in 2024, the only people. Well, the overwhelmingly Republican see it as awful. And what I think this reflects is the kind of party polarization that we’ve seen developed since, you know, 1992. You know, back in 1992, it was possible for Republicans and Democrats to see the world the same world in the same way.”

Kimberly Adams 

And now, not so much.

Matt Levin

No, no longer really possible.

Kimberly Adams

Right. It was kind of across the board because there were fewer news outlets, you know, at the time. I don’t think Fox even existed at that point. You know, there was kind of one narrative across the media. And also, because, you know, we tend to focus on negative news as opposed to positive news because that’s what people click on and listen to. But it was kind of universal. Republicans and Democrats both had negative views of the economy even as the economy was getting better. But now, if you look at the data and Pew has some good numbers on this, the improving perceptions of the economy that are happening right now, it’s almost entirely Democrats. Republicans actually don’t think it’s getting any better.

Matt Levin 

So, what does that mean for the Biden and Trump campaigns?

Kimberly Adams 

So, what it means is. So, I’m kind of two minds. And so are the people I’ve been talking to about this. On the one hand, it means that there’s a way you can tailor your messaging. So, one of the campaign consultants I talked to said, look, if it’s a good economy, but you’re running against the incumbent, you still want to say it’s a bad economy, and you either super narrowly focused on individual things that are still bad. Or you kind of portray the person as out of touch, or you change the timeline. So, maybe things are getting better right now, but you talk about how things have been over the last three to five years, right? And so, you can adjust your narrative to change how someone is framing the economy, so it’s not, you know, improving in the same way. So, for example, right now, inflation is cooling, the rate of inflation, but prices are still much higher than they were pre-COVID. And everybody feels that deeply. So, even though the situation is improving, it’s still not ideal when you go to the grocery store. And that’s something people can feel quite viscerally. But on the other hand, I don’t know how much it matters, and this is what academics are really kind of stuck on because this is so much this race is so much about personalities, even though people rate the economy is really high. It’s really a referendum on Trump and Biden and what you think of them as people.

Matt Levin 

It’s so interesting, too, because when you really drill down on this. I mean, the undecided voters that really matter are a few 100,000 people in some key swing states, right?

Kimberly Adams

And key counties really.

Matt Levin

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, obviously, there’s the turnout issue for both parties, which is important. But in terms of how you feel about the economy, and whether that’s going to influence your vote, I’d be super interested in how those, you know, independent voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, how they think about the economy now. I also keep thinking about, what was the 92? Was it in a presidential debate? Like HW didn’t know what the price of milk was? Is that accurate?

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sure someone in the audience will let us know. Yeah, and to your point about this sort of so few people making these decisions. There’s a group, I’m trying to find the group, but there’s an organization that advocates for sort of rank choice voting and open primaries. And one of the reasons that they focus. It’s called UnitedAmerica.org, right. And they advocate for open primaries and rank choice voting because they highlight that the vast majority of seats in the house and even to some extent, who’s going to be a finalist for president, is being decided by fewer and fewer people. Because, say, for example, you have a reliably Democratic district for the House of Representatives, then it’s really only the people voting in the primary who are making that decision. And if you’re in a state with a closed primary, then that means the only people who get to weigh in on this are the super engaged Democratic voters in that district. So, if you’re a Republican, you don’t even get a say. If you are a less engaged democratic voter, you don’t get a say. And they’ve tracked that at this point so far, 25% of the US House has been elected by 3% of Americans.

Matt Levin

Wow.

Kimberly Adams

And in 2022, 8% of voters elected 83% of the house.

Matt Levin

Wow.

Kimberly Adams

Yeah. So, it’s wild out here.

Matt Levin 

Very quickly. I got another question for you in terms of how this plays out in the in the campaign. Last year, the Biden administration, or I guess, you know, the people in charge of his reelection campaign made the decision, like “We’re going to own the economy. We’re going to go Bidenomics,” right? Like “we’re going to lean into the recovery.” Was that a mistake?

Kimberly Adams 

So, we won’t know until election day. But I was talking with someone at Gallup, who told me, the polling firm Gallup, who told me that often the closer we get to the election, the better people feel about the economy, particularly in favor of the incumbent. And that likely has to do with the increased messaging, and because candidates know they need to sound positive about the economy. So, they flood the market with all of their economic accomplishments, right? So, the closer we get to the election, it will kind of be a battle of messaging on the economy. And to be blunt right now, Biden has a lot more money to run those ads than Trump does. Trump’s spending a lot of his money on legal fees, and Biden and the full weight of the Democratic Party are already spending millions of dollars trying to change the narrative about the economy.

Matt Levin 

Yeah. It’s super interesting. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, Kimberly.

Kimberly Adams 

No, I was just going to say we’ve spent tons of time on this. I want to get to your clips. What did you bring?

Matt Levin 

So, I have two AI stories I want to talk about. It’s interesting. These are the like, two topics that I try to limit myself talking about at home. The presidential election and AI. So, this is my opportunity to just go whole hog.

Kimberly Adams

Go to your heart’s desire.

Matt Levin

Okay, let’s hear this first clip, which is kind of a fun one.

AI Johnny Cash

“Hello. I’m not Johnny Cash. I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world. Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.”

Matt Levin 

It’s so good. So, that is AI Johnny Cash singing a cover of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” from the 90s. It’s a banger, man. Like that song has been stuck in my head, I was telling Drew this, for basically a week. I did a story on this for MMR, Marketplace Morning Report this morning. Yes, yes.

Kimberly Adams 

We use acronyms to refer to everything on Marketplace.

Matt Levin 

I know. I know. The reason I wanted to play that is, the story I did was about a Tennessee law. Tennessee became the first state in the country last week to pass a law, specifically targeting the unauthorized use of voice AI clones of musicians. It’s called the ELVIS Act, which stands for the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act. So, a couple interesting things about this. I talked with the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents record labels, really, and that the big takeaway I got from him was this is a revenue opportunity for them. Think about all the artists out there that could license their voice to sing whatever the fan wants them to sing, especially in an era where like musicians are, you know, basically heavily dependent on live touring. It’s not as lucrative to be a musician anymore unless you’re, you know, Beyonce or Taylor Swift or whoever. So, that was super interesting. The other part of this that was interesting is it is pretty easy to pass laws like this, specifically targeting these voice clones, which, you know, would conceivably apply to not just musicians but average everyday folks or perhaps certain public radio personalities. So, you know, Kimberly, they can’t use your voice to plug Doritos or something without your permission.

Kimberly Adams 

That ship has sailed, Matt. That ship has sailed. See Apple Siri American female voice number two.

Matt Levin 

I know. I know. That the part of this that is I think scarier for the music industry is it is much more legally ambiguous to try to go after training a music AI model off of copyrighted music, period. So, you may not be allowed to use Johnny Cash’s voice, but you could use a AI software program that was trained on Johnny Cash’s music. Click a button and boom, you get a country music song that is perhaps reminiscent of Johnny Cash. So, that being said, some of these AI mashups are, like that Barbie Girl one, absolute bangers. There’s a Frank Sinatra Nirvana one that’s pretty good too. Have you heard that one?

Kimberly Adams 

I haven’t. I remember back on one of our Thursday shows. Several months ago, we were talking about how YouTube is kind of already doing this. I’m looking at this blog post that they did were basically, here I’m just going to read it. “9 artists including Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charlie XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan,” I don’t know. They’ve “chosen to collaborate in this experience and work with us to shape the future of AI music.” And they’re “giving a small group of select creators a chance to create unique soundtracks of up to 30 seconds for your Shorts.” And basically, you could type in. I stopped reading now. You could type in like, “Oh, I want a wake-up song in the style of John Legend,” and it would like, use the artist’s voice to generate something. So, there is the kind of use case of what you’re talking about, that there is a potential for artists to make money doing this that they’re not getting right now.

Matt Levin 

Yeah, on that note, it would be great if we could get like T-Pain over the Make Me Smart theme. I would totally be down for that.

Kimberly Adams 

Have T-Pain make a 30-second song about getting smarter set to the Make Me Smart theme music.

Matt Levin 

That’s right. Somebody’s going to do it. Somebody’s going to do it.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s the prompt. What’s your other clip?

Matt Levin 

My other clip is from an interview I did with a guy named Jack Clark, who is the co-founder of an AI company called Anthropic. They produce the chatbot, Claude. And this is from a feature that aired on Monday. We were talking about why governments are struggling to find human AI regulators.

Jack Clark

“If you look at special government employees in the US, or you look at what they pay in the UK or EU, you’re always choosing to go back in. You know, I’m in my mid-30s, I would functionally be choosing to get paid for wages I was getting paid as an early 20 year old. Yes, sometimes it’s basically equivalent to well-paid journalism.”

Matt Levin 

So, Jack used to be a journalist, which is why. You know, he was a journalist in his 20s, which is why I asked. That was that little piece of silence there. I was like, “Oh, you mean, they’re going to pay AI regulators what journalists in their 20s get paid?” And his response is basically like, “yeah, maybe a little more.” So, this is an issue. Today, actually, the Biden administration came out with some new guidance from the Office of Management and Budget that would mandate every federal agency needs an AI chief to oversee how AI is going to be implemented within said federal agency. The question is what humans are going to get to actually fill that role and all the lower-level roles? AI is a, at least generative AI, is a pretty new technology. There’s not a lot of people that are super well qualified to understand the underlying mechanics of it. Even the people who develop large language models. A lot of times they don’t really understand what’s going on with them. And the other part of this is in that very limited talent pool, Silicon Valley is going to offer way, way, way more money than the federal government can offer or any government around the world can offer, so it’s a real problem.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, how are they going to recruit that workforce? And I was reading something in the MIT Technology Review a while back, just sort of laying out how even the scientists still don’t exactly know how some of these generative AI models come up with what they’re spitting out. Like they just don’t know. And that’s so deeply concerning.

Matt Levin

It’s terrifying.

Kimberly Adams

Well, that is it for us today on that uplifting note. Join us tomorrow for Economics on Tap. The YouTube livestream will start at 3:30 Pacific, 6:30 Eastern. It will be the Kimberley and Nova show. We will have more news. We will have drinks, and we’re going to play our favorite game, Half Full/Half Empty. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Audio engineering by Drew Jostad. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. And Thalia Menchaca is our intern.

Matt Levin 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. And Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital. Are you going to be humming that Johnny Cash tune the rest of the day, Kimberly?

Kimberly Adams

Nope.