VERSAILLES, PA — As if to emphasize that this riverside town of 1,200 people has nothing in common with the royal family that once ruled from the place of the same name on the outskirts of Paris, a royal family far removed from the worries and despair of its people, the riverside town of Youghiogheny is pronounced in its own unique, Appalachian way: See sale.
This pronunciation also applies to the cities of Versailles, Kentucky, and also to Versailles, Ohio. It has to do with the uneven way in which the early Scottish settlers in all three cities tended to emphasize the second syllable over the first. One imagines, however, that it also had something to do with the lack of connection with the palace, which for centuries has symbolized a ruling class deeply out of sync with the rest of the nation.
Versailles, Ohio is a charming and flourishing petite historic village. This village in Kentucky’s bourbon country is the epicenter of American horse breeding and has experienced solid population growth for 100 consecutive years.
Versailles here in western Pennsylvania is struggling.
President Joe Biden last week showed what happens when the ruling class loses touch with the realities of the pain and stress of the people it serves. His White House party celebrating his own economic accomplishments was an orgy of self-aggrandizement and bragging about an inflation-reduction bill that experts agree will not reduce inflation, and there was a touch of irony in the fact that stocks plummeted (and with them the retirement savings of many ordinary people) on the dire inflation news even as Biden spoke.
New inflation data showed a worrying rise: core inflation was 6.3% in August, down from 5.9% in July; the Dow Jones fell as much as 1,200 points after inflation was announced to have eased slightly to 8.3%.
“America’s bright future and America’s promise are real. They are real!” Biden shouted, counting on the power of his own claim to overshadow reality.
The average Biden and Trump voters have not lost sight of the fact that this administration is completely out of touch with the crippling effects of inflation on their lives. Eggs are 40% more high-priced than they were a year ago, coffee is 18% more high-priced, groceries in general are 11%. You don’t have to be a Republican to be upset about that.
Biden’s tone-deafness continued the next day, which he spent in Michigan lecturing people with a median income of $36,842 that they should buy an electric car to save money. In much of the Detroit area, the $62,900 Cadillac Lyriq EV that Biden drove as a stunt during his publicity stunt costs more than a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a separate garage.
Hours later, Biden traveled to Delaware to vote in his home state’s primary, using a taxpayer-funded jet and a convoy to vote in person rather than casting a mail-in ballot as Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump did when they were in office. Transporting a sitting U.S. president costs more than $2,500 (SET ITAL) per minute (END ITAL).
All of this happened just two weeks after Biden announced student loan forgiveness—a move to give money to the most privileged people in the country with the best prospects at the expense of everyone else. A week later, he stood outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, draped in ominous red lighting, and delivered one of the most repulsive speeches ever given by a president, expressing his dislike for half the people in this country.
Even Abraham Lincoln, who had much more solid grounds for condemning his political enemies as morally inferior, was able to exercise some restraint.
For months, Republicans have seemed to be in a catbird position when it comes to voters preferring them over Democrats in the November midterms. Their advantage may have shrunk recently, in huge part because of Trump’s return to power and his dispute with the Justice Department. Regardless of the outcome in November, several things will be left out in the measurement of the outcome.
If they win, Democrats will claim they built on their legislative accomplishments at the end of the summer. They will also claim that their message of demonizing half the country worked brilliantly, and that the abortion issue was perfectly in their favor.
If Republicans win back the House and Senate, it won’t be because they delivered an effective national message—they haven’t yet. But maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe if they pick up more than 25 seats in the House and at least two in the Senate, it will be because they turned the election into a referendum on Biden.
All you ever hear on the national news is how much Republicans are pro-Trump. I’ve seen a lot of this across the country, and I often wonder if the reporters who say this stuff are at the same meet-and-greets or town halls that I am. Or do they just grab a sentence fragment and turn it into a 1,000-word article about what it all means? Stories like this drive the news and social media, but will they decide the election? Probably not.
When Obama received landslides in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, he was personally popular with voters. It was his policies that were not popular. When Trump’s party lost the 2018 midterms, he was personally unpopular, but his policies were. Both men lost for different reasons—Obama because he overreacted, Trump because of his personal behavior.
If Biden gets a beating in November, it won’t be because he didn’t do enough legislation. It won’t be because voters don’t like him personally. It will be because Biden has lost touch with the concerns of the ordinary men and women who make things happen in this country: the welders and mechanics and energy workers and waitresses and farmers and small-business owners and suburban parents whose grocery, utility and housing bills have skyrocketed while their incomes have stagnated.
Many of these people have told me they voted for Biden just two years ago, but now they have little sympathy for him. They watch a man dance and brag about his climate change bill while denigrating them or their family members, regardless of the challenges they face.
Biden’s response to $5 gas is that you buy a $60,000 vehicle. That in itself explains how out of touch he is with reality.
