Short memories
June 19, 2026 at 12:46 PM by Dr. Drang
I’ve been thinking about 1984 lately—the year, not the novel. What got me thinking about it was the reduction in gas prices over the past few weeks,
and this article in the New York Times about Donald Trump’s declining poll numbers among white working-class voters and how that might affect November’s elections.1
Forgive me for not being especially optimistic, but one of my distinct memories from 1984 makes me think the polls are lagging.
A news story on one of the networks back in 1984 included short interviews with prospective voters. One of the voters was a young white man (he was about my age at the time) who said he was voting for Ronald Reagan. When asked why, he said “He got me my job back.”
Of course, the man had been laid off early in the Reagan administration,2 but that didn’t enter into his reasoning. The only thing that mattered was that he was working again. It was my introduction to the short memories of American voters.
via MoMA
I can’t help but think we’ll see the same thing this November. As long as the price of gas—like the unemployment rate in 1984—keeps going down, it won’t matter whether it gets back to where it had been or who caused it to go up in the first place. White working-class voters (especially men) will credit Trump with bringing gas prices down and vote Republican again, regardless of what they told pollsters recently. Only another major fuckup close to the election will get them to vote blue or just stay home in large numbers.
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If, like me, you don’t have a subscription to the Times, see if your local library gives you access to it. Mine does. ↩
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Constant Republican propaganda has people thinking the Reagan years were all about prosperity, but the recession early in his first term was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a distinction it held until 2008. ↩