But What If Democrats Do Too Much Of The Really Popular Things

You can draw various conclusions (some scary!) from this, but I don't think it's very debatable that had the last guy ever actually done INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK and had Mitch shoved some Orange Man Bucks out the door in October, that we'd be enjoying the great and glorious second term of that orange man.

Political scientists have been annoying people for years by telling them "eh, campaigns don't matter, if the economy is doing well then then the incumbents get re-elected." Probably that's overstated and requires some more nuanced measures of "the economy" than people usually focus on, but the truth is that before covid, the economy was really good by the way we measure such things. A lot of problems with life in the US, but they didn't start with the last guy.

I'd prefer people care about "money in my pocket" more than "tan suit scandals," even if there are some other legitimate concerns as well.