In October 1980, then-candidate Ronald Reagan asked voters a very important question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
It was during the only televised debate he had against incumbent President Jimmy Carter, whose presidency had been marred by one crisis after another, from record-high inflation and rising unemployment, to soaring gas prices and the Iran hostage crisis.
Reagan knew the answer to his question was a resounding “no,” and asking it helped propel him to a landslide victory. It also became a regularly-invoked rhetorical feature of presidential campaigns going forward.
No one knows the cautionary tale of Carter’s presidency more than our current president, who has repeatedly used it as a stand-in for presidential failure and American weakness. Although Carter’s legacy greatly improved in the years since leaving office, he ended his only term with a bleak 34% approval rating.
Donald Trump currently sits at an abysmal 32%, according to Quinnipiac’s latest polling, and likely for many of the same reasons Carter finished where he did, ironically — high inflation, rising gas prices, and a foreign policy crisis in Iran.
So, the question of whether voters are better off than they were two years ago isn’t hard to answer for most — in January of this year just 28% said they were better off than they were a year ago, and in July that number had dropped to 19%.
And it’s no wonder — when you move beyond the economic numbers, which are bad enough, the picture of Trump’s America gets worse and worse with every peak behind the MAGA curtain.
In fact, it can feel at times like America has become a Third World country.
Case in point, the U.S. is in the midst of a measles outbreak, with more cases than it’s seen in more than three decades, thanks to the administration’s vaccine misinformation. We are now at risk of losing our official measles elimination status, which we’ve held for more than a quarter century.
We’re also facing no fewer than 11 foodborne illness outbreaks, including two separate cyclospora outbreaks, as well as outbreaks of listeria, salmonella and E. coli, all since Trump downsized oversight agencies, dropped food-facility inspections, and stripped back mandatory reporting requirements at the federal Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network.
Trump’s dumb war in Iran has depleted American munitions significantly — up to 80% in some categories — straining stockpiles and raising readiness concerns. And there are new reports of sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, deployed to the North Arabian Sea since November, desperately jumping overboard amidst poor conditions — from clogged toilets to mildewed showers, food supply problems to mental health concerns.
This is America — the superpower? Where college grads can’t find work, where housing is unaffordable for 75% of the population, where families must choose between paying rent or paying doctors bills? Where you can be shot dead for peacefully protesting? Where your government is shuttering important health agencies while spewing junk science about autism and Tylenol? Where our allies are skeptical of us and our enemies no longer seem to fear us?
While Trump fiddles with reflecting pools, golden statues and ballrooms, it feels like America is burning, becoming less and less formidable and functional with every passing day.
And Republicans are asking for two more years of control of it all. Who could possibly want more of this?
Upon the occasion of Carter’s 100th birthday in October 2024, Trump did what Trump does — and insulted him. But only to insult former President Joe Biden worse, saying Carter was happy because he “is considered a brilliant president by comparison.”
Just think what they’ll say about Trump — overseeing all of this chaos, destruction, corruption and incompetence. “Are you better off?” Are you kidding?
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
