America Is Going on 20 Years of Dissatisfaction

It’s essentially the national motto at this point.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll came out Wednesday morning that — as most polls do — had whatever takeaway you’d like to draw from it, depending on your rooting interest. Democrats are up five points on a generic Congressional ballot; Joe Biden’s approval rating is 43 percent, which is almost exactly where Donald Trump’s was right before he lost the 2020 election. But I was most fascinated by the question that’s on all these big polls: Now, generally speaking, would you say that things in the country are going in the right direction, or have they pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?

The Right Direction/Wrong Track question is a fundamental one in American politics, basically the polling equivalent of “hey, which way is the wind blowing right now?” But the question has utility outside of pollsters fine-tuning their bullshit barometers. “Are things going to get better, or worse?” is one of the central questions of American life; every parent for generations has at one point fretted about leaving a better world for their children than they one they inherited. What could be a more important question than that? Another way of asking this question is the most basic one: Are we going to be OK?