The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Opinion Wednesday, December 8, 2021 — 9 ALEX YEE Opinion Columnist BRITTANY BOWMAN Managing Editor Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. CLAIRE HAO Editor in Chief ELIZABETH COOK AND JOEL WEINER Editorial Page Editors Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS Julian Barnard Zack Blumberg Brittany Bowman Emily Considine Elizabeth Cook Brandon Cowit Jess D’Agostino Andrew Gerace Krystal Hur Min Soo Kim Jessie Mitchell Zoe Phillips Mary Rolfes Gabrijela Skoko Elayna Swift Jack Tumpowsky Joel Weiner Erin White I nflation has once again gripped the nation. The consumer price index for October indicated that prices rose 6.2% from the year prior. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Survey’s preliminary findings for November were the lowest in a decade. According to the survey, consumers believe inflation is here to stay, and that President Joe Biden and the Democrat-led Congress have not effectively responded to it. Here in Michigan, the effects of inflation are slightly more palpable than in other parts of the country. According to a Detroit Free Press article, prices in the Midwest are up 6.6% compared with the 5.4% increase seen in the Northeast. This is a serious problem for Democrats. Conservative media outlets were quick to coin the term “Bidenflation.” Republicans in Congress latched onto the rising prices to attack Biden’s ambitious spending plans, affectionately re-naming his “Build Back Better” framework “Build Back Broke.” Given the flood of post-Virginia gubernatorial election commentary suggesting that Democrats should be worried about big losses in the midterms next year, beating the Republican’s challenge is vitally important. So far, Biden’s response to inflation has been faltering at best. While he did acknowledge that “inflation hurts (Americans’) pocketbooks,” he also misappropriated a letter from 17 Nobel Laureates that stated his social spending would “ease longer-term inflationary pressures” by conveniently leaving out “longer- term” in his speeches. Assuaging the public’s fears about inflation is notorious for sending former presidents to their political grave. Both Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter likely lost re-election because of their attempts to convince the country to curtail spending in order to reduce inflation. In a Politico article, former Republican aide Bill Hoagland was quoted saying, “I feel a little bit sorry for the president. A lot of this is out of control.” Economist Daniel McFadden, one of the signatories on the Nobel laureate letter, argued that inflation is the result of both constrained supply chains and “pent-up demand” from consumers emerging from the pandemic. Wrangling global supply chains and an entire country of people is an impossible task for any person, even a president, to accomplish. Nonetheless, Biden needs to take Americans’ concerns about inflation more seriously. Economists and officials at the Federal Reserve are paid to diagnose the causes of inflation and whether it will be transient or not. Biden’s job is to listen to and engage with the concerns raised by his constituents. When Biden visited General Motor’s Detroit plant, Factory ZERO, recently, he delivered a lengthy speech to celebrate the recent passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and emphasize the benefits it would bestow upon Michiganders. He highlighted the money going towards fixing Michigan’s infamously poor roads, the tax credits for consumers purchasing union-made electric vehicles, the money for eliminating PFAS and made a shout out to all the Michigan Democrats in Congress who helped pass the bill. He did mention inflation, but only to bring up that a few Wall Street rating agencies echoed the Nobel Laureates and expressed they believed the social spending plan would “not add to inflation pressures.” Roads, cars and unions all seem to hit the speaking points for the older Michigan electorate. And yet, I would bet that inflation probably matters just as much to most Michiganders. Bringing up the statements of a few Wall Street rating agencies or even a body of well-respected economists to dismiss concerns about inflation with the wave of a hand does not lead the public to believe that you understand their concerns. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Biden has nothing to gain from switching his strategy. Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal points out that since former President Barack Obama’s time in office, voters’ opinions on the economy have been driven largely by partisan identification rather than actual economic indicators. Further acknowledgement of the Republican outcry might just energize GOP campaigns come the 2022 midterms. But at the same time, it intuitively feels like ignoring inflation, or at least shakily trying to prop up “Build Back Better” as an easy fix for the problem, is not the best plan. On an episode of the New York Times’ podcast “The Daily,” economics reporter Ben Casselman emphasized the importance of remembering that even if the economy looks good in the aggregate, the economy is not experienced by individuals that way. According to Casselman, lower- income workers might have seen dramatic increases in their wages due to the labor shortage, but they also face more demanding and stressful work environments because of that same labor shortage. And even if inflation has not increased the cost of living for most Americans, that certainly does not mean everybody escaped the negative effects of inflation. Biden needs to come down to the same level as the average American. Instead of allowing the discussion over inflation to center around policymakers’ high-brow economic theories, he should make a concerted effort to publicly acknowledge that many voters are more concerned about inflation and the impact it might have on their lives than the fate of the social spending plan in the Senate. Taking the time to engage with his constituents that are concerned about inflation, or addressing the nation on the subject, would help make good on Biden’s promise to serve as a president for all Americans, not just his supporters. Elections are determined by what voters think and feel. If voters feel that their leaders have neglected them, then the massive benefits of a spending bill like “Build Back Better” appear very little. A cross the United States, anti- vaccine protestors are using antisemitic imagery and Holocaust comparisons in an offensive attempt to compare vaccine mandates to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Recently, Rob Astorino, a Republican gubernatorial candidate from New York, made headlines for hosting an anti-vaccine event featuring signs with swastikas. The use of a swastika was especially egregious because the protest was being held outside of the office of Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who is Jewish. The protest centered around a bill Assemblyman Dinowitz introduced that would require the COVID-19 vaccinations for school children. This specific protest hit particularly close to home for me as it occurred in a community close to where I am from. The section of the Bronx where the protest was held is an area I know well, having worked in that neighborhood at my congressman’s office. The area has a large and vibrant Jewish community. The fact that protestors came to this specific area with their antisemitic imagery and protested outside the office of a Jewish lawmaker is egregious but not surprising. The trend of invoking the Holocaust to protest COVID-19 restrictions and mandates extends far beyond this one event. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been many outrageous comparisons made between COVID- 19 protocols and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. With the rollout of the vaccine and the implantation of vaccine mandates, there have been many inaccurate comparisons between the Holocaust and the vaccine mandates. In Maine, a Republican lawmaker compared the Democratic governor’s health care workers’ vaccine mandate to the medical experiments performed by Dr. Josef Mengele and the Nazis during World War II. This incendiary claim tries to compare forms of torture and human experiments in the Holocaust with a safe vaccine that has gone through strenuous peer-reviewed clinical trials and has oversight from multiple medical bodies. The chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party compared companies requiring vaccines to Jews being forced to wear yellow Stars of David to identify them as Jews in Nazi Germany. Many anti-vaccine protests across the US have seen protestors wearing yellow Stars of David on their clothes, a direct reference to the stars that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust. This comparison is unbelievably disrespectful and demonstrates how anti-vaccine advocates are trying to co-opt one of the most painful parts of Jewish history and twist it to fit their anti-vaccine rhetoric. The use of swastikas, Stars of David, and other symbols at vaccine protests is truly reprehensible and serves to minimize the severity of the Holocaust. This is clear: There are no possible comparisons that can be made between what Jews endured during the Holocaust and any kind of COVID-19 restrictions. The Holocaust was one of the worst periods in our world’s history. Millions of Jews were stripped of their rights, their freedom and their lives. Concerns about inflation can be legitimate, Democrats should pay attention Comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust is abhorrent: All antisemitism must be condemned ISABELLE SCHINDLER Opinion Columnist Questions about the survey? Email diversitymatters@umich.edu Share your ideas and perspectives on diversity, equity and inclusion through the DEI Climate Survey sent to your umich email. It only takes about 15 minutes to complete and you could win prizes including $100 gift cards and other giveaways. All responses are completely confidential (the survey is administered by the independent research firm SoundRocket) and will be used to inform and improve our continuing DEI efforts at U-M. Help create a better future for all at U-M Get involved. Be heard. Make a difference. Check your email and submit your DEI Climate Survey today! Read more at MichiganDaily.com W e are fast approaching a year of a Democratic-controlled government that has been plagued by ups and downs of many varieties. These include the woes of handling the COVID-19 pandemic, a debt-ceiling crisis and the legislative leviathan of passing an infrastructure bill and spending bill. President Joe Biden’s popularity is at an all-time low, despite the passage of his infrastructure bill after months of party in-fighting. If only one word could be used to describe the government of this year, it would be factionalism. Factionalism has defined the fight in the debt crisis, allowing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., to wield an intense amount of power while being the smallest faction, as well as delaying some of the biggest items Joe Biden and the Democrats ran on. Manchin has tempered Democratic ambitions time and time again. In the fight over the infrastructure bill, progressives butted heads against the party establishment. In October, Democrats found an unlikely ally in Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., after Sinema and Manchin vowed to support the filibuster that created the debt-ceiling crisis. Factionalism has hobbled the Democrats for nearly a year now, but the issues that have hampered their party in the House and the Senate may save some prospects of power after the midterms. It may provide them with strength if, and when, they lose the House and Senate, as long as they can pull it together under minority leadership. The writing is on the wall: In the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats will lose seats. Numerous House members are retiring out of fear of the outcome of the 2022 election. Empirically, this is supported, as members of government retire when the outlook for them and their party is bleak. We can also quantitatively support the already popular belief that the president’s party loses seats in midterm elections, barring any extraordinary turnout at the polls. Yet some light can be shed on the future of a divided government: The ailments of the Democrats also pollute an incredibly fractured Republican Party. The GOP has recently displayed intense factionalism that could come to boil over in the upcoming midterms and even after. The Republicans have long faced in-fighting, even during Trump’s presidency, as those loyal to Trump above all else grew in number and rank. The bitter dispute continued after the election and saw some Trump critics, namely U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., lose their leadership positions and even be stripped of recognition by their state Republican parties. Yet the factional disputes are ever- growing and changing. The New York Times reports that there are now five factions within the Republican base. These include two Trump-focused factions, two factions that oppose the former president and a final faction comprised of individuals who often subscribe to outlandish conspiracy theories and associate themselves with QAnon. In Congress, these factions are most evident in the House where Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has found his hands full. McCarthy has had to try to defend some of the more extreme members of his party, as well as reel other ones in. U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Lauren Boebert, R-Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., have all come under fire for their controversial and sometimes violent remarks towards Progressive Caucus members. With McCarthy attempting to mitigate damage, the aforementioned representatives continued to heat things up. The factional war escalated with the passage of the infrastructure bill being supported by 13 Republicans in the House. Greene and other members of the Freedom Caucus began an all-out attack on the perceived traitors. This is not the first time Greene has come into conflict with Republican leadership, as she lost her committee assignments earlier this year. Appearing recently on U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.’s, podcast, Greene made a list of demands that McCarthy would need to fulfill to earn support from her and other members of the Freedom Caucus in the pursuit of Speaker of the House after the expected Republican victory in the midterm elections. The factions of the Republican Party are putting an immense amount of pressure on Republican leadership to bend to their whims. Leadership must tread carefully to maintain support and keep their positions, as the Freedom Caucus has ousted a speaker six years ago. McCarthy has to tread this fine line or else upset either moderates or the more extreme members, with both groups proving to be pivotal more often than not. McCarthy’s main goal, whether Greene and Gaetz and others recognize it or not, is and always will be party unity. He recognizes the importance of a unified party that is able to effectively mobilize when it needs to. He also recognizes the necessity of it for his own leadership ambitions. The worst-case scenario for McCarthy is if the Freedom Caucus leads a revolt and splinters the party apart, destroying unity and jeopardizing the advantage Republicans can gain in the midterms. There has been a lackluster showing from a Democrat-controlled House, Senate, and presidency, hindered by factionalism and overshadowed by an expected catastrophic defeat in a year’s time. However, there is yet light at the end of the dark tunnel, and there is yet a way to see this glass as half- full. The Democrats have something to look forward to in the increased factionalism of the House and Senate. Soon the Republicans will be vying for the House majority, and they have some major issues to contend with prior to the 2022 midterm elections. While factionalism has slowed the Democrats down substantially, it could cause the Republican Party to come undone in due time. The Democrats’ struggle could be a prize come midterms SAM SCHMITZ Opinion Columnist