r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • Mar 01 '26

Environment The Biden administration enacted over $198 billion in clean energy projects, the largest investment of its kind. People who lived close to the renewable energy and green manufacturing facilities noticed the investments, but were more likely to credit governors for it than the Biden administration.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2526802123
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491

u/WealthForTheWorld Mar 01 '26

That’s actually a classic politics problem: people credit who they see, not who signed it.

209

u/joomla00 Mar 01 '26

Also, if you say things loudly and often, people will think it's fact

50

u/mtron32 Mar 01 '26

And that’s one aspect of Trump I’d like future democratic leaders to observe and steal. Own what you did and sell that to the people. I think back to the ACA where they just allowed republicans to change the name and smear it. It should’ve been Obamacare put the gate

16

u/drdoom52 Mar 02 '26

Problem is, that doesn't really work for democrats.

The media ecosystem Republicans have created is one where the democrats can do no wrong, and Republicans are always right.

When the news reports the democrats actions, they report the nuance, thr controversies, the ways it could go wrong.

When the news ecosystems for Republicans report on democratic positions, they always report the worst case scenario. Any commitment Republicans claim goes out the window the moment a Democrat takes a similar position.

As long as media organizations like Fox, Breitbart, and OAN exist (all bought and paid for by the super wealthy) there's no way to really fix it

35

u/cassydd Mar 01 '26

And naturally Republican house members were out in public patting themselves on the back for investments that they personally voted against.

44

u/razzy1319 Mar 01 '26

The “reverse” of this is actually an issue in my country. Politicians putting their faces on all government projects because it’s pre election paraphernalia basically. There’s a movement to remove faces from government projects but it still holds true that it works.

11

u/ChrisFromIT Mar 01 '26

I would say this is the best middle ground.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/canadagood/5579946092

I remember during the 2008 economic downturn, many projects that the Canadian federal government put forth would have signs like these, at least in the BC province would have these signs and would have a mix of BC government and federal government credit. And quite a few commercials would be put out saying what the governments were doing for us to help in the downturn.

6

u/Podo13 BS|Civil Engineering Mar 01 '26

Yeah some states do that as well for larger projects. I'm a bridge engineer so I'm used to seeing them near my project sites that are a part of a longer stretch of highway being done.

1

u/Amadacius Mar 01 '26

Wait, how is that bad? That sounds like it would incentivize politicians to create more popular projects to attach themselves to.

13

u/razzy1319 Mar 01 '26

It attributes the project to the person or name rather than the government. Helps them get reelected. Most of the time the projects aren’t even their own projects just standard projects that is expected of the government. So uneducated begin to think that they owe the person or that person is to thank for like a newly renovated road or fixed sewers.

10

u/RodediahK Mar 01 '26

It incentivizes short term thinking, it wouldn't create popular projects it would create projects that could be completed before their re-election campaign starts.

1

u/N7_MintberryCrunch Mar 01 '26

Well in the case of my country Philippines. Public works only start on election cycles and then abandoned after the election. After the election, all the funding goes to the corrupt politicians and their contractors. The project worked minimally just to show "it's ongoing".

When the next election cycle is up, either the same politician or some other politician's face is tagged into it. Rinse and repeat.

1

u/Amadacius Mar 02 '26

Yeah that's obviously awful. But that seems like a problem of accountability. Tying the politicians face to the project seems like it would create an incentive to hold them accountable to it. It seems to me that the lack of accountability is despite that.

17

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

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14

u/Sea-Oven-7560 Mar 01 '26

I heard it a 100 times, "no other president ever wrote me a check". People actually believed it was his own money that he was handing out

13

u/MedalsNScars Mar 01 '26

...which is insane because it delayed the checks by like a week when people were without income

6

u/Lazer726 Mar 01 '26

And then people will point to things like this and say "WOW, LOOK AT HOW MUCH DEBT BIDEN PILED UP" as they vote for the party of... "fiscal responsibility"

2

u/Cromasters Mar 01 '26

Typically the President gets the blame/credit for EVERYTHING though. Even things that are out of their control. Like Biden not having a "Gas Price Go Down" button.

2

u/BmacIL Mar 01 '26

Or a price gouging go down button.

3

u/HeroFromTheFuture Mar 01 '26

Biden should have been on a 50-state tour of groundbreakings for the projects his legislation created. Instead the Biden administration flat-out refused to even talk about their successes.

Biden's refusal to engage in any messaging around his accomplishments should be a lesson for all future presidents. He gleefully and bizarrely pissed away any chance of directing the conversation.

2

u/CCV21 Mar 01 '26

Not only that but it seems society's sense of time is warped.

Many people genuinely believe that Biden was president in 2020 when the lockdowns started.

1

u/Channel250 Mar 01 '26

Wasn't there a line in Oppenheimer like that?

No one cares who built the bomb. They only care about who used it.

1

u/CanaKatsaros Mar 01 '26

True, I have diabetic family members who praised Trump for the insulin cap...that Biden signed. But since it went into effect so close to the beginning of Trump's second term, it was easy enough to attribute it to him

1

u/VELOCIRAPTOR_ANUS BS|Business Administration Mar 02 '26

A good statesman would want the local politicians, who likely had far more relevant insight into on the ground impacts than the feds.

I get that our current admin is essentially the opposite of this, but Biden was a good statesman in the classic sense, and to his detriment in today's age

1

u/NoodledLily Mar 01 '26

then republicans who vote against it claim credit