One of the most perplexing aspects of current polling is that people seem to think the economy isn’t doing that well even though the economy seems to being doing pretty well; and the state of the economy doesn’t seem to be mirrored by campaign trends. Last week, we touched on one very under-examined reason people feel bummed during the boom: We’re still coping with the pandemic. Everything is not OK. You experienced a global pandemic that completely altered your view of health, safety, politics, and just how aggressively you could move to snag the last roll of toilet paper on the shelf. Sh-t Happened. In an adapted piece from his new book, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, my mom’s favorite journalist (and she’s like me, except she actually reads the articles), Fareed Zakaria looks at some other reasons why the economy isn’t helping Biden and many other political leaders across the globe. “Explanations for this disconnect abound. Some say it’s a time lag, others that people are being swayed by social media, still others that residual feelings about inflation tends to trump all else. But I think that the real answer is that politics is no longer fundamentally driven by economics – that our political preferences are today shaped more by issues of culture, class and tribalism than by how much money we make.”