Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this week said that “Democrats are laser-focused” on “taking aim at insulin costs…lowering prices at the grocery store…building on historic job growth” and “expanding opportunity for the middle class.”
While one could easily dismiss this multi-pronged (but still “laser-focused”) statement as empty political rhetoric, such proclamations often indicate something more meaningful. They suggest where politicians recognize they are falling short of public expectations, requiring their increased legislative, or at least rhetorical, attention.
As logic suggests, politicians typically limit their “laser focus” to a single key concern. That was the case in the aftermath of the Great Recession, when Democrats regularly emphasized their laser-like focus on job creation. For example, then-Vice President Joe Biden said of President Obama: "With everything else he has on his plate, his laser focus has been jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs." Biden’s defensive rhetoric stemmed from the fact that at that moment 49 of 50 states had lost jobs since the Democrats’ 2009 stimulus law, despite their promises that legislation would create millions of new jobs.
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