Things are better than we think. Ed Kilgore takes on the question of why Biden isn’t getting any credit for our improving circumstances. (It’s because people don’t feel it yet…) These days it often seems like we’re caught in a deluge of bad and worrying news on everything from artificial intelligence and UFOs to homelessness and smoke in the air. But you could argue that life has been getting better in the USA overall, as Washington Monthly’s Bill Scher did recently in examining some of the issues people, and especially Republicans, blame on President Joe Biden. He offers as an example this indictment of Hellhole America from Ron DeSantis in his candidacy announcement last month: Actually, notes Scher, the “inflation rate for May is down to 4 percent, less than half of the June 2022 peak.” Illegal border crossings “have dropped by 70 percent in the last few weeks, according to the Department of Homeland Security, after Biden implemented a new border-management policy.” And aside from the fact that rising crime rates during the last few years left crime much, much lower than it was in the late 20th century, any “crime wave” claims are now clearly questionable: So all the dystopian talk from Republican politicians is at best anachronistic, and at worst deliberate disinformation based on reflexive partisanship, right? Well, sort of. There are some other things going on. When you are a politician, perceptions about how things are going in the nation are just as important as the facts. Polling on Biden’s job-approval ratings on various issues help illuminate the nature of the public’s discontent.…