Morning Consult is a research firm that surveys Americans and sells the information to decision makers who need to know what the public thinks. Their services are mostly priced for corporate customers, but Morning Consult offers a small amount of the information they gather for free. It is worth noting. A citizen is better informed if they have a wide perspective about trends and general consensus than if they only bounce from one day’s top story to the next without ever gaining context.

At the end of 2020, Morning Consult offered a summary of the year’s trends. Among the information shared was this chart tracing the share of adults who think the country is “moving in the right direction” (blue) versus “on the wrong track” (red).

The chart display here is too small to see well. you should click here and go to the site. But this small display is enough to get the key fact: Far more citizens think the country in on the wrong track. And that way of thinking has been persistent for years.

The chart traces opinion from as far back as January 2017 — so roughly the beginning of the Trump presidency. The only point where the optimistic blue rises to equal the pessimistic red is in early 1017. That is when many citizens were hopeful that the new president would fulfill his promises to drain the swamp and save the coal industry and build the wall and say “No” to China and more. For a brief moment in April of 2017, 51% of citizens that things were moving in the right direction. They didn’t stay optimistic for long.

The long-term trend shows about 60% of Americans unhappy with the direction of the country. There is a big change on the right side of the chart, though, and that occurred in 2020. from the already gloomy long-term level of national discontent, 2020 brought an even worse funk. In September 2020, more than 75% of citizens said the country was moving in the wrong direction.

Can we all agree that when three out of four people say something isn’t right, that something is off? The mere fact that people are discontent doesn’t reveal why they are unhappy and doesn’t pinpoint what needs to change. But it does show that “the General Welfare” promised in the preamble to the Constitution remains an unachieved goal.