An Entirely Apolitical and Ill-advised Attempt to Use McDonald’s Lower Sales and This Article on QSRweb to Draw a Sweeping Conclusion About Last Week’s Election.

Does Ronald know what the hell people want? Nope. Not at the moment. They want it all.

Here’s a Forbes article entitled “Quit Freaking About McDonald’s First Sales Decline in 9 years, It’s Still Best In Class.”

Here’s a QSRweb article entitled, “Report: Menu deals no longer driving restaurant visits.”

Here’s my entirely shot-from-the-hip theory about Obama’s recent win: people won’t tell you things are great any more than they’ll tell you to stop giving them a deal. But they’re exposing their boredom with the recession and their nascent hopes that things are getting better by eating what they want where they want for whatever the price happens to be.

I offer no other evidence.

Want to refute me? Obviously, you won’t need evidence.

But I think I’m right. We’re in a stubbornly optimistic mood right now, and we’re going out to have a nice dinner with each other just because we feel like it. I end with a quote from the QSRweb article that captures this bifurcation:

As the tide shifts from recession-era habits, many chains are taking a more active approach in promoting their everyday value offerings alongside premium items. McDonald’s, for example, noted in its Q3 earnings call that it is investing in driving traffic by emphasizing value across most markets to drive incremental traffic. However, the company is balancing value messaging with premium menu news, including its recent introduction of the Cheddar Bacon Onion sandwich.

Within two weeks, Sonic hosted a 50-cent corndog promotion and then rolled out two new premium chicken sandwiches, including the Asiago Caesar Chicken Sandwich.”

(“Bifurcation” is a Government Studies 101 vocab word, incidentally.)