Despite the present administration’s best efforts to promote “Bidenomics” as a great success, the American people aren’t buying it. And now, finally, Democrats themselves see the theme as more of a millstone than a boon to Biden’s reelection efforts.
Will Marshall, president of the leftist Progressive Policy Institute, admitted:
At this point, Bidenomics doesn’t really have strong answers to people’s biggest worries. There ought to be a lot of thinking in the White House now about changes in the way they present their case….
Politico reported that, in more than a dozen interviews with prominent Democrats, one theme was clear: “The Bidenomics messaging blitz has failed to brighten voters’ views of the economy.… Most polling shows clear majorities remain unhappy with the overall state of the economy and inflation in particular.”
Michael LaRosa, a former spokesman for “Dr. Jill” Biden, admitted: “People need to be able to see and feel an economy in their own personal bank accounts. And it doesn’t change no matter how loud[ly] you scream [that] the economy is better.”
Put another way: No matter how much makeup is applied to Jabba the Hutt, he is still ugly.
This is borne out no matter where one looks. Gas is now at $4 a gallon across the land, and approaching $7 a gallon in some counties in California. Grocery prices have skyrocketed. Mortgage rates just hit a 23-year high.
And stocks have taken a massive hit, with the S&P 500 Index losing more than six percent of its value in just the last two months.
According to Lending Club, more than six out of every ten American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, with no room for emergencies. Most of them couldn’t handle a $400 “surprise.” Twenty million Americans are behind on paying their monthly utility bills. They’ve increased their credit-card debt by more than $300 billion since Biden took over, with the total owed now exceeding $1 trillion.
With interest rates climbing, defaults are increasing as well. In fact, credit-card delinquencies have increased in each of the last seven quarters, while car-loan delinquencies in the second quarter of this year topped pre-Covid levels.
This is the inevitable result of spending money the government doesn’t have, forcing it to turn to the Federal Reserve to manufacture additional funds to pay its bills. This has eroded the purchasing power of the dollar to the point where it now takes $120 to purchase what $100 bought in January 2020.
According to RealClearPolitics, Biden’s approval rating continues to sink, recently hitting a low of 37 percent, with almost 60 percent of those polled disapproving of his performance. And when asked about the direction of the country as a whole, two-thirds of those polled say it’s headed downhill.
Nevertheless, the White House continues to tout the canard, saying in essence, “Don’t believe your eyes, ears, or pocketbooks. Believe us: you’re doing just great.” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa told Politico:
Bidenomics is the president’s economic agenda and it is strongly supported by the American people. That work and our message build on what the midterms and recent special elections proved: Americans favor the president’s vision for growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up over trickle-down MAGAnomics.
With the disconnect between Biden and “Bidenomics” and the real world — where real people earn real paychecks and spend money on real-world gas and groceries — now guaranteed to grow, it is all but certain that the “message” the White House wishes to promote will increasingly fall on deaf ears. For once, even some Democrats have got it right.
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