During Hillary Clinton’s road trip to New Hampshire on Monday, something remarkable occurred: She told the truth about the economy, telling her supporters that the economy has “stalled out” and, adding, “It’s not enough to tread water.”
A month ago while she was busy not running for president, Clinton never uttered a word about the weakening economy, giving mute evidence that she was unwilling to risk telling the truth and offending both the president and her Democrat supporters. This despite evidence that Americans have put economic worries at or near the top of their concerns for months on end. This despite the fact that the nation’s GDP fell off a cliff in January and February. This despite the fact that job growth since the start of the Great Recession has been half what it was during the Reagan recovery in the 1980s. This despite evidence that new business startups have continued their decline since 2009, and evidence that business investment in new enterprises has dropped sharply at the same time.
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But evidence just released has so overwhelmed the Democrat stance that everything is ducky that it apparently has forced Clinton to admit what is obvious to the voters whose support she is seeking: The economy has flatlined.
The March jobs report was half what economists had predicted, coming in at just 126,000 jobs, compared to estimates of 245,000. This is the slowest monthly growth since December 2013. Behind the numbers were declines in every major sector of the economy: manufacturing, construction, and energy. Even though unemployment fell by 130,000, most of that (96,000) was because of people leaving the workforce. The labor participation rate continued its steady decline, returning for a third time to the lowest level since the late 1970s.
Perhaps the final straw in the obvious reversal in the Clinton camp was the release of the “surprise index” by Bloomberg, showing the degree to which forecasts beat, equal, or fail to meet forecasts. It fell to the lowest level since 2009, when the economy was in the middle of the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
What Clinton appears to have done is to let pragmatism overrule ideology. Words can no longer hide the fact that the Obama administration has not saved the economy from going over a cliff and has not been responsible for a recovery. The truth is now plain for all to see, including the voters she is seeking in her quest for the White House. Reality has finally forced her confession: The Obama “recovery” is a myth, the economy has stalled, the voters know it, and Hillary has been forced to admit it.
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics.
