To call Joe Biden’s strategy of branding the economy “Bidenomics” stupid is an understatement. It naturally stands to reason that it is impossible to convince people the economy is strong when all they need to do is go to the supermarket or the gas station to see just how bad things really are. If people don’t feel it, they won’t believe everything is great just because you tell them so.
Joe Biden has long sought to own the current economy by taking credit for creating new jobs that were merely pre-pandemic jobs returning after the lockdowns ended. But once he went down the path of branding himself as a historically superior jobs creator, there was no turning back. And now some Democrats are realizing that Biden’s ownership of the economy was a major mistake.
“The Biden re-election campaign’s decision to brand the economy under the president’s name (Bidenomics) is looking like an early blunder that misread the public’s deep pessimism about how things are going on that front,” reports Axios. You think?
Axios tries to paint a rosy picture of the economy by suggesting that metrics like unemployment and inflation aren’t so bad and that it’s Americans’ perceptions that are the problem. While it’s true that unemployment is technically low, it’s lagging behind where it should be. And inflation may have slowed, but prices are still higher today than they were when Biden took office.
“Whatever stories Americans are told about the strength of the economy under President Joe Biden, they are not going to be persuaded to look past the issue of their own living standards,” laments liberal economist James Galbraith.
It’s true. As Axios notes, many middle- and working-class Americans are experiencing economic hardship. A Federal Reserve study found that with the exception of the wealthiest 20% of the country, Americans have depleted their savings and now have less cash on hand than before the pandemic. Rising interest rates are impacting those buying homes or cars as pandemic savings have been used up. Additionally, gas prices are on the rise once again, with the average price of regular unleaded gas reaching $3.82.
Related: Huge New Bidenomics Fail Threatens Joe Biden’s 2024 Campaign
But Biden has been aggressively telling people things are just peachy, and the consequence of that is that he appears out-of-touch with the plight of Americans — particularly the middle class, whom he’s been targeting. And there’s nothing he can do about it now. He’s taken full ownership of the economy, and it’s too late to play the blame game. He’s given speeches touting the “success” of Bidenomics but that message is falling flat, as only 28% of Americans claim they’re “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with the state of the economy, per a recent poll from NBC. The same poll shows that Republicans have a ginormous 21-point edge over Democrats on the economy.
“I’ve never understood why you would brand an economy in your name when the economy hasn’t fully recovered yet,” Michael LaRosa, a former spokesman for Jill Biden, told Politico.
It was a stupid move — one to which I suspect many will attribute Biden’s defeat in next year’s election.
