In Politico’s Playbook newsletter this morning: President Biden will spend June pivoting to a focus on economic issues, “to convince skeptical voters that, despite their current misgivings, the economy is actually doing quite well.”
Attempting to convince people that they’re doing better than they think they are is always a risky political strategy, but it seems particularly unlikely to work when gas prices keep setting new records every day. This morning, the national average price of a gallon of regular gasoline is $4.62, according to AAA. A year ago, it was $3.04.
But it isn’t just gas prices:
- Electricity bills are expected to continue skyrocketing this summer, along with rolling blackouts in parts of the western states.
- Inflation is still exceptionally high by historical standards, even if it may have peaked.
- The rapid rise in food prices continues, unabated.
- Home sales are falling, and fears of a burst housing bubble are growing.
- After a while, those 11.5 million job openings stop looking like a sign of robust strength and start looking like a labor shortage that is becoming chronic.
There is something classically Biden about looking at the state of the U.S. economy at this moment and concluding the problem is that he isn’t getting enough credit for all the good news. As Politico notes, “Telling [Americans] that their day-to-day worries are not supported by macroeconomic data — or, as Biden writes, that ‘the U.S. is in a better economic position than almost any other country’ — is risky and could come across as tone-deaf, something frontline Democrats in swing districts have been concerned about.” No kidding!
UPDATE: A good example of Biden’s unpersuasive spin arrives in his Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, where he declares, “a recent Federal Reserve report found that a higher percentage of Americans reported feeling financially comfortable at the end of 2021 than at any time since the survey began in 2013.”
But if you look in the fine print of the report, at the bottom of page 13, it states, “the survey was fielded in October and November 2021 and results reflect financial situations at that time. References to “in 2021” refer to the 12-month period before the survey rather than the precise calendar year.”
Since those survey questions were asked, the U.S. has seen inflation rates of 7.03 percent (December), 7.48 percent (January), 7.87 percent (February), 8.54 percent (March), and 8.25 percent (April). If you asked today, would 78 percent of adults were doing at least okay financially, meaning they reported either “doing okay” financially (39 percent) or “living comfortably” (39 percent)? I doubt it.