In Politico this morning, Adam Cancryn tells a sad tale of the economic and political injustices that are being suffered by our 46th president. “The White House,” Cancryn reports,
finally believes it has an economic story worth telling. Now, it’s trying to figure out how to get voters to listen.
Emboldened by a string of legislative victories, President Joe Biden has leaned into his record on the economy, increasingly confident that the nation’s outlook is brightening after months under a cloud of rising prices and consumer anxiety.
And the problem is?
But just as the White House was rushing to capitalize on its winning streak — in hopes of turning around an economic narrative that has dogged the administration from its earliest days — complications have arisen.
Oh, no! What are these pesky “complications,” which, unforeseen by all, have passively “arisen” before the executive branch’s weary eyes?
The lengthy fall in gas prices finally ended, inflation has stayed stubbornly high and a bleak global economic landscape has rattled the markets, with both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 nearing their weakest levels of the year.
So, the “complications” that have “arisen” are . . . all the things that have been a problem for a long time now, and that President Biden, who would rather do other things, has decided either to ignore or to make worse?
And no, passing a bill called “The Inflation Reduction Act” does not count as mitigation. Here’s CBS News, earlier this month, with an absolutely hilarious description of that legislation:
The Inflation Reduction Act is aimed at tackling a host of problems, from climate change to catching tax cheats, but there’s one issue it may not solve: reducing inflation.
Back to Politico:
The cross currents of economic and political news have left the White House in a tricky position. After spending much of his term battling inflation and fears of a recession, Biden has begun traveling the country touting long-term investments in manufacturing and climate.
The problem with this is that it isn’t true. Biden has spend much of his term coexisting with “inflation and fears of a recession.” But he has spent pretty much none of his term “battling” it. On the contrary: almost everything that he and his party have done — including his most recent move, the illegal “forgiveness” (i.e. transference) of up to one trillion dollars in student debt — has made inflation worse, made interest-rate hikes more likely, and made the “fear of a recession” more acute.
James Carville has thoughts:
“You can’t pivot away from the obvious,” said James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist, of the inflationary challenges that have hung over Biden’s presidency. “You have to talk about how you’re trying to help people deal with the rise in the cost of living.”
What Carville means, of course, is that you can’t “pivot away from the obvious” and remain popular. But you absolutely can “pivot away from the obvious” — as Joe Biden has now been demonstrating for more than a year-and-a-half. The problem here is not that “inflation and fears of a recession” have suddenly jumped out of the ground, shocking everyone and upending Biden’s agenda. The problem here is that Joe Biden is bored by reality. As I wrote last week, a sensible president:
would have started planning for all this on January 20, 2021 — or even before then. Noting that the federal government had just spent an astonishing $4.1 trillion fighting Covid-19, the new president could have adopted a defensive posture from the start. “All presidents have agendas,” he might have told the public. “But mine has been reshaped by events. My task is to bring us out of the pandemic, to help fix the supply chains, to keep on top of the impending inflation crisis, and to restore our balance sheets to health. That is my calling, and I shall meet it with dispatch.”
But Joe Biden isn’t a sensible president, and didn’t do any of that. Of course he’s is finding it hard to take a victory lap. There’s no victory to celebrate.
One of the biggest challenges that Biden and his party now face is their near-total inability to distinguish between their narrow ideological agenda and the health of the country at large. I’m not just talking here about the Democratic Party’s grotesque tendency to equate its electoral victories with the health of “democracy” per se. I’m talking about this:
“Legislatively, the last 90 days have been nothing short of amazing — that’s just a fact,” said Robert Wolf, an Obama-era economic adviser who maintains ties to the Biden White House. “We have to be really feeling good about what’s taken place.”
Amazing for whom? As did the American Rescue Plan, the “Inflation Reduction Act” does, indeed, contain a lot of provisions that progressives like. But the country? Well, again:
The lengthy fall in gas prices finally ended, inflation has stayed stubbornly high and a bleak global economic landscape has rattled the markets, with both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 nearing their weakest levels of the year.
And:
the cost of staples like food and housing remain elevated. The grinding war in Ukraine means gas prices could spike again too. And the Federal Reserve’s aggressive attempts to ease inflation are prompting fresh worry that its tactics will steer the economy right into a recession.
But other than that, Mr. Biden, how was the rally?