It’s a Biden Boom—and No One Has Noticed Yet published at Washington Monthly considers the economic track record of Joe Biden’s first year as president and the title tells the tale. Economic policy consultant Robert J. Shapiro’s read of the data suggests “the strongest two-year performance on growth, jobs, and income in decades.” Meaning Democrats may head into the 2022 elections with a strong economic tailwind.
Over the first three quarters of this year, real GDP increased at a 7.8 percent annual rate—that’s adjusted for the current inflation. The Federal Reserve expects real growth of 5.9 percent for all of 2021, followed by another 3.8 percent increase in 2022. By any recent standard, these are extraordinary gains. From 2000 to 2019, real GDP grew at an average annual rate of 2.2 percent and never reached 3 percent. Investors have noticed: From January 20 to December 7, 2021, the S&P 500 Index jumped 21.7 percent.
Wages, too, are up. By 2.4% after inflation “compared to gains of 0.3 percent for the comparable period in 2019 and 0.7 percent in 2018.” Disposable income as well, up by “3 percent after inflation over the 10 months from January to October.”
Unemployment benefits claims dropped to their lowest level in half a century, even Fox Business acknowledges.
Now, can Democrats make something of it?
When Donald Trump held rallies to feed his gluttonous ego, they streamed widely and received insult-by-insult coverage on social media. Joe Biden’s speeches touting his Build Back Better legislation receive no comparable earned media. Good news about the economy is like the tree falling in the forest. Does anyone hear it?
At PressRun, Eric Boehlert reports:
By a staggering ratio of six-to-one, Americans say they are seeing and hearing bad economic news more often than they are positive reports. The new polling results confirm the deep disconnect the media have constructed, as news outlets stress. discouraging news regarding the Biden economy, while often ignoring or downplaying the cascading positive developments.
Still committed to the GOP-friendly — and fictitious — storyline about a U.S. economy in decline, the press is damaging President Joe Biden’s approval rating by painting a false portrait of America. It’s doing the Republicans’ bidding — and the messaging is working.
Recently asked in a YouGov poll if they had “heard mostly positive or mostly negative news stories about the economy,” 48 percent of Americans said “mostly negative,” and just 8 percent said “mostly positive.” (28 percent said both negative/positive, and 16 percent said they hadn’t heard much about the economy at all.)
Those results are stunning, considering how many positive economic developments are being generated. Just in recent days we’ve learned that gas prices will soon be falling, wages are hitting record heights for workers, and that weekly jobless claims haven’t been this low since the Summer of Love at Woodstock. Yet for most Americans, there’s only one economic story being told — a doomsday one.
“Remember that weird CNN milk story?” Boehlert asks. Forty-two percent of YouGov respondents said inflation was their greatest concern. Biden consistently gets more downbeat coverage than Trump did just a year ago, according to a data analytics study done recently for the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank.
“The nonstop hype of “inflation, inflation, inflation” unsurprisingly leads many people to believe inflation is a really big problem, even if their own finances are pretty good, because they hear all those wise reporters at CNN, NPR, the NYT and elsewhere telling them it’s a really big problem,” notes economist Dean Baker.
A new Associated Press poll confirms Baker’s claim. The headline: “Income Is Up, But Americans Focus on Inflation.” Why is that? Probably because Americans are inundated with the media’s obsessive inflation coverage.
It’s a “political nightmare for Biden,” CNN recently stressed, while the New York Times published well over 100 articles and columns that mentioned “inflation” three or more times last month. The Washington Post announced inflation is the “defining” challenge of Biden’s presidency. Why inflation? Because the press decided.
“We’re witnessing the Biden Boom,” Boehlert concludes. “So why are news consumers being buried with bad news?”
Biden needs more than to take his message to heartland states like Kansas with set-piece speeches the press will largely ignore. Press outlets that cover them at all will reflexively both-sides them with coverage of Republicans posturing over the debt ceiling or with more hype of inflation undercutting whatever message he hoped to send.
Democrats need a good PR team (a non-Beltway-insider team) producing TV and social media ads the press will find harder to both-sides if Biden himself is not the star. It’s one thing during a speech the press will ignore for Biden to invite Joe-average to do a walk-on to tell the local audience how his life has improved this year. It’s another for Americans to see Joe-farmer or Jane-teacher where they live and work talking about how much brighter their Christmas looks this year. Or about how much more they have in their pockets at the end of each month. Or about the relief they feel to be more secure in their jobs this year than last. Or that thanks to Biden’s handling of the vaccine rollout they feel they can breathe again.
The dollar-value of free press, good or bad, Trump received in his four years must be staggering. But that ol’ liberal media will not do the same for a Democratic president. Advertising is not cheap, but it works. Democrats’ penny-foolish dependence on national media for delivering their positive message is self-defeating.