Well, Joe Biden does, but who cares what he says, right?
President Joe Biden held an hour long press conference last night and answered a range of questions about his age, his competence, his stamina, his health and his future. He also delivered several incisive disquisitions on foreign policy that Donald Trump’s staff would have to use a very large coloring book and possibly a puppet show to explain to him. Not that that would work. He’d probably storm out of the meeting long before they got to the part about China and Russia, yelling something about love letters and being a boss.
The media didn’t seem all that impressed, judging his performance to only be fair to middling and virtually ignoring the substance of what he had to say. He offered a serious overview of America and its relationship to its allies and adversaries and made some news about Israel, calling for the war to end. But everyone was more interested in Biden’s theatrical performance and how he answered questions about whether he plans to quit so any talk of his actual policies and worldview are apparently irrelevant.
Biden’s criticized a lot for failing to effectively communicate his administration’s accomplishments and there’s something in that. He’s not good at it the way someone like Bill Clinton was, with his ability to rattle off facts and figures while simultaneously explaining how it’s good for average Americans, is. It’s a special skill. (Donald Trump touts his economic record but it’s all lies, which isn’t the same thing. Just saying “we had the greatest economy the world has ever known” takes no skill — just chutzpah.)
At the press conference Biden did make some comments about his economic accomplishments, however, although nobody seemed to care:
With all the concern about inflation, you’d think this week’s news that the Consumer Price Index declined again in June , beating economist’s expectation would be worth a question or two but it’s long been clear that the press isn’t particularly interested in good economic news. If they were, they’d be reporting on the Biden administration’s exceptional economic recovery policies which dealt with a very bizarre and unprecedented economic crisis caused by the pandemic. June was the first time since May 2020 that monthly headline CPI came in negative and also the slowest annual gain in prices since March 2021.
The markets have noticed all this and rewarded investors and owners of 401ks and IRAs with a banner year. Trump, who predicted a stock market crash if Biden became president, says that the bull run on Wall Street is because traders are anticipating his return to the White House. And, yes, once again he’s predicting a crash if he isn’t.
Yesterday, the government also reported that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell again last week and remain at healthy levels. The jobs story is incredible and as someone who has heard politicians screaming “jobs, jobs, jobs!” in every election I can remember it’s unfathomable to me that this issue appears to have absolutely no salience in this one. It is the best job market since the 1960s, largely due to the Biden administration policies, which we know because the U.S. economic performance is the best in the world.
In fact, it’s so good that the World Bank announced last month:
The World Bank upgraded its outlook for the global economy Tuesday, estimating that it will expand 2.6% this year on the strength of sustained growth in the United States…
Stronger-than-expected growth in the United States — the world’s biggest economy — accounted for 80% of the World Bank’s upgraded outlook. The agency now expects the U.S. economy to expand 2.5% in 2024, the same as in 2023 but up sharply from the 1.6% the bank had predicted in January. “U.S. growth is exceptional,’’ Ayhan Kose, the bank’s deputy chief economist, told The Associated Press ahead of the release of its latest Global Economic Prospects report.
There was a time that such news would be heralded as “morning in America” but according to polling, a majority of voters believe that Trump would be a better steward of the economy than Joe Biden which is, as he would say, malarky. By virtually all measures, Biden’s economic performance has surpassed Trump’s even before the pandemic.
Biden has supported and strengthened unions which are having something of a renaissance with big wins in the last couple of years. And astonishingly, this economy has benefited lower wage workers more than the 1%. Axios reported yesterday this amazing statistic:
Just 13% of workers in the U.S. are now earning less than $15 an hour; two years ago, that number was 31.9%, per new data from Oxfam.
As for the GOP’s most sacred shibboleth, the budget deficit, Trump added $4.8 trillion in non-Covid related debt while with a similar adjustment, Biden has added $2.2 trillion. Extending Trump’s tax cuts as he plans to do will add another $3.9 trillion. Not that they care. The deficit is just a weapon which Republicans use to try to cut Social Security and Medicare, which Trump insists he will protect but whose budgets attempted to cut every year he was in office.
Biden’s economic performance has been exceptional. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and The Atlantic’s James Fallows both posted yesterday on the unemployment and inflation numbers:
If we were living in a normal world this would be more important than any other issue in this election. Joe Biden’s administration has been incredibly successful at steering the economy away from recession and into prosperity the likes of which we haven’t seen in half a century. And Trump is planning to destroy it. As USA Today reports:
“Biden’s policies are better for the economy,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “They lead to more growth and less inflation.” According to a Moody’s study, Trump’s plan would trigger a recession by mid-2025 and an economy that grows an average 1.3% annually during his four-year term vs. 2.1% under Biden. (The latter is in line with average growth in the decade before the pandemic.)
Next year, under a Trump administration, inflation would rise from the current 3.3% to 3.6%, well above the 2.4% forecast under Biden, the Moody’s analysis shows. Compared with Biden, the U.S. would have 3.2 million fewer jobs and a 4.5% unemployment rate, a half percentage point higher, at the end of a Trump tenure […]
The consequences of allowing Trump to take over with his daft tariffs and Project 2025 wrecking ball will be the dumbest thing this country has ever done.
I sincerely doubt that the American people really want this. But as of now, they don’t really know about it. Regardless of whether Biden remains at the top of the ticket, the Democratic Party needs to calm down and start delivering the message that Trump is planning to kill the golden goose and serve it for dinner at Mar-a-Lago.