President Joe Biden’s campaign advisers appear to have settled on their preferred strategy to win the 2024 presidential election; the president will ignore the economic conditions impacting middle-class families and instead promote a mythical economic boom that he says his administration sparked after taking office in January, 2021.
In recent weeks, the president has touted so-called “Bidenomics” – an economic plan that he claimed is already working, and that he has repeatedly praised for improving the lives of millions of working Americans.
In a June 28 statement, the Biden White House took credit for the return of almost 800,000 manufacturing jobs, claiming to have “unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom.”
“There were more than 10 million applications for new small businesses filed in 2021 and 2022—the strongest two years on record. America has seen the strongest growth since the pandemic of any leading economy in the world. Inflation has fallen for 11 straight months and has come down by more than half. And we have done it all while responsibly reducing the deficit,” the statement continued.
Ignoring the fact that prices remain higher than they were before Biden took office, and that prices aren’t actually decreasing but are, instead, growing at a slightly slower rate, the Biden administration has some technically positive news to deliver to the American public.
After months of predictions that the United States is headed towards a recession – and claims by some analysts that the U.S. economy has already endured a recession during Biden’s time in the White House – many economists now say that a recession may not be imminent.
In June, Wells Fargo economists told clients that while they expect the “delayed effects of monetary tightening and tighter credit availability to dampen economic growth,” they also see that the economy has “proven to be more resilient” than they expected.
“As a result, we have pushed back out expectations for the start of economic contraction to Q1-2024,” the note continued.
It’s not the best news in the world, but it’s something – and in this political climate, Biden really only needs something.
Joe Biden Can’t Even Communicate His Message Clearly
Biden’s staff might be right to think that the president can get away with making big promises of an improved economy over the next four years – but it would help if the president could at least communicate is message clearly.
During a speech at the Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia to an audience of union supporters, the Joe Biden pitched himself as a president who represents the interests of working Americans.
“I often say, and I mean this sincerely, Wall Street — good folks down there — but they didn’t build the middle class. They didn’t build America. The middle class was built by the middle class,” Biden told the crowd.
And, as he slammed Republicans’ support for “trickle-down” economics, the president appeared to get…confused.
“I watched my dad growing up, and not a whole lot of benefit trickled down on his kitchen table as a consequence of trickle-down economics,” the president said.
Biden’s comments immediately attracted attention from commentators who pointed out that his father would have suffered under “trickle-down economics” during the 1950s – a claim that doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Biden also claimed that wages have increased and surpassed the rate of inflation – another suggestion that most economics simply don’t agree with.
Either Biden’s campaign trick is to tell big lies in quick succession, or the president just can’t get his words out straight.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
From 19FortyFive
The Second American Civil War Has Begun
