It is time to shout out the obvious:
Thanks to the Biden/Harris administration and Democrats all across the country, we are in the midst of an astonishing economic run in the U.S.
Ours is “a stunning success story—one of enduring but underappreciated outperformance.” America remains “the world’s richest, most productive and most innovative big economy . . . it is leaving its peers ever further in the dust.”
Simon Rosenberg outlines some of the basics:
- The US unemployment rate today is 3.4%, the lowest peacetime unemployment rate since WWII, and the lowest since 1969 . . . The current Black unemployment rate, 4.7%, is the lowest ever recorded. The worker participation rate for prime age workers is now higher than before the pandemic.
- In the last few months, America has experienced the lowest uninsured and lowest poverty rates in its history.
- GDP growth is averaging over 3% in the Biden era, a very strong number. Our economic recovery from COVID is the strongest of all advanced economies.
- The Dow is up 24% since Election Day 2020, and is at the upper end of its performance over the past generation.
- The current Atlanta Fed GDPNow forecast has GDP growth coming in at 2.9% this quarter. Job growth remains very strong – 253,000 last month . . . we are not currently headed toward a recession.
Rosenberg notes that IF we do hear the good news from the corporate media (a very large “if”), it comes out something like this:
The economy is historically strong, people are making more money and are content in their work, a recession is not on the horizon as of today, and inflation is too high.
Republicans — and their enablers in the media who thrive on conflict — leave out the stuff in the beginning and just focus on inflation. That picture is incomplete and a parroting of right-wing talking points.
It is “not journalism or honest commentary.”
The issues around inflation are more nuanced than reported. With rapidly rising wages for those in the bottom 50% of earners, “the net impact of inflation on American workers over the past two years has been less than many have claimed.” Also, rising gas prices had the largest impact on inflation. Gas prices have been falling over the past year and are now lower than they were before the beginning of the Ukranian war.
Americans “do not choose to blame Biden” for inflation, but instead point to supply chains, COVID, and Russia/OPEC.
The Biden/Harris administration has also passed transformational legislation like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the $1 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the $750 billion Inflation Reduction Act and the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act. These laws have generated record investment in infrastructure, record job growth, and a reset of American competitiveness.
Biden’s performance is better than any other in modern history, but is typical for Democratic administrations.
As Rosenberg notes, with May’s strong jobs report in, the monthly jobs tracker clocks in at:
- 33.8m jobs — 16 years of Clinton, Obama
- 12.7m jobs — 26 months of Biden
- 1.9m jobs — 16 years of Bush, Bush and Trump
Biden’s 12.7 million jobs is 6 times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined.
- It is also millions more than were created in the entirety of any of their three individual Presidencies.
- Since 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the US has seen 49 million new jobs created. Remarkably 47 million of those 49 million jobs were created under Democratic Presidents, 96%.
Oh, and in Biden’s first two years they’ve also lowered the deficit by an unprecedented $1.7 trillion.
“The Trump tax cuts and Trump’s increased spending even before the pandemic ultimately added $7.8 trillion to the national debt, about $23,500 for every person in the country. The increase in the annual deficit under Trump was the third-biggest increase of any administration, relative to the size of the economy. He was beaten out only by George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln.”
President Biden’s 2024 budget proposes to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade by raising taxes on those who make more than $400,000 a year, along with other measures.
Folks, by every reasonable measure, the economy does much better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.
So besides trying to crash the economy by defaulting on bills that were run up in the Trump administration because they believe it will hurt Biden politically, what are the Republicans up to at the moment?
- Representative Marjorie Taylor Green is spending $100,000 for a tube of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s used chapstick.
- South Carolina’s Republican governor “jokes” about hunting Democrats with dogs.
- Arizona Senate Republicans are focused on COVID conspiracy theories, and they branded their committee with a trolly QAnon reference.
- Tennessee Republicans appointed a 9/11 truther to the committee overseeing the state’s social studies standards, “but not just any 9/11 truther, a 9/11 truther who believes Obama caused tornados.” Just the kind of person you want setting standards for your child’s education.
- And — leaving the best for last — Georgia GOP District Chair Kandiss Taylor is a flat-earther. “For me, if it is not a conspiracy, if it is real, why are you pushing so hard everywhere I go?” she asks. “Every store, you buy a globe, there’s globes everywhere . . . Everywhere there’s globes. You see them all the time, it’s constant. My children will be like ‘Mama, globe, globe, globe, globe’ — they’re everywhere.” Taylor actually said that.
These people are nuts and are not serious about governing. It is all performance art to generate outrage and sweep in money from those addicted to conspiracy theories and hatred. We are grappling with a former president fomenting insurrection, a corrupt Supreme Court, and a party that is intent on blocking people from voting while regulating women’s bodies but not guns. I hate to say this, but they continue to go off the rails (to the detriment of our country). And, unfortunately, our corporate-backed mainstream media coverage is not helpful. Check out Press Watch if you want to know why.
Perry Bacon, Jr., an opinion columnist at the Washington Post, did us all a favor recently when he wrote about seven media platforms that are helping as they redefine politcal coverage and investigative journalism in the face of fascism. They don’t, as a matter of choice, focus on the horse race that seems so alluring to the mainstream press. I read many of these regularly and have begun checking out the others:
- The American Prospect “smartly explains how major industries, electoral considerations, and particular politicians and strategists drive policy decisions.”
- With the Republican Party stacking the courts with appointees who carry out its policy goals, Balls and Strikes has coverage “premised on the reality that interpreting the law is an inherently political act with real-world consequences.”
- Bolts “recognizes that voting rights, gerrymandering, policing and other issues that often play out at the state and local level are increasingly at the center of American politics.”
- The U.S. edition of the London-based Guardian is one of the few outlets that “covers up-to-minute news like the New York Times or The Post; openly acknowledges its left of center ideology; and writes about politics without the “insider” approach (unnamed sources, an obsession with consultants and strategy) that makes so much political coverage hard to parse.”
- Hammer & Hope “takes it as a given that anti-Black discrimination still exists in America and concentrates on what should be done to address it.”
- Judd Legum at Popular Information “focuses on finding scandals, unlike most political writers. But he publishes regularly, unlike the investigative reporters at most large news organizations, who might only write a few times a year.”
- Over the past six years, States Newsroom has founded news outlets focused on state government in 34 states.
The bottom line is this: Joe Biden’s presidency is working and it’s why Republicans are trying so hard to blow it up.
Defending democracy is hard and the work never ends. Thankfully, there’s much good news to build on. Let’s get to work!
More to come…
DJB
Note: Read my disclaimer about my political posts here.
Note #2: A reader who shared this with several individuals asked about the sources for these items. While I’ve linked to all of them in the original post, most of the information comes from:
- The Economist, America’s economic outperformance is a marvel to behold, April 13, 2023.
- Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg, It’s Time for A Big Rethink on How We Poll and Talk About The Economy, Substack, May 23, 2023 (with a lot of charts and other references included).
- Hopium Chronicles by Simon Rosenberg, The May Jobs Report – US Economy Remains Remarkably Strong, Republicans Are Trying to Ruin It, Substack, May 5, 2023.
- Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, Substack, May 23, 2023 (with copious references included).
- Press Watch, Dan Fromkin, May 25, 2023.
- Washington Post, 7 news outlets reimagining political journalism in smart ways, Perry Bacon, Jr., May 23, 2023.
Note #3: The blistering May jobs report — released on June 2nd — continues the amazing streak that Biden’s economy has been on, with 339,000 net new jobs, 432,000 with upward revisions from previous months. That makes the cumulative tracker:
- 33.8m jobs – 16 years of Clinton, Obama
- 13.1m jobs – 28 months of Biden
- 1.9m jobs – 16 years of Bush, Bush and Trump
Image by Brian Odwar from Pixabay. Image of Dark Brandon from White House Correspondents Dinner by AP
MORE TO COME... 
Pingback: Observations from … May 2023 | More to Come...
Pingback: Continue to celebrate the good news! | More to Come...