My Breaking Battlegrounds co-host, Chuck Warren, flagged this tweet by Politico/MSNBC’s Sam Stein this morning. Stein, like Atlantic writer Derek Thompson who Stein retweeted is baffled that the public does not share their sunny outlook on the Biden economy, and blames that failure on the Biden team’s communications:
Two points on this thread:
First, the reason the average American isn’t buying the idea that the Biden economy is so fantastic is that – anti-capitalist rhetoric aside – Democrats have created an economy that is ballooning profits for hedge funds and mega corporations while putting the hammer down on working class people. The numbers they are touting are not the numbers that matter to the average person. For most Americans, prices are rising, wages are not. It’s that simple. Adjusted for inflation, Americans have experienced less than 1% growth in net worth under Biden. Compare that to the Trump years when the average U.S. resident saw their net worth increase by 16%. Dig under the surface, and the numbers are even worse for Biden. Most of the gains during his term have accrued to the wealthy, while lower income earners have seen their wages stagnate, causing income inequality in the U.S. to increase for the first time since 2011. Hence, touting GDP and stock market gains might resonate with the jet set, but minivan moms aren’t feeling it, because they’re living on the same paycheck as they were four years ago, while paying 20% more for essentials and experiencing Americans first real drop in buying power in decades.
Further, the unemployment numbers Biden keeps trying to tout don’t count the vast number of people who have dropped out of the workforce during his tenure. Workforce participation, while slowly rising, still has not caught up to pre-pandemic levels. And it wasn’t great pre-2020, either, as increasing government assistance programs have slow been replacing work for millions of Americans since 2007.
Left media and the Biden Admin can shout their message of a glorious billionaire’s economy from the rooftops all day long, but that doesn’t make the economy any better for average Americans, who face their dwindling reality every single day at the checkout counter.
Second, it’s worth clicking on the thread and reading the comments, but here’s the general them:
The left is absolutely convinced of two things: that Biden’s economy is better than Trump’s for the little guy (objectively, it is not), and that the job of the media is to amplify the “correct” message, not worry about delivering truth. The vast majority of national and local news outlets are inveterately leftist, they’re just not leftist enough for the left. Nothing short of a Pravda-like obeisance to the Party is acceptable.
Interesting times.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
