Bad news for Biden on inflation: Voters have long memories
Comparing president’s record with most predecessors makes his look worse Cartons of eggs are at a Whole Foods supermarket in McLean, Va., on Nov. 22, 2023. By David Winston Posted January 31, 2024 at 6:00am
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen offered a rare moment of Biden administration transparency on the economy this week. “Well, I think most Americans know that prices are not likely to fall,” Yellin told ABC News on Sunday. “It’s not the Fed’s objective to try to push the level of prices back to where they were.” And with that, the cat was out of the proverbial bag. This key admission came just as Team Biden is once again trying to revise its economic message with President Joe Biden’s job approval numbers nearly in historically bad territory. If ever there was a time for a political reset, this is it. But the messaging wizards seem to have failed the president when it comes to selling his economic record to what is an unhappy and unconvinced electorate. The problem is, when it comes to their own personal economies, voters know better.
As prices began to skyrocket shortly after passage of the “American Rescue Plan,” people didn’t buy the administration’s first narrative that “inflation is only transitory.” As support for Biden’s economic policies nosedived, the White House messaging team, inexplicably, created “Bidenomics.” I suppose they believed that a catchy marketing term would persuade “uninformed” voters that the economy was improving and life under Biden was good, if not great. But again Biden’s numbers didn’t improve. After pressure from congressional Democrats to drop the “Bidenomics” slogan, it disappeared briefly from the White House’s lexicon, but with nothing else to sell, it wasn’t long before Bidenomics 2.0 appeared on the scene with a new and improved focus — democracy and taxes — and rumbles that the White House thinks the way to win the economic issue now is to contrast Bidenomics with so-called “Trumpenomics.”
Biden and his team don’t seem to understand the significant and potentially insurmountable disconnect that exists between the president’s economic message and what the American people believe — and why they believe what they do. The answer can be found in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers. The Biden administration likes to tout its success in getting inflation down to under 4 percent for seven consecutive months. But when he came into office, inflation was at 1.4 percent in January 2021, and had been under 3 percent for 109 consecutive months. So even at the current levels, down from the highs of summer 2022, the Biden administration has not yet matched prior presidents’ inflation levels going back almost a decade, spanning Donald Trump’s entire presidency and the majority of President Barack Obama’s tenure. In March 2021, when the American Rescue Plan was signed, the inflation rate was 2.6 percent. By May 2021, it was at 5 percent, starting a 23-month run at that rate or higher. The peak inflation run was a 12-month period from December 2021 through November 2022 of 7 percent or higher. While the monthly, year-over-year rate has certainly dropped, the electorate sees this from a different perspective — by how much prices have gone up since Biden was inaugurated. That is more important to the electorate, as prices have increased by 17.3 percent, what The Winston Group has termed the Presidential Inflation Rate (PIR). In looking at the performance of the previous seven presidents at the same point in their terms, only President Jimmy Carter had a larger increase. The rise in gas prices is a good example of why voters remain skeptical of Biden’s claims.
https://rollcall.com/2024/01/31/bad-news-for-biden-on-inflation-voters-have-long-memories/
Comparing president’s record with most predecessors makes his look worse Cartons of eggs are at a Whole Foods supermarket in McLean, Va., on Nov. 22, 2023. By David Winston Posted January 31, 2024 at 6:00am
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen offered a rare moment of Biden administration transparency on the economy this week. “Well, I think most Americans know that prices are not likely to fall,” Yellin told ABC News on Sunday. “It’s not the Fed’s objective to try to push the level of prices back to where they were.” And with that, the cat was out of the proverbial bag. This key admission came just as Team Biden is once again trying to revise its economic message with President Joe Biden’s job approval numbers nearly in historically bad territory. If ever there was a time for a political reset, this is it. But the messaging wizards seem to have failed the president when it comes to selling his economic record to what is an unhappy and unconvinced electorate. The problem is, when it comes to their own personal economies, voters know better.
As prices began to skyrocket shortly after passage of the “American Rescue Plan,” people didn’t buy the administration’s first narrative that “inflation is only transitory.” As support for Biden’s economic policies nosedived, the White House messaging team, inexplicably, created “Bidenomics.” I suppose they believed that a catchy marketing term would persuade “uninformed” voters that the economy was improving and life under Biden was good, if not great. But again Biden’s numbers didn’t improve. After pressure from congressional Democrats to drop the “Bidenomics” slogan, it disappeared briefly from the White House’s lexicon, but with nothing else to sell, it wasn’t long before Bidenomics 2.0 appeared on the scene with a new and improved focus — democracy and taxes — and rumbles that the White House thinks the way to win the economic issue now is to contrast Bidenomics with so-called “Trumpenomics.”
Biden and his team don’t seem to understand the significant and potentially insurmountable disconnect that exists between the president’s economic message and what the American people believe — and why they believe what they do. The answer can be found in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ numbers. The Biden administration likes to tout its success in getting inflation down to under 4 percent for seven consecutive months. But when he came into office, inflation was at 1.4 percent in January 2021, and had been under 3 percent for 109 consecutive months. So even at the current levels, down from the highs of summer 2022, the Biden administration has not yet matched prior presidents’ inflation levels going back almost a decade, spanning Donald Trump’s entire presidency and the majority of President Barack Obama’s tenure. In March 2021, when the American Rescue Plan was signed, the inflation rate was 2.6 percent. By May 2021, it was at 5 percent, starting a 23-month run at that rate or higher. The peak inflation run was a 12-month period from December 2021 through November 2022 of 7 percent or higher. While the monthly, year-over-year rate has certainly dropped, the electorate sees this from a different perspective — by how much prices have gone up since Biden was inaugurated. That is more important to the electorate, as prices have increased by 17.3 percent, what The Winston Group has termed the Presidential Inflation Rate (PIR). In looking at the performance of the previous seven presidents at the same point in their terms, only President Jimmy Carter had a larger increase. The rise in gas prices is a good example of why voters remain skeptical of Biden’s claims.
https://rollcall.com/2024/01/31/bad-news-for-biden-on-inflation-voters-have-long-memories/
