The Patriot Post® · Nobody's Buying Bidenomics

He can’t say we didn’t warn him.

Three months ago, in a piece titled “Is Joe Really Running on Bidenomics?” we questioned the wisdom of this president’s handlers, who’d made a conscious decision to campaign for reelection on the success of Biden’s economic record.

Setting aside the unlikelihood that this guy will be atop the Democrats’ ticket come next November, Team Biden’s gambit is working out just about how we’d expected. As Axios reports, “The Biden re-election campaign’s decision to brand the economy under the president’s name (Bidenomics) is looking like an early blunder that misread the public’s deep pessimism about how things are going on that front.”

Indeed, Axios continues, “Some prominent Democrats are now openly criticizing the Biden campaign’s strategy, arguing that it appears to be in denial of Americans’ economic reality.”

What would we do without some prominent Democrats?

Yes, yes, unemployment is low, and inflation seems to be somewhat in check, but the American people still aren’t feeling it, still aren’t buying Bidenomics. And, as the polls indicate, the numbers are grim: “Forty-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, the most for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Just 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. Still fewer approve of Biden’s performance on the economy, 30%.”

This is the same poll, by the way, whose headline reads, “Trump edges out Biden 51-42 in head-to-head matchup.” Memo to these pollsters: A 51-42 margin isn’t an “edging out.” It’s an obliteration the likes of which a Republican candidate hasn’t seen since Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale nearly 40 years ago. And it’s this number that’s really causing the Democrats to freak out.

One would think the American consumer might be tightening his belt in the wake of all this grim economic news. And one would be wrong. As The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Wolfe writes: “Interest rates are up. Inflation remains high. Pandemic savings have shrunk. And the labor market is cooling. Yet household spending, the primary driver of the nation’s economic growth, remains robust. Americans spent 5.8% more in August than a year earlier, well outstripping less than 4% inflation. And the experience economy boomed this summer, with Delta Air Lines reporting record revenue in the second quarter and Ticketmaster selling over 295 million event tickets in the first six months of 2023, up nearly 18% year-over-year.”

The headline of Wolfe’s article reads, “Americans Are Still Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow.” But maybe it’s simply the case that everything is priced like there’s no tomorrow.

Or maybe it’s the case that folks are worried there won’t be a tomorrow. “Fears about a changing climate are driving some people to try to see places before they’re gone,” the Journal article notes. “In a monthly Deloitte survey of 19,000 global consumers, climate change was the only topic among 19 different concerns that respondents reported feeling significantly more worried about over the past year.” Thank Leftmedia hysterics for that.

Elsewhere in the Journal, they note, “Prices are rising more slowly, but consumers fixate on how much lower they were before the pandemic, a problem for Biden.”

Indeed, it’s a problem for Biden. And it should be. “Americans in their everyday lives usually focus on the absolute price of the things they need and want,” the Journal continues. “On that front, prices for many items, though rising more slowly this year than last, remain well above their levels just before or at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and aren’t likely to return to where they were.”

If it really is the economy, stupid, then Bidenomics is in big trouble. And so is its namesake.