It’s the economy, stupid — and Joe Biden is nothing if not stupid. Which is why he and his handlers get giddy every time they see good economic news. Surely this time, they think, those ungrateful voters will start coming around and giving us a polling bump for our awesomeness, right?

Wrong.

If ever a presidential campaign were going nowhere fast, it’s this one. If Biden 2024 were a car, it’d be a Trabant. If his campaign were a condition, it’d be stuck in the mud. Try as they might, Biden and his handlers keep spinning their wheels and miring themselves ever deeper. Isn’t there an honest man among his many sycophants who can tell Biden the truth? Who can tell this “sympathetic [sic], well-meaning [sic], elderly man with a poor memory” that the American people reached Peak Biden a long, long time ago, way back in July 2021, before the Afghanistan disaster?

Sadly, no. Which brings us to a state-by-state economic analysis by the Nobel laureates at ABC News, this one saying that most of the best-performing states voted for — say it isn’t so! — Donald Trump.

As they report: “An examination of key economic measures — including job and income growth — found an overwhelming majority of red states among 18 top performers. The disparity between red and blue states has little to do with anything Biden has done, experts interviewed by ABC News said, noting that federal policy typically holds minimal influence over state-by-state economic trends.”

You can see where this is going. If the success of these red states has “little to do with anything Biden has done,” then they can say the same thing about the Republican governors and the Republican-led state legislatures that run those states. And sure enough, ABC News continues, “The dynamic owes in large part to the appeal of warm weather states for workers and businesses, as well as the combination of company-friendly state policies and Democrat-leaning cities that attract young, educated workers.”

So, you see, it’s the warm weather and the cool Democrat mayors of the big cities that are the cause of all this red state economic success. They even found a “progressive” economist to support their findings:

The strong performance of red states may result from the convergence of business-friendly state laws and attractive cities for young, educated liberals, Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, told ABC News. The pool of skilled workers offers companies a ready source of employees, while companies benefit from state policies like low taxes and right-to-work laws, he added. “That’s just a very powerful combination,” Glaeser said.

Maybe it’s the “sanctuary city” policies of these Democrat mayors that are attracting this young and talented workforce. And the no-cash bail policies. And the shoplifter-friendly policies. After all, they’ve done wonders in the big cities of the blue states, like New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and Denver and San Francisco and LA and Seattle.

As Hot Air’s David Strom quips: “Democratic mayors in Red states are attracting young liberal workers. So Texas is going gangbusters because people like hot weather and Democrats. … You do have to hand it to the MSM; they can look you in the eye and tell you the most absurd things and keep a straight face. Lying without shame is a skill, if not one that most of us would want to be taught to our children.”

Daniel Hornung, the Biden administration’s deputy director at the National Economic Council, won’t take “No” for an answer, though. It is Joe Biden who’s responsible, he insists: “Dating back to when the president took office, he has enacted a set of historic legislative accomplishments that have very directly driven the historic labor market recovery and historic economic growth we’ve had.”

Yeah, that highly successful Inflation Reduction [sic] Act comes immediately to mind. As PJ Media’s Rick Moran chortles, “If you gave my dead grandmother $5.5 trillion and pumped it into the economy after an unnecessary shutdown due to a pandemic, she could grow the economy equally as well as Biden.”

Just to drive the point home, though, ABC News concludes by returning to their Harvard economist to reiterate what this is all about: “The warmer parts of America tend to be doing much better than the colder parts,” Glaeser said.

In sum, there are no business-friendly economic policies to see here, folks. Just the sun and a little global warming.

Move along.