Just what Joe Biden needed

Trying to put the economy into the category of “good” or “bad” is overly simplistic to the point of absurdity. Even more mystifying, most people don’t judge the economy based on their own personal economic station, or even based on the economy they see around them. Instead they use measuring sticks like the stock market, even though most Americans don’t have any of their assets in the stock market. Some people even bizarrely use the price of one isolated commodity – gasoline for instance – as an indicator of the “economy.” It rarely makes sense.

But still, the question of whether the economy is “good” or “bad” can utterly dominate a presidential election – particularly when a President is running for reelection. After all, there’s this belief that if the economy is good under a certain President, it’ll remain that way for as long as that President is in office.

Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were reelected handily, largely because the economy was widely perceived as being “good.” Presidents like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush lost reelection largely because the economy was widely perceived as being “bad.” Barack Obama was fairly narrowly reelected because the economy was widely seen as “good enough.” There are always other factors that go into elections, but the perception of the economy is usually the biggest one.

When Donald Trump sought reelection, the economy was widely seen as “good” or “good enough.” Yet he lost by seven million votes anyway, in a testament to just how widely despised he was by so many Americans in so many ways. Trump’s loss was a rare exception to the “it’s the economy stupid” rule, and shows just how much it takes for an incumbent President to lose reelection in a “good” economy.

This brings us to President Joe Biden. He inherited an economy that wasn’t actually in nearly as good of shape as the public perceived. The economy had been strong and growing under Obama. Then Trump did a lot of damage to it, and it was teetering. Biden then had to deal with the economically tricky and unprecedented situation of inflation from post-COVID economic growth. And because the media (on all sides) became so obsessed with inflation early on, average Americans came to believe that the economy was “bad” under Biden.

It didn’t matter that the Biden economy was seeing record job growth and expansion. It didn’t even matter that the stock market was hitting record highs under Biden. CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and the newspapers all said that the economy was “bad” and so people believed it, regardless of their own personal economic situations. And that’s been reflected in Biden’s approval rating which has been in low to mid forties for some time, which is just barely enough heading into reelection.

But now something is changing. Maybe it’s because inflation is now fully under control, and people are seeing that prices are no longer rising. Maybe it’s because gas prices came way down. Or maybe it’s because the media finally stopped talking about a “bad” economy long enough for people to look around and see that in reality the economy is actually really good.

But whatever the reason or combination of reasons, most Americans are now perceiving the economy as indeed being “good.” We see this in the consumer confidence numbers, which don’t measure the strength of the economy but rather the public’s perception of the strength of the economy. Most Americans now think the economy is doing well. And that’s becoming such a pervasive sentiment that now the media is having to acknowledge it.

To varying degrees, MSNBC, CNN and even Fox News are all now talking about how the economy is booming. These networks all have to say this, in much the same way that the weatherman has to admit it’s raining when it’s raining. Otherwise viewers will just look out the window and see that the claims on TV aren’t true, and turn it off.

Of course the further to the right any given news outlet is, the less willing it is to admit that the “good” economy is a credit to President Biden. But that’s okay, because average Americans out there – the ones toward the middle whose votes aren’t automatic – tend to equate a “good” economy with wanting to keep the President around. This translates to the least enthusiastic of Democratic voters turning out for Biden in order to keep their good economy intact, and the least enthusiastic of Republican voters being more likely to just stay home and let Biden 2.0 happen.

Of course this is still January and the election isn’t until November. The economy can shift in that amount of time, and so can the perception of the economy. But at this point the fundamentals are in place for the economy to keep growing, and keep being perceived as “good.” The economy in early 2024 is already perceived to be in far better shape than, for instance, when Obama was gearing up for reelection in early 2012.

So as long as this positive coverage of the economy continues, it’s good news for Biden, regardless of whether any given news outlet specifically gives Biden credit for it or not. It’s an even better sign that the economy is so widely perceived as being good that even the news outlets that would like to yell “bad economy” aren’t able to do so.

Presidential elections don’t win themselves. We’ll still have to put in the work to get President Biden reelected, no matter how good the economy is or how badly Trump and the Republicans implode. But with the perception of a good economy on our side, it makes the whole thing more realistic. So let’s get ready to put in the work in 2024, and let’s get ready to win.