Meet The Dead-Enders Still Trashing The Biden Boom
Media now agrees the Biden economy is roaring. But a number of extremely influential doomsayers will likely keep consumer sentiment in the pits.
The tussle between Joe Biden and the mainstream media over the state of the economy is over, and Biden won. Not before he felt compelled to abandon his whistlestop tour touting the success of Bidenomics—he lost that battle. But one way or another reality took hold. The way economics desks cover their beats, and political reporters grapple with the economic component of politics, has changed dramatically since the year began.
Outside of Trump propaganda organs, the strength of the American recovery is now frequently stipulated to, as is its robustness relative to other developed economies. Reporters have largely moved on from writing stories that justify economic discontent, or take it for granted, in favor of stories puzzling over the mismatch: Why do so many Americans say they believe the economy is bad when they also say their personal finances are great? When, by every metric we’ve ever used to assess the health of the economy, it is roaring?
It’s become something of a monthly ritual, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues its regular employment report, for Fox News anchors to marvel at the juggernaut of good news, then try to hide their despair over the strength of the economy.
Public sentiment has (thus) started to catch up to reality. But it also appears to have leveled off well short of where we’d expect it to be, given the historic correlation between sentiment and macro data. It certainly hasn’t made a dent in Biden’s miserable approval polling.
And sadly, I think liberals should steel themselves for the likelihood that it never will—not during this election season anyhow.
Even as the mainstream press comes around, there are more than enough individuals and institutions with a rooting interest in denying the health of the economy to keep economic perceptions anchored way below where they’d be under a Republican president. Indeed, it would be remarkable if sentiment pokes above water before the year is out.
If you’re wondering why I think that, here’s a rough-and-ready taxonomy of the doomsayers.