Don't Let Trump Claim Credit For Biden's Good Economy

Part of an excellent post by Robert Reich:

Trump will try to take credit for the Biden economy. Don’t let him. And don’t let Republican enablers of Trump or the media give him credit, either. 

In 2017, Trump inherited a strong economy from President Obama and never stopped congratulating himself for it. He claimed that “we created the greatest economy in the history of the world.”

Rubbish. Trump tanked the economy with his trade wars and his botched pandemic response.

Now, Trump is inheriting an even stronger economy.

On Friday, the Department of Labor reported that the nation added 256,000 jobs in December, significantly more than economists expected. 

The total number of jobs created under Biden’s four years is 16.6 million. That makes him the only president in history to have presided over an economy that created jobs every single month.

He has also presided over the lowest average unemployment rate of any president in a half-century, ending at 4.1 percent.

The nation gained more jobs in Biden’s four years than it did under Trump’s first term of office, or under either of Barack Obama’s or George W. Bush’s terms of office.

Working-age women are now employed at record levels.

The gap in employment between Black Americans and their white counterparts is at the lowest level ever. 

Biden has also presided over an economy that has grown faster and created more jobs than any other advanced economy around the world. Under Biden, the American economy grew faster than did the pre-pandemic Trump economy.

Yes, the United States and every other country had to deal with inflation, but Biden brought inflation down to below 3 percent — lower than in most other countries.

Americans have every reason to be outraged at decades of policies that prioritized corporations over people. But the Biden administration cracked down on corporate price-gouging, monopolization, and trickle-down nonsense.

All this means that Trump begins his second presidency with the best economy a president has inherited in living memory. 

Will he claim credit for it? You betcha.

Why Doesn't Biden Get Credit For The Good He's Done?

The following post is by Robert Reich: 

As Republicans squabble, Trump brays, Netanyahu mobilizes a ground invasion of Gaza, and Putin pushes more Russian soldiers to the front lines of Ukraine, President Biden continues to be the one adult in the room. 

In response to my letter to you last week about Biden’s leadership, a number of you wondered why he isn’t getting more credit for it.

Granted, polls are meaningless more than a year before an election. Even so, it’s bizarre that Trump — indicted for a rash of felonies, liable for sexual harassment, found to have committed business fraud — has such strong support relative to Biden. 

Why don’t voters give Biden more credit? 

One theory is that Trump and Fox News have poisoned their minds. 

This may be true for some, but I keep coming across self-described Republicans — many of them middle-aged men without college degrees — who don’t particularly like Trump and don’t believe what they see on Fox News. 

Yet they’re unimpressed with Biden. They tell me he’s “weak.” They ask questions like, “What has Biden done for me?” or “What’s one way I’m better off because of Joe Biden?”

When I mention some of Biden’s accomplishments — his steady hand in foreign policy, for example, or his creation of tens of thousands of good jobs through investments in wind, solar, electric batteries, infrastructure, and semiconductors — they tell me they didn’t know.

Which brings me to the second theory about why Biden isn’t getting credit: Biden is terrible at “messaging.”

I hear this all the time. “He needs a better ‘message,’” they say, or “He doesn’t know how to get across what he’s accomplished,” or “His speeches are deadly dull.”

I’ve gone back and watched several of Biden’s recent speeches, including last Thursday night’s address to the nation about Israel and Ukraine. His speeches aren’t electrifying, to be sure. But he says what needs to be said. He’s truthful. He doesn’t exaggerate. He’s compassionate.

So why aren’t more people hearing him?

This raises a third theory: Biden doesn’t communicate in ways that today’s media and much of the public are able to hear.

I think there’s a lot to this. 

I’m old enough to remember when President Dwight D. Eisenhower talked to the nation. Despite Ike’s flat delivery, which was often punctuated with throat-clearing, the public listened and responded, usually positively, because Americans in the 1950s were able to process non-emotive messages. They might disagree with him, but he gave reasons for what he did or proposed and invited voters to deliberate rationally.

The media of that era felt duty-bound to transmit those non-emotive messages.

By “non-emotive,” I mean messages that are straightforward. They don’t cause the recipient to be entertained or inspired, don’t play on fear or bigotry or any other strong negative emotion.

This is no longer the way the media transmits information or how Americans process it. Now, a message has to pack a wallop to be heard. 

Everything Trump says and posts is designed to spur an emotional reaction. His anger, ridicule, and vindictiveness are intended to elicit immediate, passionate responses.

Trump gets attention because the media lives off emotive messaging. The more charged the message, the more likely viewers will stop scrolling. The fiercer the words, the more likely readers will take notice.

Joe Biden still lives in the world of rational, non-emotive messaging. He has been in politics for 50 years. He is steeped in rational, conventional argument — the kind Dwight Eisenhower delivered.

When it comes to “messaging” about his accomplishments, neither Biden nor his surrogates do the emotive work that our media ecosystem demands and the American public is now primed to respond to.

When voters tell pollsters they think Trump is “stronger” than Biden on foreign policy or the economy, the “strength” they feel comes from the emotions Trump stirs up — rage, ferocity, vindictiveness, and anger. These emotions are connected to brute strength.

Biden projects strength the old-fashioned way — through mature and responsible leadership. But mature and responsible leadership doesn’t break through today’s media and reach today’s public nearly as well as brute strength. 

So what’s the answer? Not for Biden (or his Democratic allies and surrogates) to abandon facts, data, analysis, and reasoned argument. 

The best response is to draw the starkest possible contrast between Trump’s unhinged childishness and Biden’s competent adulthood.

Rather than sell Biden’s policies, sell Biden’s character. Rather than dispute Trump’s arguments, condemn his temperament.

 

And ask Americans the following question: Do they want a psychopathic infant at the helm again, or a sane grown-up?

Public Gives Obama More Credit Than Trump For Economy

Donald Trump continually brags about how good he has been for the economy. He would like Americans to think the economy wasn't improving until he became president, and that he is wholly responsible for the current improved economy.

But the American people aren't buying what he's trying to sell them. They know that it was President Obama who turned the economy around, and that Trump has done nothing to change that. About 56% of the public gives Obama a great deal/moderate amount of credit for the current economy, while 49% say the same about Trump. That's a 7 point gap in favor of President Obama. That has to be a dagger through the heart of the narcissist currently occupying the White House.

The chart shows the results of a recent Gallup Poll -- done between January 8th and 14th of a random national sample of 1,499 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

Thank The Teabaggers For The Lower U.S. Credit Rating

The United States government has maintained the top credit rating for many decades now with all of the credit-rating agencies -- a AAA+ rating. But those days are now over, at least for a while. Standard & Poors has lowered the government's credit rating to AA+, a move that could eventually result in the government having to pay more for the money they borrow (which would have a ripple effect throughout the economy, raising interest rates for everyone).

Of course all of the Republican candidates for the presidency immediately jumped to blame President Obama for the lowered credit rating. That's hogwash! They are just trying to keep their fellow party members in Congress from getting the blame -- a blame that they richly deserve.

The folks at S & P said there were two reasons for lowering the government credit rating. First was the turning of the nation's debt ceiling into a political football, with many Republicans threatening to throw the nation into default if they didn't get the political victories they wanted (showing that they valued their ideology more than the nation's economic health).

The second reason was the lack of any type of revenue enhancement (taxes) -- especially the elimination of the disastrous Bush tax cuts for the rich (which are responsible for a large chunk of the budget deficit). For S & P, the failure to include raising taxes meant the Congress (especially Republicans) were not really serious about bringing down the deficit and the national debt. Here is what S & P said:

[...]The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed.The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

[...]It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.

[...]The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them.

[...]Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

That makes it pretty clear that they seem to think the Republicans are to blame. And it is the teabagger base that has pressured the Republicans to be so intransigent in their refusal to raise taxes on the rich and their willingness to play political games with the creditworthiness of the government and the well-being of the national economy. When a Wall Street firm places the blame on the Republicans, you know it has to be true (because Wall Street loves the Republican Party).

And it's not just Standard & Poors that thinks the Republicans screwed up in the debt ceiling debate. Most polls, including a new survey by Quinnipiac University Poll (taken July 5-11 of 2,311 registered voters with a margin of error of only 2 points), show that people blame the Republicans more for the ridiculous debt ceiling debate than the president -- by a 48% to 34% margin. The poll also showed that 67% of those polled thought taxes should be raised on the wealthy and corporations, while only 25% opposed that.

It looks like the teabaggers have forced their idiot congressmen out on a weak limb. Hopefully the voters will saw that limb off in the next election. We need people in Congress that care more for the country than their own ideology. The teabaggers believe ideology is more important, and that is why they must accept the blame for the bad debt deal and the down-grading of U.S. Credit.

Banks Still Not Lending

One of the last acts of the Bush administration was to give banks a multi-billion dollar bail-out. The intent of the huge bailout was not just to save banks, but to loosen credit and get the banks to lending again. So far, it hasn't worked.

The banks took the money, but instead of loosening credit and starting to lend again, they gave billions of dollars in executive bonuses, threw lavish parties and hoarded the rest. We should have known that's what they would do, because the Bush administration didn't set up rules for using the money, and in fact, couldn't even trace what happened to most of it.

The Federal Reserve released their latest survey of banks yesterday, and it was not good. Instead of loosening credit and lending, most banks last month tightened their credit even further. They made it even harder to borrow. Even the few who didn't tightened loan standards were raising the rates for their loans.

This is not the way it was supposed to go. Before another penny is given to these (or any) banks, rules must be created and imposed. There is simply no point in bailing out the banks, if they aren't going to do their part to bailout the economy in general. Both small and large companies need credit. Without it, they have to begin laying off even more workers.

Loosening credit won't solve all of our economic woes, but it is a necessary piece of the solution.