The Washington Post recently wrote about “the economic miracle of 2023.” For real, in an apparent non-parody piece, the senior economics reporter for the Post, Heather Long, declared that this year has been wonderful financially.
It makes any sensible person wonder if she actually lives in America? Wherever she resides, Miss Long certainly does not occupy a place of reality, because this year has been an absolute struggle economically for the vast majority of Americans, especially those of modest means.
Of course, plenty of other corporate media platforms engage in similar narratives as the fantasy advanced by the Washington Post. For example, Business Insider amazingly determined that America had reached “economic nirvana.” Wait, what?
John Avlon of CNN boasted that “Biden’s got a good story to tell about the economy. It is objectively true that our country is better off economically than we were certainly three years ago and it’s not just because of the pandemic.”
Avlon went on to make patently false statements, claiming that real wages have gone up, when pay adjusted for inflation has crashed under Biden. He also pretended that manufacturing is doing well, even though factory jobs are flat on the year and the most-important manufacturing index has been in a demonstrable downward plunge for more than two years under Biden.
Now, no one is shocked that the likes of the Bezos Washington Post, Business Insider, and CNN carry water for the embattled and highly unpopular Biden administration. But to blatantly tell hurting Americans that things are just swell, economically?
That kind of propaganda requires next level hubris.
Narrative promotion and spin might work on certain topics, but thankfully it remains nearly impossible to fool people about the state of their own pocketbooks. The kitchen table reality of stressed household budgets pours cold water all over the media myth-making machine.
This harsh reality particularly afflicts families – and parents conveyed that pain in the latest battleground survey conducted by North Star Opinion Research for my organization, the League of American Workers, a populist Right advocacy group for laborers.
We questioned more than 600 likely voters in the key battleground state of Wisconsin and found pervasive economic angst in this key Midwestern swing state.
While the financial anxiety is widespread, across geographies and demographics, the pain is most acute for parents with children at home.
For example, only a paltry 16% of parents with school-age children at home think the country is on the right track presently. Similarly, only 28% of Wisconsin parents think the American Dream is “still attainable” versus 71% who think it is “out of reach.”
Specifically on the economy, Wisconsin families clearly suffer disproportionately under Biden’s inflation with, literally, more mouths to feed. Rating Biden on the economy, a mere 10% responded with “strong approval,” while a whopping 63% strongly disapprove. That 6/1 underwater ratio is well worse then the 2/1 underwater ratio for Biden among non-parents.
Parents struggle as grocery prices surge higher by 20% under Biden. Overall inflation has soared +17.6% since Biden took office. These kinds of price increases have never been seen before in the lives of most parents, younger adults in their 30s and 40s, who were not even alive the last time America experienced sustained, punishing inflation.
Most of these parents have exhausted whatever surplus savings were created by the lockdowns and virus panic of 2020-2021. According to a new JP Morgan study, 80% of all Americans have already spent their post-Covid excess savings. At current pace, 99% of Americans will have burned through their Covid excess savings by mid-year 2024, leaving only the top 1% truly better off under Biden.
Not surprisingly, then, stressed families have little patience for hearing about how so-called Bidenomics works well for them. In our survey, only 5% of parents have a “very favorable” view of the term Bidenomics, compared to a whopping 44% with a “very unfavorable” view of the phrase.
So, media mavens can prattle on about how great the Biden economy is, but regular, hard-working citizens know better. No wonder trust in legacy media just sank to an all-time low, in a Gallup survey that goes back a half century.
People understand their own economic crunch, and they clearly place blame for it on Biden and his radical agenda.
Accordingly, these battleground states like Wisconsin are in play. The campaigns and candidates who show that they care about families, about supporting stressed-out parents with a prosperity agenda, stand to earn widespread support in key states.
Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group