President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.
“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.
“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.
Prices go up every year, it’s by how much matters. For example, rent has been going up slower than inflation for a year now. For every person whose rent went up, there must be a lot of people who don’t go online to verify their rent did not go up
You’ve got numbers on the brain. Think like a human.
We’re living in some of the best economy of our lives. Was nobody here alive in 2009?
I was. The economy didn’t feel much different. Barely had anything left at the end of the month and a major expense would bankrupt me, just like today.
Except for all the people who lost their jobs back then, yeah, no different