With less than a month remaining before Election Day and early voting underway across much of the country, Republicans appear desperate to convince Americans the economy is terrible.
Late last week, for example, a reporter reminded Donald Trump of the latest encouraging data and asked, “Do you acknowledge that the economy is improving?” The former president replied, “No. It’s not.” Days earlier, his running mate, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, told the public that the economy is “an unmitigated disaster.”
Their campaign advertising, meanwhile, is telling voters in battleground states that “a recession” is “now headed our way.”
The problem for the GOP ticket, however, is that reality keeps pointing in the opposite direction. NBC News reported:
Inflation has come full circle for the Biden administration. Consumer price growth slowed to its lowest pace since February 2021 — the first full month President Joe Biden was in office, the Labor Department said Thursday in its final inflation report before Election Day.
Inflation data isn’t the only encouraging metric. Last week, Americans also received great news about job growth and unemployment. A week earlier, there was a surprisingly good report on U.S. economic growth.
We can keep going. We’ve recently seen record highs on Wall Street; gas prices are low, retail sales are strong; interest rates are falling; and wages are up.
But why stop there? As The Washington Post’s Heather Long explained in her latest column, “[M]any Americans are getting sizable pay raises, and middle-class wealth has surged to record levels. We are living through one of the best economic years of many people’s lifetimes.”
The U.S. economy is so strong that some Republicans — Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, I’m looking in your direction — have decided to start telling Americans that the real-world evidence is “fake.”
A Politico report on the latest inflation data characterized the status quo as “a dream economy,” adding, “The latest numbers, released on Thursday, add to a solid economic picture that’s coming together just weeks before the 2024 election.”
No wonder so many Republicans are lying: The more the public recognizes the truth about the economy under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the more likely it is that Trump will lose in 25 days.
