America is experiencing the best economy of the 21st century. Equitable prosperity is growing faster under Joe Biden than it did under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or ... Donald Trump.
And yet ... President Biden is tilting the electoral pinball machine by using a progressive narrative to explain things. Only 7% of the electorate buys the progressive malarkey.
Biden knows better. In 2019, he crushed the left by presenting as a democratic capitalist. He crushed "democratic socialist" Bernie Sanders and "progressive" (a political euphemism for regressive) Elizabeth Warren in the primaries.
Then, shortly after Biden took office inflation started creeping up to 9%. How?
Inflation regularly follows the tanking of the dollar after a roughly 18-month lag. Trump, as noted here, demanded the Fed tank the dollar.
About two years later, voila, inflation descended. Right on schedule.
But Biden's speeches on the economy follow the progressive fairy tale, instead of pinning the inflation tail on the rump of Trump. Biden blames greedy corporations (and supply chain disruptions).
Malarkey! Corporations have been greedy since invented. Old news: In his 1776 book, "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith wrote: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Most voters know that it is competition, not Big Government, that keeps prices down. Biden is undermining his popularity, and the case for his reelection, by being "all action, no talk," the very converse of Trump.
Bad monetary policy pushed by Biden's predecessor — not corporate greed — drove inflation. Eye on the ball, I was one of very few to predict this, here at Newsmax, relying on the work of monetary economist Steve Hanke.
The recent burst of inflation was Trump's weak dollar chickens coming home to roost. Instead of Biden reverting to stale claims of "corporate greed," blaming Trump would have been credible and, likely, popular.
In the immortal words of the late Henry Kissinger, that has "the added advantage of being true." Moreover, to add to Biden's fumble in taking credit for ending inflation, he — mysteriously — is not bragging enough on how his democratic capitalist economic growth is producing the best growth of this millennium.
Hey, we just saw a quarter bumping up on a 5% annualized rate. Might not be sustained but … it's a rate of prosperity creation unseen since Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
As I wrote here at Newsmax, "Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton fomented sustained 4%-range growth. Their successors did much worse: George W. Bush, 2.25%; Barack Obama, 1.59%; Donald Trump, 1.03%. To be fair, pre-COVID President Trump clocked in at 2.3%, 2.9%, and 2.3%."
Biden's economic growth track record to date well outperforms all of his 21st century predecessors, including Trump ... even pre-COVID. Now ... to explain it!
In peacetime we voters most desire affluence. Consider Democrat operative Bob Shrum's campaigns memoir, "No Excuses: Confessions of a Serial Campaigner" (jam packed with excuses on nearly every page!).
Shrum: "[James] Carville was obsessed with keeping the Clinton campaign on message. ... Somewhere in the Midwest, he said, Clinton had suddenly launched into a soliloquy on nuclear nonproliferation. There wasn't one g*dd**n vote in it, Carville shouted at me — a warning he had already delivered, a little more respectfully, to his contrite candidate.
"When James put up his famous sign in the war room — 'It's the economy, stupid' — it was not just an admonition to the strategists and to the staff, but to one very smart former Rhodes Scholar named Bill Clinton."
Biden isn't campaigning on his own democratic capitalism. Why not?
To avoid sparking an internecine Democratic Party war, akin to the fight between MAGAs and Party Regulars over in the GOP. That's why not.
Biden needs to keep his fractious progressive base intact ... especially until he's renominated. That said, Biden's mouthing silly progressive malarkey — rather than taking credit for his pretty good democratic capitalism, backing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's managing the almost unprecedented hat trick of bringing inflation down without precipitating a recession — is a bit lame.
"Progressives" detest both Reagan and Clinton for their anti-class warfare, wonderful, prosperity-generating, free market policies. But hey!
Progressives – Class Warfare Reenactors – while noisy, are (see above) but a tiny fraction of the American people. Biden, a party animal, is not yet ready to pull out his whip, starter pistol and chair to climb into the cage to tame the fanatics of his base.
Yet. Once Biden has the nomination locked, he can safely tack to the sensible center and (if the good news keeps coming) claim credit for using good democratic capitalism to quell inflation and generate the most equitable prosperity of the lifetime of the Millennials and Zoomers.
Hey, all you Biden haters out here?
It's the economy, stupid!
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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