Bidenomics spin vs the grocery store reality
The propaganda media and the Joe Biden campaign have a big challenge. They must somehow create advertisements (and news stories) designed to make the American people believe things that are demonstrably false. Virtually every major poll identifies inflation and rising prices as the biggest challenges facing Americans. People are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. Many Americans are taking second and third jobs to try to keep up with the cost of living.
Retired Americans are worried because their entire lives they had saved based on a reasonable level of inflation. Now they are finding their lifetime accumulation of assets being shrunk by Bidenflation. With each passing month of the Biden presidency, retirees watch their savings shrink.
But no matter how many ads the Democrats run claiming that the economy is strong, Americans go to the grocery store every day. They are immediately reminded that things are much worse than President Biden and the Democrats claim. Bidenflation shows up in every aisle of the store. Eggs are up. Milk is up. Bread is up. Meat is up.
Callista went to the grocery store Sunday and was shocked at the price of a 12-pack of Diet Coke. It was close to a dollar per can – or more than twice what she remembered from a few years ago. Cereal makers are responding to Bidenflation with two different strategies. Some are maintaining their traditional size but raising the price substantially. Others have maintained their price but shrunk the size. In a few cases, they have shrunk the size and still increased the price.
In a second Biden term, we might be reduced to buying one bowl of cereal at a time and eggs by the quarter-dozen. The media talks about a Never Trump vote, but there is also a large and growing Never Biden vote. President Biden constantly says the economy is strong – the envy of the world. But the next trip to the grocery store reminds us of the reality of Biden’s failure.
Biden and the Democrats try to only talk about year-over-year inflation rates. This is intentional and disingenuous. The current rate of roughly 3.4% dramatically understates the price shock which Bidenflation has created for most Americans. As Dave Winston and Myra Miller of the Winston Group wrote on May 15, looking at inflation since Biden took office paints a much different picture.
“Our trending chart shows year-over-year inflation coming in at 3.4% and with the new Presidential Inflation Rate ticking up to 19.9% – almost a 20% cumulative price increase since Biden took office. Today’s report means 11 months in a row of inflation staying at or above 3%. Additionally, it reflects that since December, prices have risen 2.6%. In contrast over the same time period, weekly wages have increased only 1%.”
Winston and Miller rightly make the point that the impact of the economy over an entire presidency is far more useful than tracking one or two months. Viewed over the entire Biden presidency, the economic pain is beginning to resemble the Jimmy Carter years, when people felt everything was out of control. Importantly, the cumulative effect of Bidenflation has convinced millions of Americans that they were better off under President Trump.
I am not sure there is anything the Biden team can do about the reality that people are in pain and that Bidenomics simply isn’t working. I don’t think clever ads will work when people think they are directly opposite reality. Grocery price increases may be Trump’s greatest asset in the upcoming one-sided debates.
On CNN, Trump will be walking into a four-on-one ambush. He will have to defeat Biden – and Chris Wallace, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. All three of the CNN personalities are openly and bitterly anti-Trump. They have all said things which in a normal world would have disqualified them from participating in an impartial debate. But no matter how hard they try to stack the deck against Trump in the debate, all he must do is go back to the grocery store and the devastating impact of Bidenflation.
As for the larger Democrat propaganda machine, Biden’s daily failure at the grocery store just adds to his failures in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza and the U.S. southern border. In many ways, Biden and the Democrats aren’t running against Trump. They are running against reality.
