The Contrast Between Strong, Sturdy, Successful Biden and Weak, Extreme, Diminished Trump Becomes More Clear

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Friends, a few things for you on this Friday:

I’ve spent a lot of time these last few weeks talking about how truly awful Trump is, how much weaker he now than in 2020, how he’s the most unfit man to run for President in our history, and what a risk Republicans are taking by rallying behind him. I talked about it in our January gathering this week, in a major post on Monday, my recent MSNBC op-ed and Morning Joe appearance, in a new Ezra Klein NYT podcast, The Stongest Democratic Party Any Of Us Has Ever Seen, and in this clip from my discussion with Lawrence on MSNBC Wednesday night:

But today, let’s spend some time discussing not Trump the historically awful candidate but the extreme and dangerous agenda he and MAGA are running on. Here’s what they want:

Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to stay open. The economy to crash. Women, people of color to lose more freedoms and rights. The planet to warm faster. 10 year olds to carry their rapist's baby to term, and for more women to die on an operating room table. Tens of millions to lose their health insurance. More dead kids in schools. A restoration of pre-Civil Rights era white supremacy. Big tax cuts for their donors, higher deficits and less for everyone else. Books banned across the US. Teenagers to work night shifts in meat packing plants and not go to school. The minimum wage to stay at $7.25. Mass arrests and mass deportations of immigrants long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to get pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.

That’s what they want. That’s what they are running on. That’s why we need to beat them in 2024, get to 55 and make this election a clear repudiation of this terrible, terrible politics.

Here’s Morning Joe talking about this emerging, outrageous agenda (and do note the outrage, astonishment in his voice) because it is on its face so ridiculous that an American political party is running on these things:

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Joe Biden Is A Good President, The Country Is Far Better Off Today - The months and months of encouraging economic news continued this week with q4 GDP coming in at 3.3% - far higher than analysts expected, and another sign of just how remarkable the economy has been under Joe Biden. Let’s recap where we are today:

• Best job market since the 1960s, stock market setting records (401Ks are happy), best recovery in the G7, consumer sentiment rising

• The inflation fueled by COVID/supply chain disruptions, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and OPEC price hikes has ended, and we are now in a place much closer to historic norms. Prices for many items are falling including groceries, gas, rents and mortgage rates. Some recent data, via Bloomberg:

• Historically elevated wage growth, new business formation and prime-age worker participation rates. In the last few months we’ve seen some of the most robust real wage growth we’ve seen in decades, and Americans at all income levels have seen sizeable increases in their overall net worth

• Lowest uninsured rate in history, record ACA signups this year

• Renewable and domestic oil production set records in 2023, US more energy independent than its been in decades. In 2023 the US produced more oil than any country has in any year in history

• The investments Biden has made will creating prosperity for America and opportunities for American workers for decades to come

• The annual deficit is trillions less than when Biden came to office

• For young people the job market is the best since the 1960s; more young people have health insurance today than ever before; the President has forgiven more than $130b in student debt; by some measure home ownership rates are higher for Gen Z than Gen X and Millennials at this point in their lives; and rising minimum wages in states and cities across the US have created higher floors for new and entry-level workers than in many years

• Crime and murder rates plummeted across the US in 2023, and remain a fraction of what they were 30 years ago.

As I wrote the other day the ongoing success of the Biden Presidency is causing most of the core GOP indictment of Biden to evaporate and disappear. It’s a huge, growing political problem for Republicans as we head into 2024, and is forcing them to over invest in what have traditionally been secondary issues for voters like border and immigration. That they have centered their politics right now around immigration is a sign of their growing desperation in the face of Biden’s ongoing success and Trump’s clear ugliness. Trump spent the last month of 2018 talking about caravans and we won the mid-terms by 8.6 points. It’s an important issue, but it is not going to one that decides this election; and like so many issues where they have an opportunity to ding Biden, they end up instead reminding us of their radicalization and extremism and pushing themselves further away from voters.

My good friend and long time collaborator Rob Shapiro has a new piece in Washington Monthly, Data Don’t Lie: Biden’s Economic Record Is Much Better Than Trump’s, which goes hard at one of those remaining Zombie GOP talking points - that somehow the economy was better under Trump. Rob writes:

Donald Trump’s prospects for a second presidential term may well rest on whether voters accept his proposition that facts no longer matter. A case in point is his narrative that the economy was stronger during his presidency than under President Joe Biden. With few reality checks from the economic media, most of the public apparently agrees: One recent survey found that voters prefer Trump over Biden on the economy by 59 percent to 37 percent.

As Trump closes in on his third GOP presidential nomination, it’s time to set the record straight: By virtually every measure, that narrative is patently false.

From growth and jobs to investment and business creation, the economy has performed substantially better under Biden than it did under Trump. Biden’s superior record holds even if we set aside the pandemic’s impact in 2020. The exception, of course, is inflation. But just as the COVID-19 pandemic led to the collapse in GDP and employment during Trump’s last year in office, it was also the main reason prices rose so much for a time here and globally, according to new analysis from the Federal Reserve…..

….Far from mismanaging inflation, Biden tamed it. As a result, America has fared better than other advanced countries. In 2023, while U.S. consumer prices rose 3.3 percent, they increased 4.1 percent in France, 3.9 percent in Great Britain, and 3.7 percent in Germany. And we beat inflation without sacrificing growth: In 2023, real GDP grew 2.5 percent in the United States compared to growth rates of 1.0 percent in France, 0.5 percent in the United Kingdom, and negative 0.5 percent in Germany.

I’ve been a pushover for data ever since I oversaw the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau as the Under Secretary of Commerce in the late 1990s. But politicians and the press must also take real economic numbers seriously. It’s time to reframe the narrative based on data that rigorously tracks what happens in the economy and not on mythmaking. President Biden’s record not only eclipses Donald Trump’s, but when policy made a difference—on growth, employment, investment, and inflation—Biden stepped up and improved our economic conditions. Those are the facts.

All of this is to say:

Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. The Democratic Party is strong, and winning elections all across the country. And they have Trump.

Keep working hard all, and a big Hopium welcome to the many new subscribers who’ve joined us this week. We have a big election to win this year, together, and I for one am glad the general election is here - Simon