Biden Boom, GOP Bust
On a day of fantastic economic news, the RNC is rebuking Liz Cheney for exposing the truth on a domestic terrorist attack. Democrats have their message -- and must run on it.
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The media this morning was caught flat-footed as the jobs numbers showed an economic boom that is so explosive it burst through DC reporters’ set-in-stone narrative of an economy bedraggled by Omicron and inflation.
“U.S. added 467,000 jobs in January despite omicron variant surge,” blared the Washington Post headline. The New York Times went with “Strong Jobs Report Shows Resilience of Economic Recovery,” and admitted that the old narrative is dead:
Here’s the prevailing narrative of the job market last year: Hiring accelerated in the spring and summer as the vaccine rollout allowed the economy to reopen, then slumped later in the year as coronavirus variants — first Delta, then Omicron — led workers and businesses to pull back.
New data calls that narrative into question.
TV news anchors, trying to backtrack from their previous stories, were talking about the "blockbuster, unexpected report,” and the “surprising, phenomenal economic news.” Business network CNBC went into party mode, with one anchor yelling, “I’ve never seen anything like this!” CNN’s John King said the results were “shocking numbers,” while the network’s financial reporter Christine Romans said wage increases were “offsetting” inflation brought on because of the supply chain problems.
So inflation is a dead-as-a-doornail, hackneyed story, and as the Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of any other country in the world in rebounding during the Covid-19 pandemic. For the first time in American history, the U.S. economy created almost 7 million jobs in 12 months.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee, meeting in Salt Lake City, was set to condemn Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for actually sitting on a committee devoted to getting to the truth about the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol on January 6th, with the RNC defending the insurrectionists as “ordinary citizens.”
I’ve been saying for the past several weeks on my SiriusXM program that Democrats, if they’re to win in 2022, must lean into negative partisanship, hitting every day on the Republican Party’s embrace of authoritarianism — from Donald Trump’s continued fascistic attacks to book-banning and censoring the teaching of history in schools.
The GOP is set on destroying democracy, and now Trump called for more violence in his speech in Texas last weekend and said he would pardon the January 6th insurrectionists. More alarmingly, the GOP is embracing Trump and his authoritarian actions. Every Democratic candidate running in 2022 must hit hard on this and expose it — put the GOP on the defensive and demand they disavow Trump for wanting to pardon terrorists.
It must be stated every day. And it must also come from the White House and President Biden. I wrote last month that Biden should be giving the speech he gave on January 6th every day — talking about the threat of the GOP’s attack on democracy, and yes, their embrace of Trump. He did it again when he spoke in Atlanta in January, focusing on the threat to voting rights. But we need to hear it more, keeping Democrats on the offensive.
At the same time, Democrats certainly should be talking about what they’ve accomplished for the American people while Republicans just tried to stall progress. We can talk about two things at once — and must. The economic boom is a direct result of the American Rescue Plan, and the infrastructure bill will add to that and, if any of Build Back Better passes — and we must get some of these programs passed — it will help the economy to surge further.
The economy is booming. There is no denying it. The media has had a chokehold on this story, pushing a narrative that was untrue and driven by the GOP. With the news today, the president and Democrats should smash through the media’s narrative once and for all — and condemn the coverage if need be.
Republicans are hellbent on attacking the economy and those attacks just can’t stand. They run from talking about anything regarding January 6th. Democrats have to throw it in their faces, and focus on the complete and total crack up of their party, which has allowed extremists to take control.
Hitting on those two issues — Biden boom and GOP bust — will help Democrats keep the House and Senate this November, hopefully expanding the Senate and getting past obstructionists. That will ensure continued progress for the American people. And it will push back the authoritarian assault on democracy.
If I had not read your report, I would have had no idea things were going well. Every day, through every source of media, I see gloom and doom. Thank you for a well written article
Mike, the best economic news I read was at The American Prospect, where they said that Wall Street was reacting to re-regulation more than it was to any so-called "fundamentals". Biden has a strong group of pro-regulaton people at the helm, from Janet Yellen on down.