It's the Biden Boom, and media should be calling it that

Plus: Trump keeps losing the narrative even as he's winning the primaries, further showing he is his own biggest liability.

Nikki Haley is creating a nightmare for Donald Trump simply by staying in the race past New Hampshire.

The proof of this is in the unhinged calls for her to drop out, as she finds herself viciously attacked all across MAGA world. As Rich Lowry, the far-right editor-in-chief of the National Review, put it, “Haley is getting skewered by the MAGA right, led by Donald Trump himself, for having the temerity to persist in the act of running for president. She’s a tool of evil donors who are distorting the Republican primary process to weaken Trump ahead of his showdown with President Joe Biden.”

Actually, the attackers may be right that she is useful to those of us backing Biden. But that wouldn’t be the case if Trump were as strong as they’ve all been yammering on about for years.

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With Haley getting 43% in New Hampshire, the night showed how weak the incumbent Republican and former president is, following up on his weak performance in Iowa, as I’ve noted both earlier this week and last week.

Haley has so enraged Trump that he made his victory speech all about her. It was an angry, misogynistic tirade, as he fumed at her for staying in the race. Way to go in reaching out to all those independents (many of whom voted for Haley in New Hampshire) whom you will desperately need in a general election! Trump simply doesn’t have the capacity to grow his support.

Haley had gotten under Trump’s skin in her speech on primary night, pointing out that he’s only lost elections for the GOP—in 2018, in 2020, and in 2022—and emphasizing his mental decline on display in episodes like his confusing her with Nancy Pelosi.

She continued jabbing at him mercilessly in South Carolina yesterday, saying that he “threw a temper tantrum” in his speech and “pitched a fit.” She described him as “insecure” and “threatened.” And she talked about him as “confused,” as she again questioned his mental competency and noted he didn’t discuss in his speech what he’d do for the American people and only focused on “revenge.”

Haley, of course, will not win the nomination, and she is another among a long list of GOP rivals who alternately embraced Trump and his most extreme ideas and criticized him far too late. (And she will no doubt get in line and endorse him when she inevitably drops out.) But, for our purposes right now, she’s certainly a handy tool, whatever her motivations are. And unlike Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and others who’ve attacked Trump in the past before pitifully embracing him, she’s not stooping to his level.

Rather than become a faux bully, trying to emulate Trump, she’s taking pleasure in mocking him, just turning the knife in a way that clearly induces maximum pain.

All of this has the media covering Trump’s weaknesses and mental competency, and they’ve now gone full force in reporting that Trump’s showing in Iowa and New Hampshire was not good. From The New York Times ("New Hampshire and Iowa Reveal Broader Weaknesses for Trump”) to even the conservative Wall Street Journal Editorial Board (“Haley Revealed Trump’s Weaknesses”), they’re looking at the election results as well as the exit polling, and they’re seeing a candidate who has a lot of problems.

The winner in all of this so far is President Biden.

And economic news just keeps lifting him up. The big news today that GDP growth surged in 2023—"US growth shatters expectations, boosting Biden’s economic pitch,” blared Politico—shows undeniably that this president has saved the economy from collapse after the pandemic, and Trump is not going to get the recession he’s praying for.

And it’s time to call it what it is—something some in the media have been hinting at: “The Biden Boom.” The Washington Post headline today used the “boom” word—”The U.S. economy boomed in 2023, thanks to consumers opening up wallets”—but it’s time to connect Biden’s name to it.

Ironically, a person in the media who actually did use “Biden Boom” this week was none other than Larry Kudlow, Trump’s former White House economic adviser, who has a show on Fox Business. The Biden campaign highlighted his words in a clip seized upon by their great digital operation:

Lower inflation, higher stock prices, and better consumer sentiment. Mainstream media is saying there’s a Biden Boom.

Honestly, I’m not sure (from the short clip) if Kudlow agrees with what he says the “mainstream media” is calling it. And I can’t actually find anyone in the media who reported “the Biden Boom” this week, so he’s either exaggerating or it’s not too many people. (This is the beauty, by the way, of the Biden-Harris digital operation, just grabbing clips and statements that work for them and circulating them across social media, from X to TikTok.)

But whatever the case, from Kudlow’s mouth to the newsrooms across the country, it’s time for the Biden Boom, the outcome of Bidenomics, to become the term used to describe what is happening. And that’s simply because it’s the truth.