And now a CNN poll is showing that Trump has actually become more popular since the Jan. 6th attack and that he would beat Biden if the election were held today.
WTF
Because hardly anyone is watching. More people are seeing the spin the algorithms choose to show them.
"It's the economy, stupid" (attributed to former President Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992)
Democrats lost their historic 2020 advantage over the course of 2021. For most of 2021, Fed Chair Powell called 6% inflation "transitory". We now have CPI-U inflation over 8% for the past 3 months and very high gas prices, so the ecnomy isn't looking any better to voters.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferences-shifted-greatly-during-2021.aspx
Right. And of course, because many of those voters are not inclined toward complex thinking, they blame Biden for most of this stuff. Because the media they are shown tell them to.
Agreed, although I think Americans are also alarmed whenever they buy more gas. As that costs more, other expenses need to be squeezed.
I'd ask news media: "Are you blaming President Biden for worldwide inflation?"
And they'll probably bring up Russia invading Ukraine, "Wasn't inflation 7% in December 2021, months before Russia invaded?"
Or if I was feeling more generous, "Why did Fed Chair Jerome Powell say inflation was transitory for most of 2021, if inflation only started at the end of Feb in 2022?"
It would be a mistake to assume that inflation prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine somehow means that the current occupation isn’t a significant factor in current inflation.
I could certainly see how inflation - which Powell and Yalen predicted as transitory a year ago - would indeed have started dropping had the whole Ukraine mess not triggered yet more supply chain shortages, pushed oil prices up further and increased overall volatility.
Russia invading Ukraine was a factor in food & energy inflation, but not the only factor. President Biden claimed it was the only factor - he blamed Putin for inflation. Presidents get wrongly blamed for things they didn't cause, but there's a second aspect here. President Biden should be taking whatever action he can to mitigate inflation and its impacts. By blaming Putin, Biden implied he had nothing to say about his own efforts, which is why I think people really disliked it.
As you point out, Fed Chair Powell and Treasury Secretary Yellen also got the inflation call wrong in 2021. But what's missing is how they keep getting it wrong using the same narrative - inflation is just about to fall (most of 2021), then in Dec 2021 inflation is just about to fall ... and now the Fed is nudging rates up and expects in 2023 inflation is just about to fall. Even if he's correct at some point, I would say he ran out of guesses already.
It's worth mentioning I predicted inflation would be over 8.5% on June 10 (CPI-U inflation for May), but I was correct for the wrong reasons. I assumed oil prices correlated with energy prices, which was an incorrect assumption on my part. Food inflation had been 0.9% to 1.0% since the end of 2021, and I assumed that would continue - also incorrect. Lucky for me, my two wrong assumptions actually canceled each other out and inflation came in at 8.6%.
Even before that calculation, I thought peak inflation was incorrect. But when a large part of the stock market (half?) saw inflation rise from April 8.3% to May 8.6%, that shattered many people's beliefs in rapidly falling inflation. Based on the June 10 inflation data, a recession became much more likely - the new inflation data caught even the Fed by surprise.
Of relevance to former President Trump, a recession makes a Republican victory more likely in 2024. In that scenario, former President Trump's main obstacle was laid out by Ice Cube 4 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9oUnC8JtXY