Something has come over President Biden and his White House. Rather than talking about the economy in their usual tone of apology and nuance lest someone think they haven’t acknowledged the feelings of anyone who might be unhappy, the “Bidenomics” push has become positively triumphal.
That doesn’t mean all Americans will immediately be persuaded. The media’s own skepticism remains, and news outlets will give Republicans ample time to continue claiming the economy is in desperate straits. But if nothing else, the idea that the economy is actually doing very well — how to judge that success, what produced it, how we might continue it — will move toward the center of the debate. Which means that debate will become very different from what it has been recently.
A robust argument is underway among wonky liberals about just how good the economy is right now and whether Biden’s approval on the economy deserves to be as low as it is. Meanwhile in the financial press, the default mode seems to be to present every piece of good news with a warning not to let it brighten your day. Each month’s report of job growth — and there have been an extraordinary 30 straight months of growth — is reported with headlines that say things like “Hundreds of thousands of jobs added, but recession fears loom.”