OK, I keep seeing people (many whom I guess are GOP voters) here on FR pointing at the government stats and saying “The economy is OK! It is the press’ fault that people think otherwise!”
Bullcrap. Here’s why the GOP is losing:
Did you see the gender disparity stat published recently about how women are gaining jobs in the US economy while men are losing jobs? The BLS showed that from last November until April, men lost 700,000 jobs, while women gained 300,000 jobs.
Who votes in the majority for the GOP? Men. White married men are the core constituency of the GOP, hands down. And the BLS reports, taken over the last year, show that they’re getting hammered in this economy. Our usual cynical refrain “Women and children hardest hit” is not true this time ‘round. Women and children are making out like bandits this time ‘round.
The idiots at the BLS also keep reporting such idiotic nonsense that “inflation is contained” - while a breadwinner can look at the price of gas and diesel fuel going up every week, without let-up. They can see inflation coming through in food. Small business owners, another GOP constituency, are getting hammered with increasing input costs. At some point, the working stiff looks at what he sees all around him and decides that the clowns in power don’t know their pompous buttocks from a hole in the ground.
And that has now happened to the GOP. What is worse is that the GOP is blissfully ignorant of what is going on - they keep looking at these government stats, rather than go out into their districts and talking to people. Ever since the blow-up on immigration, it seems as tho the GOP doesn’t want to talk to, you know, actual voters. The GOP got such an earful they decided “Whoa - those voters sure are ugly people, and they called me names! I’m not going to talk to those smelly voters again if I can help it...”
Into this environment, the national GOP keeps coming through with a “What, me worry?” refrain from the Alfred E. Neuman School of Economics. People vote their pocketbooks. That’s all you need to know about elections in presidential years: people vote their pocketbooks.
Nice summary.
People who say "the economy is doing well" have no understanding that paper-pushing, transaction swapping, house flipping, and borrowing more and more money are not components of a real economy.
Invention, development, production, farming, and exploitation of natural resources comprise the real economy. The real economy is in catastrophic decline, due to free trade with no concern for proper national interest. Both parties are to blame, but punishing the GOP for their share of it is not wrong.
You can't fool all of the people, all of the time.