You Can’t Lie Your Way Out of Inflation

Dave Griffey at Daffey Thoughts notes the failure of the media to lie successfully about Biden economics:

For the last couple days, I’ve seen news stories pondering why, despite such overwhelmingly positive economic news, Americans don’t think Biden is doing a good job.  Some polls suggest Americans think he is doing a dismal job. 

The reason, of course, is that things are pretty miserable and we are a diminishing and crumbling society.  Part of that trend is watching a growing number of Americans unable to afford the basics.  The news keeps saying spending is strong.  Yeah.  Because the things people need to survive are off the scale expensive, and people are going into historically unprecedented levels of personal debt to keep up with just surviving.  Yesterday we had to buy laundry soap, toilet paper and dryer sheets.  We bought the smallest packages and got generic brands.  The total was almost $19.00.  That is unsustainable.  

Funny thing people.  You can tell them everything is peachy about vague things, but you can’t tell people who can barely afford groceries that everything is awesome.  They won’t believe you.  They may just resent you.

In 2016, after the conventions, I caught Fareed Zakaria on CNN.  He gave an editorial that had one clear message: The world was officially better than any time in history, and we owe it all to President Obama and his administration (read: Hillary Clinton).  The problem?  Things weren’t great at all.  The post-2008 recovery was anemic at best.  ISIS was on the rampage and all we were told was to accept the new normal.  The African American community had all but been thrown under the bus.  And I could drive for weeks, if not months, without seeing a newly purchased car on the road. 

You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t tell people they never had it so good when they remember not so long ago when they had it so good, if not better.  The press made a huge mistake with that in 2016, believing that no matter what, a few propaganda nudges like Zakaria’s screed would seal the deal and convince Americans to vote Hillary.  After all, Clinton was running against Trump for crying out loud.  Yet we saw how that turned out. 

You’d think they wouldn’t repeat the same mistake again.  Fact is, except for hardcore leftwing thralls, most Americans can see the obvious.  As much as the press tries to make it about just hating the right groups of those people over there, most are increasingly bothered that things are getting worse and not better.  The press trying every other day to run stories about how great the economy is, how Bidenomics is doing a wonderful job, and how the future looks rosy and cheerful will at best not convince people who can’t afford food without going into debt.  At worst, it will chase them away from the polls come November, or into the arms of you-know-who.

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My Bride normally does the shopping for the family.  I recently accompanied her because I wished to buy a replacement belt.  I was shocked.  The most popular price on food items seemed to be 4.98 on items that at the beginning of 2021 sold for 2.00 or less.  My Bride had been telling me that many grocery items had doubled in price, but seeing it for myself was a shock.  I am keenly aware of inflation on gas every time I fill up, but seeing it for other basic staples was dismaying.

Political lies work in a lot of areas but not when it comes to inflation.  People see the increased prices and feel it with less money in their pockets.  This has revived in me bad memories from the late seventies when inflation and interest rates were out of control,  There is almost always a political price to pay for this type of inflation, and recent dismal polls for Zombie Biden indicates that a day of reckoning next November may be in the works.