The latest GDP numbers are good. They’re really good. There’s no way around it. q3 GDP came in at an annualized 5.2%. And, you know, when I talk about the economy, I make an effort to sort of de politicize the discussions about the economy in the following sense. Presidents have a little bit to do with economic metrics on a month to month basis, they certainly can take actions and pass policy that will impact a factor like GDP. But so much of it has to do with global economic conditions, seasonality, business cycles, wars or pandemics, etc. But when it comes to 5.2% GDP, which is a fantastic number under Joe Biden, there are a couple of important and interesting things that I think need to be mentioned, first and foremost, an argument that the right has been making for a long time now about Joe Biden and his economic policies are that they will destroy the country, they will destroy the economy. So even if we don’t say we had 5.2 GDP, thanks to Joe Biden, at minimum, we must acknowledge that the economic destruction that Republicans predicted would come at the hands of Joe Biden simply hasn’t happened. And it’s not just GDP, that tells us that we’ve seen unemployment below 4%, for the longest period in 50 years, most recently at 3.9%. Wages are going up, inflation has come way down, it was zero in October, it’s now just 3.2% year over year. These are all really good numbers. And so while I’m not going to come here and hypocritically say it’s all thanks to Biden, it is absolutely the case that Biden has not destroyed the economy. Now, on the margins, have there been legislative accomplishments under the Biden administration, that have certainly helped GDP to grow? The answer is absolutely. The infrastructure bill as that money now starts entering the economy has helped the GDP remain healthy and high, the chips act, some student loan forgiveness, which has freed up money for people to spend at other businesses, rather than as interest to big banks, and lenders, all of these things have an impact. Now, on the other hand, this also has significant political implications when we are looking at 2024. And what I mean is the following. If you just want to look at polling right now, you will see polling, where I would say two thirds of the polls show Trump’s slightly ahead of Biden, and about 1/3 of the polls show Biden slightly ahead of Trump. And there are many people, including people on the political left, who are panicking saying Biden’s dead, Biden can’t win, Trump’s gonna crush him if you look at this polling, and there are two really important caveats to that. And one of them has to do with the GDP numbers. So let’s deal with that. Second, first and foremost, if you look at polling today, it’s often you know, Trump, 44, Biden 42. Well, if you add that up, that’s 85. That means that there’s a full 15% of the electorate, who either doesn’t yet know who they’re going to vote for, or is planning to vote for a third party candidate. The people who don’t know who they’re going to vote for, I believe, are going to break towards Joe Biden. And once the real fear of Trump getting another four years is president, they’ll say, Well, okay, I was undecided in December. But now that Trump’s the nominee, I can’t do that, I’m gonna have to vote Biden. So I think the undecideds are the don’t knows are gonna break for Biden. And then I also do believe that some of the people planning to vote third party today are going to ultimately not vote third party, they may break for Biden, they may break for Trump, we don’t know. But it is a little early to make these assessments when a full 15% of those responding to polls aren’t yet committed to Biden, nor Trump. But here’s the the GDP factor in general, you know, we can talk about worse, we can talk about political scandals, we can talk about the age of candidates, we can do all of those things. But there is one historical reality that really not doesn’t disappoint as a heuristic to think about the election, is the economy by the standards we use to evaluate an economy doing pretty well. GDP, unemployment, job creation, inflation, stock market. If the answer is it’s pretty okay, by historical standards, incumbent presidents tend to be reelected. And so the major prediction and I don’t really like making predictions, I just look at history and say, what would we expect? My major prediction is that if the economy stays relatively okay, over the next 11 months between now and the election, Joe Biden will probably get reelected and I know that the polls may not yet make you confident in that and
You shouldn’t be confident every single one of us should be registered to vote and should vote but if there is the strongest argument to be made about the likely reelection of Joe Biden is if the economy in 11 months looks the way it looks today I would be betting on a Biden re election
