I don’t usually post on Sundays, but Peter Baker’s new New York Times essay that echoes themes and stats deeply familiar to the Hopium community merited a quick send: (gift link):
To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.
But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.
For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.
Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Mr. Trump’s presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.
The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than prepandemic.”
Here’s my most recent version of Baker’s characterization of Biden’s success:
The Biden-Harris job market has been the best since the 1960s. Wage growth, new business formation and the # of job openings per unemployed persons have been at historically elevated levels. Inflation has been beaten, gas prices are low, interest rates are coming down and our recovery from COVID has been the best of any advanced nation in the world. The dollar is strong. GDP growth has hovered around 3% for all four years of Biden’s Presidency and the stock market keeps booming. The uninsured rate is the lowest on record. Through historic levels of domestic production of renewables, oil and gas America is more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. Crime, overdose rates, the flows to the border and the deficit have come way down. Biden’s big three investment bills are creating jobs and opportunities for American workers today and will keep doing so for decades if Trump doesn’t gut them. We’ve begun stripping away the requirement of a four year college degree for government employment and other jobs too. We’ve lowered the price of prescription drugs, capped insulin at $35 and this year all seniors will enjoy a $2,000 Rx price cap. The Iranian-Russian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis in the Middle East has been deeply degraded. The Western alliance has been rejuvenated…..
As I’ve been writing it’s critical that we, as a family, have a robust discussion about why we were not able to effectively tell this story - or more broadly the story of how when we are in power things get better - in the 2024 election.
We will also have to be vigilant about defending the clearly successful parts of the Biden Presidency in the coming years as Republicans will attempt to flush them all down the memory hole, leaving the public with understanding only of our struggles. And that my friends, if they are successful, will make it much harder for us to win in 2025, 2026 or 2028.
More Things To Chew On This Weekend:
A very good new analysis of the 2024 election from Mike Podhorzer
The Washington Post does a deep dive on Elon Musk’s escalating interventions for far-right, pro-Putin political forces in the UK, Europe and North America
My Friday Hopium post, with lots of links to recent readings and interviews and presentations
Enjoy this announcement of a new Trump appointee - “hopefully has learned her lesson”
And yes, what Musk has done in the past week to try to unseat pro-Western, pro-US governments in our closest allies and replace them with ones close to Russia deserves broad condemnation by President Biden and other responsible political leaders here in the US and abroad.
Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon
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