The Economy Is Awesome and Here's Why That's Bad for Biden 🙄
The Economy Is Awesome and Here's Why That's Bad for Biden 🙄
Plus: Sleepy Don can't stay awake.
Oops, he did it again: Here’s Frank Runyeon reporting from the courtroom on Day 2 of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial:
Trump's head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head doops for a third time, he shakes his shoulders. Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open.
Once again, the universe has done Trump a favor. If video was allowed in the courtroom and we had tape of this obese old man nodding off because he doesn’t even have the vigor to stay awake during a criminal trial, this election would be over.1
The Newsletters:
Kristol & Egger: Biden should run as FDR in 1940.
Press Pass
Joe Perticone reports that House Republicans are now ready to pass all of the things: aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and also forcing the sale of TikTok, and also seizing Russian assets, and—wait. Do we really think Mike Johnson has the juice to make this happen?
Here’s Joe:
Remember the comprehensive foreign aid package that already passed the Senate? If the House were to vote on that, it could get to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law by mid-week . . . However, that’s not the path the House’s Republican majority wants to take. . . . [H]ere is how you should expect things to unfold.
Johnson is moving four bills, which will be allowed to have amendments. The bills will be considered and voted on separately but combined under a single rule.
The four bills will be:
Israel aid
Ukraine aid
Taiwan aid
A convoluted package that includes a TikTok ban, a lend-lease act to reduce red tape in supplying military aid to Ukraine (the lend-lease for Ukraine expired on September 30, 2023), and an authorization for the United States to sell seized Russian assets.
While it’s not a particularly complicated plan, this is the 118th Congress: The political reality is what makes things complicated. . . .
If Johnson can get all the four amended bills through the House in one piece by the end of the week—and it’s a big if, especially considering that representatives must have 72 hours to read the text of a bill before voting on it—the bills will then go on to the Senate, where each will face its own hurdles, although that chamber is far more amenable to legislation of great importance.
If Johnson moves forward with the foreign aid bills, it will likely trigger a motion to vacate the chair by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.). Greene has already introduced this motion, but she hasn’t yet made it privileged (the mechanism that actually forces the vote to occur).
Later in this morning’s House Republican Conference meeting, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told Speaker Johnson that he will cosponsor Greene’s motion to vacate and that Johnson should pre-announce his resignation. After the meeting, Johnson told reporters, “I regard myself as a wartime speaker . . .”
Read the whole thing. It seems like one of two outcomes is likely: Either these bills pass, or Mike Johnson’s speakership blows up.
It would be entertaining, if it wasn’t so important.
The Dark Side
A.B. and I were back yesterday to explain why everything is terrible and America is on a rocket-sled to hell. It’s a great show. You should watch it.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
We’ve reached the ne plus ultra of Here Is Some Good News and Also Why It’s Bad for Biden headline writing. I present to you an April 13 story in the Washington Post by Abha Bhattarai and Tyler Pager. (Don’t click the link yet.)
The piece is about the current economic indicators we’re seeing in the March reports: Job growth, wage growth, consumer spending—all headed in the right direction. The economy is, the piece declares, “booming.”
Now, are you ready for the two headlines the Post gave the piece?
Before I make your head explode, this is the part where I say that you should join Bulwark+ because we don’t do happy talk, but we also don’t pull the type of nonsense where we say “Puppies were spotted at the White House, here’s why that’s bad for Biden.”
If we want a better media, we have to build it. That’s what we’re doing here and we’d love it if you joined us.
Okay, so back to the Post.
Here’s Headline #1:
And here’s Headline #2:
Here is a real sentence written by a real person at the Washington Post: “The economy’s unfettered strength is becoming more of a political liability for the White House.”
Are you forking kidding me?
We are deep into heads-I-win, tails-you-lose territory. Would it also be a political liability for the White House if, I dunno, we were experiencing deflation and the economy was shrinking? If unemployment was rising? If wage growth was stagnant?
Pray tell, describe the economic conditions which augur political benefits for Joseph Robinette Biden?
My two complaints:
(1) The piece is wrong on the merits: We have seen a small—but measurable—increase in Biden’s poll numbers over the last month. He is not being harmed by the economy. Or at least, his political prospects are improving, so if the economy is causing him harm, that debit is being overbalanced by something else that’s working in his favor.
(2) The Post isn’t providing analysis, it’s manufacturing a rationalization. As I’ve written before, if you came down from Mars and looked at all of the economic data and had to guess who was winning the election right now, you’d think Biden was on track for a landslide. The fact that he isn’t indicates that something interesting is going on. Instead of investigating that interesting thing, the Post is trying to pretend that everything is normal. Which is what causes them to say, Uhhh, Biden’s not doing so hot. And the economy is great. So . . . here’s why having a great economy is bad for Biden!
Oh, who am I kidding: The videotape wouldn’t hurt Trump at all. Sigh.