Bidenomics is working but all the corporate media will talk about is Donald Trump (and Hunter Biden)

We need to get the message out!

If you only watch and read corporate media, you would think Donald Trump is actually President. After all, they cover Trump far more than the actual President, Joe Biden.

It feels like 2016 all over again when then CBS CEO Les Moonves admitted that Trump’s candidacy “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Moonves added, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun. … (T)his is going to be a very good year for us,” concluding, “Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

And when the corporate media does cover President Biden, it’s generally a negative story or one about Hunter Biden where the media is somehow equating Hunter’s personal legal troubles with Trump being charged with 71 felonies—including 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act.

That is why most Americans don’t know that Bidenomics is working. And I don’t mean just in the sense of reporting on job growth from the time Biden took office to today—an astounding 13 million plus. It’s the recent economic data—some of it from consumers while others from experts—that demands far more press.

Let’s start from what I view as the most important economic indicator: How, we the people are feeling about the economy. Earlier this week we learned that, “U.S. consumer confidence shot to the highest level in two years.”  This metric is measured by the Conference Board’s monthly Consumer Confidence Index which hit 117 in July, rising from 110.1 the month before.  This is well above the economists prediction that the index would climb to 111.8.

Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, in a statement Tuesday noted, “Greater confidence was evident across all age groups, and among consumers earning incomes less than $50,000 and those making more than $100,000.”

The reason for this spike in consumer confidence-as experts note—is twofold: Inflation coming down and job growth remaining robust. And both are driven by Biden policies—despite the corporate media ignoring this fact.

When it comes to inflation, in June we saw it drop to 3 percent--the lowest since March 2021. Keep in mind just last June, inflation was at 9%, the highest since November 1981.

Why did it come down? Well in part because of the Biden appointed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell championing interest rate increases and because of  Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act which focused on lowering prescription drugs, health care, energy costs and more.

This explains the very relief inflation relief we are seeing. For example, in June, gasoline prices were down more than 26% from a year ago, when pump prices hit an all-time high of more than $5 a gallon.

When it comes to jobs, the media covers the current 3.6% unemployment rate—just about the lowest since the 1960’s—as occurring by happenstance. It wasn’t. Look where the nation was in Trump’s last two full months in office: Unemployment was stuck at 6.7%, with Black unemployment at 10% and Hispanic at 9.3%. Today, the overall rate is 3.6%, while Black unemployment is down to 6 percent and 4.3% for Hispanics.

How did the US economy recover more quickly than the other first world nations? That was because Biden and Democrats--who then controlled both chambers of Congress--enacted legislation from a massive Covid relief program to the Inflation Reduction Act to the Infrastructure law—all which both saved and created jobs.

In fact, earlier this week Wall Street’s Morgan Stanley credited President Biden’s economic policies with “driving an unexpected surge in the U.S. economy that is so significant that the bank announced a “sizable upward revision” to its estimates for U.S. gross domestic product.” Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, in a research note released last Thursday noted that Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure.”

Morgan Stanley is right as the economic data released Thursday morning backed up. We learned that the U.S. economy grew at 2.4% in the second quarter of this year, better than the 2% consensus estimate from Dow Jones. As CNBC explained Thursday, “Consumer spending powered the solid quarter,” with “widespread growth” in sector after sector, such as a  4.7% rise in the purchase of vehicles, computers and appliances--much higher than the 1.5% estimate.”

And as CNBC highlighted, “Perhaps as important, inflation was held in check through the period. The personal consumption expenditures price index increased 2.6%, down from a 4.1% rise in the first quarter and well below the Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 3.2%.”

Where are the headlines tying this economic success to Biden’s policies?! Nowhere! Instead, it’s all Trump—along with a big helping of Hunter Biden. 

I’m not suggesting that journalists in mainstream media outlets (outside Fox News etc.) present non-stop Trump coverage because they sincerely want Trump to win in 2024. But what I am saying is that the corporate executives who dictate the content are driven by the pursuit of ratings/clicks because that’s good for both the corporate and their own bottom lines.

But there is a very real and dangerous political cost for us to this. As Angelo Carusone—the President of Media Matters—recently explained on my SiriusXM show, even though much of the coverage of Trump is negative, it is still resulting in Trump maintaining media “narrative dominance” since “most of the stories are so centered around him.” As Carusone warned, when “you have narrative dominance—like Trump has--you control the agenda. You control the terms of the discussion--even if it may be perceived as negative, like when they are reporting on Trump’s crimes or potential crimes.”

And very importantly, as Carusone highlighted, when the stories are all Trump centric, “he’s crowding out the positive things or the important information that people would need to have about Joe Biden and other things that would influence the decision making around an election.”

This is so much of what we are seeing today. Since corporate media is all Trump, all the time, it squeezes out stories about Biden’s economic achievements.

What is the answer? One is calling out the media bias the same way the right has long claimed there is a “liberal bias” in the media. As Carusone has told me many times, media criticism can impact coverage.

Second, we need to be the ones to amplify the successes of Bidenomics. Share it with friends, co-workers and others on social media, make TikTok videos, write op-eds, write an article for Substack, etc.! Today we have so many ways to reach people.

The 2024 election is the most important of our lives, which means each of us can and must play a role. Helping to amplify the message about President Biden’s economic success is one way to do just that!

---