By regularly griping about the supposed mystery of why so many voters say they prefer Donald Trump or another Republican, President Biden’s pundit backers mainly expose their own elitist ignorance.
Because if they’d been shopping to feed their families these last few years, they would have noticed the average grocery bill has shot up 25%.
And wage growth hasn’t remotely kept pace: It rose less than inflation for Biden’s first two years, and while the 2023 stats aren’t final, it wasn’t a ton better last year.
Inflation has eased some in recent months, but remains well above 3% — and may well spike back up as Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping create new global supply-chain disruptions.
Perhaps because they drive electric vehicles, the pro-Biden pundits may have missed the huge hike in pump prices on his watch — a daily nightmare driven largely by his policies.
And while Democrats may find it convenient to forget, plenty of voters will recall how this president spent months insisting inflation was “transitory” even as it was raging up toward 9%.
Oh, and few pundits are all that young, so they also lack personal experience of how high interest rates (raised to combat Bidenflation) are a huge reason why buying a first home is increasingly out of reach for the middle class.
All a huge contrast with the three pre-COVID Trump years, when median, inflation-adjusted incomes rose more than 10% — and lower-income earners made faster gains than they had in decades.
Of course it’s not just the economy: Anti-Biden voters also see the collapse of border enforcement — and are more likely to feel the impact of the illegal migrant surge than the nation’s elites.
Voters also likely recall the disaster that was Biden’s bugout from Afghanistan (which he insists was a “success”) — and can’t help noticing the major wars in Europe and the Middle East that erupted after that brutal sign of beyond-weak American leadership.
Leadership that looks even weaker every time the fast-aging prez does any public speaking that doesn’t involve a teleprompter (and sometimes even then).
This president’s poll ratings are under water on just about everything, and the reasons are pretty obvious to the average Joe and Jane.
Bottom line: The pundit class’ confusion over Biden’s unpopularity is just one more proof of George Orwell’s maxim: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
