Sunday, April 14, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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A president’s approval rating is often tied to the state of the economy, and the American economy is booming.
The job market has repeatedly blown past expectations. The unemployment rate has remained low, below 4%. In fact, this marks the longest stretch in five decades that the jobless rate has stayed below that threshold.
The stock market is soaring, with all three primary indexes reaching new all-time highs recently. Inflation has fallen from 9.1% in June of 2022 to 3.1%. And real wages are now outpacing inflation. Indeed, the inflation outlook is so positive that the Federal Reserve is projecting three interest rate cuts at some point this year.
So why is President Joe Biden not receiving any credit for the vast improvements? Fareed Zakaria, in his book “Age of Revolutions,” attributes Biden’s 38% approval rating to the fact that “politics are no longer fundamentally driven by economics — that our political preferences are today shaped more by issues of culture, class and tribalism.”
Therefore, a Republican who thought the economy was booming under Trump now sees it in terrible shape under Biden. And vice versa for a Democrat.
In other words, people’s political affiliation, not objective facts, determine their view of the economy. This rise of cultural politics helps explain why Biden has such a dismal approval rating in spite of a robust economy.
