For basically the entire Biden presidency, the corporate media have been trying to sell Americans on the idea that the economy is as good as it could possibly be, given the circumstances. But the messaging hasn’t resonated with voters, and the President’s poll numbers on the economy remain well underwater. In response, Biden’s frustrated media allies have started complaining about voter ignorance and bemoaning that he has been denied “credit” for the “fantastic” economy.
See the compilation below for a taste of how outlandish some of the media’s excuses have gotten:
Of course, the reason the corporate media are desperately insisting voters are wrong about the economy is because they want to boost Biden’s chances in the 2024 election. The administration itself has even tried instructing journalists on how to cover the economy, and it appears to have paid off for them. In late 2021, the White House held a series of private meetings with the heads of major news outlets, in which administration officials pressured the media to aggressively push any and all positive economic news, no matter how small.
Shortly thereafter, CNN’s coverage of oil and gas prices went from 77 percent negative to 79 percent positive, and suddenly almost every anchor on the network was hyping the recent 5¢-per-gallon drop refueling costs. “Relief at the pump,” they chanted excitedly.
No matter how bad Biden’s poll numbers get, these journalists will never treat them as an accurate reflection of economic conditions. As a result, many Biden stooges in the media have begun talking about the existence of a so-called “disconnect” between the state of the economy and voter sentiment.
Journalists have crafted a variety of excuses for why this mysterious disconnect exists — all of which amount to, essentially, the polls are wrong. On January 19, MSNBC host Chris Hayes suggested that perhaps Americans just weren’t paying close enough attention to the economy:
If people aren’t paying attention to it, then it’s very hard to go out and take credit. And especially when it comes to the Biden administration, they haven’t been getting nearly enough credit for a whole bunch of good stuff, like the economy.
That same evening, Hayes’s colleague Stephanie Ruhle theorized that perhaps the real culprit was blind partisanship: “Are we going to get to the point where facts do not matter, and for the economy example, people are going to feel the way that aligns with their political party?”
But easily the most absurd rational came from CNN’s John Berman back in July of 2023: voters just “like being unhappy.”
Unfortunately for these self-appointed Biden surrogates in the media, telling voters not to believe their lying wallets is not a winning campaign strategy. If Americans continue to feel pain at the gas pump and the grocery store, no amount of kooky rationalizing by Stephanie Ruhle is going to change that.
