Well, this is awkward.
Undermining most of what the business press has done to try to portray the post-recession U.S. economy as performing adequately under President Barack Obama, Bill Daley, Obama’s former chief of staff, told CNBC today that Hillary Clinton "can’t run as the third term of Barack Obama economically," because the recovery has been "uneven" and has only benefited "a small slice" of U.S. households.
Daley appeared (HT Washington Free Beacon) on the network's "Squawk Box," which I daresay was not the only place where squawking was heard this morning:
Here is most of Nick Gass's report on Daley's appearance at the Politico:
Barack Obama former aide: Economic recovery has benefited ‘very small slice’
President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff said on Monday that the uneven recovery will prevent Hillary Clinton from running as an extension of Obama’s economic policies.
William Daley said the reality is that the economic recovery has benefited only a “very small slice” of the country.
... Hillary Clinton’s “challenge is going to be to come up with different plans,” he said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “No doubt about it, she can’t run as the third term of Barack Obama economically.”
How can this be?
In late February, Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, openly admired how Obama was "taunting" Republicans because the economy "is improving under his watch."
In late March, the AP's Martin Crutsinger went further, falsely claiming that the currrent "expansion" may be a "durable" one for the ages:
But like the turtle versus the hare, slow and steady may win the day. The current expansion will mark its sixth anniversary in June, meaning it will have already lasted 14 months longer than the average expansion since the end of World War II. Before the war, periods of expansion tended to be shorter and the economy more volatile.
As seen below, the current "expansion" is only three quarters long, even as Crutsinger claims that it's nearing six years:
A continuous "expansion" needs to have entirely positive numbers (I can't believe I need to explain this). This recovery doesn't; therefore, the "current expansion" has lasted only two quarters, not the 22 Crutsinger claimed.
All Crutsinger can truthfully say is that as the economy, during the worst "recovery" since World War II — a "recovery" which by some measurements hardly performed any better than the economy did in the Depression-era 1930s during its first four years — at least hasn't slipped back into an officially- or normally-defined recession. Big flippin' whoop.
So Hillary can't run on the economic policies of the past seven years (going back to late spring 2007, which marked the beginning of what I then began calling the Pelosi-Obama-Reid (POR) economy, and she is making improving the plight of the "middle class" (while apparently intervening in nearly every aspect of their lives) the cornerstone of her campaign.
So I guess she's going to promise a middle-class tax cut.
Or maybe not, because someone else promised that 22 years ago — and didn't deliver. Instead, her husband, President Bill Clinton, delivered a middle-class tax increase.
As I noted earlier, this is all very awkward.
Finally , the Free Beacon's Alyssa Canobbio noted that, in her words, Daley also said that "the recovery has been good for the country." So only a few have benefited, but it's been good for everyone. In other words, the Obama economy has been the no-trickle-down economy — and for Bill Daley and many Democrats, that's good.
Glad we have that straight.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
