[Editor’s Note:  This is one of several articles from Jacobin magazine by Branko Marcetic, together comprising a fair and balanced post-mortem on the Biden administration, both domestic/economic and foreign policy accomplishments and failures. I subscribe to Jacobin because of its consistently intelligent socialist/working class perspective. In this article, Marcetic shows conclusively how liberal pundits of the popular media (MSNBC, CNN, etc) promoted an over-rosy narrative about the economy during the Biden administration. Don]

It turns out misinformation did help decide the election: the misinformation coming from liberal pundits. They told Democratic Party leaders that voters who were unhappy with the economy were simply wrong.

EXCERPTS:

The Biden years saw very real and growing hardship among US households after 2021, economic struggles that Americans reported in Federal Reserve surveys. But it was also plain to see in objective facts and figures: spiking eviction numbers, record homelessness, all-time high numbers of cost-burdened renters, rising food insecurity, explosion in food bank demand, and record-high credit card debt and skyrocketing interest rates to pay it off — all topped off by steadily rising poverty, including a historic spike in child poverty.

[…]

Take Morning Joe, the favorite political show of the president and Washington insiders more broadly. This message about a “disconnect” between voters’ feelings and the supposed objective economic reality was ubiquitous on the influential cable news program over the last two years, led by the titular host himself. Reportedly doubling as Biden’s occasional off-air informal advisor, Joe Scarborough’s rave reviews of the economy were, as the election neared, often paired with a slavish defense of the president, his record, and his place at the top of the ticket.

[…]

An August 2023 appearance by former MSNBC host Chris Matthews was one of the rare times the show acknowledged the economic pain in the country, with Matthews reminding the panel that “this still remains for the vast majority of people a paycheck-to-paycheck economy” and that talking about the price of bananas coming down didn’t change that. But for the panel, the solution to this was either “out of the president’s hands” or to just acknowledge people’s economic pain in speeches.

This wasn’t limited to Morning Joe. The entirety of MSNBC — similarly oriented around flattering the president and his party — was filled, on air and online, with pro-Democratic pundits scratching their heads over why Biden was getting no credit for an economy benefiting the working class, talking up the same selection of positive “normal metrics” while ignoring the negative signs, determining that voters were wrong or delusional, and insisting they had to be told how good things were.

Even the typically insightful Chris Hayes spent segments extolling how “astoundingly well” the economy was doing, calling Biden’s presidency “the most successful macroeconomic stewardship of any president in my lifetime,” and concluding that partisan blinders had left voters unable “to assess the facts.”

One of the serial offenders was anchor Stephanie Ruhle, a former Wall Street banker. Over the past two years, Ruhle has insisted “we have the best economy in the world” with “an extraordinary stock market run,” blamed the media for having “instilled this fear and unhappiness in people, and said that “we need an economic explainer” because “people are confused” and “doing quite well.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE:

https://jacobin.com/2024/12/liberal-pundits-democrats-economic-pain

SEE ALSO MARCETIC’S ASSESSMENT OF BIDENS FOREIGN POLICY HERE:

On Foreign Policy, Biden Leaves a Global Trail of Destruction