President Joe Biden goes into next year’s election with a vexing challenge: Just as the U.S. economy is getting stronger, people are still feeling horrible about it.
Pollsters and economists say there has never been as wide a gap between the underlying health of the economy and public perception. The divergence could be a decisive factor in whether the Democrat secures a second term next year. Republicans are seizing on the dissatisfaction to skewer Biden, while the White House is finding less success as it tries to highlight economic progress.
“Things are getting better and people think things are going to get worse — and that’s the most dangerous piece of this," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has worked with Biden. Lake said voters no longer want to just see inflation rates fall — rather, they want an outright decline in prices, something that last happened on a large scale during the Great Depression.
“Honestly, I’m kind of mystified by it,” she said.
Groceries really are the problem. I lived comfortably up until about a year ago. Now the checking account gets pretty low every couple weeks. And that’s with decent raises for me and my wife. I don’t even care about gas prices except in how they add to the cost of everything that gets shipped. Food prices are killing us.
Yeah I went from not having to really check prices when I shopped to having to be careful so I don’t accidentally spend $200/week.
A bag of ruffles, which I swear is only a tiny bit bigger than the size that used to exist between the snack size bags and the regular bags, was something like $6.75. It’s legitimately cheaper to get the gourmet kettle cooked chips.
Just stupid expensive for some things.