Why Joe Biden won the ‘debate’ (part 1)

A Gallup poll from June 1948 showed Truman trailing Dewey 49% to 36%. In June 1980, Jimmy Carter was ahead of Ronald Reagan 39% to 32%. Everything changed thanks in good part to Reagan’s only debate shortly before the election. As for me all I know is that I’m absolutely not going to take any political polls about this election because there is no contest and when you think about it it’s really not a good climate in which to take political polls. Who is going to poll the people who think that Trump is so absurd right now that they are going to decline to take political polls?

Joe Biden inherited a 6.3% unemployment rate which is now stable at 3.6%. The average unemployment rate during the Trump presidency was 5.28% and during the Biden presidency it is 4.13%. The unemployment rate under Joe Biden reached a lower level than it did under Trump and we are not far from that number now. The money you make from employment often goes a lot farther when you are not paying $400 for insulin shots and when you don’t have to take Air Force One to Moscow to get life-preserving medication. The housing markets have stabilized since mid-2022: Joe Biden is working on it and things have already stabilized. Food inflation doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 1.8% to 3.9%. Biden inherited this trend which continued but it is also stabilizing: in 2023 it was two thirds what it was in 2022, and now we have the lowest rate of grocery inflation that we have had in five years.

Trump claims to have had the greatest economy in the history of the world. The economy rebounded when Biden took office and GDP was 5.7%, higher than any year in the Trump administration, and the forecasted GDP from this year taken along with other years does not look all that different from that of Trump except under Trump you have chaos and instability and with Biden you have an economic rebound. The national debt increased more under Trump and while it has increased significantly under Biden too where exactly did that money go under Trump whereas under Biden we have actual COVID-19 relief as opposed to car trips from the hospital without masks and suggestions that people inject unapproved substances into their bodies. Under Biden we have climate change and clean energy spending whereas Trump does not believe that the oceans will rise as much in the next four hundred years as they did this year. We have increased funding for Medicaid, subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Under Trump we had a major slash in corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%. We had significant increases in military spending each and every year, and yes, we had spending on COVID-19 relief that he sabotaged in all sorts of ways with his absolute lack of leadership on the issue. Biden’s vaccination campaign and economic relief that made it easier for vaccines to be distributed and for people to be tested got us out of a *mess*.

Trump says the only jobs created under Biden are COVID bounceback jobs which is hogwash. If you want to talk about bouncebacks, certain indicators bounced favourably so well under Biden that perhaps they did a bit of an adjustment, which I see as stabilization after the chaos of the Trump administration, but these are normal fluctuations in otherwise positive trends, and Mr. Trump should know that when you have a 14.8% unemployment rate you are *going* to see bounceback!

The increase in inflation happened thanks to COVID-19 which, if Trump had approached it with the alacrity and care that Biden did, probably would not have gotten as out of control as it did, but why did Trump pride himself on not wearing masks and treat the whole pandemic like a joke? Well, he’s evil, for one, but more than that, you can then blame your successor for things that happen during *your* administration as a result of your playing games with the lives of millions of people. All of the factors that led to inflation are things that were set into motion while Trump was in office and that, as far as I can tell, was probably his strategy: let millions of people die, disrupt supply chains, create chaos in the labour markets, and then when President Biden takes over all the numbers will look like they are responding to his actions, brilliant! So Joe Biden does the right thing and provides a stimulus and Trump is going to say that is the cause of inflation when it is ultimately part of the solution! It just takes a while for numbers to settle and when you start screwing things up it takes a while for inflation to go through the roof — inflation is a lagging indicator!!! What is not being talked about is the numbers *have* settled and we are in a good place for positive, sustainable growth *if* Joe Biden wins the presidency!

Donald J. Trump indeed ended up with fewer jobs than he started with at the beginning of his presidency and he intentionally botched the COVID response to try to put this on whoever might succeed in usurping what he thinks is his rightful throne. While Trump is writing love letters to the dictator of North Korea, and being the anti-Mirror Ball saying every which contradictory thing to get votes, such as claiming that he would actually consider acknowledging the Palestinian state even after he moved the Israeli embassy to what is supposed to be the international city of Jerusalem which is fighting words and the biggest blow any president has ever made to Palestinian statehood yet, under Joe Biden the US does not have citizens in combat dying anywhere in the world!