It’s the Biden vs. Trump Economy—and Hell No, It’s Not Even Close
The second issue is the broader comparison of the two economies. Trump’s pre-pandemic economy, as I’ve written before, was good. Trump haters can’t deny it. It wasn’t because of anything he did. He passed a tax cut for the rich. It goosed demand a little, and it did help the stock market. Median household income rose dramatically in one year, from 2018 to 2019.
But it was not the greatest economy in the history of the universe. Trump’s jobs numbers in his first two years lagged behind Barack Obama’s in his last two, 4.5 million to 5.2 million. And both are way behind Biden’s first two-year total of nearly 11 million. And wages, as I noted above, are up. And they’re especially up for the middle class and the poor. This is what “middle-out economics” means.
Granted, Democrats have to be careful how they talk about all this. But they have to find a way, and it has to be completely free of the backtracking and apologetics Democrats so often display. Jobs are up. Wages are up. The stock market is way up. Inequality is down. The deficit is down. Big laws passed under Biden are opening factories and putting people to work. It’s all true.