By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – May 10, 2024

The average annual inflation rate during his Presidency is 5.5%.Under Trump it was 1.9%.

If our friends on the left want to stop berating voters and admit reality, they might look at the chart nearby from Dan Clifton of Strategas Research Partners. It compares the average annual consumer-price inflation rate across the first term of the last eight presidencies. As you can see, Mr. Biden’s average inflation rate of 5.5% is second only to Jimmy Carter’s average rate of 10.3%, and Mr. Carter wasn’t re-elected.

Democrats searching for a silver lining might point to the 5.1% average under Ronald Reagan, who won re-election in a landslide in 1984. But what matters in that case is inflation compared to what it had been. The Gipper campaigned against the Carter inflation, promised to do something about it, and with the help of the Paul Volcker Federal Reserve, he did. The average inflation rate fell by half in his first four years, and voters could feel it and rewarded him for it.

Mr. Biden’s inflation performance is the opposite. Voters became inured over six Presidencies, from Reagan to Donald Trump, to falling or low inflation. Then, all of a sudden under Mr. Biden, inflation surged, hitting a peak of 9.1% on an annual basis in June 2022.

The President keeps telling voters that inflation has fallen on his watch to 3.5% from that peak, but voters remember how low inflation was for some 40 years before Mr. Biden took office and went on his historic spending spree. Americans can also see that prices aren’t falling back to where they were when Mr. Trump was President. They know their average real earnings have declined since Mr. Biden took office.

Voters aren’t stupid, and this is why they don’t like Mr. Biden’s economic record.

To see this article in its entirety and to subscribe to others like it, please choose to read more.

Source: Why Biden Is Losing on the Economy – WSJ