To hear President Obama tell it, average Americans might think the economy is terrible, but that’s only because they can’t appreciate how good things have been since he took office.
Forget that people are dropping out of the workforce, he nudges, because real jobs are being created.
Obama is leaving office, but the woman he wants to succeed him, Hillary Clinton, still needs to sell that line of BS to a skeptical public looking for economic relief as the 2016 presidential election approaches.
Can she do it? It’s hard to say. But one thing is certain: Clinton’s sales (or snow) job just got a lot harder after Thursday’s GDP report — which showed the great Obama economy barely growing during the first quarter of the year, underscoring the bad economic hand she’ll be forced to play this election season.
Obama, as usual, is in denial, as evidenced by a long and lugubrious New York Times Magazine article this week where he and the author attempt to put the best spin on his record by insisting his economic achievements have been grossly “underappreciated” because of the size of the mess he was handed in January 2009.
Sure, the headline numbers look great — 5 percent unemployment, compared to the 10 percent rate he was stuck with during the height of the Great Recession. But dig deeper and you’ll find trouble: Unemployment is down in large measure because people have given up looking for jobs.
The deficit is falling because the GOP Congress has held the line on spending, and the market is up because the Fed has kept interest rates at rock-bottom levels so investors have nowhere else to go but to buy stocks.
And now, the final shoes seem like they could soon drop. The absence of real economic growth is making it harder to deny the fact that the past seven-plus years of massive taxes, over-regulation, ObamaCare disruptions and the constant drumbeat of class warfare are hurting, not helping, the average American worker.
How worried is Hillary about possibly inheriting an economic basket case? Very, I’m told by Democratic Party insiders. She knows the Obama recovery, such as it is, has been possibly the most anemic in modern American history, despite a much-ballyhooed “stimulus” plan in his first year in the office and the Federal Reserve printing massive amounts of money.
Hillary also knows full well that economic cycles run about seven years — and, as weak as the Obama recovery has been, things could get worse.
Which is why her explanation of economic policy has been so weirdly schizophrenic in this campaign.
She has all but ignored the economic recipe of her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton (lower taxes and fewer regulations), that brought massive growth during the 1990s in order to win over the left wing of her party and fend off a challenge by socialist Bernie Sanders. With that, she has advocated higher taxes and an expanded welfare state.
Hillary is clearly walking a tightrope on the economy: She needs to say people are hurting without directly attacking her old boss for the lousy economy that’s responsible for their pain.
So far it has worked, but there’s good reason to believe it won’t for long.
Of course, one bad quarter in a sea of mediocre ones won’t break a presidential campaign. Clinton is also running against a divided GOP field, where the presumptive front-runner, Donald Trump, has negatives even higher than hers.
But it doesn’t hurt that Trump can boast of his background as a billionaire businessman who has created both wealth and jobs for the masses.
And Clinton, her Democratic allies on Wall Street tell me, also knows voters are willing to overlook a lot — even Trump’s obnoxious bluster — if they think he can make their economic lives better.
If Thursday’s GDP number (and 210-point Dow drop) are any indication, the economy — and thus their lives — could get considerably worse. If that happens, Clinton’s chances of being elected president will get worse, too — no matter whom the Republicans nominate.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business senior correspondent.