I & I Editorial BoardWhen he wasn’t admiring his White House portrait, Barack Obama managed to say a nice thing about President Joe Biden. He must have been joking, though, because what he said defies reality.
“Joe, it is now America’s good fortune to have you as president,” Obama said. “The country is better off than when you took office. We should all be deeply grateful for that.”
Our “good fortune”? Let’s review just how much “better off” we all are thanks to Biden and his fellow Democrats.
COVID deaths: When Biden took office on the promise that he had a plan that would end COVID, the official death count was 424,318. Today it is over 1.044 million. In other words, there have been nearly 620,000 COVID deaths on Biden’s watch. And that’s despite all the interventions Biden claimed would end the pandemic. Are the families of those 620,000 people better off?
Inflation: Despite the recent decline in pump prices, gasoline costs 91% more than it did on January 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index. Food prices are up 14%. Overall prices have climbed 13% in the time Biden has been president. To put that last number in perspective, the overall increase in the CPI during President Donald Trump’s entire four years in office was just 7%.
Real earnings: How about workers, are they better off? While wages have climbed, they haven’t nearly kept pace with Bidenflation. As a result, workers have seen their real wages decline by 5%, which works out to an effective average pay cut of $2,726 a year. Does that, in Obama’s mind, make them better off?
Financial stress: Inflation and a sluggish economy have had an impact on people’s sense of financial stress. When Biden took office, the IBD/TIPP Financial Related Stress Index stood at 61.6. Anything over 50 indicates increased stress. (TIPP is also a polling partner of Issues & Insights.) That was understandable since the economy was still reeling from the COVID lockdowns the previous year. But the financial stress index was 69.3 in July 2022, or 12.5% higher. Anyone want to argue that people are better off under Biden when it comes to their financial worries?
Economic optimism: The IBD/TIPP economic optimism index stood at 50.1 when Biden took office, and then climbed during the first few months of his presidency. But once Biden’s economic policies started to take effect, confidence plunged. It is now a desperately low 38.1. The last time it was this low, Biden was vice president.
Unity: When it comes to how united the country is, well, our differences are also worse since Biden took office, despite his solemn pledge to bring the country back together after Trump’s supposedly highly divisive term. The TIPP unity index stands at 28.5, which is down from 37.8 back in April 2021 – the first month TIPP began tracking this. Even Democrats overwhelmingly think Biden has failed to unite the country, with the index plunging from 53.7 in April 2021 to 35.8 today.
Stock market: On the last trading day before Biden took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 30,997. Last week, it closed at 32,151. On paper, that’s a gain of 4% – which over the span of 18 months isn’t much to brag about. (Over those same months in Trump’s administration, the Dow shot up 37%.) After accounting for inflation, investors have lost money under Biden.
Crime: The number of aggravated assaults was up 4% in the first half of 2022 compared with the first half of 2021, according to the Council on Criminal Justice. Robberies are up 19%. Motor vehicle thefts are up 15%. While murder rates are down slightly from 2021, they are still higher than they were in the first half of 2020 and way above where they were before COVID.
Direction of the country: The week after Biden took office, 61% of the public said the country was on the wrong track, according to the Real Clear Politics average. Today, more than 70% say the country is on the wrong track. If there’s a better indication of just how much “better off” people believe we are under Biden, it’s hard to top that.
Finally, there’s the fact that a majority of Americans now favor impeaching Biden. A new Rasmussen survey finds that 52% of likely voters want him impeached. Even among Democrats, almost a third (32%) want him impeached.
Ask yourself, are you “deeply grateful” for how things have turned out under Biden? If not, what are you going to do about it?
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Not better off. Lost $20K in investments since Biden assumed the stage. As a septuagenarian, the hikes in gas prices and prices in stores have an impact. America’s status abroad has weakened and we send billions to Ukraine while ignoring the invasion on our southern border and the homeless in our major cities. Systemically, the only action I have available is in the voting booth and I encourage others to take action there as well…this year in particular.
He;s kidding himself. joey biden is obama’s proxy in his third term. He’s the invisible president responsible for all this crap.
Obama is telling Biden what to do and say. This is Obama’s third term and it is a disaster.
Inflation skyrocketing, markets down, real income down, all efforts to move manufacturing for American consumed goods to America abandoned and jobs moving overseas, people have to borrow money for food, tens of $Billions in energy exports lost, farmers being forced worldwide to stop growing desperately needed food, America on the brink of WWIII, the new American Gestapo (FBI and DOJ) are kicking in the doors of political opponents, most of the western world about to live a very cold, very hungry winter… yeah things are wonderful under Joe Biden. About the only thing “good” under Biden is that a bunch of Democrat-controlled, Brownshirt thugs called ANTIFA and BLM aren’t burning down American cities and murdering American citizens and police officers. Biden, Biden, he’s our man….
Americans are using their credit cards to pay bills and buy food.
The first photograph I saw of the Obama’s portrait unveiling it looked like Michelle was actually unveiling and standing next to a wax man, a replica of Barry, he’s just so fake.
I wonder how long it will take for Team Biden and other Democrats to figure out that Green Energy cannot possibly replace fossil fuel.
Maybe they know that but, don’t care about peons freezing to death.
Every policy decision has backfired on the DC Elites. The DC Elites are beyond incompetent, but they do control the media and blast out Obama non-sense like this. Why does the media do this, they know it is lies, but they go along with the elites, no backbone or courage to challenge. We the People now must place them in the minority, for a long, long time.
For the media, it is about ratings, ego, and profits.
All democrats have are lies, slander, and censorship to support their treasonous, psychotic false narratives
Thee “basement obama”. WHEN whitehats, Rice too!!!!
I am curious if you share the viewpoint that there really isn’t a functional president in Joe Biden? Who pulls his strings is the question….?
OBAMA: “I’ve said this before, people would ask me, ‘Knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term?’ And I used to say, ‘You know what, if I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front-man or a front-woman and they had an ear piece in and I was just in my basement with my sweats looking through the stuff and I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I would be fine with that.’
Yeah maybe your fine with that, us not so much.
Obama means that the Washington Elites are better off under Biden, which is true. As for how the average American is doing, he doesn’t know and couldn’t care less.
And they fawned and gushed at his every word.
I’m sure the MSM will be posting something similar in 3….2….1….Oh wait. They will mindnumbingly pass on those words of wisdom.
We all have a pretty good idea why Obama thinks it is our good fortune to have Biden as president. It is because he himself is the one directing all of this chaos..
Obama is auditioning to be the head of the Ministry of Truth. He knows quite well that things have gone to Hell under Biden and the Usurpers. However, as an absolute partisan, he must say otherwise in defense of his party. It’s the Democrats’ current strategy, since there have been no positive developments to take credit for.
We’re still slightly better off than the denizens of Oceania. The Left hasn’t succeeded in canceling or destroying all countervailing voices. But I’m sure they’re working on it.
You must be kidding. Take a good look around this country, all cities governed by DEMS are in dire straits. CRIME, illegal aliens, inflation, energy. YOU would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to notice these things.
Well, he’s not lying. Obama is better off under Biden. He only has to have one other person agree with him to make it “we.” I am sure Big Mike will go along with that.
Let’s consider three major achievements of President Trump:
1 No one since Woodrow Wilson did as much to make America’s race relations the way they used to be,
2 Millions of people received inheritances from their parents and grandparents many years earlier than they expected because of Trump’s leadership in fighting Covid19, and
3 Trump’s tax cut gave the top 1/100th of 1% (about 10,000 households altogether) $20,000,000 per year additional income. At least 200,000,000 American citizens received $5 to $10 additional income, every year — one lunch at a casual restaurant once a year, excluding beverages, sales tax and a tip.
The Bad Orange Man is no longer in the White House. That in itself makes everything better for the Left.