The irrepressible Tressie McMillan Cottom tells us once again in the NYT that the economy, in spite of all of the positive numbers, sucks. This time, she focuses a bit more narrowly on the expiration of the additional pandemic welfare state benefits. She thinks the campaign narrative should take that into account.
Well, of course it should! But instead of driving blue team morale down by whining about how bad things are and implicitly blaming Biden, the objective should be to assign blame where it belongs–on Joe Manchin and the Republicans. They’re the ones who are responsible for Biden’s inability to remake the dollar store economy. If the reactionary bastards can be overcome, happy days can be here again! Get out and vote for the welfare state, young people!
That’s an actual program. It would be inflationary, and higher interest rates may put it beyond our reach. It would involve trade-offs that weren’t necessary during the depths of the pandemic. But it at least would make political sense.