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White House officials are becoming “deeply frustrated” with the usually friendly mainstream media’s focus on President Joe Biden’s tanking approval rating as the 2024 campaign cycle begins in earnest.
Biden’s numbers have been falling for most of the past year and, in a growing number of polls, he is behind former President Donald Trump, who is leading the GOP field by a wide margin and appears to be on a glide path to the Republican nomination — even as Biden’s Justice Department attempts to convict Trump on several charges his supporters say are politically motivated.
According to The Hill, “Someone in the Biden orbit also told [the outlet] part of the frustration is the disproportionate media focus on the polls that show Biden losing while ignoring polls that show him winning.”
Though Trump has predicted the economy’s collapse under Biden’s administration, inflation is falling, stock prices are rising, and the unemployment rate is near “historic lows,” White House officials say. In addition, the Consumer Price Index measuring a basket of goods has slipped since the pandemic.
However, per The Hill, economic progress is not getting the coverage needed to sway results in the polls.
A Biden official told The Hill that the lack of coverage is a “deep frustration.”
“One Biden ally said meetings have taken place because of ‘deep frustration’ over polls but that it did not reflect a panic over the president’s prospects,” The Hill reported.
A source from the Biden administration told The Hill that “the meetings are intended to discuss messaging based on his age and his accomplishments. There has been concern among his inner circle that the messaging has not been strong or consistent enough to break through with the public.”
But regardless of how the administration tries to spin the economic news, a majority of Americans, according to most polling, are still feeling the pinch and struggling to make ends meet.
In fact, a new survey is likely to provide Republicans with more political ammunition against him and Democrats in general heading into next year’s elections.
“As of November 2023, 62% of consumers relied on their next paycheck to cover their monthly financial outflows, the PYMNTS and LendingClub survey said. These consumers also own nearly 60% of the credit cards in the U.S. Moreover, 80% of paycheck-to-paycheck consumers own at least two credit cards on average,” Fox Business reported last week.
“The report also said that paycheck-to-paycheck cardholders are more than twice as likely as those not living paycheck-to-paycheck to carry a credit card balance over to the following month. Close to one-third said they reached their credit card limit, an average of $9,200, at least occasionally in the last year,” the outlet reported, citing the data.
U.S. consumers have accumulated an additional $48 billion in credit card debt during the third quarter of 2023, bringing the total owed to $1.08 trillion, as noted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in a recent analysis of household debt.
While Biden has been touting his “Bidenomics” plans and insisting that his economic policies have made the lives of Americans better, what they are telling pollsters is that his policies caused them to spend less this Christmas season and, in many cases, had them working more hours or working another job simply to afford the holidays.
In the survey, Empower’s 2023 holiday spending report, a whopping 74 percent of the 1,000 people polled said that inflation caused them to spend less over the holiday season, and 31 percent said they worked more hours to afford it, Fox Business reported separately.
“The survey shows that over a third (34%) are trimming their budgets in favor of saving this year, while others are cutting back on buying gifts or non-essential expenses like dining out to stay on track,” Empower representative Courtney Burrell said to Fox Business.
