Atlantic Columnist Is Mad That Americans Are Better at Bidenomics Math Than He Is

Bidenomics has at least one believer outside of President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols is so devoted to the manufactured branding concept that he’s disregarded grade school math in service of it, and he’s upset with those of us who won’t do the same.

A recent Wall Street Journal survey showed that exclusive group includes just about three-quarters of the country (PDF). As Nichols observed on X, “74 percent of registered voters think inflation is headed in the wrong direction.”

“There is no reasoning with this many people being this wrong,” lamented the self-styled expert about the foolish, ungrateful masses. “It’s not possible to shovel against that tide.”

What Nichols hasn’t stopped to consider here is what he’s never stopped to consider anywhere: What if he’s the ignorant one? And here – as is so often the case – he is.

According to the Department of Labor, inflation refers to the “general upward price movement of goods and services in an economy.” In common parlance, consumers measure inflation by whether they’re paying more for things than they used to.

It is true that the rate at which prices are increasing has gone down. Indeed, it would have been difficult to maintain the rate at which prices were increasing for the first two years of Biden’s term in office.

An analysis performed in March of this year found that Biden had overseen price increases that outstripped those observed during every president since Jimmy Carter and found that across a wide range of categories, consumers were paying 15% more than they were when Biden was inaugurated.

For food, that number was as high as 18.3%; for energy, it was a whopping 37.2%.

That’s not all Biden’s fault — although the trillions more in discretionary spending has obviously been to consumers’ detriment — and it is of course a good thing that prices are no long skyrocketing at the historic rate seen over the last two years. But one could hardly expect Americans to interpret a decrease in the rate at which prices are still increasing as a sign that the economy was headed in the right direction.

Here’s an example that should be illustrative, if painful for this writer.

The New York Jets won 11 games in 2010, 8 games in 2011, and 6 games in 2012. If then-head coach Rex Ryan had tried to sell fans on the idea that they were headed in the right direction after the 2012 season because the rate at which they were declining had decreased, I don’t suppose it would have gone terribly well for him.

But because Nichols wants Biden to prevail in the 2024 election, he’s decided to make a similarly ridiculous case in an unbearably haughty manner.

He can try to gaslight the people suffering under the yoke of a significantly higher cost of living for not agreeing with his estimation of just how good they have it, but they’re unlikely to buckle under the weight of his unwarranted exasperation.

Condescension’s a bad look on the brightest of minds, so to see Nichols wearing it so proudly is downright blinding.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.