LARRY KUDLOW: The needle hasn't moved for Biden
Bad News Biden. It's been a rough week for the president. My hunch is he can look forward to even rougher weeks in the months ahead. His decision to embargo arms to Israel is incredibly unpopular. That is, outside the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
Almost 80% of Americans want Israel to destroy Hamas as fast as possible. Another untruth on the economy is he claimed he inherited a 9% inflation rate. Actually, Donald Trump handed over a 1.4% inflation rate and Joe Biden drove it up to 9%. Actually, prices have jumped over 20% under Biden, including a nearly 40% increase in gasoline, and a 24% rise in groceries.
So, working folks -- no matter what color, race or creed -- are suffering a 4% decline in their real take-home pay, and by the way, consumer confidence has plunged to 67% in the Michigan Sentiment Index. During the Trump years, sentiment was hovering around 100%. Plus, inflation expectations are now the highest in six months.
INFLATION REDUCES BUYING POWER AS $100 GOES A LOT LESS FAR THESE DAYS
Inflation is now picking up speed once again in the new year, running at a near 5% clip. Gen Z is going deeper into debt and, while inflation tightens its grip on Biden's re-election, he thinks he's FDR by trying to spend $1.5 trillion in the next six months to buy votes and juice the economy.
Nobody could spend $1.5 trillion in six months, but if they ever did, the inflation would probably jump to 10%. Meanwhile, this is not the 1930s. Joe Biden's economic ratings are running 20 points behind Trump, and working folks don't want elite student loan cancellations or climate and electric vehicle spending binges that will do nothing more than damage their consumer choice and create unaffordable price increases. Even more, Biden's lawfare campaign to tie Trump up in jail so he can't campaign is blowing up in Biden's face.
The New York trial is a fiasco. The Washington trial is tied up in the Supreme Court on immunity. The Florida classified docs trial is permanently on hold and the Fani Willis shenanigans in Atlanta are now stuck in the Georgia appeals court and a majority of voters now believe that this whole lawfare jihad against former President Trump was totally politically motivated.
In other words, voters see right through it. The needle hasn't moved for Biden. If anything, the needle is moving for Trump. Plus, Biden has taken no decisive action to close the border catastrophe. The cost of letting in roughly 10 million illegals has been estimated to be at least $150 billion and rising, and a new study based on Britain's open-border catastrophe shows that the mass illegal migration does not help the economy.
The data here in the U.S. shows that the illegals are taking away native-born jobs and causing wage scales to fall. Do you remember the movie "Bad News Bears"? Well, here's a new flick: "Bad News Biden."
This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the May 10, 2024, edition of "Kudlow."