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      Good Economy, Negative Vibes: The Story Continues

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      When it comes to economic news, we’ve had so much winning that we’ve gotten tired of winning, or at any rate blasé about it. Last week, we got another terrific employment report — job growth for 39 straight months — and it feels as if hardly anyone noticed. In particular, it’s not clear whether the good news will dent the still widespread but false narrative that President Biden is presiding over a bad economy.Start with the facts: Job creation under Biden has been truly amazing, especially when you recall all those confident but wrong predictions of recession. Four years ago, the economy was body-slammed by the Covid-19 pandemic, but we have more than recovered. Four years after the start of 2007-9 recession, total employment was still down by more than five million; now it’s up by almost six million. The unemployment rate has been below 4 percent for 26 months, the longest streak since the 1960s.Inflation did surge in 2021-22, although this surge has mostly subsided. But most workers’ earnings are up in real terms. Over the past four years, wages of nonsupervisory workers, who account for more than 80 percent of private employment, are up by about 24 percent, while consumer prices are up less, around 20 percent.Why, then, are so many Americans still telling pollsters that the economy is in bad shape?More often than not, anyone who argues that we’re in a “vibecession,” in which public perceptions are at odds with economic reality, gets tagged as an elitist, out of touch with people’s real-life experience. And there’s a whole genre of commentary to the effect that if you squint at the data hard enough, it shows that the economy really is bad, after all.But such commentary is an attempt to explain something that isn’t happening. Without question, there are Americans who are hurting financially — sadly, this is always true to some extent, especially given the weakness of America’s social safety net. But in general, Americans are relatively optimistic about their own finances.I wrote recently about a couple of Quinnipiac swing-state polls that asked registered voters about both the economy and their personal finances. In both Michigan and Pennsylvania — states crucial to the outcome of this year’s presidential election — more than 60 percent of respondents rated the economy as not so good or bad; a similar percentage said that their own situation is excellent or good.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden va detrás de Trump en 7 ‘swing states’, según encuesta

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      Los resultados de la encuesta de The Wall Street Journal en siete de los estados indecisos hacen eco de otros sondeos recientes.El expresidente Donald Trump sigue adelante del presidente Joe Biden en los estados disputados con más probabilidades de decidir la presidencia, según encuestas de The Wall Street Journal en siete estados clave.Trump mantenía una estrecha ventaja en seis de ellos: Arizona, Georgia, Míchigan, Nevada, Carolina del Norte y Pensilvania. Biden lideraba en Wisconsin.Los resultados hacen eco de otras encuestas recientes, incluida una serie de sondeos de The New York Times/Siena College en seis estados disputados (conocidos como swing o battleground en inglés) el pasado mes de octubre. En los últimos cinco meses, Trump ha liderado casi todas las encuestas en Arizona, Georgia, Míchigan, Nevada y Carolina del Norte, estados que le darían más de los 270 votos electorales necesarios para ganar.Sin embargo, aunque los resultados no sean tan diferentes, han frenado las esperanzas demócratas de que Biden ganara terreno en las encuestas tras su enérgico discurso sobre el estado de la Unión y el final de la temporada de primarias.Esas esperanzas no carecían de fundamento. En teoría, muchas de las condiciones para una remontada de Biden deberían estar en su lugar. La confianza del consumidor está aumentando. Una revancha Biden-Trump es ahora una realidad inevitable. La preocupación por la edad del presidente pareció remitir con el estado de la Unión y el inicio de la campaña para las elecciones generales.A pesar de las decenas de millones de dólares en publicidad anticipada de los demócratas y un vigoroso programa de campaña de Biden en los estados clave, las encuestas de The Wall Street Journal seguían revelando que los votantes tenían una impresión profundamente negativa de su rendimiento en el cargo, su resistencia mental y física y su gestión económica. Trump tenía ventaja sobre Biden en casi todos los temas, y normalmente por mucho.El aborto y la democracia fueron las únicas excepciones.Nate Cohn es el analista político jefe del Times. Cubre elecciones, opinión pública, demografía y encuestas. Más de Nate Cohn More

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      Revisiting Florida 2000 and the Butterfly Effect

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      The evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.Theresa LePore, who designed Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot, with old ballots three years after the 2000 election. David FriedmanWe’re still in a post-primary lull before the campaign starts to heat up — and before Donald J. Trump goes on trial. Here are a few quick notes to end the week.Joe Lieberman and the butterfly ballotJoe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator, died this week at 82. He was Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee in 2000, when the Gore-Lieberman ticket came less than 600 Florida votes away from winning the White House.We’ll never know what would have happened if the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to continue. But I don’t think it’s always appreciated that we probably do know that Mr. Gore would have won Florida, and therefore the presidency, if it weren’t for the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County.If you don’t remember — it has been a while — the butterfly ballot was very unusual. Candidates were listed on both sides of the ballot, and voters cast a ballot by punching a corresponding hole in the middle. What made it so unusual was that the ordering of the candidates on the ballot didn’t have the same logic as the corresponding punch hole: George W. Bush and Mr. Gore were the first two candidates listed on the left-hand side, but they corresponded to the first and third hole on the punch. The second punch corresponded with the first candidate on the right-hand side of the ballot: the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, running as a Reform Party candidate.After the election, many voters from Palm Beach claimed they had inadvertently voted for Mr. Buchanan when they meant to vote for Mr. Gore. This is clear in the data. Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than he did on the other side of the county line. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than any politically or demographically comparable area in the country.You can see this pattern quite clearly in this map, courtesy of Matthew C. Isbell, a Democratic data strategist and consultant:We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fighting Rages Around Two Gaza Hospitals as Pressure on Israel Rises

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      Israeli forces are battling to retake areas they had already seized, showing the militants’ resilience, as critics call for less destructive tactics in the war.Israeli troops and Hamas fighters waged deadly battles in and around two of the Gaza Strip’s major hospitals on Thursday as the Israeli government came under growing pressure at home and abroad to moderate its approach to a war that has devastated the enclave.Fighting raged for the 11th day at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in an area Israeli forces first seized in November. The clashes illustrated the difficulty the Israelis are having in keeping control of places they had already taken as Palestinian militants melt away and then return.In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, increasingly unpopular and facing criticism on multiple fronts, met for the first time with the families of kidnapped soldiers being held in Gaza, who accused him before the meeting of ignoring their plight for nearly six months. The soldiers’ relatives had largely remained silent in public while other families of captives spoke out, many of them saying the prime minister should agree to a truce with Hamas if that was what it would take to free their relatives.But there has been no apparent change in Israel’s determination to press on with its offensive in Gaza, despite pressure from, among others, hostage families, the Biden administration and the United Nations, where the Security Council passed a resolution on Monday demanding a cease-fire. After vetoing previous cease-fire resolutions, the United States abstained on Monday, allowing the measure to pass and signaling American displeasure over Israel’s conduct of the war.The International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday ordered Israel to take concrete steps to stop obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza as starvation spreads there, calling on Israel to increase the number of land crossings for supplies and to provide “full cooperation” with the United Nations. The ruling contained the strongest language the court has used so far as it weighs a case filed by South Africa that accuses Israel of genocide, which Israel denies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elecciones en Rusia: qué dicen los resultados del respaldo a Putin

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      Muchos rusos dicen que apoyan a su presidente, pero no está claro cuáles serían sus preferencias si existieran otras alternativas.El Kremlin escenificó la votación presidencial rusa durante el fin de semana para enviar un solo mensaje dentro y fuera del país: que el apoyo al presidente Vladimir Putin es abrumador e inquebrantable, a pesar o incluso a causa de su guerra contra Ucrania.Desde el momento en que los resultados preliminares aparecieron por primera vez en la televisión estatal a última hora del domingo, las autoridades no dejaron lugar a interpretaciones erróneas. Putin, dijeron, obtuvo más del 87 por ciento de los votos, su competidor más cercano solo el 4 por ciento. Tenía toda la pinta de ser un plebiscito autoritario estilo Potemkin.Es posible que el Kremlin se haya sentido más confiado orquestando un margen de victoria tan amplio porque el índice de aprobación de Putin ha subido durante la guerra en las encuestas independientes, debido a un efecto bandera o de apoyo en tiempos de crisis, y al optimismo sobre la economía rusa. El Centro Levada, una encuestadora independiente, informó el mes pasado de que el 86 por ciento de los rusos aprobaban a Putin, su índice más alto en más de siete años.Pero aunque las cifras puedan sugerir un apoyo inquebrantable a Putin y a su programa en toda Rusia, la situación es más compleja de lo que transmiten los números. El líder de un grupo de investigación de la oposición en Moscú ha argumentado que el apoyo a Putin es en realidad mucho más frágil de lo que sugieren las simples cifras de aprobación.“Las cifras que aparecen en las encuestas de Rusia no significan lo que la gente cree que significan”, afirmó Aleksei Minyailo, activista de la oposición residente en Moscú y cofundador de un proyecto de investigación llamado Chronicles, que ha estado encuestando a rusos en los últimos meses. “Porque Rusia no es una democracia electoral, sino una dictadura en tiempos de guerra”.Una televisión en Moscú muestra los resultados electorales para Putin el domingo, último día de las elecciones.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fine, Call It a Comeback

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      If the Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address last week is the Joe Biden who shows up for the rest of the campaign, you’re not going to have any more of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he’s not up to running for re-election. Here’s hoping he does.But that’s not the only thing from Thursday night that I hope Biden holds onto. So far, the Biden team has been more sure-footed attacking Donald Trump’s threat to democracy than it has been defending Biden’s incumbency. That reflects a strange problem they face. By virtually any measure save food prices, Biden is presiding over a strong economy — stronger, by far, than most peer countries. As Noah Smith has noted, the Biden economy looks far better than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”: Unemployment is lower, inflation is lower, interest rates are lower, stock market returns are better.But Americans feel otherwise. The most recent Times/Siena poll found that 74 percent of registered voters rated the economy either “poor” or “fair.” By a 15-point margin, voters said Trump’s policies helped them personally. By a 25-point margin, they said Biden’s policies hurt them personally.Voters seem to remember the tail end of Trump’s third year, when the economy was strong, and not the utter calamity of his fourth year, when his Covid response was chaos and the economy was frozen. In November of 2020, unemployment was 6.7 percent and Trump had just turned a White House celebration into a superspreader event. Republicans who say Americans should ask whether they’re better off than they were four years ago should be careful what they wish for.But Biden is in a tough spot. You don’t want to run for re-election telling voters they’re wrong and the economy is actually great. Nor can you run for re-election telling voters that they’re right and the economy is bad. Biden has often seemed a little unsure what to say about his own record. Thursday night, he figured it out.“I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history,” Biden said. “We have. It doesn’t make news, news — in a thousand cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why It’s Hard to Explain Joe Biden’s Unpopularity

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      Joe Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history. In Gallup polling, his approval ratings are lower than those of any president embarking on a re-election campaign, from Dwight Eisenhower to Donald Trump.Yet an air of mystery hangs around his lousy polling numbers. As The Washington Free Beacon’s Joe Simonson noted recently, just surfing around most American media and pop culture, you probably wouldn’t realize that Biden’s job approval ratings are quite so historically terrible, worse by far than Trump’s at the same point in his first term.Apart from anxiety about his age, there isn’t a chattering-class consensus or common shorthand for why his presidency is such a political flop. Which is why, perhaps, there was a rush to declare his State of the Union address a rip-roaring success, as though all Biden needs to do to right things is to talk loudly through more than an hour of prepared remarks.When things went south for other recent chief executives, there was usually a clearer theory of what was happening. Trump’s unpopularity was understood to reflect his chaos and craziness and authoritarian forays. The story of George W. Bush’s descending polls was all about Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. When Barack Obama was at his polling nadir, most observers blamed the unemployment rate and the Obamacare backlash, and when Bill Clinton struggled through his first two years, there was a clear media narrative about his lack of discipline and White House scandals.With Biden, it has been different. Attempts to reduce his struggles to the inflation rate are usually met with vehement rebuttals, there’s a strong market for “bad vibes” explanations of his troubles, a lot of blame gets placed on partisan polarization even though Biden won a clear popular majority not so long ago, and even the age issue has taken center stage only in the past few months.Some of this mystification reflects liberal media bias accentuated by contemporary conditions — an unwillingness to look closely at issues like immigration and the border, a hesitation to speak ill of a president who’s the only bulwark against Trumpism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      La campaña de Biden cambia su estrategia para abordar el tema de la edad

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      Parte del nuevo plan de la Casa Blanca consiste en destacar más los viajes del presidente fuera de Washington y los encuentros individuales con votantes en las redes sociales.Lleva lentes oscuros de aviador y gorras de béisbol. Visita heladerías y asadores y pide reunirse con influentes que puedan difundir imágenes suyas en TikTok e Instagram. Habla más a menudo con los periodistas y responde a preguntas sobre Medio Oriente, los republicanos y, por supuesto, su edad.Nada de esto es una coincidencia. Mientras el presidente Joe Biden se enfrenta a lo que las encuestas muestran como una preocupación significativa por sus 81 años y a unas elecciones muy reñidas contra su virtual oponente, Donald Trump, la estrategia de la Casa Blanca es que salga de su burbuja protectora y afronte directamente las preocupaciones de los votantes.El tema se sobrecargó el mes pasado cuando Biden se defendió airadamente de un informe del fiscal especial que lo describió como un “hombre bienintencionado de edad avanzada con mala memoria”. El presidente se convirtió con rapidez en el chiste favorito de los presentadores de los programas nocturnos de entrevistas, lo que enfureció a sus aliados, quienes reconocen que aunque Biden no puede volver atrás en el tiempo, al menos puede intentar reajustar la imagen que los votantes tienen de él.“Llevo varios meses diciéndole a la campaña: ‘Por favor, déjenlo ser Joe Biden’, y lo mismo han dicho muchos otros”, comentó en una entrevista el senador demócrata por Delaware Chris Coons, aliado cercano del presidente. “No solo es bueno para la campaña. Es bueno para él y es bueno para el país que Joe Biden tenga la oportunidad de bajarse del podio y ser menos el presidente Joe Biden y más Joe”.Con ese fin, se espera que Biden plantee la cuestión de la edad en su beneficio al destacar sus logros legislativos en su discurso sobre el Estado de la Unión del jueves por la noche. El argumento que esgrimirá, según sus ayudantes, es que sus logros como presidente podrían haber pasado desapercibidos para políticos con menos experiencia.Biden bromeó sobre memes en una aparición en el programa de televisión nocturno de Seth Meyers en febrero.Bonnie Cash para The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More