CNN Tells Harris Not to Talk About the Economy

CNN has been at the forefront in pushing the Biden bad economy story in defiance of the data. It had two of my six favorite untruths about the Biden economy. In one case, it told people about a “retirement crisis” even though the real wealth of near retirees is more than 45 percent higher than it was in 2019. It also helped hype the young people will never own a home story even though, until recently, ownership rates for young people were above their pre-pandemic peak.

CNN also had the story about the family that drank 12 gallons of milk a week and therefore were devastated by the rise in milk prices. It didn’t tell us why this family, which presumably had lots of children, wasn’t benefiting from the expanded child tax credit that was in place at the time.

Anyhow, given the work that CNN has put into trashing the Biden economy, it isn’t surprising that they would warn Harris away from talking about it. They undoubtedly are looking to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Hence the piece headlined, “Voters think America’s economy stinks. Nothing will change that before the election.”

This is yet again a place where CNN is ignoring the evidence to push its agenda. If we go back to June, before Harris became the candidate, voters did have a very negative view of the economy under Biden-Harris. Just 30 percent had a positive view of the economy at that time.

However, attitudes seem to have shifted quite a bit since then. In a recent poll, voters gave Trump just a 43-41 percent edge on handling the economy, meaning it is almost even. That suggests that the assertion in the headline of the CNN news story appears to be wrong. It looks like voters’ views of the economy can be and have been changed.

It is also important to invite CNN back to Planet Earth. No one expects that the Democrats will get most voters to think the economy is good in the three weeks remaining in the campaign. (Of course, 30-40 percent of voters will say the economy is bad out of loyalty to Donald Trump.)

The goal for Democrats in pushing their many economic successes (rapid job creation, extraordinarily low unemployment, real wage growth, especially at the lower end of the wage distribution, a record boom in factory construction) is to convince a small percentage of the electorate that this is a record to build on. By contrast, Donald Trump seems to push out a new whacked out proposal every day, with the only constants being a massive tax on imports and deporting a large portion of the workforce in agriculture and construction.

Given the track record of the Biden-Harris administration compared with the craziness being pushed by Donald Trump, it is understandable that backers of Donald Trump would not want Harris to talk about the economy. But why would a neutral news outlet hold that view?

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post CNN Tells Harris Not to Talk About the Economy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.