Dem
51
GOP
49
You can never know what the economy will do, but it certainly looks like the wild inflation of the last year is in the rear-view mirror. The year-to-year figure for October was 7.7% and for November it was 7.1%. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) was up 0.4% in October and just 0.1% in November. Core CPI (which excludes food and energy costs) was up 0.3% in October and 0.2% in November. The national average price of a gallon of gas, which is apparently the index that regular people pay attention to, is down to $3.18. That compares to $3.74 a month ago and $3.31 a year ago. We wonder if people are still putting those Joe Biden "I Did That" stickers on gas station pumps, now that fuel is cheaper than it was this time last year.
And speaking of Biden, probably the best sign that the economy has turned a corner is not these numbers, but the behavior of the politicians. The President did a little bragging about the state of the economy this week. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and predicted confidently that inflation would cool in 2013. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank met this week and raised rates by half a point, which was a smaller hike than the past several, and is a clear sign that the Governors think inflation is slowing down.
So, you can probably bid farewell to all those "inflation is out of control" stories in 2023, while bracing yourself for a million "Will there be a recession?" stories. For our part, we don't have the faintest idea what will happen. In fairness, (Z) has been watching a fair bit of CNBC lately because the dogsitter tends to leave the TV set to that channel, and is not convinced that anyone else has the faintest idea, either.
In any event, what we are interested in is the political implications of all of this. More specifically, are the Republicans better off in 2024 if there is a recession and/or if the inflation returns, or are they better off with a more stable economy? The obvious answer is that Republicans would like to run against a bad economy. However, they are going to control the House for the next two years. Further, it's not like running on a bad economy worked out great for them in 2022.
If the GOP was a normally functioning political party, the leadership might conclude that its "Biden ruined the economy" pitch did not land very well, and would re-tool either their verbiage, or the issues they focused upon, or both. Maybe they might even offer some actual policy ideas (even though Mitch McConnell does not like to do that). For example, exactly why the Republican Party, which is the party of rural America, has not become the party of rural broadband for everyone right now, we do not know. But that would be an actual policy idea that might get some positive attention.
Under current circumstances, however, the removal of the economy as a viable issue (not to mention the likelihood of Donald Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-FL at the top of the ticket) would probably cause the Party to lean even more fully into the culture wars stuff. And that definitely hasn't been working for them, outside of red states and districts. So, it's probably best for the Republicans if the economy is bad in 2024, not because they will have success using that against Biden, but because it might save them from focusing more on things that are even less likely to be successful. (Z)