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At the end of their time in office, a D yields +economy & R yields - economy [1]

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Date: 2023-08-25  

I am back hammering this same point about the economy, but in a slightly different way. In this argument, I would be asking people to tell me what the state of the economy was at the end of the term for each of the last 3 republican presidents and what was the state of the economy at the end of the term for each of the last 3 Democratic Party presidents? In my view, 😁, this is an awfully difficult question for a republican voter to answer. The data is hard for them to account for.

It's undeniable that the economy at the end of each of the last 3 republican presidents has been terrible 😞. It's similarly undeniable that the economy has been very good at the end of the time in office for each of the last 3 Democratic Party presidents. I don't feel that they have a good response to this.

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The economy has done better under presidents who were members of the Democratic Party than under presidents boys were members of the Republican Party

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President George H W Bush left with an unemployment rate of 7.3%. That's high. That's a bad economy.

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President George W Bush left with 1.5 million ​​​​​​ jobs being lost over the last 3 months of Bush's second term and the gross domestic product shrank by 8.5% in the last quarter. The unemployment rate was 7.8%. That's a bad economy.

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Donald Trump left office with fewer people employed at the end of his term than at the beginning, just like Herbert Hoover. He left an unemployment rate of 6.7%. That's a bad economy.

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Under President Bill Clinton, by the end of his second term 22 million new jobs were created and we had budget surpluses and the unemployment rate was 4.2%.

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Under President Obama, by the end of his second term, the deficit was cut in half, the unemployment rate was 4.7%, and we were in the longest continuous period of peacetime private sector job growth this country has ever known.

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When Donald Trump left office, the workforce had shrunk dramatically and fewer people were employed at the end of his term than at the beginning and the unemployment rate was 6.7%. That's the economy that President Biden inherited . The pandemic damaged our supply chains and that accompanied by Russia's war of aggression caused our inflation rate like that of the rest of the world to soar. Our rate of inflation was 9% in July of 2022. The rate of inflation is now 3%, close to normal. Since last July, July of 2022, the rate of inflation has decreased every single month for the last 12 months. The jobs that have been created during President Biden's term surpassed the number of jobs lost due to the pandemic in July of 2022. The cost of petroleum has similarly decreased. The predicted recession is not going to materialize. The GDP growth is 2.4%. Our rate of inflation and our GDP growth are stronger than ANY other nation in the G7. Under President Biden, 13 million new jobs have been created, 800,000 of those jobs were manufacturing jobs. The unemployment rate is 3.5%. This is the longest continuous period of a sub 4 percent unemployment rate in 60 years. By the way, the fundamentals of the race (the economy, the indictments, and independents) are far more important than head to head general election polls when we are five months out from the first contest in the primary.

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.On that front, at least, Trump has company: He is the third Republican president in a row to leave office with a higher jobless rate than on his inauguration. Both President George W. Bush and President George H. W. Bush oversaw rising unemployment rates during their terms.

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GDP growth: This pattern of faster GDP growth under Democratic presidents continued after Blinder and Watson published their study; GDP grew faster both in President Obama's second term and in the first two years of President Biden's administration than in President Trump's term.[4] Trump 1.5% G W Bush 1.9% Obama 1.9% Ford 2.2% G H W Bush 2.2% Eisenhower 2.5% Nixon 3.0% Biden 3.0% and CNN reported in October 2020 that 10 of the last 11 recessions started under Republican presidents, and that “Every Republican president since Benjamin Harrison, who served from 1889 to 1893, had a recession start in their first term in office.”[3] NBER reports the start date of recessions; the following list includes the president in office at that time and their party:[26]

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In general, here is the pattern: a republican president is elected. He cuts taxes for the wealthy and engages in deregulation. The rate of growth of inequality increases. Tax revenue decreases. Therefore, the republicans reason that we can't fund or invest in the social safety net that benefits the middle class and the poor. Consumer spending decreases. Businesses don't invest in growth. Hours are cut and jobs are lost. GDP shrinks. The deficit increases.

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Then a president who is a member of the Democratic Party is elected and is given a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party. An economic stimulus is passed (Clinton- 1993 Omnibus, Obama- Economic Reinvestment and Recovery Act, Biden- American Rescue Plan) and after a year (the US economic is large and turns around as easily as the Titanic) , we see the economy begin to recover. There is an investment in the social safety net. Consumer spending increases, workers are given more hours, then more people are hired, then competition drives wages up. Businesses invest in growth. Tax revenue increases. GDP grows and job creation takes place. The deficit shrinks.

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It seems to me that it's undeniable that at the end of each of the last 3 republican presidents, we see a bad economy. Likewise, it appears undeniable that at the end of the term(s) of a president who is a member of the Democratic Party we see a pretty good economy based upon the normal metrics that we always use to give us an easy way to evaluate the economy.

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Suppose that the probability of ending a term or second term is fifty percent (and the events are independent and yes we know that's a supposition that's contrary to fact) , what would the probability be that each of the last 3 republican presidents ended their term with a bad economy and that each of the last 3 presidents who were members of the Democratic Party ended their terms with a good economy purely randomly? 1/2^6=1/64=~1.5%. Correlation isn't causation, but we have a good explanatory vehicle which went paired with this correlation suggests a casual relationship is at work here.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/25/2189657/-At-the-end-of-their-time-in-office-a-D-yields-economy-R-yields-economy

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