Inflation and gas prices reached new highs this week, and those were just the latest inglorious records America has set in the first 14 months of Joe Biden’s presidency.
SO WHAT
Biden’s presidency is already a historic failure by many measures — and elections are coming.
THE HALL OF SHAME
More than 60% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week.
- Here are five record-breaking indicators that the pessimists are right.
1. INFLATION: Consumer prices increased increased 7.9% through February, the fastest pace of annual inflation in 40 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday.
The Biden administration has blamed the high inflation on supply chain issues, but many economists have said Democrats’ excessive federal spending played a role.
- Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck at the start of 2022, according to one analysis.
2. GAS PRICES: Drivers group AAA reported that the national average for a gallon of regular gas hit $4.25 Wednesday, an all-time record.
While the Biden administration has pointed to the global energy squeeze following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, gas prices had been on the rise for over a year.
- Biden’s solution: Try to cut deals with democratic bastions like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for more oil
3. COVID DEATHS: More Americans died of COVID-19 in the first nine months of 2021 than in all of 2020.
That put the lie to Biden’s central campaign promise to “shut down the virus” with a better response than then-President Donald Trump could muster.
4. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: The number of illegal border crossings under the Biden administration soared to record highs in 2021, with Customs and Border Protection reporting nearly 1.7 million encounters.
- The crossing were lower this January than last, but still higher than any previous January in two decades.
5. WAR: Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.
And 2 million Ukrainians have already fled the country in the biggest refugee crisis in the post-war era.
WHY IT MATTERS
Democratic fears about Biden’s low approval ratings and discouraging internal polling data — along with the natural tendency for the party in power to lose ground in midterms — have shifted into overdrive.
- Party insiders are concerned the White House has not set congressional Democrats up for success.
- “I think Democrats are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” Democrat Gilda Cobb-Hunter, the longest-serving member of the South Carolina State House of Representatives, told the Washington Post.