In the spirit of the recent Star Wars holiday (May the 4th be with you) the American Left is engaging in Jedi minds tricks in an effort to trick the electorate into not believing what they are actually experiencing. What the Left appears to not understand is that Jedi mind tricks are a Hollywood fantasy and not an actual thing.
The Biden Administration attempted a Jedi mind trick by trying to convince the nation that the term “Bidenomics” was somehow a positive term linked to an improving economy. The economy, however, is not improving. Data from the U.S. Commerce Department shows U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by just 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024 – below the 2.4% predicted by many analysts.
The inflation rate was also higher than expected coming in at 3.4% over the first quarter of 2024. Core inflation (excluding food and fuel) was 3.7%. The Federal Reserve target rate is 2%. This has had two impacts: first it adds to the nearly 20% cumulative inflation rate during the Biden Presidency. Second, persistent inflation has delayed, perhaps until next year, any target interest rate cut by the Fed.
At the kitchen table American families are struggling to buy necessities like food and fuel. The goal of home ownership remains out of reach for many due to interest rates which, although not at historically high levels are the highest they have been in decades.
As a result efforts by President Biden and his minions to spin the term “Bidenomics” in a positive direction have failed to the point they have abandoned the tactic. Worse for them, with inflation continuing to rise and the growing likelihood that there will be no interest rate cuts this year the economic headwinds are blowing against the president.
The other would-be Jedi is Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. Facing a tough re-election battle against the well-organized, well-financed campaign of Republican nominee David McCormick, Casey too is being battered by his party’s lackluster economy.
To combat that he has been running television ads attempting to create a new term: “shrinkflation.” Casey’s Jedi mind trick is to tell voters that inflation is being caused by greedy corporations who are deviously doing things like selling you bags of potato chips that contain fewer chips.
This is an attempt to distract voters from the real cause of inflation: the profligate government spending financed by trillions of dollars essentially “printed” by the U.S. Treasury. Casey is guilty of fueling inflation by voting for all of that spending.
He is now attempting to shift the blame to corporations. Corporations, however, have also suffered the impact of Casey-induced inflation. The Spring 2024 Keystone Business Climate Survey conducted by the Lincoln Institute of Public Opinion Research, Inc. found inflation to be the top challenge facing Pennsylvania businesses with 93% saying inflation has impacted their operations.
And then there are the protests roiling campuses across the nation in recent weeks. These protests were purported to be organic, spontaneous shows of support for the Hamas terrorists. Ultimately it was discovered various Leftwing groups planned for, helped to finance, and launched the protests which quickly veered from the “peaceful” exercise of free speech into anti-Semitic hate speech, disruption of campus activities, and the unlawful occupation of buildings.
It became clear that this is part of what authors Mike Gonzales and Katharine Cornell Gorka describe in their book Next Gen Marxism: What it Is and How to Combat It as a shift in Marxist tactics from dividing the nation by economic class and instead waging cultural warfare indoctrinating students in radical ideologies based on anti-Semitism, race, ethnic origin and other cultural wedges.
The Biden Administration and other branches of the Left have attempted to straddle the issue of how to handle the Israel/Hamas war trying to appeal to both sides of the highly charged issue while at the same time failing to fully support Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas from Gaza. The end result is their Jedi mind tricks failed to satisfy anyone on either side of the issue.
Returning to our Star Wars analogy, efforts by the Biden Administration, Senator Casey, and the campus protestors have made all of the above appear more like JarJar Binks than a Jedi knight.
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is [email protected].)
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