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This is the exactly the sort of reason why it's so hard to figure out what the national political environment is going to look like in November https://twitter.com/davidmwessel/status/1253734063153840128?s=20
This would be so tough because it really pushes the limits of two general assumptions about the role of the economy :
--Voters are fairly myopic, and focused on the most recent events
--Rate of change matters far more than the absolute state of the economy
--Voters are fairly myopic, and focused on the most recent events
--Rate of change matters far more than the absolute state of the economy
Now, I don't think you'd find anyone who argues that the only thing that matters is the rate of growth over the last month.
But it is a tough case if you have a surging economy, over a short period, that's still bad in absolute terms. It's hard to know what that would feel like
But it is a tough case if you have a surging economy, over a short period, that's still bad in absolute terms. It's hard to know what that would feel like
It's not simply GDP matters and unemployment doesn't. It's that the rate of change matters. You can feel optimistic if you're convinced things are getting better, even if they're bad in absolute terms (FDR '36, as just one ex) https://twitter.com/CHeathWFTV/status/1253747289212039170?s=20
But look, I'm not at all contending that this is sure to be good for Trump! I'm just saying this is a highly sensitive and difficult to evaluate situation if you have a quick V-type recovery right ahead of an election. It could be a disaster for Trump; it might not be so bad.
And that's before you consider the uncertainty in the forecast itself, which can't possibly be particularly confident about what's going to happen by Q3 given all of the external factors
