NEW YORK — “The American public is getting clobbered,” former vice president Joe Biden claims. “The wealthy are the only ones doing well, period.”
According to former coal-mining investor, multi-billionaire, and presidential contender Tom Steyer, the U.S. economy “isn’t delivering for working people. The jobs don’t pay enough for people to live on.”
“Under Donald Trump, the average American is struggling to keep up,” Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer of New York moaned Tuesday.
Will someone please alert the American people?
While Democrats insist that their countrymen never have been more miserable, several new surveys show what Americans think: They’ve never had it so good.
“Nine in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, a new high in Gallup’s four-decade trend,” the public-opinion-research giant’s Justin McCarthy wrote February 6. “The latest [90 percent] figure bests the previous high of 88 percent recorded in 2003.” In December, 86 percent of respondents described themselves as fairly or very happy.
“It’s likely no coincidence that Americans’ heightened satisfaction with their personal life comes as confidence in the U.S. economy and their personal finances are also at long-term or record highs. That two in three Americans are very satisfied is reflective of this upbeat moment in time,” McCarthy added.
Gallup’s January 2-15 Mood of the Nation survey also clocked economic confidence at its highest point since October 2000. Conversely, Gallup has found that few Americans cite the economy as the nation’s greatest worry. “The latest reading of 10 percent is, by one percentage point, the lowest Gallup has found since it began compiling mentions of economic issues in 2001,” McCarthy wrote on January 23.
These results echo the 63 percent of Americans who approve of President Donald J. Trump’s economic stewardship — a figure last seen in June 2002, under G.W. Bush — even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, S&P 500, and other financial indices soar toward the stars, almost daily. This sentiment bodes well for Trump’s re-election prospects. And if the GOP shares in his credit, this brightens the outlook for Republicans to retain control of the Senate and rescue the House from Nervous Nancy, AOC, the socialist Squad, Inspector Adam Schiff, Constable Jerry Nadler, and their enraged, hapless, far-Left comrades.
And here is more good news for the president and his Republican allies: Survey respondents like how today looks, compared to early 2017, when Trump led a pack of pachyderms into Washington.
“Sixty-one percent of Americans say they are better off than they were three years ago, a higher percentage than in prior election years when an incumbent president was running,” Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones wrote this morning. “In the 1992, 1996, and 2004 election cycles, exactly half said they were better off. In three separate measures during the 2012 election cycle, an average of 45 percent said they were better off.”
Looking to 2021, 74 percent of American adults told Gallup that they expect to be better off economically a year from now. This is the highest such reading since 1977 — when Gallup first asked this question — 43 years ago.
All of these data show that the roaring Trump/GOP economy is not just about swollen portfolio statements, upward-curving graphs, and juicy economic numbers. Today’s prosperity fuels something harder to measure, but far more important: Human happiness.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
