If You’re Voting on the Economy, Vote for Joe Biden

By Michael Tarnoff

Two fundamental maxims of politics apply in nearly every presidential campaign: “it’s the economy stupid” and “change vs. more of the same.” The 2020 presidential campaign is unique in many respects, but if anything, these maxims are even more relevant today than in the past. That’s why the Trump campaign continues to push the false narrative that Trump, and only Trump, is good for the economy. He is right to focus on the economy, as polls indicate that it is one of the top issues for American voters. But the truth is that Trump’s record on the economy is actually a compelling reason to vote for change instead of more of the same.

Contrary to what Trump would like us to believe, the Dow has been under-performing for the past two years. At the end of the third quarter 2018, the Dow closed at 26,447.05. On one year later, it closed at 26,553.72. In other words, the U.S. stock market was essentially flat for that one-year period — a year before the coronavirus pandemic. At the end of the third quarter, on Sept 29, 2020, the Dow stood at 27,452.66.

At the end of September 2020, the Dow’s total cumulative gain was 1,005 points, a mere 3.8% over the prior two-year period. The inescapable conclusion is that during the last two years, the Dow has performed significantly below its long-term average rate of return.

Meanwhile, on Main Street, over 180,000 businesses have closed, and polls indicate that over 100,000, or 55%, of those closed businesses will probably not reopen. Over 13 million American workers are unemployed, and more than half of those 13 million Americans fear, with ample justification, that their jobs may never come back. And let us not forget America’s farmers. President Trump started a series of trade wars promising a financial windfall for American farmers that would eliminate their dependence on government programs and price supports. Instead, Trump’s trade wars have decimated farmers across the entire country, costing billions in taxpayer funded bailouts.

In May Ryann Cranney, a potato farmer in Burley, Idaho who claims he faces losses of $3.5 million, told a reporter, “It’s going to be years before we return to where we were.” The truth is that small businesses, ordinary workers, and family farms have been, and still are, significantly down.

More than 210,100 Americans have died from COVID, and scientists predict deaths will top 300,000 by the end of this year. The US has less than 5% of the world’s population but more than 20% of the world’s COVID deaths. The numbers don’t lie. The Trump administration has failed on COVID, and Trump’s failure to protect Americans’ health is directly tied to his failure to protect Americans’ livelihoods.

In fact, Trump’s failure to mount an efficient, effective, coordinated, national response to the pandemic is the single biggest contributing factor to Trump’s failure on the economy. The U.S. economy cannot recover while U.S. citizens are dying at four times the average per capita rate of deaths in the rest of the world.

These two epic failures — on COVID and on the economy — go together, hand in glove. The failure on COVID exacerbates the failure on the economy, and the failure on the economy makes the suffering from the pandemic much more devastating for the vast majority of Americans.

Many in the financial community now believe that Democratic victories in November would lead to stock market gains, and Ray Dalio, the co-CIO and founder of Bridgewater Associates, believes that a Biden victory in November would be good news for the financial markets, which is why if the stock market and the economy are the primary issues that drive your vote, you should be jumping on the Blue Wave and voting Democratic.

Remember Trump’s handling of the economy and COVID when you vote.