‘Suffering Index’ Hits Highest In History of Measuring – Opinion

To win the midterms, Democrats will try to ignore reality.

In the land of alternate “facts” that Democrats would like to sell people, inflation is transitory and we aren’t in a recession. Vladimir Putin caused gas prices to rise, but Joe Biden somehow made them fall a bit. It isn’t just that the demand dropped because the gas became so expensive. You should consider that a “raise” to your paycheck, even if it’s still costing you far more for gas than when Joe Biden started his term.

What is the bottom line? Try as the Democrats might, they can’t change the objective reality of how badly Joe Biden’s economy is affecting the American public.

We saw at the beginning of the month the “misery index.” That was stacking up to bad news for the Democrats in the midterms.

A new study by Bloomberg Economics takes one gauge with a knack of predicting ballot outcomes — the misery index, calculated by adding up the inflation and unemployment rates — and projects it forward through election day.

The result: Based on past voting patterns, President Joe Biden’s party can expect to lose 30 to 40 seats in the House and a few in the Senate too, easily wiping out razor-thin Democratic majorities.

Now comes the “suffering index” and that’s at record highs. It’s worse than it ever was under the pandemic, which is saying something.

Suffering index. pic.twitter.com/ywPKPbYSN2

— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) August 22, 2022

The percentage of Americans who evaluate their lives poorly enough to be considered “suffering” on Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index was 5.6% in July, the highest since the index’s inception in 2008. This figure is significantly higher than the April record of 4.8% and it’s statistically comparable to all previous COVID-19 estimations. Since January 2008, extensive measures have shown that the suffering percentage is at least 4.5%.

It was 3.9 percent when Biden came into office and as Ed Morrissey at HotAir observes, it’s the steepest ascent in the history of measuring it.

That fits with how many Americans think we’re going in the “wrong direction” in the Real Clear Politics average: 22.9 percent think “right track” and 70.9 think “wrong track” in polls over the past month.

On top of that, Americans’ real disposable personal income has plummeted continuously for 18 months in a row and it’s getting worse. Walmart and Target both indicate that consumers are cutting down on discretionary goods.

So people know exactly where they can trace all this suffering — and it isn’t Republicans. Democrats can say what they might, but they can’t argue with the hit that people are having on their wallets. It was easily avoided if Republicans were in power. It is obvious that people are aware of this because they remember how things were under Donald Trump. That’s what the Republicans need to stress again and again when it comes to the midterms.