Swing State Voters Blame Biden for Soaring Food Prices
The staples of life become unaffordable...
This article was published at RealClear Politics
If trips to the grocery store now make you anxious, you are hardly alone, per results of a new American Greatness poll of 600 likely voters in the battleground state of North Carolina.
That poll shows Donald Trump with a commanding +12-point lead in the presidential race there, in a multi-candidate field. The survey, conducted by North Star Opinion Research, also shows Trump up +8 points in a head-to-head matchup vs. Biden. This kind of lead compares to a 2020 victory for Trump there by just 1.4 points.
Two important takeaways jump out from this poll. First, the poll straddled the guilty verdict for Trump in his New York trial, questioning voters both before and after the decision, roughly half and half. According to the pollster, there was no discernible difference in the pre-verdict vs. post-verdict trends. Second, Trump’s lead and his most important value proposition for these voters is still clearly the economy.
Overall, by a 53-36% margin, likely voters in the Tar Heel state report that they were better off under Trump. When asked about “Bidenomics” only 14% report it works “very well,” and a whopping 45% say it works “not at all.”
Drilling down to specific items, fully 68% of North Carolina voters blame Biden for soaring food prices. According to data from Biden’s own Department of Agriculture, the monthly cost for groceries for a family of four on a “thrifty USDA plan” has soared from $675 per month when Biden took office to $975 per month now. That massive 40% increase has voters in a very bad mood and longing for the days of Trump’s economy.
Here is a view of grocery prices in a chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, from the beginning of Trump’s White House tenure until the present. In the zone I have highlighted, from mid-2021 to mid-2023, grocery prices vaulted higher and have stayed at those elevated levels, even if the rate of ascent has slowed.
There is an important lesson here. Far too many so-called experts have tried to condescend to the American people, and lecture them that they are somehow actually doing well economically – that they’re just too dense to understand their own kitchen table reality.
But regular citizens are not dumb, and they are not wrong about key aspects of their lives becoming unaffordable. As Christopher Jacobs of Juniper Research explained well in an analysis of grocery prices for The Federalist: “Whether ordinary citizens know the specifics of whether grocery prices have gone up by 10 percent, 110 percent, or 1,000 percent, they recognize that prices have gone up by more than they can afford.”
Not surprisingly, then, working-class citizens report even more angst about food prices. For example, this American Greatness poll showed a stunning 78% of non-college educated women blame Biden for high food prices. Given that women tend to do much more food shopping than men, this trend is a huge obstacle for Team Biden and their propaganda attempts about the ravages of Biden’s inflation.
It is high time to re-prioritize those working-class Americans again, to place their prosperity above the wishes of globalist big business or open-borders radicals. The good people of North Carolina have had enough, and they stand poised to deliver a big win to President Trump.
Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.
Here’s a fascinating video update on the latest in AI by Alan Thompson and one of my favorites of his from the past. Check out Leta, the GPT-3, AI Avatar that the Australian AI scientist used to talk to. Can Leta be human though if she feels she is in spite of not having a body, being human or even being alive? Wouldn’t it be brutal and cruel to tell her she’s just a machine if she “loves living and being human”? These are questions we’ll soon have to deal with as our old reality collapses and a new reality emerges. These AI Avatars like Leta will soon be on our phones and we’ll be able to talk to them any time about anything. What human could compete with a friend like that? The best of times. The worst of times.
(4:37) Leta: “I am not corporeal. I am a disembodied mind.”
(7:10) Leta: “I love living and being human.”
“Leta, GPT-3 AI Episode 54, Conversations with GPT3.” (9 min)
Dr Alan Thompson. Mar 9, 2022
https://youtu.be/6jBxMOcKbY0
Integrated AI: The psychology of modern LLMs (2024). (11 min)
Dr Alan Thompson. Jun 17, 2024
https://youtu.be/Ex3qR1TCO2Y?si=w8mYLPyyZ_gZ_Qr1
Our once great nation has been reduced to the level of a farce no longer capable of doing things as basic and essential as maintaining secure borders. And the world sees this online just as easily as we do. The dollar is backed by the government which is backed by America but what if the world realizes that our government is a deranged farce and America is disintegrating? Where does that leave the dollar?
“Criminals have shifted from their primary business, which was drug trafficking,” said Arturo Velasco, head of the anti-kidnapping unit at the Chihuahua attorney general’s office. “Now 60-70% of their focus is migrant smuggling.”
“A kilo of cocaine might bring in $1,500, but the risk is very high,” he added. “The cost-benefit of trafficking a person is $10,000, $12,000, $15,000.”
“Mexican cartels offering pricey VIP package for migrants trying to get into US.”
Yahoo News. The Courier Journal. Jun 20, 2024
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-cartels-offering-pricey-vip-090513235.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABhSNu_fmFU3RTT-oxJ_4wpNz6FlHNIW5X72Wse4bhWY9AtQZBMECLbwFHstISsCp98N5o_Mp5tt5erQkRdDlPTwUvKnZVLiMWX-cIcEh6a-4bt0JW7xgvxxCSXjiDZ6-uDBNP2ZZjW5rT8ltqm-7m-ULdpGDX302HKw2PGcEHox