Americans now possess two new metrics by which the Biden/Harris administration quantifiably ranks as the worst in American history.
As November’s election date approaches, the administration and the Harris campaign desperately seek to convince Americans that they’re somehow better off now than they were four years ago.
The grim truth is that on a constantly accumulating number of measures, they’ve made matters worse than ever.
It’s understandable, of course, that the campaign and its cheerleading media defiantly attempt to convince the American electorate otherwise, and ask people to disregard their own lying eyes and believe Biden/Harris surrogates instead. After all, the pivotal question in any election remains Ronald Reagan’s famous challenge, ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
With rare exceptions today, the unequivocal answer is “no.”
To cite several salient examples, on the Biden/Harris watch illegal border incursions reached record levels, the cost of home ownership reached a record high, credit card debt ascended to record highs, as did gas prices, while inflation and declining median incomes punished average American families.
This week added two new objective measures solidifying that ignominious reality.
First, an in-depth Wall Street Journal analysis showed that homelessness in America has reached a new record high:
The number of homeless people in the U.S. continues to grow, putting the country on pace to hit yet another record this year. Counts from encampments, streets and shelters are largely higher than they were in 2023, according to preliminary data collected and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. … The Journal’s count includes about 550,000 homeless people so far, up 10% from what these places reported last year. The trend thus far means the U.S. is likely to top the roughly 653,000 homeless people estimated in 2023 – the highest number since the government started reporting comparable data in 2007.
Notably, the analysis pinpoints two of the Biden/Harris failures cited above as causal factors in the new record high homelessness levels: illegal immigration and housing costs.
“The latest homelessness counts,” it notes, “were largely done in January, just after the U.S. set a record for illegal border crossings.” It subsequently adds, “Soaring housing prices and high rents have pushed families out of homes, especially since pandemic-era aid wound down, according to advocates for the homeless.”
In other words, the Biden/Harris bears responsibility, and the crisis only continues to worsen under their policy mismanagement.
Separately, the latest periodic Gallup survey on the problem of divisiveness in America reveals that it has also reached a new record high, despite the Biden/Harris promise to restore unity among Americans:
A record-high 80% of U.S. adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while 18% believe the country is united. The percentage seeing the nation as divided has ticked up from 77% the last time Gallup asked the question in 2016. It is more than 10 percentage points higher than in prior 2004 and 2012 measures. … Americans have long thought the nation was divided on the most important values, but never to the degree they do now. And that view is shared about equally among all major subgroups of Americans.
That constitutes perhaps the worst Biden/Harris performance failure of all, considering that Biden chose to make the goal of “unity” the central theme of his inaugural address:
[T]o restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words, and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity. Unity. … My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this, bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation.
Mission not only not accomplished, but worsened under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The only unity that they have achieved, according to Gallup, is in the nearly universal belief that American divisions are now worse than ever in their lifetimes.
Accordingly, Kamala Harris must now convince a skeptical American electorate that her presidency wouldn’t simply bring four more years of the same, or perhaps even worse.
Timothy H. Lee is Senior Vice President of legal and public affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom.
Reprinted with Permission from CFIF.org – By Timothy H. Lee
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
