Here's hoping you have a Happy Thanksgiving (especially one free of contentious table debates with lunatic relatives).
If, however, you can't avoid that fate, Dana Milbank has some things to be thankful for that you can cite:
In this season of thanksgiving, let us be grateful that some measure of calm and sanity has returned to the White House. The United States, at least for now, has a stable, functioning government. The president is not making everything about himself, nor creating chaos for its own sake.
The stock market is higher than it ever was under President Donald Trump; the S&P 500 has hit more than 50 record highs so far in 2021.
Fully 5.6 million new jobs have been created in Biden’s first nine months, a record pace for a new president, and unemployment is down to 4.6 percent from an estimated 10 percent.
Wages for American workers have increased this year at the fastest rate in more than two decades. Economic growth for 2021 is on course to hit a healthy 5 percent.
Life is returning to normal after the pandemic, as the country finally overcomes a delay worsened by right-wing resistance to vaccination and prevention.
Biden has managed to secure broadband Internet and better roads, bridges, electric power and drinking water for all Americans. Despite fierce Republican opposition, he is within striking distance of securing better child-care assistance, free prekindergarten and lower drug prices, as well as requiring the ultra-rich to pay more in taxes.
What you might be hearing in rebuttal could go alone these lines:
Of course, those misled by the Fox News/GOP dezinformatsiya campaign have a different view of Biden’s record. Crisis on the border! (Border crossings have surged to record levels, as one would expect in a booming economy, but so have border arrests.) Crime! (Homicides continue to rise, but at a slower pace than in Trump’s final year, and they remain well below 1990s levels.) Inflation! (As the Financial Times reported this week, it’s a “global trend” that is expected to ease next year and is “nowhere near the levels reached in the 1970s and 1980s.”)
After excoriating the Biden administration for leaving behind Afghan allies, Republicans are now fomenting opposition to resettling the refugees who did escape. After Republicans complained for years about a “jobless recovery” under President Barack Obama, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy literally complained that there are now too many “help wanted” signs.
Of course, there's also the sheer depravity. Just one recent example (but we know you can come up with more!):
But as Biden puts the national interest over partisan considerations, his Republican counterparts are doing the opposite. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who is overseeing Senate Republicans’ 2022 campaign, is cheering for economic disaster. “You can see what’s going to happen next. We’re going to continue to have inflation, and then interest rates will go up,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “This is a gold mine for us.”
Economic pain for millions is a “gold mine” for Republicans? I’m thankful that, for the moment, people like this are not running the country.
As Milbank says, that's a lot to be thankful for -- for now.
Happy Thanksgiving!
