There are many good reasons to be unhappy with the economy today: by conventional social democratic metrics like union density, welfare generosity, and public ownership levels, the economy is not in good shape, and recent trends have been mixed at best.
Not even the most news-illiterate, feckless, gullible voter on Earth will have their entire political trajectory changed by one headline, and NO ONE who is not already extremely politically-engaged is ever even going to see a Jacobin headline.
Moreover, whether you like it or not, the economy being bad (thanks to Capitalism and Corporatism) will be blamed on Biden by politically-disengaged people, and it’s important to understand and acknowledge that reality rather than just trying to convince people that the economy isn’t bad right now (which is what the headline is about).
A bunch of Democratic strategists have been out doing op-eds in their usual publications crowing that the economy is totally great, akshually! and pushing that narrative to ignore the reality that people feel in their bank accounts is just putting Trump in a stronger position come election time, because you know he is going to accuse Biden of causing the economic hardships that people are feeling.
So really, Democrats have 2 options:
And before you say, “that will just hand the Right the ‘Socialist’ talking point they’ve always wanted”… guess what! They already claim he’s a socialist now, and he’d be better off pushing the narrative that he wants an FDR-style economy that reigns in corporations than just limply pretending everything it great.
Right now the pro-union, anti-corporation sentiment is easily the highest it’s been in 40 years, and to just let that fall by the wayside would be a huge mistake, that I have no doubt Biden will absolutely make. Biden has no one to blame for his current unpopularity but Biden.