I spoke to POLITICO‘s Kate Davidson about the surprisingly ugly Q1 GDP number and what it means politically for the Biden administration.
The senior Biden administration official pointed to a thread Wednesday from Jason Furman, former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, explaining why technical factors in the first quarter masked the economy’s underlying strength.
But one analyst said that kind of messaging from the White House wouldn’t work.
“Any time you’re relying on a 12-tweet thread from Jason Furman to explain why actually the economy is better than it looks — particularly when GDP is already an abstract thing that people are not necessarily intuitively feeling, unlike inflation — I think it makes the story they’re trying to tell now even tougher,” said Liam Donovan, a principal at Bracewell LLP and a former GOP operative. “There’s only so many indicators left that can provide good news. The last thing they need is further bad news.”
Read the full piece here.