From the With-Friends-Like-Yhis Department: During a campaign stop for a fellow Democrat in Iowa, Vice President Joe Biden admitted that the middle class had been “left behind” by the Obama administration.
As with many of Biden’s comments, it was most likely an accidental admission. In his defense, it’s difficult to discuss the financial state of the middle class without conceding it has suffered mightily under President Obama.
After running off some economic indicators, Biden explained that despite six years worth of Obamanomics – not to mention two years of total control with a Democrat= controlled House and Senate – “the middle class is still in trouble.”
Biden explained that the numbers are essentially meaningless, when everyone can still feel that the middle class is hurting.
Via the Free Beacon:
“But you know the truth: The middle class is still in trouble,” Biden said. “You don’t have to know the numbers, you can feel it. You can feel it in your bones.”
Biden’s lamentation failed to inspire any hope or energy among the crowd at Braley’s rally. Instead, the vice president’s words hun[g] in the air as he pointed out that all the positive economic numbers the Obama administration touts have little meaning for middle-class families.
“According to all the statistics, all the economic policy institutes, and all these groups that are outside experts in the economy, the gross domestic product means the nation grew over the last ten years by over 25 percent, and productivity went up over 30 percent,” Biden said. “But middle class wages went up by only 14 cents. Hear me? 14 cents. You know it. You don’t have to know the number, but you know. The middle class has been left behind.”
Watch Biden’s comment below:
In an interview with Salon earlier this month, Senator Elizabeth Warren explained that she felt the Obama administration chose Big Business over the middle class.
“[The president] picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street,” she said… “They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over.”
This isn’t Biden’s first time ripping his own administration for its policies toward the middle class. In 2012, he claimed the middle class had been “buried the last four years.”
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
