Democrats and their media keep arguing that the problem with Bidenomics is perception not reality. People just don’t get how good it is and supposedly, despite total control of the organs of communication and narrative discourse, they haven’t been able to get it across.

Cue articles like this from the New York Times. “Economic Gains — Seeking re-election in 1984, Ronald Reagan presided over an economy similar in many ways to today’s. But he sold a message of progress and promise.” Except that the issue is reality, not perception.

Here’s another data point.

The average amount of total debt owed by U.S. households hit $145,319 in the third quarter of 2023.

The report estimated that American households increased their total debt by $78 billion in the third quarter.

“Consumers typically rack up the most debt during the fourth quarter of the year as we spend excessively on holiday gifts and travel, so it’s not a good sign when we enter the final few months of the year with a lot of new debt,” John Kiernan, the Managing Editor at WalletHub, said in a statement emailed to The Hill.

“Given how Q3 played out, WalletHub is now projecting that U.S. households will end the year with $350+ billion more debt than they started with,” Kiernan continued.

Consumer spending is weakening.

Target CEO Brian Cornell weighed in Thursday on spending behavior that the retailer has observed among its customers, saying they have been “buying less stuff.”

“They’re managing that budget really carefully, and it’s certainly pressuring discretionary spending. They’re buying less stuff, even within food and beverage,” Cornell, who has led the Minnesota-based retailer since 2014, said during a CNBC interview.

The housing market is shutting down. Consumers are tired of paying prices that feel like ripoffs and they’re budgeting. The economy is doing what the Fed wanted it to do, more or less, and that has little to do with anything the Biden administration did. All it’s done is spend insane amounts of money which made inflation even worse. People are loaded with debt and pessimistic about the future. They go shopping and come away having to spend a whole lot more than they planned every time. This is not perception, it’s reality.

When people can’t afford groceries, gas or a home, it’s a reality issue. And the more the media keeps pushing the perception line, the further out of touch it gets with ordinary Americans.