One of Democrats’ pet peeves is that President Biden has not only overseen a robust economy with almost unprecedentedly low levels of unemployment, his policies actually have some decent claim to responsibility for that record. And yet he gets no credit for it. Not only has Biden been mired in low-40s approval for the last two years, his ratings on the economy are some of his weakest.

This is definitely annoying and certainly unfair (what isn’t?). But it shouldn’t seem new or unexpected. If you’ve been following politics closely for a few decades you’ll remember that Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Obama faced a very similar issue. All three presidents had a significant interval when the economy was demonstrably doing well and yet got zero credit for it or even any clear public recognition that the economy was in good shape.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate are joined by TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky to talk all things Georgia indictment.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Plus two bonus pods! 

The Trial Will Be Televised

Josh and Kate do a mini-pod to discuss the fourth indictment of Donald Trump out of Georgia.

Plead the Fifth

Josh and Kate discuss the Fifth Circuit’s newest mifepristone ruling in a mini-pod.

One of the many interesting details in Josh Kovensky’s podcast interview with independent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar was the discussion of what often seems like Vladimir Putin’s very American culture war politics. To Americans, these statements by Putin can come off as almost a kind of trolling or part of some common rightist, authoritarian playbook. Zygar argued that they are, for the most part, not aimed at Putin’s domestic audience. In short, Putin decided over the last decade that he needed new international allies. And those allies were less a set of particular countries — or not only that — than the right and far-right in North America and Europe. As an example, Zygar argued that Russia’s recent crackdown on trans rights had very little grounding in Russia’s domestic political dialog. It’s not that Russians are pro-trans rights. It just isn’t something that has much salience either way. The crackdown was more something Putin did to deepen his bond with the global right.