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EXCERPT:
TODD: "As Democrats look ahead to November, I see a lot of reasons for worry. The top concern, likely the economy. And while measuring the country's economic picture right now, it's complicated. The nation's mood about it? Certainly not. In fact, the consumer sentiment index from the University of Michigan is probably the best thing we have to measure where people think the economy is. When Biden took office, it sat at 79, it went up a little bit in sort of B+ territory when the Covid response improved. It is now sitting at 62.8. That is basically a failing grade, if you want. Before, just before the pandemic hit, February 2020, this index was sitting at 101. People felt really good about the economy. Now, there are some good signs that the Biden administration will point to when they talk about the economy. The unemployment rate, 6.4 percent when they took office, now extraordinarily low, 3.6 percent. We continue to add jobs from the Covid downturn. Look at the stock market. Stock market's up 11 percent since Biden took office. It's sitting at just over 31,000. As of Friday, it was near 35,000. For what it's worth, the Dow is down for this calendar year, from January to now, but up overall. So, why is everybody upset about the economy? It's this number: 7.9 percent. When Biden took office, the inflation rate was sitting at 1.4 percent. but as we've been digging out from Covid, all this money thrown into the economy, we see what the inflation rate is doing. The question is, is it going to stop going up? Because this is why folks do not think this is a good economy."