Media’s Trump Apocalypse Narrative Disconnected From Americans’ Growing Confidence

Media’s Trump Apocalypse Narrative Disconnected From Americans’ Growing Confidence

If you only read the mainstream, openly left-wing, and establishment Republican media, you’d think it was Apocalypse Now in America.

Paraphrasing Pauline Kael’s alleged statement about how she didn’t see Nixon’s win coming because she didn’t know anyone who voted for him: The doom and gloom media doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t hate Trump and who isn’t despondent, or if they do know such people, they discount them as imbeciles.

But that’s not what is reflected in the American spirit, as numerous polls have recently shown.

Optimism is rising, as we noted in an earlier post.

Bloomberg just released its findings, on Consumer Comfort, and it is soaring, U.S. Consumer Comfort Just Reached Its Highest Level in a Decade:

Americans’ confidence continued to mount last week as the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index reached the highest point in a decade on more-upbeat assessments about the economy and buying climate, figures showed Thursday.

Key Points

• Consumer comfort index rose to 50.6 in the period ended March 5, the highest since March 2007, from 49.8
• Measure has exceeded 50 just six times since April 2002
• Gauge of economy advanced to 48.2, the highest since August 2001, from 46.8
• Buying-climate measure rose to 44.5, the strongest reading since April 2002, from 43.7
• Index of personal finances was little changed at 58.9 versus 59

This is consistent with recent findings that Consumer Confidence is at a 15-year high:

U.S. consumers are the most confident in the U.S. economy in 15 years, buoyed by the strongest job market since before the Great Recession.

The survey of consumer confidence rose to 114.8 in February from 111.6 in January, according to the Conference Board, the private company that publishes the index. That’s the highest level since July 2001.

The U. Michigan Consumer Confidence index has similar findings:

As does Gallup, US Economic Confidence Index at Record High of +16:

Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index is the average of two components: how Americans rate current economic conditions and whether they feel the economy is improving or getting worse. The index has a theoretical maximum of +100 if all Americans were to say the economy is doing well and improving, and a theoretical minimum of -100 if all Americans were to say the economy is doing poorly and getting worse.

Gallup also fpund an upswing in personal satisfaction just prior to the Inauguration, In US, Personal Satisfaction Back to Pre-Recession Levels

As 2017 begins, Americans are more satisfied with their personal lives than they have been in a decade. Eighty-seven percent say they are satisfied with their own life, including 57% who are very satisfied. Both figures have improved since dipping during the recession and are at or near pre-recession levels.

General consumers attitudes also are reflected in business executive optimism, as an AICPA survey just showed, Business Executives’ Optimism About U.S. Economy Is Highest Since 2004:

Business executives are reporting their highest level of optimism about prospects for the U.S. economy in more than a dozen years, according to the first-quarter AICPA Economic Outlook Survey, which polls chief executive officers, chief financial officers, controllers and other certified public accountants in U.S. companies who hold executive and senior management accounting roles.

This type of media-public disconnect is one of the reasons President Hillary Clinton could not be reached for comment.

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