Kevin Hassett went on CNN Sunday and told Jake Tapper he doesn’t believe the gloomy economic surveys. Ahead of an election, he said, partisan pollsters telling us Americans are deeply depressed is a classic Democratic move, and he isn’t buying it. If the polls meant anything, he argued, you’d see it in the consumption data. Instead, retailers are doing fine:
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said Sunday that he doesn’t believe in recent polls that show Americans’ negative feelings about the economy.
“Ahead of an election cycle, the fact that there’s, you know, possibly partisan pollsters telling us that the people are really really depressed, it’s a classic Democrat move, and I just don’t buy it,” Hassett told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“Because if it were true, if the polls were any value for thinking about what’s going on with consumers, then we should look at the consumption data and say, ‘Geez, yeah, that’s right. People aren’t spending.’ But, in fact, the retailers are doing well,” he added.
On the data, he’s right, and the numbers aren’t close. Second-quarter GDP was finalized at 2.2 percent, revised up from 1.5 when forecasters expected no change at all. Consumer spending grew at a 3.8 percent annual pace after a first quarter that managed 0.7. Core PCE came in at 3.0 percent against expectations of 3.3 — inflation cooler than projected, growth hotter, which is the exact opposite of the stagflation everyone was promised. Chain store sales have climbed through the year. Retail sales excluding gas and autos spiked in August. Household debt as a share of GDP is falling. Real median household income rose in 2025 while unemployment ticked down.
That’s not a narrative. It’s a set of numbers from career statisticians, and Hassett’s point about them is sound: frightened people don’t spend like that. They defer the appliance, skip the trip, trade down at the grocery store. The behavior and the survey responses are telling different stories, and behavior is the one with money attached.
Here’s where Republicans should be careful, because Hassett is an economist giving an economist’s answer and this is a political problem.
Voters are answering a different question than the one about aggregate growth. They’re answering about the price of a cart of groceries compared to four years ago, about what it costs to fill a tank, about whether the mortgage math works. Inflation at 3.4 percent means prices are still rising, just more slowly — and the cumulative level is what people feel at the register. Fuel prices remain higher than anyone wants. Those are real, and a White House that tells people their lived experience is a partisan artifact will lose that argument every time.
The better posture is the honest one, and it’s available: the direction is right, the trend is favorable, and the job isn’t finished. More growth than forecast, less inflation than forecast, two thousand new manufacturing jobs at one truck plant in Texas, and a tariff policy that the experts swore would produce the opposite. That’s a record worth running on without claiming the groceries are cheap.
Democrats will hammer affordability for the next month, which is their only real opening — though it’s complicated by a party whose activist wing is now openly selling economic ideas that are tied to Havana and Pyongyang. And there’s still that Joe Bidenflation hangover most voters feel and remember.
