So far, the reigning instinct among Democrats campaigning to reelect Joe Biden next year has been to underscore the administration’s economic success. And, while the likes of White House press releases and tweets from administration officials aren’t without their fair share of spin, their underlying premise isn’t entirely untrue. Seen in relation to key macroeconomic indicators like growth (projected to be 1.8 percent this year and possibly much higher) and unemployment (just 3.8 percent in August), the general outlook is in many ways very positive.

The strategy, however, doesn’t seem to be working. According to new CNN polling, Biden currently trails every major candidate for the Republican presidential nomination except Vivek Ramaswamy, including likely nominee Donald Trump. Biden’s economic numbers are also notably poor. Gallup’s latest survey, conducted last month, suggests that a sizable majority of Americans (63 percent) disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, while a much lesser share (37 percent) view it favorably. As journalist Jeff Spross points out, Trump’s approval rating was nearly twice as high when the economy posted similar numbers.

The obvious dissonance between these two sets of figures has given rise to a whole meta-discourse about why more Americans aren’t effusively sharing macroeconomic figures at the watercooler and gifting Biden with higher approval ratings. A few pundits, in fact, have more or less taken to scolding voters for being insufficiently grateful. “You don’t want to say that Americans are stupid,” wrote Paul Krugman in May, “[but there are] huge gaps between what people say about the economy and both what the data says and what they say about their own experience.” “Overall, the U.S. economy continues to surge forward despite economists’ dire predictions,” remarked MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough in July, citing among other things America’s GDP growth. “And despite the blather that cable-news hosts spit at you daily, your country is doing pretty damn well.”