The 2024 Joe Biden presidential campaign, which has thus far been essentially nonexistent, is now out with a crisp 30-second TV ad titled, “Got to Work.” The ad, which targets local Michigan broadcasts and other national battleground states during this week’s NFL season opener, touts the 46th president’s first-term track record on such economic issues as “fixing supply chains” and “mak(ing) us more energy-independent.” The fact that this is the subject of Biden’s first major post-Labor Day advertising barrage confirms what was already fairly obvious: The president and his team intend to make so-called Bidenomics the focal point of their reelection campaign messaging.

There is just one glaring problem: It is all a lie. Biden can try to gaslight the American people and retcon the past few years to his heart’s content, but the evidence is simply overwhelming. The ruse will not work.

Last year, the U.S. economy formally entered a recession—which until 2022, when the Biden administration attempted to redefine the word, universally meant consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Around the same time last year, annualized inflation on the consumer price index surpassed 9 percent—the highest reading in four decades, since the infamous “stagflation” of the Jimmy Carter era. Inflation was particularly thorny for many basic household food staples, such as chicken and eggs, some of which experienced 20-30 percent inflation at summertime 2022 peaks.