What do you call it when you miss expectations by almost half? I’d call that a failure. Joe Biden calls it Wednesday.

ADP has released its latest jobs figures, showing that the economy only created 330,000 jobs, missing the expected mark of 653,000 by an astronomical amount. This comes amid high inflation as the economy appears to be teetering on the edge after Democrats began threatening more COVID mitigation measures.

BREAKING: Private companies added 330,000 jobs in July, according to ADP, far short of the 653,000 estimate https://t.co/pUIN3rkoz6

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) August 4, 2021

The caveat here is that ADP does its own survey and the government’s numbers may be different, but the differences are typically not large. It’d certainly be a huge surprise if the government comes back with numbers nearly 100% higher. I highly doubt that’s the case this go around.

Regardless, it’s undeniable, in my view, that Biden has taken an organic recovery and run it off a cliff. There is no reason for the economy to miss growth expectations by over 2%. There is no reason for any jobs reports to be missing by half the projected value. There are at least 9 million open jobs in this country and they aren’t being filled for one very specific reason — because Democrats keep paying people to stay home.

That has a ripple effect where the strangling of supply due to a shortage of workers leads to more and more inflation which leads to suppressed growth. All Biden had to do was get out of the way. Instead, he’s put his mark on the economy and not in a good way.

Want to know why the Democrats, including Biden, are so gung-ho about pushing COVID as an existential crisis again? Because it gives them an excuse for the failures I just described. If they can keep this going into next year, they figure they might be able to limit the damage in the 2022 election. After all, how can it be their fault the economy faltered when we have a pandemic going on? That’s the rationalization anyway.

The government will release its jobs report on Friday so we’ll have to see then whether it varies wildly from ADP’s numbers. Either way, the economy looks to be hitting a wall amid several other data points showing the same thing. Context is always important, and the jobs numbers in context are simply not a good sign. Elections have consequences, and the country is finding that out the hard way. This was avoidable, but here we are.