President Joe Biden had a simple message for voters in Cleveland when he went to defend a provision of the first big spending bill he signed into law: Everything good about the economy was the result of his policies. In contrast, everything bad was the fault of someone else.

“The previous administration lost more jobs on its watch than any administration since Herbert Hoover — that’s a fact — all based on failed trickle-down economics that benefited the wealthiest Americans and hit the middle class and working people the hardest,” Biden told the crowd earlier this month. “But we came in with a fundamentally different economic vision: an economy that grows from the bottom up and the middle out. It’s good for everyone, because when the middle class does well, the poor have a ladder up, and the wealthy still do very well.”