DCCC roasted for tweeting broken graph and thanking Biden for 2-cent drop in gas prices

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was hammered over a tweet containing a misleading graph thanking President Joe Biden for a drop of 2 cents in U.S. gas prices.

A couple of hours after it was sent, the missive was mercilessly subjected to a “ratio,” which Dictionary.com defines as “the proportion of replies to a tweet compared to the combined number of retweets and likes, where a high ratio usually indicates a barrage of negative replies.”

At first glance, the chart shared by the DCCC on Thursday shows a promising decrease up until the end of November, citing economic data. But a closer look makes it clear the graph is misleading, as there is no data point to show when the x-axis begins. The only data points shown are Nov. 22 and Nov. 29. Beyond that, the noteworthiness of a 2-cent fall between $3.40 and $3.38 per gallon, as well as a y-axis scale that zooms in to between $3.375 and $3.415, was not lost on Twitter users roasting the group.

Expanding the timescale view of gas prices paints a much less optimistic picture. For instance, in late April 2020, the average U.S. gas price was $1.77, according to data from the U.S. Energy information Administration.

It appears the DCCC’s inspiration to share the tweet may have come from Matthew Yglesias, who writes the Slow Boring newsletter and is the author of One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, as hours earlier he tweeted a very similar chart and, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, said, “Gas prices steadily falling since Biden signed the infrastructure bill and fixed inflation.”

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Some users noticed that White House chief of staff Ron Klain, whose social media activity is highly scrutinized by the D.C. press, “liked” the original tweet from Yglesias, who later tweeted a meme that appeared to acknowledge the situation.

The DCCC raised $11.6 million in October, according to figures published late last month, compared to $9.7 million raised by the National Republican Congressional Committee.