Comparing the 1960's in poverty to now is a bit of a stretch, especially when one is trying to decide if the current guy in office is doing the job or not.

I was saying that he is doing no worse than anyone else, given the trend. But if I pick the peak of COVID, then he's doing a great job. As I said, you can pick the dates that best reinforce your bias (or my bias). You remember statistics and data reporting, don't you? Your bin size in a histogram can make a difference in how the data appears. A scatterplot often needs to have an R2 line. Etc.

Either way, typically an anomalous event will be excluded from the data. Take U6:

ycharts.com - US u unemployment rate unadjusted.

That big spike is COVID. Before Biden, during Trump. Do we include that in the data? I see the argument either way.

Or I could pick any point prior to the spike, and compare it to April of this year. Then I would have to conclude that Bidenomics works because that is the lowest point in five years.

And, as you know, that is just a single number that doesn't reflect everything else that is going on. COVID itself, the reactions to COVID, government interventions, cessation of government interventions, etc. Expanding to 10 years, if you look, except for the COVID spike, U6 has been relatively steady at ~7%. No matter who was in office.

And the economy has been expanding. 187K new jobs the past 12 months, and 271K the prior 12 months. But, of course, the loss of jobs during COVID likely makes that apparent expansion inevitable (i.e. after COVID, things open up again, people get rehired, etc.).

It's not a simple one variable problem.