U.S. third-quarter gross domestic product was revised upward this morning to 3.3% growth – unexpectedly, of course, in the minds of analysts, who see no connection between a broadly free-market president who is determined to do right by the American people and results like these.

Tired of winning yet?

Yet there is a connection.  The free market is happily responding to thousands and thousands of regulations being cut, an end to business being targeted as the enemy, and the prospect of fairer taxes.  What it means is jobs, jobs, jobs, and lots of investment bringing more growth.  GDP is a lagging indicator, the sum of all things that led to the economic activity in the third quarter, so it presents a broad picture.  But that detail about investment being up portends more GDP figures just like this one in coming quarters as investments pay off.  Nobody makes investments if he doesn't think there will be winning ahead.  That tells us a lot about the direction of the Trump economy.

And it tells us a lot about the lost Obama years of growth, when times were good for the Beltway bureaucrats, who drove up Virginia real estate prices and turned a red state blue, at a cost of depleting the rest of the country.  The Obama years were years of subpar growth, where GDP never broke the 3.0% growth line in any quarter.  Averaged in with the Beltway bureaucrat bonanza, the weak, anemic Obama-era figures reflect how much was lost around the rest of the country – as money went to Washington, and voters grew poorer.  This is the cash the Ohios, the West Virginias, the Pennsylvanias – and other neglected states – sent, virtually all of whose voters defiantly cast their ballots in 2016 for Trump.

It's what normal people call change.

The truth is, the Obama administration never needed a good economy.  It was content to print money to keep the government financed and extract ever more from the taxpayers, leaving America's credit rating damaged and GDP at miserable levels.  Obama never cared about growth, not if it would interfere with his desire to over-regulate America and hire more bureaucrats to do it.

He thought it would be OK, because pollsters always insist that economic news is something Americans never notice.

But they do notice – all through the economy as jobs form and bureaucratic regulations, delays, shakedowns, and fees evaporate.

This is the result the voters voted for when they chose Trump.  They don't care about the small-ball stuff that consumes the Beltway such as tweets.  What they care about is winning.