President Joe Biden has a matter of months to convince gloomy voters that he’s built a thriving economy. Democrats now think he’ll get a hand in doing so from an unlikely source: the Federal Reserve.

Biden allies who spent the last year fearful that the Fed’s effort to curb inflation would tip the nation into recession have suddenly changed their tune with the central bank on the verge of pulling off a so-called soft landing.

The rate-hiking campaign that ballooned people’s borrowing costs and weighed on economic forecasts appears over, without major damage to the job market in its wake. And after a brief pause, Fed officials are indicating they may reverse course and start actually cutting interest rates. They got another green light signal on Friday when the Commerce Department reported that inflation grew by just 1.9 percent over the last six months, putting it under the 2 percent yearly level that the Fed has long made its target. Biden, in a statement, called it “a significant milestone.”

That shift, he and other Democrats hope, will serve as a definitive signal to voters that the economy has emerged from a sea of challenges far stronger than before — just as the presidential race hits full stride.

“Lowering the interest rates would be huge,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign, calling it a key element in making Americans more optimistic about the future. “What’s important for voters is not so much the absolute level of the economy, but the direction of the economy.”

The White House has no plans to break its long-standing silence on the Fed, much less demand that Chair Jerome Powell take specific actions — an approach that marks a sharp departure from former President Donald Trump's practice of routinely pressuring the bank's policymakers.

But the mere act of feeling anticipation, rather than dread, for the Fed’s next moves represents a newfound sensation for much of the Democratic Party. Fed........

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