Here’s the ironic thing about next year’s presidential election: The economy will be boosted by the flood of campaign money being spent at a time when the 26 Democrats running for president want the economy to look lousy so they can defeat President Trump.

And the economy will be the major issue during the 2020 election because it always is during a presidential election.

Think about it. Those 26 candidates, plus Trump, are projected to spend nearly $10 billion on advertising alone.

And there will be, of course, a ripple effect from all that spending.

By that I mean that people at the advertising companies and media organizations will be richer because of those ads and they will make purchases with their newfound wealth.

They’ll buy shoes. And the shoe salesman will feel wealthier and, say, go out and buy a nice dinner. And the waiter at the shoe salesman’s restaurant will go to Subway for a hero sandwich.

And each dollar of that $10 billion will trickle down the line until multiple people are helped.

In fact, so many Democrats are trying to beat Trump that spending will rise from the “just” $6.3 billion during the presidential election of 2016 and the massive $8.7 billion spent during 2018’s non-presidential-year elections.

I’m not saying that the $10 billion in election spending will affect the overall economy by much. The US economy is more than $20 trillion in size, so $10 billion is a ripple in that ocean.

But it is still ironic that so many people trying to take Trump’s job away are going to contribute so much to the issue that will help him remain president.

And what I just said doesn’t include the number of people who will get jobs from all the presidential and congressional campaigns.

How many people get jobs with the candidates? This is also funny because the Labor Department really doesn’t know.

The best I could find — with the help of a patient Labor Department analyst — was a Census Bureau table that shows a spurt of about 10,000 jobs before the last presidential election.

In 2016, for instance, there were 22,367 people working for what the Census Bureau called private political organizations. There was a steady buildup that year from just 9,412 such workers in January of 2016.

If you remember 2016, it was the Republican Party that had an army of candidates. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were the only Democrats in the race.

And, naturally, there was a big drop-off in jobs for these people after the election. By January 2017, only 6,217 people had jobs with private political organizations.

And since the Census Bureau doesn’t seasonally adjust this category of jobs, the buildup of political workers might have an impact on the employment figures reported in the months leading up to the next presidential election.

There really isn’t anything opposition candidates can do about this irony. They have to hire people and spend money if they plan to beat Trump.

It’s just funny that what they are doing is helping the guy they are trying to beat.