The closer we get to the election, the harder it becomes to explain the polls by any material basis. The primary explanation for President Joe Biden’s disastrous polling has been that voters believe the economy has been poor. But as the economy keeps getting better and better, his polling has remained awful or even gotten worse.
The best response to this situation, I believe, is for Biden to make an affirmative case for his economic policies.
Last year, Biden unveiled a catchphrase, “Bidenomics,” to sell his program. Democrats went berserk with anger. Didn’t Biden know the state of the economy is unpopular? Why is he associating himself with something people don’t like? Biden accordingly stopped using the line and has scaled back economic themes in favor of attacks on Trump’s fitness and emphasizing abortion rights.
Those are important issues. But it is very hard for a president to win reelection if voters think the economy is bad.
That the economy is in such fantastic shape makes it all the more bizarre that Biden faces this dilemma. It is true that inflation spiked during the first two years of his presidency, and voters apparently have not forgiven him. Innumerable analyses have delved into the apparently fatal effect on the voters’ psyche that inflation has caused.
But inflation has fallen back to pre-COVID levels. Interest rates remain elevated, at least for the time being. Meanwhile, nearly everything else about the economy remains fantastic. Wages are growing much faster than price levels (which was not true earlier in Biden’s term). They are growing faster for low-income workers than for affluent ones. The unemployment rate is at historic lows.
It may be the case that voters will decide they care more about the COVID inflation surge than anything else that’s happening in the economy. But there’s no universal law of politics that says inflation is the only economic fact that matters to people, and people who are angry about inflation will continue to feel angry even after it stops.
During Donald Trump’s first term, it was common for analysts to explain his surprising victory by pointing to the slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis or to the long-standing stagnation of working-class wages. Working-class wages are sizzling right now. So it seems odd that inflation is now the be-all, end-all explanation for public opinion. Trump, moreover, has been able to escape blame for the economic and social conditions that happened in 2020, because he has made the case that it’s all the fault of the pandemic. Biden should try explaining why the inflation surge, which happened worldwide, isn’t his fault.
Perhaps public opinion is malleable and persistent efforts to educate and persuade the public can make headway. Biden has plenty of material to work with. He signed laws that are bringing down prescription-drug costs, making health insurance cheaper, and funding new factories and infrastructure. Donald Trump’s plan is to raise taxes on the working class and middle class (via a gigantic tariff) and cut them on the wealthy.
It’s possible none of this will work. But right now, while there’s plenty of time to change things, Biden’s campaign is in rough shape. What ought to be his greatest advantage is continuing to hurt him. That’s the thing he needs to change.
