President Biden wants to persuade Americans that the economy is better than they think — and that he deserves credit for fixing it.
He calls his strategy “Bidenomics,” and it has already become a central theme of his upcoming re-election campaign.
“Bidenomics works,” he said in a June 28 speech in Chicago.
This sales pitch will be an uphill struggle. Most Americans aren’t just skeptical of the economy’s recovery, they’re downright pessimistic. A Gallup poll last month reported that 66% think the economy is getting worse, not better. In an AP/NORC survey in May, 64% disapproved of Biden’s handling of the economy, including 39% of Democrats.
But even though most voters see this as a strike against him, it’s smart policy for Biden to claim ownership of the economy.
On the one hand, it’s a problem that no presidential candidate, especially an incumbent, can avoid.
“You can bet Donald Trump is going to ask voters: are you better now than you were four years ago?” Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik predicted. “Biden must have an answer to this.”
On the other hand, the facts are slowly rallying to Biden’s side. The economy is growing at around 2% a year, job creation remains strong and, most important politically, inflation has come down to 4% from a peak of 9% of last year. After two years in which prices rose faster than wages, real incomes are slowly rising again.
“Bidenomics in action,” the president sang recently when the Department of Labor announced that 209,000 new jobs had been created in June.
White House officials expressed frustration that voters failed to notice — let alone celebrate — these upbeat numbers.
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But the pessimistic mood of the public is not at all mystifying.
Inflation is falling, but prices are still stuck at inflation fueled levels.
“The consumer price index is 16% higher than when Biden took office,” said Republican pollster David Winston.
And while growth looks strong, financial experts continue to warn that a recession could be upon us any day, especially if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates again.
Biden’s bet is that if the economy continues to improve, so will public opinion – and he wants to get the credit when that happens.
Hence “Bidenomics,” a cheeky way of claiming authorship of a recovery that most voters don’t yet see.
“Good things are happening in the economy, but the average American doesn’t necessarily associate them with the president,” a Biden aide told me. “We need to make sure people make a direct connection to his economic agenda.”
As an economic strategy, Bidenomics is essentially a set of industrial policy initiatives that the president successfully pushed through Congress in his first two years in office, focusing on infrastructure, high-tech manufacturing and renewable energies.
As a political strategy, it boils down to job creation. Between now and Election Day, expect plenty of photos of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials admiring high-tech bridges, tunnels and assembly lines.
In South Carolina last week, the president touted the bridges his grants are rebuilding and boasted that workers at new semiconductor factories would earn up to $100,000 a year – “and you you don’t need a degree!”
But he didn’t have much to say about inflation except to promise it was still “one of my top priorities.”
That omission drew grumbling from some centrist Democrats.
“I would have liked more of a story about inflation-fighter Joe Biden,” said Will Marshall, president of the moderate Progressive Policy Institute.
Needless to say, Republicans renewed their longstanding accusation that Biden’s spending programs were what fueled inflation in the first place.
But Biden doesn’t need to persuade every voter that his policy has been a triumph. If he can sway most Democrats who are unhappy with his economic handling, his re-election campaign will be on firmer ground.
What matters is not what Bidenomics looks like now, it’s what it will look like a year from now, when voters decide.
That’s Biden’s bet.
If the economy continues to improve, Biden will have already told voters why he deserves some credit.
If the Fed sends the economy into a recession, it won’t be able to claim those bragging rights – but it can claim that it tried.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.