Any incumbent president running for re-election tells some variation of this basic narrative: We are better off than we were four years ago. Voters can be confident our policies are working and will help solve the remaining problems.
The 2024 election was unusual because two incumbents were running, each selling his version of that narrative. But the current incumbent, Joe Biden, had lost his ability to communicate coherently, while the former incumbent, Donald Trump, was selling a romanticized-at-best, mendacious-at-worst, version of his tenure.
Now that Biden has withdrawn and Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to be the Democratic nominee, what had been Trump’s advantage can be her’s. The “better off than four years ago” argument favors the current administration, which should become apparent with a stronger communicator unburdened by concerns about cognitive decline.
When a New York Times poll asked a few weeks ago, “Do you think Donald Trump left the country better or worse than when he took office,” a 47 percent plurality said “better.” Then, when asked, “Do you think Joe Biden has made the country better or worse since taking office,” a sizeable 58 percent said “worse.”
The perceptions are the reverse of reality. But the June debate helps explain why errant perceptions are widely held. Trump spun an Orwellian narrative, which Biden failed to counter.
“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We had never done so well,” Trump falsely crowed. “We got hit with COVID. And when we did, we spent the money necessary so we wouldn’t end up in a Great Depression,” he claimed, leaving out the part when Biden pushed through additional pandemic relief.
Trump rambled on, “We had given them back a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-COVID, and nobody thought that was even possible. The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounceback jobs; they’re bounced back from the COVID.” Unmentioned are the record stock market highs and the 6 million net new jobs beyond the 9 million post-pandemic “bounceback” jobs generated under Biden. Most of those jobs went to American-born workers, and most of those that didn’t likely went to legal, not illegal, immigrants.
But Biden’s response was a jumbled hash of talking points, devoid of an easy-to-follow narrative that spoke to the economic debate.
For example, Biden said Trump “rewarded the wealthy. He had the largest tax cut in American history, $2 trillion. He raised the deficit larger than any president has in any one term.” But cutting taxes, even if it helps the wealthy, won’t rankle voters if they think they benefit as well. And Biden isn’t much better than Trump regarding deficits—both spent heavily in response to the pandemic. Most crucially, nothing Biden said addressed the core question: Which president did more to improve daily life for most Americans?
A simpler response was available that punctures Trump’s inflated narrative:
I worked with Barack Obama to end the Great Recession. We fixed the economy, creating 75 consecutive months of job growth that slashed the unemployment rate by more than half. Then we handed it over to you. You coasted on our work for three years. Then, while you were telling people to cure COVID with bleach, the economy collapsed, and you handed me back a colossal mess. It took some time, but we fixed the economy again. Now, the economy is growing strong, unemployment is back to a near-record low, and wages have been beating inflation for the last 15 months.
That doesn’t address every lie and exaggeration in Trump’s story (getting bogged down in fact-checks can derail a compelling narrative). More detail is needed to explain what Biden’s policies did, such as fixing supply chains and tackling monopolistic price-gouging to tame inflation.
But the narrative conveys that we are better off now than we were four years ago and worse off after four years of Trump. That’s how incumbent administrations win. (And they usually win, barring economic calamity or unpopular wars with American ground troops.)
Like Biden, Harris is most comfortable framing the 2024 contest as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. At Essence Fest earlier this month, she warned: “This is probably the most significant election of our lifetime … where on one side you have the former president … who has openly talked about his admiration of dictators and his intention to be a dictator on Day One, who has openly talked about his intention to weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, who has talked about being proud of taking from the women of America a most fundamental right to make decisions about your own body.”
These are appropriate and urgent warnings for the Democratic nominee to deliver. We know they have electoral potency since concerns about the Republican threats to democracy and reproductive freedom buoyed Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.
Yet the economy is almost always on what presidential elections hinge. And Trump has been able to get away with a revisionist history of the economy’s performance over the last eight years. Biden could not correct that phony history in the debate, inflicting a fatal self-wound on his campaign.
Fortunately, Biden was able to recognize his limitations, stand down, and lift Harris up. His Number Two, with sharper communication skills, has the ability to defend the record of the last four years and erode the rhetorical foundation of Trump’s comeback campaign.
At the risk of being excessively optimistic amid an exhilarating moment, I believe the former prosecutor can set the economic record straight. If she does, the presidential election won’t be all that close.
The post Kamala Can Correct Trump’s Tallest Tale appeared first on Washington Monthly.
