Are people talking about it much? Not really. But the good news does seem to have caught up with some voters at least.
Cathrine Rampell at the Washington Post writes:
How good is the U.S. economy these days? So good that Republicans are pretending the numbers are fake.
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has long held a lead over his Democratic rival on economic issues, but lately the gap has narrowed. In the spring, when President Joe Biden was still on the ticket, Trump held a roughly 12-point edge on the economy. Today, Trump remains ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris, but she’s cut that margin in half.
Some recent surveys have even found the candidates in a dead heat on economic issues. A recent Cook Political Report poll of swing state voters, for instance, found Trump’s advantage on “inflation and the cost of living” had evaporated completely.
This is remarkable. For most of the past decade, voters overwhelmingly trusted Republicans more on economic issues. They’ve been bummed about the economy during the Biden-Harris administration, often citing the economy or inflation as their top issue.
So how has Harris narrowed the gap?
Trump probably hasn’t helped his case by pitching ever-higher global tariffs, which would probably be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Independent economic analyses have also found that the rest of his agenda (mass deportations, politicizing the Federal Reserve, etc.) would probably worsen inflation and depress growth. The downstream consequences of these policies are not always intuitive, however, so they might not have influenced voters’ perceptions of Trump’s economic agenda all that much.
Trump’s struggles to remember his pitch might have played a role, too. At a recent Michigan event, for instance, a voter asked how he’d keep auto manufacturing jobs in the state. He responded with a rant about a nonexistent “Michigan man of the year” award he apparently hallucinated receiving.
Meanwhile, Harris has managed a “pivot” on the economy. Her policy approach has been directionally similar to Biden’s (she has proposed higher taxes for the wealthy, manufacturing subsidies, a more generous child tax credit, punishing greedy corporations, and so on). Her tone or word choices so far appear more successful than Biden’s, though. As Ben Mathis-Lilley recently wrote in Slate, Harris has subtly shifted public discourse away from past “inflation” and toward a more forward-looking discussion of the “cost of living.”
But the biggest reason for Trump’s shrinking lead on the economy may have little to do with either candidate: The U.S. economy is just doing spectacularly well.
According to the polling, most people still believe it’s terrible even if more people think that Harris will be acceptable as the steward of it over that failed, orange ignoramus. But I think we know that if the orange ignoramus wins, it will suddenly be great because he will take credit for everything that’s happened. He always does.
In 1984, Reagan declared that it was morning in America with much worse numbers than we have now. The inflation we had just been through had been truly horrific with high unemployment on top of it. But people were sick of feeling bad after the years of Vietnam and Watergate and oil shocks and cultural turmoil. Maybe we’re running a little late on that but are getting there. God, I hope so because if Trump wins, the whole thing is going to fall apart.
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This week’s video draws a contrast between Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz on our economic wellbeing – and is strongly effective at moving vote choice and increasing Harris favorability among Spanish speaking voters. Share Antonio – available with
