CNN
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President Joe Biden often explains his simple theory of winning elections with his father’s kitchen-table wisdom: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.”
But his big speech in Chicago on Wednesday — devoted to enshrining “Bidenomics” as a credible idea in the public mind — implicitly acknowledged that comparisons with the “alternative” in November 2024 (quite possibly Donald Trump) may not be enough to win re-election.
In 2020, Biden won the White House promising a return to normalcy after a pandemic that dealt punishing economic blows. He had the advantage of running against an incumbent already embarrassed by one of his two impeachments, who kept the nation in a constant state of psychological distress with his Twitter feed, and whose musings on the injection of disinfectant as a cure for Covid-19 were reflected. their mistake of the worst public health emergency in a century.
But that return to normalcy that Biden promised to deliver has been elusive amid an economy that remains a challenge for many Americans.
If Biden faces Trump next year in a rematch, some of the internal logic of the last race could still apply. Trump has alienated moderate, suburban and swing voters in the past, and there is little sign that the twice-impeached former president has tried to moderate his brashness to appeal to them going forward. So not being the “alternative” might work for Biden one last time.
But just as Trump was tried during his term in 2020, Biden has to sell his own record four years later, a factor that helps explain why he is trying to improve the perception of his handling of the economy.
And given the still tightly balanced electoral map and Biden’s low approval ratings, it’s not hard to see how some damaging events, perhaps including an economic center, could be disastrous for him. Biden won in painfully narrow victories in key states like Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona, and it wouldn’t take that many swing votes in that trio of states for Biden to lose.
Although a measure of normal life has returned, months of sky-high inflation (which is now falling) exacerbated the feeling among many Americans of perpetual economic crisis. Many citizens are experiencing a pandemic hangover, from children dealing with the consequences of the lockdown to adults whose jobs in downtown shops and restaurants have disappeared as the culture of working from from home And beyond the economy, a rosy “normalcy” may never return in a nation rocked by political and cultural clashes, especially when a former president who incited an insurgency is the frontrunner for the GOP nomination , falsely arguing that he was duped. no power last time.
Biden admitted as much, in a speech last September, accusing MAGA Republicans of seeking to destroy the soul of the nation.
“Too much of what is happening in our country today is not normal,” Biden said.
If Trump is not the GOP nominee, depriving Biden of comparison to an extreme autocrat wannabe, the president’s campaign has even more of an imperative to change the public’s poor perception of his handling of the economy. Multiple polls show that the public rates Biden poorly in an area that is usually critical to a president’s reelection hopes. A CNN/SSRS poll in April, for example, found that 62 percent of Americans disapprove of how Biden has handled aid to the middle class. Only 3 in 10 Americans thought the economy was in good shape.
This pessimism prevails despite the economy’s impressive job growth and its extraordinary resilience to avoid predictions of a recession. Months of high inflation, caused in part by the supply chain crisis due to the pandemic and high gas prices, created a lasting gloom. These conditions were visceral for many families. It didn’t help Biden that his administration initially called inflation “transitory.” In some ways, the officials were right: The rate of increase in the cost of living is now about half of what it once was. But the White House seemed indifferent, and Biden paid a political price. Meanwhile, Republicans took back the House, in part, arguing that Biden’s big-spending pandemic bailout, infrastructure bill and other measures overheated the economy.
So what exactly is “Bidenomics” and what is essentially a branding exercise, to pull together the threads of Biden’s domestic agenda and convince Americans that he is far more successful than they thought, can actually boost political fortunes of the president?
To be fair, Biden has been talking about how to grow the middle class during his own half-century in top politics. It forms an essential part of his identity, down to his frequent description of his blue-collar upbringing and his idealization of the idea that often seems out of step with the modern market economy: that if Americans work hard, they can get a good shake. to stay ahead.
He told a story Wednesday about how he once stood on a Tibetan plateau with now-Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who asked him to define America in one word. Biden replied, “Possibilities.” According to the president, those possibilities have been lost for many Americans.
He argued that “trickle down” economics—the Republican-backed theory of cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations to start a downward flow of job creation and prosperity—doesn’t work and has simply created more inequality and enriched the already rich.
Biden touted his agenda, including the first bipartisan infrastructure bill in decades, another that fired up the U.S. semiconductor industry to take on China, investments in new forms of carbon-free energy and an attempt to use government power to reduce health care costs. and childcare and to revive industrial research and investment to boost the upswing in high-tech manufacturing.
“Here’s the simple truth about the trickle-down economy: It didn’t represent the best of American capitalism, let alone America,” Biden said in Chicago. “It represented a time when we left and how this country was built, how this city was built. Bidenomics is about the future.”
There is some irony with the oldest American president in history, who is asking voters to give him a second term that would begin when he is 82, talking about the future. But creating a sense of optimism about the future after difficult times is a staple of re-election efforts. It was central to President Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign in 1984, for example. Biden’s economic re-election message appears to have more in common with a more recent equivalent: the 2012 campaign, when President Barack Obama successfully castigated Republican candidate and venture capitalist Mitt Romney as an avatar of a skewed economy towards the rich that eliminated the workers and middle class. class Like his running mate that year, Biden finds himself in the difficult position of claiming credit for areas of a recovering economy, in his case, low unemployment, at a time when many Americans feel that the things are in terrible condition.
Trump is already looking to capitalize on Biden’s rough approval ratings on the economy, even though the former president’s only major legislative success in his first term, tax reform, was a big giveaway to the rich and the corporations
“‘Bidenomics’ is high taxes, crippling regulations, crushing inflation, (a) war on American energy, rising energy costs, intentional job-killing globalist deals like the Paris Climate Agreement and full economic surrender to China and other foreign countries,” the Trump campaign said in a statement Wednesday. “Economics of America First vs. America Last.”
Right now, it’s hard to judge whether the new Bidenomics mantra will catch on and change Biden’s assessments of the economy. Given the multiple factors that weigh on economic performance, presidents don’t get much credit for booms and often get too much blame for recessions anyway. And it’s all a bit fake. Biden, for example, wants credit for a low unemployment rate, but not the blame for high inflation, both made from the same economic conditions.
It has long been accepted political wisdom that the fortunes of presidents are dictated more by the economy than anything else. But even Biden’s big hits, like the infrastructure bill, may not deliver tangible results right away, at least not before the 2024 election.
Biden, as he did in his midterm presentation, is sure to center much of his re-election bid on the idea that Trump is once again threatening American democracy. But with his bid for Bidenomics he is also taking a conventional political approach against Trump, who is flooding the area with a new kind of politics full of payback, lies, conspiracy theories and culture war.
Americans will decide in November 2024 whether Bill Clinton’s 1992 election credo – “it’s the economy, stupid” – still applies in a wilder and more volatile political era.
