Brand-Aid: Democrats worry Bidenomics is a losing message

Supporters of President Joe Biden are beginning to worry that his economic platform isn’t working, at least not as a winning 2024 campaign message.

For months, the president and top surrogates focused his reelection effort around “Bidenomics,” the reclaimed nickname for his collective spending bills and economic policies, despite his economic polling remaining firmly underwater.

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The Biden team’s argument, dating back to early 2023, has been that as more parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisan infrastructure law, and CHIPS and Science Act are implemented, the more downstream benefits households will see, raising Biden’s economic profile in the process.

However, a recent poll from NBC News showed just 38% support Biden’s economic stewardship, a low point for his nearly three years in office.

Apprehension over Bidenomics is also causing the president to bleed support from a critical component of his winning 2020 coalition: voters under 45 years old.

A poll published Wednesday by PBS NewsHour, NPR, and Marist showed the president now trailing former President Donald Trump, his likely opponent in the 2024 general election, in that demographic by 2 points. For comparison, Biden carried all voters under 45 by 17 points in 2020. Biden still leads Trump by 2 points in a head-to-head matchup, per the poll.

Meanwhile, polling from Gallup found that 53% trust Republicans to “do a better job of keeping the country prosperous,” while just 39% said the same of Democrats. The GOP’s 14-point lead in the poll represented a 4-point bump compared to the 2022 midterm elections and represents its widest margin in Gallup’s polling since 1991.

Though national Democrats aren’t ready to abandon Biden’s policies and continue to argue that the long-term strategy will bear fruit as time passes, many have expressed concerns about the efficacy of “Bidenomics” as the central pillar of the president’s reelection pitch.

Michael LaRosa, former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden, wrote an op-ed on Sunday flat-out urging Biden to ditch his economic messaging in favor of focusing on how Republicans are failing voters.

“If Biden isn’t getting credit for how he’s improved the economy by now, then he won’t get such credit anytime soon. I say this as a Democrat who supports President Biden and was the press secretary for his wife, Jill Biden, the president needs to reevaluate the approach to how and what he is communicating to the American people,” LaRosa argued. “More than that, he needs to make the election about how Republicans have disqualified themselves from leading the country. As part of that strategy, he can do what Republicans have done effectively and use wedge issues to motivate and outrage their own voters.”

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, believes that, despite the president’s desire to run on the economy, the Bidenomics push simply isn’t working.

“At this point, Bidenomics doesn’t really have strong answers to people’s biggest worries,” he claimed. “There ought to be a lot of thinking in the White House now about changes in the way they present their case for the economic good that this administration has done.”

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, made similar remarks in a September interview and suggested that Bidenomics was sending voters the wrong message.

“With all due respect to the president, to the White House, this is not so much about them as it is the people who are benefiting by the policies that they came out and demanded,” Horsford said. “We have to do a better job framing this not so much for one person — for the office of the presidency — but for the people.”

Faiz Shakir, a Democratic strategist and campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), believes that Biden’s lull with young voters is due strictly to the economy, his failure to wipe $10,000 in student loan debt for all borrowers, and a worsening housing market for both renters and buyers.

“That’s scary and concerning,” Shakir explained. “If you’re Joe Biden, if you’re any Democrat running for office, you’ve got to pull in a healthy amount of people who are young. And if you’re not, that should be of concern to you.”

The president is showing some signs that he plans to shift gears slightly regarding his campaign messaging. He delivered a national address on protecting democracy in late September at the McCain Institute in Arizona, where he lionized his friend, the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and made a pitch to centrist Republicans to reject Trump and the MAGA movement.

And Biden announced Wednesday that he will deliver a similar nationally televised speech regarding the need to continue assisting Ukraine’s efforts to expel a Russian invasion.

Still, the Biden team isn’t totally ready to admit Bidenomics is bad branding.

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“Bidenomics is the president’s economic agenda and it is strongly supported by the American people,” White House spokesman Michael Kikukawa said in a statement. “That work and our message build on what the midterms and recent special elections proved: Americans favor the president’s vision for growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up over trickle-down MAGAnomics.”

“Like they did in 2022, Americans will face a choice between MAGA Republicans whose agenda serves the rich and powerful, and Joe Biden, whose agenda serves the middle class,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz added. “That strategy worked then, and it will again in 2024.”