Although Democrats deposed President Joe Biden from the top of their 2024 ticket, installing Vice President Kamala Harris in place of the man who appointed her his second-in-command, the fundamentals of the case for GOP nominee Donald Trump theoretically should not have changed. While replacing the oldest president in history with a comely 59-year-old neutralized the potent attacks on Biden’s age and cognitive fitness for office, Harris still carries the baggage of four nearly universally deplored years of federal governance.
From the record influx of 10 million illegal immigrants into our southern border to the issue that voters prioritize over any other, the economy, Harris should still be paying the price in the polls for her abysmal record.
And yet, Harris has taken the lead over Trump on the economy in a Financial Times poll that is downright unprecedented for this election cycle. Despite her lead by just 1 point, with 42% of voters saying they trust Harris on the economy versus the 41% who say they trust Trump, the poll is remarkable if only because Trump was leading Biden consistently and often by a double-digit margin on the matter long before the latter’s career-ending debate implosion. As early as May, three-fifths of voters in the Real Clear Politics polling aggregation disapproved of Biden’s economic proposals, with the Financial Times finding that half of all voters blamed Biden’s policies specifically for making economic conditions worse.
Harris was a key architect of and a tiebreaking vote for the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the $1.2 trillion Inflation Reduction Act, which, of course, was about as accurately and honestly named as the Democratic People’s “Republic” of Korea. Behind the scenes, Harris has been instrumental in the White House’s cancellation of student debt and pauses on recouping interest payments on outstanding debt, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget tallies as a total combined cost of $870 billion to $1.4 trillion as of April.
And yet, the polling indicates that in the minds of voters, there is a burgeoning and politically devastating disconnect. While the overwhelming majority of registered voters still rate overall economic conditions negatively and their economic situations worse off since Biden and Harris took office, they seem to have resigned themselves to the delusion that Harris would or could dramatically pivot away from the “Bidenomics” that she was fundamental in executing through both her role as president of the Senate and executive fiat.
For example, per the Financial Times poll, 39% of voters blamed Democratic policies for the inflation wrought over the past six months, while only 24% blamed Republican policies. Whereas a plurality of voters agreed that Trump’s economic policies would leave them personally better off, only 33% of voters said the same about Harris, with a 38% plurality conceding that her policies would leave them worse off. But voters still trust Harris overall on the economy. And why? Because they believe she is not responsible for Bidenomics.
In what likely counts as wish casting, only 11% of voters said Harris should stick with Biden’s economic policies. More than 60% said she should either take a completely different approach or make major changes, with just 29% saying she should make minor changes to Bidenomics.
When Democrats decided to replace the candidate elected by the party’s voters with a candidate who had not earned a single vote from any primary voter in either 2020 or 2024, the Trump campaign was blindsided. Democrats had spent four years upholding themselves as the standard-bearers of democracy and decency — effectively disenfranchising their entire primary electorate came as a shock and should have come as a scandal that implicated Harris, as well as the party.
But it hasn’t, and the Democratic hagiographers in the media have launched a concerted and, to date, successful effort to redefine Harris and sever her carefully constructed persona from her actual record as chief consigliere to the president still in power.
If Trump has one job before Election Day, it is to reclaim the narrative and remind voters that Harris is responsible for the disaster of Bidenomics and that her presidency would likely be even more radical. The unprecedented $8 trillion spending spree during Harris’s tenure has resulted in the worst inflationary cycle in 40 years, with prices up more than 20% for an average annual inflation rate of nearly 6%, or thrice the Federal Reserve’s maximum target. Whereas real average weekly earnings rose by 9.1% under Trump’s presidency, they have fallen by more than 4% since Harris took office. The S&P 500 delivered 55% inflation-adjusted returns under Trump compared to just 16% under Harris and Biden, and the Nasdaq delivered 116% inflation-adjusted returns under Trump compared to a measly 7% under Harris and Biden.
Meanwhile, the White House has previewed how Harris plans to double down on Bidenomics with rent control and raising the corporate tax rate from its current globally competitive 21% to 32%.
At the Republican National Convention, Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore explained to me what the prevailing message should be.
“If you look at how much money was raised by the taxes, we, last year, we collected a record amount of tax revenue,” Moore said about Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “We don’t have a revenue problem in Washington. We have a massive overspending program problem.”
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And Trump has a specific record of results to compare to dramatic contrast against Harris. Thanks to pro-growth policies such as the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, inflation averaged below the Fed’s 2% target across his presidency, and deregulatory policies saved households $11,000 over four years versus more than $40,000 in regulatory costs incurred by Biden and Harris. Biden and Harris inherited a 20% personal savings rate as a percentage of disposable income when they took office, but that figure has dwindled to 3.6% as savings and paychecks prove less capable of covering rising prices. Compare that to the personal savings rate as a percentage of disposable income, which nearly doubled from the time Trump took office to 9.1%.
This election will not be won by “brat” Harris and “weird” Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and her vice presidential running mate, canoodling with celebrities any more than it will be won by Trump focusing on his grievances over his demonstrable policy record and priorities. And with the stakes this high, Trump must remind the electorate that a vote for Harris’s candidacy is a vote for another four years of the most destructive economic agenda of the 21st century.