Biden isn’t giving up on Bidenomics
President Biden isn’t retiring the slogan that the White House has been using to sell his economic agenda — even if some Democrats prefer that he would.
The White House started using the slogan — “Bidenomics” — to promote Biden’s economic policies in June after the term appeared in a Wall Street Journal article. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre proclaimed it the “word of the year here at the White House.”
But Republicans have latched on to the term as a convenient way to criticize Biden’s handling of an unpopular economy. While unemployment remains low and inflation has steadily declined, the cost of housing, groceries and other goods remains high.
And even some Democrats have expressed bafflement with the Bidenomics brand.
- “We were taking ownership of something that we didn’t totally control,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a top Biden ally who has criticized the term before, told us Friday. (He made clear that he was not advising Biden to stop using it.)
- Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who’s challenging Biden in the primary, described Bidenomics as “a nonsensical, absurd moniker.”
David Axelrod, a top strategist on former president Barack Obama’s campaigns, praised Biden’s handling of the economy even though he’s questioned whether Biden should run for reelection.
- “But folks are seeing the economy through the prism of prices and mortgage interest rates and there is a post-pandemic unease about everything,” Axelrod texted us on Friday. “So branding the economy with your name seems like a bad strategy right now.”
Biden — who never seemed as enthusiastic about the slogan as his top aides did — has stopped using it as much in recent weeks. He didn’t mention “Bidenomics” in economic speeches last month in Delaware, in Illinois, at the White House and in Colorado — even though the last speech featured a giant “Bidenomics” banner behind him. (The lack of Bidenomics references was first pointed out by NBC News.)
That’s a sharp contrast to Biden’s remarks in Northfield, Minn., on Nov. 1, when he used the term four times, as well as four speeches on the economy in October, each of which he peppered with Bidenomics references.
Michael Tyler, a Biden campaign spokesman, criticized this story and others in a statement for focusing “on how many times the president has uttered a single particular word instead of highlighting the many ways his policies have lowered costs for middle class families, created millions of jobs, and made record investments so that America will own the future.”
The White House did not specify why Biden has shied away from the term but said he hadn’t excised it from his vocabulary.
“You can expect him to continue to talk about Bidenomics and how it’s delivered for the American people,” Michael Kikukawa, a White House spokesman, told The Early.
Just 41 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, according to an Economist/YouGov poll released last week. Approval among registered voters is even lower: 38 percent, according to an NBC News poll last month, and 37 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
Biden has responded to voters’ dissatisfaction by stepping up his criticism of corporate “price gouging.”
But the White House also hailed strong economic indicators last week, including data showing the economy grew faster than previously thought in the third quarter — “Bidenomics!” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients wrote on X — and that inflation continued to ease.
- “We’ve seen such strong growth over the last year, even as inflation has come down,” Daniel Hornung, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, told us Friday. “It’s been pretty extraordinary and not what was projected.”
There are also hints that voters’ views of the economy are improving. Thirty-five percent of registered voters described the economy as excellent or good in October, according to a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll. That’s up from 20 percent in the same poll in March.
The term Bidenomics hasn’t caught on with many Democrats in Congress, even though they back Biden’s policies.
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), who represents a swing district and isn’t running for reelection, compared Bidenomics to “Obamacare” — a term of derision for the Affordable Care Act that Democrats claimed for themselves as the law became more popular.
- “My suggestion would be continue to use it,” Kildee said.
Still, several House Democrats we spoke with who, even while touting the economic accomplishments of their party and the president, said they tend to avoid the word when they are speaking with voters in their districts.
“Bidenomics” is “not something I’ve used particularly,” said Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.), who represents a district former president Donald Trump won in 2020. “But I have used the statistics, which are for the most part very, very nice: record lows in unemployment, manufacturing jobs growth in this country. There’s a lot to be happy about.”
But some challenging economic indicators remain, Democrats admit.
- “Prices are still high,” Cartwright said. “Prices haven’t gone down. To crow about prices not going up too much more — that’s not something I would lead with.”
“Right now, I don’t think people know what it means,” another House Democrat told us when asked about Bidenomics, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid. But “over the next 10 months, I think they could tell a really compelling story about the economy.”
Bidenomics was never a campaign slogan.
None of the TV ads the Biden campaign has run in an early advertising blitz have featured the terms. But the ads have delivered a triumphal message on the economy, with narrators boasting about “our economy leading the world” and “millions of new, good-paying jobs.”
A new ad the campaign debuted last week strikes a more somber tone.
- “The last administration’s policies were so troubling,” a pediatric nurse says in the ad. “And our health-care system has become a business, and people are becoming billionaires off the backs of sick people.”
- She discusses what Biden has done to make prescription drugs more affordable. “The idea that we could go back to the policies that helped the rich get richer and left so many people behind — I don’t want to go back,” she says.
Among the new ad’s fans: Axelrod.
“It’s not just a recitation of accomplishments but lifts up the choice and the stakes,” he wrote Sunday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Supplemental: Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he’ll bring up a procedural vote on Biden’s $106 billion national security supplemental request for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and the border as early as this week.
Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young sent a letter to the top four congressional leaders this morning urging the dire need for money for Ukraine.
- “I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks. There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money—and nearly out of time,” Young wrote in the letter.
The vote comes as Republicans threaten to vote against the aid package if there are no policy changes at the border, a sentiment Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) reiterated Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” But bipartisan negotiations, led by Lankford, haven’t reach consensus.
Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth will testify before the House Education Committee in a hearing “holding campus leaders accountable and confronting antisemitism.” Pamela Nadell, professor of history and Jewish studies at American University, will also testify.
Two IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, will testify again about the Hunter Biden tax investigation. They previously testified before the House Oversight Committee. This time, they’ll appear before the House Ways and Means Committee.
In the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray will testify in an oversight hearing.
The Senate Banking Committee is holding its annual oversight hearing of Wall Street firms, with the CEOs of major financial firms set to testify.
The fourth-quarter fundraising deadline is still weeks away, but Biden is stepping up his efforts to raise money early.
He’ll headline six fundraisers this week, including three events on Tuesday in Massachusetts. He’ll speak at the White House tribal nations summit on Wednesday before a fundraiser in Washington. And he’ll head to Las Vegas on Friday for a speech before headlining two fundraisers in Los Angeles, one on Friday and one on Saturday.
Biden often speaks more candidly in fundraisers than he does in public, so we’ll be watching what he says.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in three major cases this week: one about Purdue Pharma’s proposed bankruptcy plan, one that could upend the nation’s tax system and one that will test Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination.
Monday: Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P.
The justices will review Purdue Pharma’s proposed bankruptcy plan, which, among other things, would shield members of the Sackler family from future lawsuits over the company’s role in fueling the opioid crisis. Families who have lost relatives to overdoses are split over a legal challenge, per our colleagues David Ovalle and Robert Barnes.
This case questions Congress’s authority to impose a tax on offshore earnings. The tax helped fund Trump’s 2017 tax cut.
Wednesday: Muldrow v. City of St. Louis, Missouri
Jatonya Clayborn Muldrow, a Black female police sergeant from St. Louis, claims her employer discriminated against her by transferring her out of the department’s intelligence division to hire a man to fill her role.
At issue is whether Title VII bars discrimination in transfer decisions if the plaintiff who accused their employer of discrimination did not prove to the courts that they were significantly harmed by the action.
Stalemate: Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive
Our Post colleagues are out this morning with a two-part series examining Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Part one explains what transpired in the weeks leading up to the counteroffensive as well as America’s deep involvement in the military planning. Part two explores how the battle unfolded. Here’s an excerpt:
Part One: “The year began with Western resolve at its peak, Ukrainian forces highly confident and President Volodymyr Zelensky predicting a decisive victory,” our colleagues write. “But now, there is uncertainty on all fronts. Morale in Ukraine is waning. International attention has been diverted to the Middle East. Even among Ukraine’s supporters, there is growing political reluctance to contribute more to a precarious cause. At almost every point along the front, expectations and results have diverged as Ukraine has shifted to a slow-moving dismounted slog that has retaken only slivers of territory.”
- “The year now stands to end with Russian President Vladimir Putin more certain than ever that he can wait out a fickle West and fully absorb the Ukrainian territory already seized by his troops.”
Kari Lake struggles to court moderates, imperiling GOP Senate pickup
Senate candidate Kari Lake is having difficulty persuading Arizona Republicans she’s denounced as “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only, to vote for her in 2024, our colleagues Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Liz Goodwin and Isaac Arnsdorf report.
- “The outreach, made over the course of several weeks through in-person meetings and phone calls, is a welcome sign to Washington Republicans, who would like to see Lake broaden her MAGA base in the once reliably red state and help them retake the U.S. Senate in 2024.”
- “But Lake’s effort to reassure political rivals and onetime supporters in this desert state has been met with skepticism,” our colleagues write. “Most cite her refusal to acknowledge her electoral loss — even up to today — as well as the relentless demonization of members of her own party, including former Arizona governor Doug Ducey and the late U.S. senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).”
‘Biden Biden, you can’t hide!’: Protesters challenge Biden everywhere on Gaza
Our colleagues Matt Viser and Toluse Olorunnipa are out this morning with a look at Biden’s inability to escape pro-Palestinian protesters and how public discourse over the president’s handling of the war in Gaza is shaping his reelection bid. Here’s an excerpt:
“Protesters have interrupted the president’s speeches, placed bloody handprints near the front of the White House, appeared near his Wilmington, Del., home, gathered outside his fundraisers and lined the streets traversed by his motorcade,” Matt and Tolu write.
- Even though the scale of the Israel-Gaza protests so far has not remotely approached that of Vietnam War years, when Americans themselves were being drafted, “Democratic operatives have been unnerved by the fact that much of the activism is emanating from groups and individuals who were strong Biden supporters in 2020.”
- Former US ambassador arrested in Florida, accused of serving as an agent of Cuba, AP source says. By the Associated Press’s Joshua Goodman and Eric Tucker.
- The difference that Sandra Day O’Connor made. By the New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot.
Scenes from last night’s Kennedy Center Honors White House reception and gala
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