Saturday, July 27, 2024

POLITICO Nightly: Harris' next challenge: How to talk about the economy


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BY GAVIN BADE


WEST ALLIS, WISCONSIN - JULY 23:  Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to supporters during a campaign rally at West Allis Central High School on July 23, 2024 in West Allis, Wisconsin. Harris made her first campaign appearance as the party's presidential candidate, with an endorsement from President Biden.  (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns in Wisconsin on July 23, 2024. | Getty Images


AFTER THE HONEYMOON   When the Kamala Harris honeymoon ends, it will likely be due to the economy.

The vice president has enjoyed a surge of base support in recent days and seen some tightening in her head-to-head polls with Donald Trump. But the economy still remains a top-of-mind issue for voters — especially undecideds and lower income voters . And many of them aren’t feeling the love for the Biden/Harris economic policies, even if they personally benefited from them.

Take the workers at Ingeteam, a Milwaukee manufacturer of wind turbines and electric vehicle chargers. The factory got a huge boost from Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act — so big that Biden himself visited last year to mark the one-year anniversary of the IRA.

But talk to many of the workers there, and they’re still down on the economy . One union wind turbine repair technician said he didn’t feel that Democrats’ industrial policies had benefited him “at all” — even though he got a double-digit pay raise this year and was training a new hire to repair wind turbines that were being installed thanks to the generous tax credits in the IRA. Both he and the trainee said they were likely to vote for Trump.

Is this a classic case of working class people voting against their material interests, as Beltway liberals often opine? Not when you talk to voters themselves.

For those Wisconsinites, the culprit was simple: inflation. Both workers said that they still felt price increases were at an “all time high” and thought of the issue not in terms of the latest, moderating inflation figures — which Democrats like to point to — but to prices when Trump was in office. Even loyal Democratic voters at the plant admitted the economy was a weak spot, with one saying it “kind of sucks” due to inflation on food, rent and other essentials.

Those perspectives are indicative of a long running issue for Biden, which Harris will now inherit as the presumptive Democratic nominee: that even while economic indicators are moving in the right direction, most voters still feel that their material conditions have worsened in the last few years. And in an election season, it’s voter sentiment — not economic statistics — that matter.

“There’s this kind of wishy-washy thought on the economy,” admitted Kent Miller, the Wisconsin Laborers’ district council president, whose union members are working on another IRA-funded facility, the Paris Solar Project, south of Milwaukee.

“When we connect those dots, they get it,” he said, but many members don’t realize “that it’s because of these [federal] investments that we’re securing good contract wins and … we have unemployment at a record, all-time low.”

It’s a problem the Kamala vibe-shift will struggle to knock down. Though Harris wasn’t on the top of the ticket when we visited Wisconsin, those factory workers and other voters in Milwaukee were largely unmoved by the potential that she might take over, and expressed befuddlement at how her policies would differ from the Biden ones that they panned repeatedly. “I don’t even know who else they have on the Democratic side,” the turbine technician, Jake Westray, said.

It’s something that Washington Democrats hope Harris can overcome by shifting both the content and context of her economic message. But they stress that it’ll take more than green-tinted memes to win over skeptical Rust Belt voters. Harris will need to speak to their actual material conditions and not just repeat the Biden-world line that,  actually, if you know your stuff, the economy is good.

“You can't tell people that what they're feeling isn't real,” said Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee, who represents a swing district around Flint, Michigan. “She just has to be straight with people. We know [inflation] is an issue, we know how it happened, we know the U.S. is doing better than any other industrialized country when it comes to issues of inflation and economic growth.”

“If you look across countries across time, inflation is the single most demoralizing economic element in the world,” added Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Massachusetts Democrat. “That’s the opportunity for Harris, by the way, because people don’t hold her responsible for inflation … and I would strongly encourage a message that hinges on economics on a lower cost of living going forward.”

The Harris camp says they are on it. Her economic advisers worked the phones with reporters this week, saying that Harris would prioritize more elements of the “care economy” — like re-upping the Child Tax Credit — and support for small businesses, in hopes that those policies will resonate with voters more than the abstractions of industrial policy.

“Debating about the theory and academic discussions on economic policy does not get her up in the morning. What she really cares about is: how does it work in practice for people?” Jill Habig, who worked under Harris when she was California’s attorney general, told POLITICO. 

That’s an encouraging message for lawmakers like Kildee and Auchincloss, but they still want to see more from the campaign to convince voters that their personal financial conditions – not some abstraction of the broader economy – will improve if Harris is in the White House. To do that, they both pointed to an issue that Harris has yet to address: housing.

“I would place a very high priority on housing on the cost of housing, affordability of housing,” Kildee said. “It's an issue that cuts across the economic and social spectrum and I would, if I were advising them … I would lean heavily into that as the next core economic element of our agenda.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at gbade@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @GavinBade .

 

Pro Briefing: Kamala Harris and the World. What we expect on foreign policy and trade. Join POLITICO Pro for a deep-dive conversation with our specialist reporters about the vice president’s approach to foreign policy. Register Now.

 
WHAT'D I MISS?

ISRAEL is the largest US WELFARE RECIPIENT - expanding NETANYAHU's WARS does not bode well for the Middle East....

— Netanyahu wraps US visit with a meeting to woo Trump: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Florida on Friday with one mission in mind: Get Donald Trump to pledge unequivocal support for Israel militarily and financially should he win in November. That kind of backing from Trump would arguably help Netanyahu solidify his grip on power amid an increasingly hostile political scene back at home. The Republican candidate’s strong standing in the polls has had the Israeli leader eager to get his backing. And with President Joe Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, dropping off the Democratic ticket, Netanyahu feels it is even now more essential to garner goodwill with Trump, according to two people familiar with the prime minister’s thinking.

Others surrounding tRump had wounds of glass/plastic fragments...WHERE'S THE BULLET? 
MAGA MORONS again genuflect to the Orange Turd!

— GOP asks Wray to ‘correct’ testimony that Trump might not have been hit with bullet:  Congressional Republicans are asking FBI Director Christopher Wray to “correct” his testimony that there was “some question” about whether Donald Trump’s ear was struck by a bullet or shrapnel . Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Wray on Friday that accused him of “creating confusion” in a way that “further undercuts the agency’s credibility.” Wray had testified before a House panel on Wednesday that it was unclear if Trump had been struck directly by a bullet or shrapnel, prompting Trump’s ire.

— Olympic-sized fight erupts among anti-doping officials:   The stream of threats, recriminations and anti-doping innuendo flowed freely again Thursday when tensions over a U.S. law designed to combat drugs in sports escalated on the eve of the Paris Olympics . It’s a fight that’s been simmering for a decade, sparked by Russia’s brazen doping scandal at the Sochi Olympics. The reaction from the World Anti-Doping Agency and IOC was criticized as too weak by many, including the United States. So much so, that the U.S. passed a law in 2020 giving federal authorities power to investigate sports doping and cover-ups.

The latest round of backlash played out in a trio of news conferences in Paris, the highlight of which came when leaders at WADA suggested they might sanction one of their biggest critics, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, over the law.

NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024

EXTENDED PROMISE  — Vice President Kamala Harris is pledging not to raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year if elected in November, her campaign told POLITICO on Friday. That extends a promise that President Joe Biden made central to his administration’s economic agenda, arguing that corporations and the wealthy should instead pay a greater share of the tax burden. And it effectively rules out the prospect that Harris could embrace far more progressive policies as a candidate — such as massively expanding Social Security benefits — that would require raising taxes on a wider swath of Americans.

CAT LADY CLEAN-UP  — Vice presidential hopeful Sen. JD Vance tried to clean up his resurfaced attack on “childless cat ladies” in an interview Friday, asserting that he was not criticizing people who do not have children, while accusing Democrats of adopting “anti-family and anti-kid” messaging and policies. Vance’s response, delivered on conservative media personality Megyn Kelly’s SiriusXM podcast, comes after a years-old video clip went viral this week which shows him questioning some Democrats for not having biological children — specifically naming Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee for president. Harris has two stepchildren.

AROUND THE WORLD


Ukrainian servicemembers prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on July 14, 2022.

Ukrainian servicemembers prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on July 14, 2022. | Evgeniy Maloletka/AP


FIRST BATCH OF FUNDING   The European Commission transferred €1.5 billion of profits from investing frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine . After months of grueling negotiations in Brussels, the EU executive finally sent the first batch of funding to the war-torn country. Ninety percent of the cash will be used for military purposes, while the remaining amount will go towards humanitarian aid.

EU capitals agreed to use the proceeds generated by investing €192 billion immobilized Russian assets held by the Brussels-based securities depository Euroclear.

OBJECTION DROPPED — The U.K. government reversed its opposition to the International Criminal Court seeking an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu .

Friday marked the deadline to submit documents as part of a legal challenge against the ICC, a date which had been extended due to the U.K. general election and change of government earlier this month. “We’ve been very clear about the importance of the rule of law and the independence of the courts both domestically and internationally,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.

 

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NIGHTLY NUMBER

17

The number of House Democratic challengers who outraised their incumbent Republican opponents last quarter in the 29 GOP-held districts that either party considers competitive.

RADAR SWEEP

STORAGE WARS   Increases in post-Covid office rents and an increase in so-called side hustles are among the factors fueling a global self-storage boom. In Canada, 16 new facilities opened their doors last year, adding an extra one million sq ft of space. In the UK, the self-storage industry made more than a billion pounds last year for the first time. The industry has been so popular with investors, it’s even spawned several podcasts advising would-be moguls on how to get into the business. Sam Gruet writes about the phenomenon for the BBC .

PARTING IMAGE


On this date in 1965: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (center foreground) walks in front of a crowd estimated at 10,000 people who gathered in downtown Chicago to protest segregation in the city's schools.

On this date in 1965: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (center foreground) walks in front of a crowd estimated at 10,000 people who gathered in downtown Chicago to protest segregation in the city's schools. | AP




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