Over at the far left Salon, Joe Tauke suggests Ms. Harris should focus on anything but the economy. In Tauke’s argument, despite all the evidence of a superior economy under Biden/Harris, voters simply don’t believe it:

Yet when it comes to economic matters, all the momentum in the world apparently means nothing. Last month, the ABC/Post/Ipsos poll showed Trump ahead by 10 points among voters who were asked which candidate they trusted more to handle the economy. After the historic surge of energy, fundraising and viral memes that Harris’ nomination has generated, that same gap is down to … nine points. The most recent Bloomberg/Morning Consult results give Trump an eight-point edge on the question, while the New York Times/Siena College swing-state survey puts the figure at 12 points, the same number found by CNBC. CNBC’s poll is especially interesting because the raw data includes a running question that respondents have been asked periodically since all the way back in 2002: “How would you rate the current state of the economy? Would you say it is excellent, good, only fair, or poor?” Over the entire history of the series, the highest combined “excellent” and “good” numbers, by far, came from the days of the Trump administration. 

This is dumbfounding to the left, which is why Mr. Tauke correctly notes that focusing on all the “good” news on the economy (e.g., record unemployment and inflation coming down) is a losing strategy. You can’t make people feel better about the economy, “because, well, they don’t.”

Here at BATG we’ve warned repeatedly about what inflation would do to the Democrats’ political prospects. This is far worse than other bad economic times. Consider unemployment. First of all, the Biden numbers were only slightly below Trump’s at the low, so any prior claim of “record unemployment” is only a marginal improvement. But much more importantly, even in a recession where we might hit 10% unemployment, that means that 90% of those that were working keep their jobs, and many others were not part of the labor force (retired, young people, etc). So the vast majority of the people in the country don’t feel poorer. For sure they’re more cautious, and many more may feel that their job could be at risk. So nobody likes a bad economy and that tends to be reflected in the voting booth. But inflation is a completely different animal. In a world of inflation, almost everybody is poorer in real terms. When you go into the grocery store and food costs are up, you know your economy is worse. So now almost everybody is directly impacted, and all the spin in the world can’t make people unsee the damage to their own pocketbook. Worse, denying that means the politician is deliberately lying to you. That’s why the Democrats have tried so hard to blame “greedy business” for the higher costs.

Maybe this election will be about the vibe (and for some it will be, but they were always going to vote Democrat, if they voted at all). But I still think the election is Mr. Trump’s to lose. I’d rather the issues be on my side than “the joy”*, especially when one of those issues, higher prices, can clearly be linked to massive government spending unleashed by the deciding votes of Kamala Harris. And just as Mr. Tauke is telling Ms. Harris and the Democrats to not talk about the economy, Mr. Trump needs to talk about it (and the other hot issues, e.g., immigration) almost exclusively. Can he be disciplined enough to pull it off? We’ll see over the next two months.

* It’s important to note that Kamala Harris has done nothing to create joy from a policy perspective. The only joy is because now the Democrats don’t have “anti-joy Joe” at the top of the ticket. So the only people feeling any joy are those that wanted the Democrats to win but formerly had almost no hope. I understand the relief joy and hope. But it’s not a phenomenon that you would ever expect to affect very many truly moderate/undecided voters.