There have been several PR campaigns that presidential administrations initiated that fell flat on their face. Comedians and voters alike cruelly mocked Gerald Ford's "WIN" (Whip Inflation Now) campaign. Needless to say, the only thing that the campaign "whipped" was Ford's electability.
Then there was the "Health Security Act" of 1993, which Bill Clinton unwisely put his wife in charge of selling to Congress and the American people. "Hillarycare" was such a bad idea that President Clinton had to abandon it when several Republicans came out and said it went too far and several Democrats said it didn't go far enough.
Neither of those failed PR efforts could hold a candle to the epic fail that is "Bidenomics." Biden and the Democratic Party have abandoned the word itself. In June 2023, Biden mentioned "Bidenomics" 29 times. By January 2024, Biden mentioned his signature economic program just twice. And in February, he never mentioned it at all.
We're told that the economy is going great guns. We're told that the economy is roaring. So what's the problem?
The problem is that the American people see "Bidenomics" for exactly what it is, a PR gimmick. The economy is the one thing that you can't fool the voters on. They don't judge the economy based on what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate is. Nor do they judge the inflation rate by what the Consumer Price Index says it is.
To voters, the economy is how they perceive their own economic situations to be, how secure they feel in their jobs, and how good their healthcare plans are. They judge the inflation rate by how much more every week they're spending on food, the CPI be damned.
The fact is that "Bidenomics" is meaningless when voters are feeling real economic pain and the president is saying they're imagining things.
The president's shift from "Bidenomics" is part of a broader move toward trying to energize his base ahead of the election, instead of trying to convince swing voters that the economy is better than what they tell pollsters.
Biden's post-State of the Union strategy has focused on shoring up his weaknesses among Democrats. He has cut ads to address concerns about his age and appeal to Black and Latino voters.
By contrast, the campaign's $20 million-plus in ads last year focused mostly on Biden's economic record — though the ads didn't frame it as "Bidenomics."
The ad buy didn't move Biden's poll numbers, but his campaign has said it let voters know of his legislative accomplishments.
What Biden and Democrats never mention when dictating to Americans that they're stupid for not telling pollsters how tremendous the economy is is the fact that interest rates are at 40-year highs, and that affects the price of everything.
Home loans, car loans, home improvement loans, and just as importantly, the increased cost of business financing loans all make life a lot more expensive in 2024 than it was in 2020. That's something Biden can't escape whether he used the term "Bidenomics" or not.
Biden "will continue talking about Bidenomics, which is a sharp contrast with congressional Republicans, who are siding with special interests and the rich over middle-class families," White House spokesperson Michael Kikukawa said in a statement.
Class warfare is all Biden has left. His new budget proposal will raise taxes on the "rich" — a doomed effort from the start to find revenue to close the massive $2 trillion deficits he is running.
That's the true nature of "Bidenomics": massive deficits, no fiscal discipline, and using smoke and mirrors to get re-elected.
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