by Robert Romano
As the 2024 presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump nears its conclusion, all eyes now turn to the debate between the two candidates on September 10, as national polls continue to indicate the race will be very close. nationally and in key states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada.
For example, Harris, who has so far preferred to campaign without specifics, is still lagging behind Trump this New York Times– Siena poll conducted on September 3-648 percent to 47 percent. That’s not better than end of Julybefore the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, when Trump was leading by 48 to 47 votes, and he is no better than in April when Trump led Biden 47-46, underscoring how little the race has changed since Harris gave voters little reason to change their minds.
The truth is that Democrats were in trouble long before the disastrous June 27 debate between Biden and Trump.
Harris may want to frame the election as a sort of personality contest between herself and Trump during the debate, but her challenge remains the need to outline the vision she wants Congress and her administration to work toward. That’s something she largely failed to do in Chicago, opting instead for a brief speech focused on her personal story that otherwise would have been appropriate for a vice presidential candidate, attacking Trump and his policies (even if he’s been out of office for three and a half years) but offering very little of her own.
Harris may hope to run as a neat slate, but the truth is that as vice president, she is the incumbent, representing the incumbent party, the Democrats who have held the White House since 2021 under Biden and Harris. Incumbents should run based on success, not how they would have done things differently. And as always, the election will be a referendum on the incumbent party — regardless of the candidate — and the current state of affairs.
And Trump will go on the attack.
Harris will have to defend the current economic situation, which is the result of her administration’s policies and is clearly weakening, unemployment increased by 1.4 million from December 2022.
That followed a spike in inflation to 9.1 percent in June 2022 as manufacturing failed to keep up with demand following COVID-19 lockdowns, and a wave of federal spending that began during the pandemic but continued into his first year in office with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and another $891 billion in greenfield and other grants.
Now that peak employment has passed and the economy is overheating, Americans have maxed out their credit cards, so demand is low. Worse, prices still haven’t largely come down.
Food still up 21.8 percent since February 2021.
Electricity still rose 27.3 percent during that time.
Natural gas connection increased by 29.3 percent over the same period.
Gas increased by 40.3 percent.
Shelter increased by 21.8 percent.
New motor vehicles increased by 18.95 percent.
And they were so costly that the demand for them was so high used vehicles rose sharply, reaching an augment of 13.7 percent.
In addition, the American dream of owning a home remains elusive as interest rates have skyrocketed due to inflation, including 30-Year Mortgage Interest Ratesfrom 2.7 percent in February 2021 to 6.35 percent today. Combined with rising home prices, the cost of a monthly mortgage payment on a recently purchased home has doubled significantly.
Generally consumer prices all increased by 18.9 percent.
Harris risks being seen as out of touch and uncaring if she doesn’t provide specifics, or worse, if she tells voters what she really wants, which is to ultimately cut energy production even further, leading to even higher price increases to make way for up-to-date green fantasies.
Worse still (and this is why this is most critical), revenues have not kept pace by any measure. Personal incomewhich includes government transfers from all printed money, increased by only 18.6 percent. Median Nominal Weekly Earnings for employed persons, wages increased by only 17 percent.
This rarely happens historically, when wages and incomes fail to keep up with prices, but when it does—under Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush—it has been disastrous for the parties in power. The classic historical summary was Ronald Reagan’s question in a 1980 debate with Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
The answer was “no” then, and it’s “no” again today. This is an incredibly simple case for Trump, who has proposed policies including increasing energy production to do so, and it will be a case for which Harris will have no simple answers. Harris did not make the sale to the American people, and that could mean Trump is in a position to close the deal. Stay tuned.
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Robert Romano is vice president of public policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0 and “Donald Trump” by RNC.
