Ruy Teixeira:

As the 2024 election approaches, Democrats have a three-point plan for their challenging quest to re-elect Joe Biden, take back the House, and defend their razor-thin Senate majority. The first two points one might characterize as the Democrats’ version of the culture war: (1) relentless attacks on Republicans’ association with abortion restrictionism, usually portrayed as a GOP drive to ban the procedure entirely; and (2) equally relentless attacks on the Republicans as destroyers of democracy, from Trump’s and his supporters’ “election denialism” to “MAGA” movement rhetoric and legislation said to be subverting democracy across the country.

The theory is that these attacks will neutralize and then some Republican messages on crime, immigration, race, gender and schools, where Democrats are easily associated with genuinely unpopular positions. The 2022 elections and special elections since are believed to provide a precedent for this approach. But then we have the third prong of the Democratic strategy: a bold attempt to sell Democrats’ stewardship of the economy as “Bidenomics.”

On one level, this can only be described as chutzpah. A massive tranche of poll findings uniformly find the public extremely unhappy with the state of the economy. In a particularly brutal recent poll from Washington Post/ABC News, Biden receives a dreadful 30 percent approval rating on handling the economy. It’s instructive to break this down by working class (noncollege) vs. college educated. Working-class respondents give Biden a 24 percent approval rating on the economy, way below the comparatively respectable 43 percent rating among the more upscale college educated group. Since Bidenomics has been explicity pitched as a way to build working-class enthusiasm for Biden’s candidacy, this signals a rather big problem with the strategy.

Similarly, the Post poll finds a mere 25 percent characterizing the national economy positively (excellent or good), with just half as many (19 percent) feeling that way among the working class as among the college educated (38 percent). And a rock-bottom 14 percent of working-class respondents say their personal financial situation is better now than when Biden took office, compared to 50 percent who say they are actually worse off.

The second wave of The Liberal Patriot/YouGov (TLP/YouGov) 2024 presidential election project was completed in early September, including interviews with more than 3000 registered voters. These new data flesh out how and why Bidenomics has been such a flop with voters. Start with the issue of inflation. As we noted in our post yesterday, voters overwhelmingly feel that inflation is “still a very serious problem that is not improving,” with working-class voters particularly likely (68 percent) to feel that way.

These sentiments baffle Democrats who note that the rate of inflation has actually been falling and that unemployment is super-low. So why aren’t people, particularly workers, happy? It’s very simple as liberal economist James K. Galbraith has noted:

Unlike unemployment, inflation does affect everyone. But what matters to working people is not the monthly or yearly price change taken alone. What matters is the effect on purchasing power and living standards over time. Whether these are rising or falling depends on the relationship of prices to wages. When wage growth exceeds price increases, times are generally good. When it doesn’t, they aren’t.

It is here that Biden has a problem. During his presidency, living standards have not risen. From early 2021 to mid-2023, prices have increased more than wages, implying that real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages and real weekly earnings have fallen, on average. Not by much, but they have fallen. Worse, the average figure probably masks a larger fall, in real terms, for families that started out below the average. And given how income distributions work, there are always many more families earning less than the average than there are who earn more.

In other words, it is the trajectory of workers’ living standards, not  misinformation or media framing, that explains why they see the economy of the Biden administration in such jaundiced terms. And why they tend to think Trump actually did a better job managing the economy. In the new TLP/YouGov poll, working-class voters prefer Trump’s economic management as president by 20 points (55 percent to 35 percent), again contrasting with the college educated who prefer Biden’s performance by 9 points (51percent to 42 percent).

Given all this, it should not be surprising that the very term the Democrats are seeking to popularize—”Bidenomics”—is not striking a responsive chord. On the contrary, the lack of enthusiasm is deafening. In the TLP/YouGov survey, a mere 28 percent of working-class voters are willing to say they support Bidenomics, just 29 percent think Bidenomics will help their family financially, and scarcely more (32 percent) believe Bidenomics will help the overall economy.

Interestingly, Bidenomics support lags significantly behind support for specific legislative measures passed by the Biden administration, especially the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Since these were unaided questions—that is, no descriptions of the bills were given, just the names—voters may partially have been reacting to things they already feel positively about like “inflation reduction,” “bipartisan,” and “infrastructure,” rather than the content of the bills themselves. But that in itself is a clue to what voters are looking for. The term “Bidenomics,” on the other hand, with its absolutely inevitable association with economic conditions voters, especially working-class voters, detest seems perfectly designed to annoy voters, rather than win them over.

A new NBC poll shows Republicans currently favored over Democrats on handling the economy by an astounding 21 points, the largest lead Republicans have had on this measure since 1991. That tells you about how well the Bidenomics messaging campaign is working so far. The Democrats would be wise to try a different approach—one that doesn’t rely on telling voters they should be happy when they are not.

David Ditch:

With the nation’s capital fixated on tense negotiations over funding the federal government, apocalyptic warnings over a possible shutdown are filling headlines. Time is “running short,” we’re in “crisis mode,” and the House and Senate are on a “collision course,” to quote just a few prominent news outlets.

But for the 99% of Americans who live far from the swamp, it’s not always clear how a government shutdown would affect day-to-day life. Here are some important points about how shutdowns work – and how Washington makes them worse.

1) Many Federal Functions Continue During Shutdowns

Even if there is a funding lapse, federal activities (and employees) deemed “essential” will continue to draw from the national treasury. Examples include national security, border patrol, law enforcement, disaster response and more.

In addition, funding for many benefits (such as Social Security) along with some agencies (such as the Postal Service) are independent of the annual spending process.

A lapse of under two weeks would have even less effect since federal employees would get their paychecks on time. However, longer shutdowns are typically coupled with providing back pay to bureaucrats and congressional staffers.

Accordingly, the real-world effect of a shutdown would be much less than the apocalyptic rhetoric that often characterizes press coverage of the issue.

2) Shutdowns Reflect Bloated Government and Failure to Budget

The federal government’s fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30.

If Congress fails to pass the annual set of spending bills (referred to as appropriations) by the end of September, the government’s ability to spend becomes limited due to important legal safeguards against executive agencies spending without legislative approval.

In theory, the annual budget process looks like this:

• By early February, the president delivers a budget proposal to Congress. This provides information and recommendations on the full spectrum of federal activity.
• By mid-April, Congress produces a budget resolution to establish spending guidelines.
• Over the late spring and summer, Appropriations Committees draft 12 pieces of legislation to provide spending allowances for federal agencies, with varying degrees of specificity.
• By Sept. 30, Congress passes the spending bills.

Of course, it seldom works that way. Congress hasn’t completed the process on time since 1997. With Republicans and Democrats divided over the proper size and scope of the federal government, negotiations over both overall spending levels and item-by-item authorizations usually drag out well past the Sept. 30 deadline.

However, the spending process is difficult to complete on time even when one party controls both Congress and the White House. The unchecked growth of the federal government means legislators haggle over core priorities such as national defense – and special-interest handouts such as maple syrup subsidies.

Unfortunately, it’s clear that the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have no interest in making the process go smoother by putting Uncle Sam on a diet.

3) Administrations Can Deliberately Make Shutdowns Worse

A classic example of the swamp in action is what’s referred to as “Washington Monument Syndrome,” where a government will make a spending cut or funding lapse as painful as possible by closing down low-cost, highly symbolic things.

The Obama administration implemented this strategy in 2013 by blocking access to open-air public facilities such as the World War II Memorial, even though keeping such areas closed and guarded was more expensive than normal operations.

While there’s no indication as to how Biden plans to handle a potential government shutdown, the administration’s radical approach to issue after issue doesn’t bode well.

4) Reducing the Impact of Shutdowns – and Reducing Deficits

Many things the federal government manages are important and necessary. However, some of these (such as the air traffic control system and infrastructure programs) can and should be devolved to state and local governments, civil society and private entities.

Shrinking the endless list of federal responsibilities would make the country less vulnerable to congressional dysfunction. (If polls are any indication, the American public considers Congress to be plenty dysfunctional.)

Also, in most cases, pulling these activities from the swamp would yield budgetary savings. With the national debt at $33.1 trillion due in large part to rampant waste and fraud, unloading federal liabilities is long overdue.

House Republicans have put forward spending bills and a budget resolution that would move things in the right direction, and there is debate within the GOP caucus over whether to make the legislation even stronger.

Following a wildly destructive spending spree that has pushed the country down the road to bankruptcy and hyper-inflation, that’s a debate worth having.

Bret Stephens of the New York Times: