Republicans have criticized President Biden’s handling of the economy, but as inflation ticks down, that message may not resonate as well. Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post
Soaring egg prices. Gas for more than $5 per gallon. Used cars that cost 30 percent more than they had the year before.
For most of President Biden’s term, the fastest inflation in four decades provided Republicans with no shortage of ripe targets for political attacks over his economic stewardship, emerging as the central talking point of their 2022 midterm campaigns and the early 2024 presidential election campaigns.
But now that message may no longer be as powerful. Inflation has eased to 3 percent on an annual basis, down from 9 percent last year, and workers’ earnings are beginning to outpace rising costs. Economists’ fears of an imminent recession have abated as well, and Biden administration officials are eager to tout the billions of dollars in private investment unleashed from legislation on semiconductors and clean energy that they pushed through Congress.
These developments have led Republican analysts to begin early discussions about whether, or how, the party should adjust its attacks on Biden to account for the new economic reality. For now, most are convinced that the scars of inflation remain deep enough for the issue to serve as a central electoral message a year from now. But some conservatives acknowledge that may be shifting as the rate of price hikes levels off.
“Honestly, I’m hearing many more complaints about Biden now that are about something else. It’s beginning to fade as the key issue,” said Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank in frequent communication with GOP policymakers. “There’s a sense that Biden’s economic message can be attacked anyway, but it’s instead becoming more of one topic among many.”
Falling inflation will lead Republicans to adjust from highlighting the annual rate of inflation to highlighting price hikes since Biden took office, said Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Donald Trump administration. But the bigger messaging adjustment would have to come if “real wages” – earnings accounting for inflation – continue to grow, Mulligan said.
Inflation rose faster than earnings for most of Biden’s presidency, meaning most Americans were getting poorer. But for the past two months, real wages have risen, although economists caution the trend has just begun and could be reversed.
“I think the thing that would change their message – and I know this from working in the White House – is what happens to real wages. If inflation stops at the highest price level, and wages continue to march ahead, you’re in a very different situation,” Mulligan said. “If that were to happen, that would shift the narrative – no doubt.”
Democrats have reason to be optimistic that change is occurring. Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, found that inflation-adjusted wages have already caught up to their pre-pandemic trajectory for “nonsupervisory workers,” a category that encompasses 80 percent of workers.
Frank Luntz, the longtime GOP pollster, said it would take as much as a year for voters to react fully to the fall in inflation because it takes time for the public mood to catch up to the new economic reality.
“But if it continues to come down as it is, it won’t be nearly as potent in 2024 as it was in 2022,” Luntz said.
To be sure, most Republicans still ridicule as absurd the notion that they will have to change course. Inflation may have come down, but consumers are still facing price increases of 3 percent that exceed recent norms. Despite the cooling economy, the 16 percent price hikes over the past two years “are still embedded,” said Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank.
The Republican National Committee has continued over the past week to criticize Biden over inflation-adjusted wages, even as they move in the right direction.
“I still hear about inflation every day – that’s what I hear from friends, family, and voters,” said Doug Heye, a GOP political consultant. “They’re still talking inflation, and they’re still going to.”
The polling data, for now at least, appears to suggest little immediate softening in attitudes. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation, according to a Monmouth University poll released last week, and there is scant evidence that has substantially budged. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment surveys, after months of strikingly negative findings, finally ticked up in July, but consumer attitudes remain sour.
Historically, political science research suggests that voters base their election-year decisions on economic performance over the prior year. That would mean how the economy fares from now until the election may matter more than how it’s done up to now. But it’s unclear how voters will react to inflation that was high but is falling, leaving experts guessing as to exactly how the economy will influence the 2024 campaigns, said Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University.
“We seem to be in a position where people are staying dour, and if that continues into the election that could disrupt the historical pattern,” Grossmann said. “I don’t know if we have a firm grasp on whether inflation moving in the right direction will be enough.”
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