The president is hitting the road this week to kickstart a big push to sell his economic track record. The nation, barely recovered from the excitement of the first “Investing in America” tour earlier this year, will be treated to another few weeks of cabinet members in hardhats talking about green jobs. A memo from White House advisors Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon warns that Biden, cabinet members and other administrators “will continue fanning out across the country to take the case for Bidenomics and the president’s Investing in America agenda directly to the American people.” (Take shelter!) On Wednesday Biden will give what the White House is billing as a “major speech” touting his economic policies.
Most Democrats agree that Biden needs to spend more time talking about the economy ahead of 2024. For some, like progressive journalist Michael Tomasky, Biden is leading an economic revolution, it’s just that the proletariat haven’t realized it yet.
Others don’t have their heads in the clouds, but in the poll numbers. And they see the clear message those surveys send: that the economy remains a major vulnerability for Biden. An AP-NORC survey in late May found that just 24 percent of adults rate the national economy as good. That’s close to the lowest figure of the Biden presidency so far; the high came in his first month in office, and it has trended downward ever since. Biden’s approval rating on the economy is in the low thirties, below his already low overall approval rating. In other words, Americans think Biden is doing a bad job as president and doing especially badly on the economy.
If you believed the White House story on the economy, these numbers would be something of a head-scratcher. Dunn and Donilon’s memo boasts that Biden has created more jobs per month than any other modern president and touts $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction in his first two years in office, “a larger reduction than under any other president in American history.”
The problem for Biden — and the explanation for his dire numbers on the economy — is that this story is largely fiction. As you doubtless know, Biden’s deficit-reduction claims are prizewinning in their dishonesty, with spending simply falling as one-off pandemic spending lapsed. The jobs numbers are in large part a pandemic story: a bounce back after the Covid slowdown that has very little to do with Biden’s policies.
Voters know Biden’s story doesn’t add up not because they’re glued to CNBC, but because they have lived the economic ups and downs of the pandemic and post-pandemic years. And they know what the story leaves out: inflation.
No enthusiastic progressive cheerleading or ribbon cuttings at an EV factory can distract from the basic and massive blot on Biden’s economic track record: that, on his watch, American wages have fallen in real terms. Americans feel poorer because they are poorer. No wonder they have little appetite for a president touting the successes of “Bidenomics.”
On our radar
CHRISTIE-TRUMP HEAVYWEIGHT CLASH Chris Christie was asked on Fox News to respond to Donald Trump’s jokes about Christie’s weight. “Like he’s some Adonis,” replied Christie. “Please.”
SCOTT MISSES VOTES TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT Tim Scott has missed four judicial votes since he launched his presidential bid, including one that would have forced Kamala Harris to break a 50-50 tie, Axios reports. The Scott campaign was quick to point out that Scott would not have been the deciding vote in any of these cases, but the issue is a reminder of the fraught business of running for president as a senator when the margins are so tight.
TRUMP HEDGES ON ABORTION In Friday’s diary, a report from the Faith and Freedom jamboree in Washington, I asked how Donald Trump would respond to the commitment from some of his opponents to a fifteen-week national abortion. In his speech at the conference on Saturday, Trump didn’t get specific. He noted that most of the pro-life victories are at the state level, but added that “there of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life.”
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Washington responds to Russian instability
Last weekend’s revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group was a moment with far-reaching consequences both for Russia and its war in Ukraine. Not much is known about what will happen to Prigozhin, why both he and Putin acted as they did, or what it all portends for the future. Yet it seems the Biden administration is playing it safe. The Washington Post reports that the US government received information about Wagner’s potential for a rebellion in “mid-June,” which may explain the relative lack of shock the administration exhibited as events developed.
The most notable quality of Biden’s response was the absence of any. The White House strove to make clear that the US and the West more broadly had wanted no involvement in the crisis gripping Russia, and Biden stated as much in his chat with Britain’s Sunak, France’s Macron and Germany’s Scholz. ABC news reports Biden saying today that, “They [allies] agreed with me that we had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse… to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO. We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”
The US government, according to CNN, also told its embassies “not to proactively engage host government officials” about the revolt, but if queried, to emphasize that “the United States has no intention of involving itself in this matter.” Secretary of state Antony Blinken told NBC on Sunday that, “I think we’ve seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade. It is too soon to tell exactly where they go and when they get there, but certainly we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead.”
–John Pietro
Jeffrey Katzenberg’s advice for Biden: own your old age
Seventy-two-year-old entertainment mogul and campaign advisor Jeffrey Katzenberg has some sage advice for President Biden: eighty is the new sixty.
In the Wall Street Journal, Katzenberg encouraged Biden to “own” his age and tout his longevity and wisdom as assets. Katzenberg pointed to Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger, similarly geriatric celebrities who still make splashes in their industries, as style models for Biden.
Cockburn can’t help but think Katzenberg is onto something here. Imagine: Joe Biden and the Trials of Burisma — that’s sure to help with the youth vote. And as long as there aren’t any sandbags present, Biden could do well to launch a stadium tour when he hits the campaign trail. Nothing would bring the American voters more confidence than seeing Biden hitting Mick Jagger’s whirling-dervish dance moves.
Longtime Democratic donor George Clooney suspects Katzenberg is going to incorporate narrative elements to the Biden campaign. “Everybody keeps coming into Hollywood for cash, and they don’t come to us for the one thing we do better than anybody, which is tell stories,” Clooney told the WSJ. “And so I think it’s probably a very good idea that they’re going to Jeffrey not just for raising money, but for narratives. And I think that’s a very good thing. Jeffrey, he’s a dog with a bone and he doesn’t let go.”
Katezberg was announced as one of the seven co-chairs for Biden’s reelection campaign earlier this year. The former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and co-founder of DreamWorks animation is expected to bring Hollywood connections to the president’s circle of supporters. Cockburn hopes he can bring free Shrek and Madagascar-themed merchandise to the next campaign event.
Katzenberg is more recently known as the founder of Quibi, a defunct short-form video platform that launched in 2018. When the company went under, Katzenberg suggested that employees listen to the song “Get Back Up Again” from the animated children’s film Trolls to buoy their spirits as they were put out of work. Will Biden 2024 require a similar pick-me-up?
–Cockburn
From the site
Paul Wood: Why did Prigozhin’s ‘march on justice’ happen?
Ben Domenech: Markwayne Mullin: the Senate’s stoic brawler
John Pietro: Will Biden make the same mistakes as Obama on Iran?
Poll watch
PRESIDENT BIDEN JOB APPROVAL
Approve 42.24% | Disapprove 53.5% | Net Approval -11.1
(RCP average)
2024 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION
Trump 51% | DeSantis 22% | Pence 7%
Christie 5% | Haley 4% | Scott 3% | Ramaswamy 3%
(NBC News)
Best of the rest
Stephen Kotkin, Foreign Affairs: Prigozhin’s rebellion, Putin’s fate and Russia’s future
Charles Fain Lehman, National Affairs: How to think about the drug crisis
Mark Leibovich, the Atlantic: Why not Whitmer?
John Frank, Axios: Larry Fink ’‘ashamed’ to be part of ESG political debate
Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal: The American left’s fantastic threats
Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post: China’s threat should be a major campaign issue. GOP, are you listening?
