Don't Throw the Biden-Harris Record Under the Bus

Defending the Biden-Harris record is a far more important project than complaining about Biden's missteps or trashing the Harris presidential campaign.

Being mad at Joe Biden is understandable. He should not have run again, and perhaps he should have resigned the presidency. He initially mishandled the inflation spike, giving Donald Trump the opening to argue the economy was better on his watch.

Fault can be found with the Kamala Harris campaign. She didn't give clear answers to the question of how she would be different than Biden. She was a disciplined campaigner, so much so that some voters found her overly scripted and inauthentic. She could have pushed different economic policies, or better emphasized that ones she had.

For the next four years, Democrats could bicker with each other over these arguments. Or, they could set them aside and focus on what the Biden-Harris administration did right.

Defending the Biden-Harris record is a far more important project than complaining about Biden's missteps or trashing the Harris presidential campaign.

First, here's what's leading the Washington Monthly website:

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Will Conservative Judges Abide Trump’s Ending Birthright Citizenship?: Legal Affairs Editor Garrett Epps flags a possible shift in opinion by a key conservative federal judge. Click here for the full story.

NATO’s Nervous New World: James D. Zirin reports back from a trip to Europe with the Council on Foreign Relations. Click here for the full story.

The Ted Olson I Knew: Contributing Writer Peter M. Shane remembers the acclaimed conservative attorney who championed the right to same-sex marriage and who died last week at 84. Click here for the full story.

I Was a Washington Monthly Whippersnapper: Marc Novicoff reflects on his journey from Monthly reader to intern to associate editor. Click here for the full story.

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When Biden peacefully hands the power of the presidency to Trump, he will also be handing Trump a healthy, growing, increasingly affordable economy. The data points of the economy today should be the benchmarks on which we judge what Trump does to the economy.

Trump, of course, is a shameless liar, credit taker, blame shifter, and data manipulator. He will surely start to take credit for the growing economy before being sworn in, and won't stop taking credit no matter what the data show over the next four years. (In a worst-case scenario, Trump politicizes the civil service so completely that government agencies no longer produce credible economic data.)

Democrats need not allow Trump to distort economic reality without challenge. They can start telling the economic story of the Biden-Harris presidency now, with accurate data.

The political problem with using cold macroeconomic numbers, which regular voters don't "feel," is no longer a problem. Democrats are no longer trying to win an election today. They are trying to shape the perceptions of tomorrow.

So let's check the scoreboard.

The main metric of overall economic health, the annualized real GDP growth rate, most recently–for the third quarter of this year–is a solid 3.0 percent. And that's reflective of the overall term. Every quarter of the Biden-Harris administration was at least 2.4 percent save for the first half of 2022 and the first quarter of 2024. (This year's fourth quarter number will not be initially reported until the end of January and not finalized until March.)

As I noted two weeks ago, per capita real disposable income–which captures how much people have in their pockets after accounting for taxes and inflation–from June 2022 to September 2024 has increased by 9 percent. (At the end of January we will have the December 2024 figures.) That shows robust and steady improvement since the unwinding of pandemic relief and the success of inflation-fighting measures.

The unemployment rate, as of October 2024, is 4.1 percent, down from 6.4 percent when Biden was inaugurated. (The December figure will be released on January 10.)

The rate of inflation, as reflected in the year-to-year change to the Consumer Price Index, for October is a reasonable 2.6 percent, almost exactly the same as in January 2020 before the pandemic lockdowns throttled the economy and briefly drove inflation close to zero percent. And today's number is far lower–about 70 percent lower–than the 9.1 percent rate from June 2022.

The manufacturing job sector performed better during the Biden-Harris administration than the Trump administration, even if we discount the collapse in manufacturing jobs during the pandemic. Trump presided over a net gain of 355,000 manufacturing jobs through March 2020, over 9,000 a month. For Biden-Harris, through October 2024, that's 685,000, or about 15,000 a month.

You can expect Trump to try to take credit for all the infrastructure projects funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), so let's get the record straight now. A White House fact sheet published last week noted that $568 billion in BIL spending for over 66,000 infrastructure projects has already been announced.

That doesn't even include the $350 billion for climate-related projects from the Inflation Reduction Act–some of which Trump may try to clawback, although Republicans may have second-thoughts, since more than three-quarters of the climate money is going to Republican-majority congressional districts.

The Trump economic plan puts our currently positive economic trajectory at risk. Mass deportations may disrupt industries and tighten the labor market. Tariffs would jack up prices on imported goods. Both steps threaten to increase inflation, push up interest rates, and slow economic growth.

So clip and save these data points, and be ready to refer to them over the course of the next four years.

Best,

Bill

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