Is It Morning in Kamala Harris’s America?

Since 1980 and before, Republicans have pushed trickle down economic policies that overall have greatly benefited the super wealthy and the rest of us have received crumbs and fared nowhere near as well.  Yes, in 1980 the nation faced very real economic problems which look nothing like today's strong American economy even if far too many voters are falling for the Trump/GOP/Fox News lies that things are terrible with crime up, inflation still high, and a recession in the offing.  None of these claims are true and in reality crime is down, inflation is down, unemployment is low, and despite interest rates that are too high, the economy remains robust. As a column in the New York Times lays out, more Americans seem to be belatedly noting the true situation and a long desired sense of optimism - something diametrically the opposite of Trump's "American carnage" - is fueling excitement for the Harris/Walz ticket.  Just as importantly, many seem tired of Trump and his endless stream of lies and his increasingly visible age and mental decline. Whatever Trump thinks he's doing in his so-called press conferences, they seem to only be highlighting his deficiencies to all but his most devoted cult followers. Here are highlights from the Times column:

Like everyone who follows this stuff, I’m a bit awe-struck by the polling shift since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. We still don’t know what will happen on Election Day; Harris could easily lose, despite her improved poll numbers. But if she wins, one way to think about what happened will be to say that Republicans were trying to replay the wrong election.

You see, G.O.P. messaging has been quite explicitly modeled on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, when he asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Applying this approach in 2024 has always been problematic, depending as it does on voters forgetting what 2020, with its soaring unemployment and mass deaths, was really like. But it’s now looking as if this election may bear more resemblance to 1984, when Reagan won a landslide victory with the theme “Morning in America.”

Before you dismiss this comparison, consider the actual state of America in 1984, which was a lot more problematic than the legend — carefully cultivated by conservatives over the years — would have it. In November of that year, the unemployment rate was 7.2 percent, compared with 4.3 percent now; inflation was just over 4 percent, compared with the current 2.9 percent. The homicide rate was much higher than the rate today.

But unemployment and inflation had come down from their peaks a few years earlier, and many Americans felt that the nation was emerging from the despondency that gripped it in 1980. In retrospect, the celebration was premature . . . . the hollowness of “Morning in America” wouldn’t become apparent until much later.

The parallel with current politics is that the state of America in 2024 isn’t just objectively very good, particularly when compared with other wealthy nations; it has also been improving rapidly along multiple dimensions. The percentage of prime-age Americans employed is at a 23-year high. Inflation is down by about two-thirds from its peak in 2022. Violent crime, which rose significantly during Donald Trump’s last year in office, has been falling fast.

Yet voters didn’t seem to be feeling the good news, and until recently Trump seemed to be running a successful campaign centered on false claims that crime is “through the roof” and that we may be in “the throes of a depression.” Oh, and that the price of bacon has quadrupled.

You may say that people don’t care that inflation — the rate at which prices are rising — is down, that they care only about the fact that prices are higher than they were. But in November 1984, consumer prices were 21 percent higher than when Reagan took office, which didn’t stop him from getting credit for curbing inflation . . . .

No, increasingly it seems the reason the good news wasn’t getting through to voters was the messenger. Very good things have happened on Biden’s watch, many of them attributable to his startlingly bold policies. He will surely receive a much deserved hero’s welcome at next week’s Democratic National Convention, and future historians will, I believe, rate his presidency extremely highly. But for various reasons — his age, the fact that inflation surged in 2021 and ’22 and maybe just his personal style — voters weren’t willing to give him credit for his achievements.

Now that Harris is the Democratic nominee, however, the vibes have shifted.

A Financial Times poll showing that voters prefer Harris on the economy may be an outlier, but there are other polls showing that Trump’s once sizable (and utterly undeserved) advantage on that issue has been greatly eroded. . . . . and Harris leads by wide margins on abortion and health care.

Now, I’m not saying that Harris, who appears to be leading but not by much, will win. . . . . Still, there is a real sense in which this election suddenly looks more like 1984 than like 1980, with Harris, not Trump, playing the Reagan role. Trump is running as the candidate of American carnage, insisting that things are terrible, which was sort of true in 1980 but isn’t true now; along with his ranting about crowd sizes and all that, he’s coming across as a whiner.

Meanwhile, Harris is running as the candidate of optimism and hope, declaring that we have triumphed over adversity — which we have. The truth is that there was ample reason to feel good about America a month or two ago, but voters weren’t willing to believe it as long as Biden was running. With Harris as the Democrats’ standard-bearer, Biden’s achievements may finally pay off politically.