News/Commentary

Dems worry Kamala’s economic message didn’t resonate. Critics ask…‘what message?’

October 29, 2024 | | Print Article

As Vice President Kamala Harris continued to miss her “opportunity” on a key voter issue, coverage of her failure to break through begged the question, “What message?!”

Platitudes, speeches recycled down to her hand motions, and the demonization of her opponent continue to prove ineffectual while her initial hype fizzles as former President Donald Trump continues to surge in the closing days of the election.

Now, after months of prioritizing the promotion of unborn baby murder, ducking the border crisis, and vilifying the GOP leader as a “fascist,” The Hill spoke with concerned Democrats about the vice president’s failure to promote an economic policy.

“Democrats alarmed Vice President Harris’s economic message isn’t breaking through,” read the headline as Democratic strategist Steve Jarding said, “Where I don’t think she’s done a good enough job is, [Trump] gets away with saying, ‘The economy is the worst it’s ever been, there’s more unemployment, inflation is the highest it’s ever been.’ None of that is true.”

“It’s almost like he lies so much you get tired of refuting it, and I think that’s a mistake,” he continued while a donor lamented to the outlet, “Her economic message hasn’t broken through. And the economy is the issue most people care about. She narrowed the gap a little on the issue, but she’s left a lot of people wondering about her vision.”

Notable of the report from The Hill was the scant coverage of an actual economic message, only pointing to a “list of proposals to help middle-class families: a plant to crack down on price gouging, an expansion of the child tax credit, an expansion of Medicare to cover home care, exempting tipped income from taxes, and a $25,000 down payment to first-time homebuyers.”

Left unmentioned was her pitch amid failing support among black men for a fully forgivable $1 million loan or her seeming to suggest that credit for applying for a small business loan was not the equivalent of giving an entrepreneur the startup capital needed to pursue such an endeavor.

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“I still think there are folks out there who can’t tell you what she plans to do. That should have been something our side hammered home every day,” another Democratic strategist told The Hill expressing what Harris had conveyed so far, “left a lot to be desired.”

The outlet went as far as to cite an essay from Robert Reich that stated, “When all of [the polls] show the same thing — that Kamala Harris’s campaign stalled several weeks ago yet Trump’s continues to surge — it’s important to take the polls seriously.”

“She needs to respond forcefully to the one issue that continues to be highest on the minds of most Americans: the economy,” he added.

While the fact that the pro-Harris Future Forward PAC’s messaging attacking Trump as a “fascist” is also failing to win support, it was suggested that the vice president should spend the final week campaigning and pushing the economy. Social media users were left snarking over the report.

“What message?! That she’s gonna fix things by not changing anything? She’s got no ‘economic message,'” said one as the “Opportunity Economy” hadn’t disavowed the failures of Bidenomics, while others called out her focus on anything but the economy.

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Kevin Haggerty
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