Dems find a rallying cry: Trump tanked the economy

For most of the presidential campaign, the economy looked like the one thing that could overcome Donald Trump’s stubbornly low approval ratings and carry him to a second term. Even many Democrats acknowledged they had no cohesive economic message of their own.

But now that the coronavirus has laid waste to the surging stock market and low unemployment, Democrats are discovering another obstacle — framing a coherent economic argument that all the party’s factions can rally around.

It’s already become a source of friction within the Democratic Party, even as some major Democratic outside groups begin pummeling Trump for the economic fallout of the pandemic. It‘s a message Democrats plan to amplify in coming months, long after the immediate health effects of the crisis subside.

The left flank is increasing pressure on Joe Biden, the party’s likely nominee, to adopt more progressive economic policies. Activists accuse Trump of prioritizing corporate America over low-wage workers, while many moderate Democrats are leery of drawing such distinctions, training their criticism of Trump solely on his initial mishandling of the pandemic.

“This is not just about saying, ‘Trump is not doing a good job,’” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders, who remains in the presidential race. “That is absolutely a piece of it, but it's also about, what are you going to do? What is your vision? … We should be talking about a payroll guarantee, like a bold pay payroll guarantee program, we should be talking about canceling student debt. I mean, these are the things that, they're not just progressive priorities anymore, they are going to be desperate needs for the survival and the recovery of our people in our economy.”

Jayapal added that Biden, should he become the nominee, will “absolutely” come under pressure from progressives to reconsider those policies ideas in light of the crisis.

In a string of recent TV appearances, Biden has explicitly tied the pandemic’s health effects to its economic devastation, casting them as dual crises and yoking both of them to Trump. That messaging is gaining volume through a constellation of outside groups and super PACs that are driving the messaging, and Democratic officials said voters can expect to see more of it echoed throughout the summer and into the fall.

Priorities USA, one of the main Democratic super PACs opposing Trump, has begun airing TV ads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan attacking Trump for his response to Covid-19. Guy Cecil, the group’s chairman, said Priorities will continue “in the short term” to “use the president’s own words” to focus on “where early decisions [on the coronavirus response] had significant impact on what’s happening today.”

Longer term, Cecil said, “the economy and health care, which for most Americans is interconnected, are the central issues in 2020.”

Mathew Littman, a former Biden speechwriter and the executive director of a new pro-Biden super PAC, Win the West, said his group will hit Trump repeatedly for “not taking this issue seriously.” PACRONYM, a progressive super PAC, is also dropping $2.5 million on a digital ad campaign attacking Trump for his response to the coronavirus. American Bridge, another progressive group, is highlighting unemployment statistics alongside coronavirus deaths, and labor unions are preparing to make an economy-focused push.

“We think the economy is central to what working people need to hear from candidates and elected officials up and down the ballot,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union.

Invoking what she called the “twin crises of a public health pandemic and an economic cratering that’s occurring,” she said “bold structural change is going to be necessary in order to address the deepening economic crisis. ... Now more than ever, the economy and how unequal our economy is has to get addressed.”

One thing that nearly everyone can agree on: For a party that until recently feared the Republican president — though unpopular — could win reelection on the strength of the economy alone, the moment offers an unparalleled chance to make an airtight case against Trump.

“Democrats, ever since before 2016, haven’t really had an economic profile. People couldn’t name what the Democratic economics was, and it was a major reason why Trump won in 2016,” said Celinda Lake, a leading Democratic strategist and pollster who works with Biden’s presidential campaign but was not speaking for Biden or his advisers.

In the coronavirus response, she said, “there’s a real opportunity to define … what is a people-centered economy, what is an economy that works for everyone, and we should be leaning into this.”

Robert Reich, the Clinton-era Labor secretary, said the crisis presents Biden with a unique opportunity to make policy changes that he might otherwise have difficulty explaining.

“Even if he wants to be perceived as cautious and prudent on issues like income support and health care, the pandemic gives him more room for being bold than he had before the pandemic,” Reich said. “A national trauma such as we are experiencing and definitely will experience over the next month or two enables a politician … to say, in effect, ‘I’ve now seen what the country needs in a way that the country has also experienced, and therefore I’m modifying the position.’”

While the general election is still seven months away, the effect on the electorate is likely to endure after weeks of deaths, stay-at-home orders, job losses and business closures.

“When we come out of this, millions of Americans will have a very different experience of what happened than they had at any time in their lifetimes before,” Reich said. “It’s almost like going through the Great Depression or World War II in the sense that the direct experience of a traumatic event changes attitudes towards government and public policy, sometimes in profound ways.”

In response to criticism from Democrats, Trump’s campaign has highlighted the relief measures he has signed into law, while accusing Biden of “sniping from the sidelines.” The president has suggested the economy will be moving again before the general election, and direct payments to millions of Americans — even if late arriving — could benefit him in November.

But the economic damage from the pandemic has already proved severe, and it is widely expected to worsen this month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Friday for an expansion of the $2 trillion relief package Trump signed, including more money for small businesses and more direct payments to Americans.

Barry Goodman, a Democratic National Committee member and bundler for Biden, said Democrats should clobber Trump for his hesitance to embrace public health measures detrimental to the stock market, saying that “his infatuation with the stock market and keeping the economy running and humming … he believed that over the science.”

“He ended up tanking the economy worse than it ever could have been tanked,” Goodman said.

Biden’s campaign is not signaling a wholesale policy shift as a result of the crisis. Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director, said the former vice president has advanced “a lot of really progressive policies that are designed to help working people, and I think this crisis is putting into stark relief the need to double down on that agenda.”

Still, Biden has adopted some more progressive policies in recent weeks, Biden adopted a proposal to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students whose family incomes fall below $125,000 — an element of Sanders’ platform. Urging policymakers not to allow the coronavirus’ fallout to disproportionately affect young people, he proposed forgiving some student loan debt.

Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Biden’s campaign, recalling the 2008 financial crisis, said “this is so much bigger. And it’s so is different because it is across so many different sectors. And, as the disease progresses, more and more sectors will start feeling this.

“The things that were important though, in 2009, was not to create a false sense of hope, not to take one piece of good news about the economy, and basically say, ‘OK, it's all gonna be great, now we turn the corner.’ We came close to making that mistake a few times, but decided not to,” Dunn said. “So, I think lesson one for the people in the administration would be: Don't overstate good news, in the face of what is going to be an ongoing economic crisis for the American people. From a challenger perspective, we often say: Don't overstate bad news. The American people are not interested in having their lives used as political pawns right now.”