Republicans have laid a dangerous trap for Biden. Here’s how to avoid it.

Republicans have laid a dangerous trap for Biden. Here’s how to avoid it.

Paul Waldman, Greg Sargent — Read time: 4 minutes

While the recent news has been dominated by the war in Ukraine, no issue has gotten more attention over the past few months than inflation. An inescapable drumbeat of stories has explored price increases from every possible angle.

Meanwhile, Republicans are unified in their endlessly repeated belief that first, this is the worst economic calamity in history, and second, it’s all President Biden’s fault. This has persuaded some Democrats to adopt a largely defensive crouch on the economy, but it’s a trap: It’s making voters more inclined to believe the Republican story about this moment, rather than less.

So when Biden delivers his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, he should avoid this trap. He speaks against the background of an argument among Democrats about how much they should be saying they feel voters’ pain, and how much they should tout the substantial economic progress that has been made in the past year.

On a conference call Monday, senior White House officials gave some hints about where he might be leaning in this argument.

Part of Biden’s speech will address the infrastructure bill he signed in November. Expect a laundry list of projects and improvements that are underway because of the bill, to convince people watching that even if they haven’t yet seen the results of the bill, they will soon.

And there will be some bragging about the state of the economy — but not as much as you might expect, given the administration’s pretty remarkable success.

We can argue about how much credit Biden deserves for that success, but the numbers are undeniable: gross domestic product growth in 2021 was 5.7 percent, and more than 6 million jobs were created, more than in any year on record.

Again, you can quibble about what produced the latter — we were pulling ourselves out of a terrible recession — but how many Americans have even heard it? If most presidents could boast that their first year saw the creation of more jobs than any calendar year in American history, they’d never stop talking about it.

But this White House is terribly worried that if they brag too much, someone will think they’re not in touch with what Americans are going through. Which may be why, on that call, White House officials laid out four groups of proposals Biden will discuss, and three were about reducing prices.

Biden, they said, intends to promote more domestic manufacturing and strengthen supply chains; take direct steps to reduce everyday costs for consumers; promote competition to reduce prices; and create more well-paying jobs.

All too often, Democrats remain fundamentally defensive about the economy. When they start and finish every sentence with “We know prices are high, it’s tough out there, and we get it,” that reinforces the perception that inflation is the only thing we should talk about.

There are signs that Biden will lean toward emphasizing his accomplishments. Democrats are circulating a memo on Capitol Hill — likely approved by the White House — indicating that Biden will address “the progress of the last year in the face of deep challenges” and his “optimism for the future.”

If so, Biden will be coming down on the right side of this argument.

Some Democrats insist that discussing accomplishments is akin to pressuring voters to feel something about the economy that they do not feel, which courts backlash.

But this misses key nuances. Biden can talk about the covid-19 relief bill that passed early last year and drove a surprisingly strong recovery while also stressing our current struggles and how much further we have to go.

Biden should not squander the chance to make an argument that absolutely must be made: Even if inflation has been a worse problem than Democrats anticipated — and even if recovery spending helped drive it — the alternative would likely have been far worse.

Had we not poured money into the economy, we would have experienced an absolute nightmare of suffering, with millions more long-term unemployed, more hunger, more evictions, more failed businesses and a recession whose effects would have lingered far longer than it actually will. But we did.

It can’t be right that Biden must refrain from making this argument. First, it’s the truth. Second, it would pass up a chance to emphasize what Republicans (every one of whom voted against the American Rescue Plan) wanted instead.

As Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has argued, the goal should be messaging that speaks to people’s lingering struggles while also telling them how Democrats are well on their way to “leading us to the other side.”

Indeed, polling done by Democrats has found Biden’s approval on the economy in terrible shape, and trust in Republicans is higher. Yet when voters are told various true metrics about the economy, majorities see these as signs of recovery, and larger percentages credit Democrats rather than Republicans for it.

But right now, Republicans couldn’t be happier: All anyone talks about is inflation, they don’t have to come up with any solutions for it, and Biden often seems reluctant to make too strong a case for successes he’s already achieved. If he’s going to change that, Tuesday’s speech is the place to start.