The White House is desperately trying to convince people that Biden’s presidency has been good for them. They dismiss polls showing that Americans think the economy isn’t doing well and claim to have reduced inflation even though inflation is still much higher than it was under Trump. Republicans linked Biden to the negative perceptions of the economy by branding his policies “Bidenomics,” and it’s been highly effective.
Now that the 2024 presidential campaign has started, the White House is trying even harder to convince the public that Biden’s presidency has been great for everyone’s bottom line and is attempting to reclaim the term “Bidenomics” as a positive term and is laughably plastering the phrase all over banners and in speeches. It’s a transparent effort to flip the script on what is considered to be the most important issue for most Americans when they vote.
And it’s not going to work.
Back when the Democrats were pushing the so-called Affordable Care Act, Republicans were quick to dub the controversial healthcare takeover “Obamacare,” as a pejorative label and a call back to the epic failure of Hillary Clinton’s “Hillarycare.”
Obamacare was so controversial that it took a series of backroom deals and procedural tricks to get enough Democrats on board to get it passed. While the GOP was in the minority, with little power to stop it, they ultimately managed to win the messaging war over Obamacare and win back control of the House of Representatives in 2010 by picking up 63 seats.
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It wasn’t until 2012, while he was running for reelection that Obama dared to embrace the Obamacare label. “On Obamacare, Republicans spent hundreds of millions branding Obamacare as a negative, and we believe we can turn that to our advantage,” Obama campaign spokesman Stephanie Cutter said at the time. “The term is incredibly popular with the president’s supporters, who will fight to the end to defend the law after 70 years of work to pass health reform.”
It was an effort that clearly failed. Even though Obama was reelected in 2012, Obamacare never achieved majority support from the public during Obama’s presidency, averaging 44% approval and not once hitting 50%, according to Gallup.
Obama also won reelection with 3.6 million fewer votes than in 2008—hardly a glowing endorsement of his policies.
If Barack Obama couldn’t win the messaging war on Obamacare, Joe Biden doesn’t stand a chance to flip “Bidenomics” from a pejorative to a positive. Biden can tell people any fantasy about the economy he wants. Still, it won’t change the fact that people are paying more at the pump, more at the grocery store, more for utilities, and more for virtually everything today than they were under Donald Trump. All the political consultants and marketing experts in the world can’t convince people to ignore their huge grocery bills and dwindling bank accounts.