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ARE DEMOCRATS ROOTING AGAINST THE ECONOMY? A lot of stir about an article in Politico headlined, “The general election scenario that Democrats are dreading.” The piece, by Ryan Lizza and Daniel Lippman, focused on the views of Jason Furman, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama now at Harvard. Furman has been sounding the alarm among Democrats that the economy might do very, very well this fall. And a rapidly improving economy might be a boost to President Trump’s re-election prospects.
“We’re about to see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country,” Furman told a group of government officials recently. The point was not that the economy would be the best it has ever been — it has fallen far too precipitously to come all the way back by the fall. The point was the economy might be in the midst of a strong recovery — stronger than anything seen earlier because of the peculiar circumstances of the coronavirus crisis. And voters sometimes make their choices based on the trajectory of the economy — things are getting better — rather than its absolute position.
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“Furman’s counterintuitive pitch has caused some Democrats…to panic,” Politico reported. “‘This is my big worry,’ said a former Obama White House official who is still close to the former president. Asked about the level of concern among top party officials, he said, ‘It’s high — high, high, high, high.'”
Furman and Politico took some grief from progressive types. How dare they? NeverTrumper Tim Miller suggested there was nothing to it — it’s just “one background quote from a former Obama administration official saying ‘this is my big worry.'”
But the fact is, long before coronavirus, Democrats and some in the press seemed unusually eager for economic hard times to beset Trump. In late 2018, there was a lot of talk about an imminent recession. “A recession is coming. Trump will make it so much worse,” announced a Washington Post op-ed in December 2018. “Trump and the slowing economy: A wounded tiger is a dangerous tiger,” said an op-ed by former Obama economist Jared Bernstein, also in the Post.
It’s standard practice for the party out of power to say the economy is a mess. Back in 2004, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry declared conditions the “worst economy since the Great Depression.” If only. But the dilemma has always been that the party out of power — the Democrats today — do not want to be seen as rooting against the economy. People’s lives and livelihoods depend on it. Leaders and would-be leaders should always root for what is best for all Americans.
So: If, in fact, the economy is recovering rapidly in the fall, that would be a great thing. Joe Biden should hope for it. Donald Trump should hope for it. We all should hope for it. It should never be anyone’s nightmare scenario.
