South Carolina commences President Joe Biden’s reelection effort in earnest on Feb. 3 with the first sanctioned Democratic primary. The contest, which he is all but sure to win, will be the first time in 2024 Biden will be on the ballot. As such, the state presents an opportunity to examine the electability of the incumbent president, who has been plagued by low approval ratings across multiple measures and groups. Part three of “Biden on the Ballot” looks at his low approval ratings with the economy.
COLUMBIA, South Carolina — For months, President Joe Biden signaled he would hang his hopes of winning a second term in the White House on an economic rebound from the coronavirus pandemic.
Inflation dropped from a 40-year high of 9%, all while the unemployment rate returned to historic lows. What’s more, Biden sold the economic investments Democrats made on infrastructure and drug pricing. Yet with a year left in his term, the president is no closer to shaking voter disapproval of his handling of the economy.
That sentiment shows up in national polling — just 37% approve of his job performance, on average. His approval on inflation specifically is several points worse, with only 32%. But the pessimism also came through in a series of interviews conducted in South Carolina, the state that saved Biden’s fledgling candidacy in 2020.
Tonja G., a 34-year-old mother and former healthcare professional, said she was leaning toward voting for Biden but is “still worried” about food prices, specifically eggs and meat, and wants to see the president “do more” to lower costs.
Kayveon W., who at 27 commutes over two hours a day, six days a week, pointed to gas prices as the “single biggest issue” for him this election cycle.
The Biden campaign is banking on a strong showing in South Carolina’s Feb. 3 Democratic primary, the party’s first sanctioned contest of the presidential cycle, this coming weekend to boost enthusiasm for the president’s reelection push.
Yet Dr. Danielle Vinson, a South Carolina native and professor of politics at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, told the Washington Examiner that Biden’s economic messaging hasn’t yet broken through with voters in the state.
“Part of that is because folks are still realizing they’re dealing with high inflation, and the wages are starting to catch up, but it takes a while,” she said in an interview. “People are still going to be comparing this to what they were paying three years ago or four years ago, and it’s obvious — our grocery bills are higher.”
That could change by November, Vinson says.
“I do think, however, that by November, there will probably be at least some change on the ground in South Carolina and probably nationally,” Vinson added. “And also Biden, quite frankly until the last month, hasn’t been campaigning, and so, if he has time to campaign or if his surrogates are out there campaigning, then they’ll be hammering that message that things are better, and they’ll focus on the parts of it that makes sense for them.”
Furthermore, 22 people interviewed by the Washington Examiner, including 44-year-old Jennifer F., say they are disappointed with Biden’s inability to complete his campaign promise of forgiving $10,000 in student loan debt for all borrowers.
“It’s frustrating. I know Republicans and the Supreme Court killed his plan, but I really could have used the help. We all could,” she explained.
Though Biden’s blanket student loan forgiveness plan was blocked in 2023, the president has directed the federal government to wipe more than $136 billion in debt for more than 3.7 million student loan borrowers through the restructuring of federal loan repayment plans.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), a co-chairman of the president’s reelection campaign, touched on the public disconnect on the issue while campaigning alongside Biden Saturday evening.
“There was more action taken in the first month by his office than in the entire 20 previous years. Why? Because Joe Biden had fixed the student loan debt relief program. And this gentleman says that ‘I had been paying for 25 years. I had put in $255,000 — I’m sorry, $215,000 — but I still owed $119,000,” Clyburn read from a letter thanking him and Biden for the administration’s efforts on the issue. “And then he said, ‘You also said, Mr. President, that if you had paid for 35 years or for 25 years and you thought you had paid more than you should have, you can get a rebate.”
“I got my entire $119,000 eliminated, and on Oct. 1, I received a check for $56,800,” Clyburn continued. “When you hear these Russian bots, you hear these people using social media who are saying that Joe Biden has not kept his promise to students? Tell them about this letter. He has kept his promise. Why? Because he is a compassionate man.”
Several interviewees told the Washington Examiner they welcomed Biden’s efforts to lower healthcare costs, prescription drug prices in particular, but had only found out about the changes by following Clyburn rather than the White House or Biden himself.
“I think Biden has to do a better job of telling people exactly what he’s done. I had no idea some of this stuff had happened,” declared Erica S., a 24-year-old gas station employee. “All I hear is what he hasn’t done.”
For much of 2023, the sole focus of Biden’s limited reelection campaigning was on “Bidenomics,” a summation of his economic policies, yet allies, including Clyburn, urged him to re-target his messaging around Trump given the negative economic polling.
However, Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, who specializes in South Carolina politics, recommended a three-pronged approach for retooling Biden’s economic message: rewind, remind, and reinforce.
Firstly, as Seawright explained, Biden and his surrogates must “rewind the clock to where we were when Joe Biden took office, and we all know about some of the worst economic challenges since the Great Depression, the worst health pandemic since the early 1900s.”
Secondly, the Biden campaign should continue to tout what Biden has “actually accomplished,” reminding voters that the economy is “now hitting markers and records that no one ever anticipated and probably will go down as one of the healthiest economic times in this nation’s history.”
Finally, Seawright argues Democrats must hammer the line that losing, not just the White House but also congressional seats and down-ballot races, will effectively erase all recent gains and raise taxes on lower- and middle-income families.
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“We have to reinforce that the good things about the economy that we read and we see and we hear can easily be taken away in one swoop,” he told the Washington Examiner. “We don’t win the election if we don’t remind folks what we’re up against and how when they had the power, meaning the opposition, the Republican Party, what the economic climate was like.”
South Carolina’s Democratic primary takes place on Saturday, Feb. 3.
