US Politics: ‘Bidenomics’ is bad policy and worse politics
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris embrace at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. Photograph: Erin Schaff/New York Timeshas but one catch. His high-spending protectionism will never face its electoral reckoning. “Bidenomics”, if we are to accord such an old-fashioned programme such a fresh name, seemed bound for defeat onwin, there was this: it would have been a while before the Democrats vilified trade and markets again as a shortcut to votes.
Here is one. Policies that are popular on their own terms can be unpopular in combination. A cheque in the mail from the federal government is a delight. A cheque plus an infrastructure splurge, a crusade against corporate “price-gouging”, a takedown of Big Tech and some other paternalist gestures starts to smell of zeal. Voters hear the chord, not the notes. Otherwise, politics would be absurdly easy: just stack crowd-pleasing ideas on top of each other.
But I doubt it. This dialectical turning point has always felt like something commentators have tried to will into being. On the eve of the pandemic, US economic confidence was at its highest since the millennium. The worldwide trend in politics has been against incumbents, not against this or that programme. And few eras have a clean ideological identity.
Besides this electoral case for retiring Bidenomics, there are higher-minded ones. Industrial workers, if Democrats are sincere about their plight, are also price-sensitive consumers, often of imported goods. And paternalism can be a charter for lobbyists, hence the current gimmick of exempting waiting-staff tips from tax.
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