Joe Biden preps to sell the economy — to boost his legacy and help Harris

Joe Biden is determined to use the waning days of his political career to overcome public skepticism and defend his economic record — both for his sake and for Kamala Harris.

The president is putting together a national campaign to persuade voters who have so far resisted his efforts to argue that his administration achieved what will one day be viewed as major economic progress, even if most voters don’t believe it because of the huge spike in prices that followed the pandemic.

He needs it for his legacy. Harris needs it to have one.

“These are epochal, economy-changing, history changing accomplishments — and instead, everybody is talking about the price of eggs,” said one adviser to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly on the challenge facing Biden. “It’s all personal. Every bit of it is personal.”

In swing-state speeches, White House events and a social media push, Biden plans to cast the last four years as a turning point that altered the U.S.’s trajectory and expanded benefits for a generation of voters — even if, to Biden’s frustration, most say they don’t yet feel it.

The multi-state travel in coming weeks — a mix of official and campaign events — aims to show off neighborhoods and communities where Biden believes his policies are finally making a measurable difference, while doubling as a supplement to Harris’ own stretch run to November.

The decision to spend much of Biden’s final months on his economic record reflects a bid to finally solve the paradox that’s long challenged the White House and undercut the president’s popularity: The working-class voters Biden crafted his agenda to help the most have been among the hardest to convince of its benefits.

Despite overseeing a rapid economic recovery, recording job and wage gains and passing legislation investing billions of dollars in infrastructure, manufacturing and climate projects, only a slice of Americans associate Biden with progress on the economy. Instead, voters remain far more fixated on an inflationary run that peaked two years ago, yet continues to push up the price of basic expenses like groceries and housing. In an August Gallup poll, just 31 percent of Americans said the economy was getting better — and that represented something of an improvement compared with most of the last three years.

As part of the messaging effort, the White House is also carving out time for Biden to speak individually with people who have benefited from his policies, which aides plan to film and distribute through social media and other channels. The president held a public discussion with four such voters earlier this month; future instances will likely be one-on-one conversations that aides hope will showcase the administration’s expanding ground-level impact.

“The most successful pieces have almost always been Joe Biden humanizing a piece of policy, talking to people one on one, hearing their stories,” said Christian Tom, the White House’s director of digital strategy.

The new project was spurred partly by the fact that, more than two years after passing landmark bills pouring billions into the economy, Biden can finally point to some concrete results. The president’s first set of conversations spotlighted the construction of a new well on tribal land and an urban design project reconnecting parts of Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood that had been long divided by a highway. White House aides have crowdsourced reams of similar stories, which they’re sorting through in search of the most vivid examples.

“We’re looking for really good stories and real people, where that sense of impact can come across,” Tom said.

Achieving short-term political credit isn’t a problem unique to Biden. Barack Obama left office chasing popular support for Obamacare and didn’t get it until Republicans tried to repeal the law a year later. Biden alluded to facing a similar dilemma during a trip to Michigan last week, urging attendees there to focus less on the present and more on the potential opportunities created by his investments.

“We’re not going to see it for a little bit because it takes time to build those factories,” Biden said. “But there are going to be millions of people working in those factories, and guess what? Once that starts, they’re going to create entire communities around them.”

That challenge isn’t helped by the unusual place he now occupies in today’s political landscape — a first-term president relegated to a supporting role in a campaign that hinges on convincing voters his vice president will take the country in a new direction. It’s made for a delicate two-step at times, as Biden touts his economic successes while Harris orients her message toward the high prices and financial pain points still left unaddressed.

That dynamic has generated anxiety among some Democrats, who worry the president’s determination to talk up his record risks inadvertently dragging down his chosen successor. One Harris ally, granted anonymity to speak candidly, advised putting more distance between the two of them: “Let him do what he wants, and the campaign does what they want.”

Another Democrat close to the campaign also privately voiced worries about Biden talking up his administration’s agenda at a moment when the biggest challenge facing Harris is laying out a distinct vision for voters who say they need more information about her plans.

“Harris came into the race with a ton of separation from Biden,” said Evan Roth Smith, the lead pollster for Blueprint, a Democratic polling initiative. “I don’t think it’s necessarily productive for Democrats to undo that favorable and helpful voter instinct to create daylight between the two.”

White House and campaign officials insist that Biden remains an asset, especially amid an improvement in Democratic voters’ perception of the president prompted by his decision to step aside in July. At least four separate polls have shown notable improvement in voters’ perception of Biden since then, and aides cited his consistent strength with key parts of the base, like union members, older Americans, and Black voters.

Biden also remains personally determined to stay in the mix, pushing aides to keep his schedule full and search in particular for opportunities to demonstrate where his administration’s investments are starting to pay off, said officials familiar with the internal discussions. In addition to his Michigan visit, he also traveled to Wisconsin last week to promote a $7.3 billion rural electricity project funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, in an early illustration of the types of targeted appearances where officials believe Biden may still be effective in rallying the party’s base in battleground states.

Still, even Biden’s closest allies acknowledge that the president’s final push must be closely coordinated with the campaign, and that its overall success will be judged solely by whether it ends with Harris in the White House.

“A presidential election is a personal choice, and [Harris] has to make the sale herself,” said former White House chief of staff Ron Klain. “He can build a bit of a foundation for her economic message. But she can and has to deliver the message about her agenda going forward.”

Klain and other Biden confidants argued that he can nevertheless serve as an important validator for some voters — and that boosting awareness of the current administration’s economic accomplishments is crucial if only to reinforce a Harris platform based largely on expanding and building off those ambitions.

For Biden himself, advisers say cementing his economic record is as much about the next two months as it is the next 20 years, with some likening it to his version of Obamacare: A politically painful, yet legacy-defining project that could transform the economy in enduring ways that may well become broadly popular only Biden has left the Oval Office.

“Joe Biden is the leading practitioner of the philosophy that government exists to improve the lives of working and middle-class people, and if that means government needs to intervene, then government’s going to intervene,” the adviser to the White House said. “Along with his family, this is his entire life. This is what he has lived for.”