Lowman S. Henry: The Politics of Joy

The left, usually racked with anger and hostility over everything from protests in favor of Middle Eastern terrorists to the perceived right to kill children in the womb, is now jubilant. A nearly unconscious Joe Biden has been replaced by an energetic Kamala Harris, who has turned what was shaping up to be an election defeat into a competitive presidential race. Despair has turned to joy.

But joy is neither a strategy nor a tactic—it is an emotion. And while emotion does play a big role in political campaigns, the emotion must be felt by a broad swath of the electorate, not just by an activist base. Of course, Democrats are more adept at using emotion than Republicans, who tend to focus more on politics. But joy without politics is like a house built without a foundation; at some point, it will collapse.

Barack Obama successfully harnessed emotion, conveying his message as “hope and change.” Donald Trump followed it up with his iconic slogan, “Make America Great Again.” Perhaps the most successful use of emotion in relatively recent presidential history was that of four-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose campaign theme song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” became a staple of the Democratic Party for decades.

Unlike Kamala Harris’ vaguely defined “Opportunity Society,” Franklin Roosevelt’s glowing speeches had a basis. Roosevelt took office in the midst of the Great Depression and began building what is now the deep state by dramatically expanding federal programs to pull the nation out of the economic crisis. There is a lively debate about whether these programs helped end or prolong the Great Depression. Ultimately, while the economy improved, the nation felt better, and Roosevelt received immediate recognition.

The problem for Harris and her gleeful minions is that she is part of an administration that has caused the last 3½ years of runaway inflation, high interest rates, and a housing crisis. To continue the analogy, she is more Herbert Hoover (Roosevelt’s predecessor, who is blamed for the Great Depression) than Franklin Roosevelt.

The few solutions she has proposed are time-tested failures. Price controls, in particular, have been spectacular disasters every time and everywhere they have been tried. Promising aspiring homebuyers $25,000 sounds good. But it will cost billions of dollars, likely financed by increasing the money supply—printing money—which will trigger another round of inflation.

To combat the 20%-plus inflation that has plagued the Biden/Harris years, the Federal Reserve has raised its target interest rates. While not historically high, current rates are higher than they have been in decades, which has a desired cooling effect on the economy and is contributing to voters’ concerns about their personal financial well-being.

Suspiciously, the Federal Reserve delivered its first rate cut of 2020 just weeks before the presidential election. Government statistics show that inflation has fallen significantly, although the higher prices of the past few years are still there. However, inflation and GDP data are subject to revisions in the months that follow, so we don’t know if they are actually accurate.

The uncertainty of the government data was exposed a few weeks ago when promising employment growth figures from late spring and early summer were “revised” down by more than 800,000 jobs — a staggeringly large revision even by the government’s data standards.

In order to “not be burdened by what was,” the left and its allies in the traditional news media will tout an “improving economy.” Cutting interest rates will provide cheery “news” reports, but the reality is that such actions will take months to revive the economy and have an impact that people will actually see in their daily lives.

Food prices have increased by 25.8% since 2020. A basket of groceries that cost $100 in November 2020 will cost $125.80 today. The cost of heating a home has also increased dramatically. Natural gas prices have increased by 27% since the winter of 2019-20, and electricity costs have increased by more than 18%. Periodic increases in the price of gasoline have also contributed to the strain on family budgets.

The bottom line is that few voters sit around after dinner and read government statistical reports, but they know it costs them a lot more to put that dinner on the table. That’s why virtually every poll taken in the past year has shown inflation/the economy to be voters’ top concern.

All the happy talk in the world can’t change how voters really feel. The candidate who most effectively addresses those concerns will likely emerge victorious in what is shaping up to be one of the most closely contested presidential elections in U.S. history.

Lowman S. Henry is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is [email protected].

Originally published: September 21, 2024 at 1:09 PM