If there were any doubts that Team Biden is still struggling to make its case to the American people, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris ended them.
At last week’s annual Dealbook Summit in New York, Mr. Sorkin asked about the Biden administration’s handling of inflation. Ms. Harris responded that “we have accomplished quite a bit.” She cited “record unemployment” and claimed “wages have surpassed inflation in many ways.”
The first claim was clumsily worded—she probably meant record-low unemployment—but October’s 3.9% unemployment rate was the highest since January 2022, while October’s 62.7% labor participation rate was still below pre-Covid levels.
Her second claim—that wage growth has outstripped inflation—is simply wrong. The Kansas City Federal Reserve says real median household income continues to drop. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that from January 2021 through this year’s second quarter, prices grew 15.8% and wages only 12.8%. Though wages are slowly growing, at this rate it will take until late next year for them to catch up with prices.
Pressed by Mr. Sorkin, Ms. Harris admitted that “for many Americans, prices are still too high.” She claimed the Biden administration had tackled inflation by capping insulin prices, forgiving $120 billion in student loans and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. “Our challenge,” she said, “is just to let folks know who brung it to them.”
Blaming Mr. Biden’s lousy inflation-fighting record on communications shortcomings is lame. Will these so-called achievements swing the election? Medicare hasn’t yet negotiated lower prices on the 10 drugs the Biden administration targeted, and any price cuts won’t become effective until 2026. Maybe the 8.4 million people the American Diabetes Association says take insulin will award their 2024 vote to Mr. Biden based on that Inflation Reduction Act provision. Perhaps some part of the 3.6 million Americans relieved of their obligation to repay student loans—until the next likely Supreme Court loss—will reward the president with their vote. But these two groups won’t swing the election.
Moreover, political actions often cause opposite and more powerful reactions. What about graduates who repaid their loans or worked through college and didn’t get a loan and are now paying for the debt forgiveness of others? Around 160 million Americans are likely to vote next year. Ms. Harris’s list of accomplishments might positively affect the lives of a fraction of them; the inflation that Mr. Biden’s spending helped create affects all of them.
When Mr. Sorkin gently raised the president’s age, Ms. Harris replied “age is more than a chronological fact.” It’s true some people appear as old, or older, than their years. They mangle more sentences, show less energy, shuffle frequently, lose their balance repeatedly, and just plain look old. Like Mr. Biden.
“I spend a whole lot of time with our president, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room,” Ms. Harris told Mr. Sorkin. “I can tell you,” she went on, “not only is he absolutely authoritative,” he’s both “steady” and “mature.” But what we see belies what she says. The claim that Mr. Biden, who turned 81 last month, is cheating Father Time is implausible.
