(Headline USA) Former Obama adviser David Axelrod blasted President Joe Biden this week, arguing the president’s economic messaging was a “terrible mistake.”
Axelrod was responding to a sit-down Biden did on Wednesday with CNN’s Erin Burnett, who grilled Biden on the state of the economy and voters’ disapproval of the way he’s handled it.
YOUR REACTION: CNN to Biden, "Grocery prices are up 30%+ … that's a real day-to-day pain that people feel." Biden responds, "They have the money to spend." WATCH pic.twitter.com/h51mRuPzIA
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) May 9, 2024
Biden attempted to boast about his economic record during the interview, claiming he’s “already turned it around.”
He also dismissed polls cited by Burnett in which Americans list the economy as their top concern.
“The idea that we’re in a situation where things are so bad … When I started this administration, people were saying there’s gonna be a collapse in the economy,” Biden insisted.
“We have the strongest economy in the world,” he continued. “Let me say that again: in the world.”
Axelrod, however, warned Biden’s message would fall on deaf ears.
“I don’t understand this,” the Democratic strategist said during a follow-up panel discussion with Burnett.
“I don’t understand—all these months later, you know, I thought they spent $25 million mistakenly last fall touting Bidenomics and making the same argument that the president is making here.”
The media recently began to take note of the Biden campaign’s quiet de-emphasis of the term, which it has boldly tried to appropriate for itself from what had been a conservative pejorative by confusing the public into thinking that the economy was in good shape.
“It was a bad call to use that term,” said Drew Westen, a psychology professor at Emory University and Democrat messaging consultant, according to USA Today. “At that time, people were seeing the Biden economy as the inflation economy.”
The failed effort not only underscored the economic failures, thus, but also the administration’s brazen attempts at gaslighting the public on a wide array of issues—something that Biden has continued to do, even falsely claiming during the CNN interview that inflation was at 9% when he took office.
In reality, it was at 1.4%, as Fox Business reported. However, it quickly shot up after he assumed office, Biden’s his failed energy policies and vaccine mandates exacerbated a supply-chain crisis.
Axelrod noted that Biden would be wise to attempt to empathize with the economic hardships many Americans were experiencing as a result of his mismanagement.
“He is a man who’s built his career on empathy. Why not lead with the empathy?” Axelrod said. “And I think he’s making a terrible mistake… If he doesn’t win this race, it may not be Donald Trump that beats him. It may be his own pride.”
Biden’s own former chief of staff, Ron Klain, made a similar criticism of his former boss during a meeting with Democratic strategists last month.
“There’s too much talking about bridges and not enough about eggs and milk,” Klain said. “Like I tell you, if you go into the grocery store, you go to the grocery store and, you know, eggs and milk are expensive, the fact that there’s a f***ing bridge is not [inaudible].”
