Republicans Should Take Bidenomics Seriously
Conservatives have treated Bidenomics as a laughing matter. That could be a strategic mistake.
When the Biden administration decided to go all in on its economic record a few months ago, this looked like a high stakes gamble. Americans were giving the Biden administration very low marks for economic stewardship, inflation was still uncomfortably high, and a recession seemed to still be inevitable.
Surveys suggested that the public cared far more about what was going wrong with the economy—namely, inflation—than what was going right—mostly, low unemployment. The Biden administration’s attempt to accentuate the positive looked doomed to fail.
Even worse, many economists believed that resolving the inflation problem would require undermining the strength of the labor market. So, even if inflation was brought down, it would likely be at the cost of millions of jobs. If layoffs became widespread and employment precarious, the…