Kamala Harris is better known for word salad nonsense than pointed economic analysis, but even broken clocks get it right without meaning to.
That’s where the vice president found herself last week, with a complaint about the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn the Roe v. Wade abortion decision and return the question to state lawmakers.
Harris might have thought she was damning the court, instead she ended up damning her own administration.
During an extended riff on the supposed economic challenges faced by women seeking abortions (the challenges the unborn baby is facing are considerably graver), Harris bemoaned the fact that the U.S. economy is so precarious that most households would have difficulty handling an unexpected expense of even $400.
“Most Americans are a $400 unexpected expense away from bankruptcy,” Harris said Friday during a pro-abortion event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Clearly, Harris thought she would be tugging at the heartstrings of the progressives gathered to protest Iowa’s law banning abortions after six week of pregnancy — a law that has been blocked in court for the moment, as The Associated Press reported.
But no one needs to agree with Harris about abortion to understand that she was making an even bigger point — even if she didn’t realize it:
After more than two years of President Joe Biden in the White House, the citizens of the world’s most prosperous country aren’t so very prosperous after all.
And with a president who seems to think what he calls “Bidenomics” is working so well he plans on running for re-election on it, it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon.
Harris might not have known what she was saying — it surely wouldn’t be the first time — but plenty of social media users understood it immediately.
“Yeah, that’s called Bidenomics and it’s a problem,” wrote Sen. Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican who’s running for the GOP nomination in 2024.
Yeah, that’s called Bidenomics and it’s a problem.
Americans have lost $10,000 in spending power because of the Biden-Harris agenda. https://t.co/0cNR34yt6O
— Tim Scott (@votetimscott) July 28, 2023
There were many who agreed. Here’s a sampling:
Bideneconomics explained
— David Goodrich (@DavidGo14865055) July 29, 2023
Thanks to you and your boss!
— SamJ (@SamJuneau) July 28, 2023
I’ve been assured many times over that the economy is doing great, we are all doing great and we should shut up about it, great!
— KevHill (@kevhill) July 28, 2023
To get one point out of the way, Harris was exaggerating to the point of absurdity — precision, like honesty, has never been her strength. Bankruptcy is serious business that isn’t likely to come up with just one financial setback, no matter how hard it might hit.
But as Fox News pointed out, she didn’t just quite make the factoid up out of thin air. Fox noted that Harris was likely referring to a Federal Reserve survey of U.S. households that showed that 37 percent of American individuals or households would be unable to cover an unexpected expense of $400.
Almost 40 percent of Americans is not “most Americans.” And saying most Americans don’t have $400 in change in their couch is one thing. Claiming a $400 expense would drive a household into literal bankruptcy is considerably different.
But the underlying fact that Harris admitted is undeniable: American incomes have not kept up with the soaring price of living under the Biden administration.
In fact, the Biden presidency has been a disaster for the American economy, from rampant government spending that fueled rapacious inflation to surrendering the energy independence that the United States achieved under the Trump administration.
If this is the “Bidenomics” that Democrats want to run the 2024 election on — if Kamala Harris wants to go on the road to tell her country that the administration she serves has left its citizenry teetering on the edge of financial failure, it’s only going to help whomever Republicans eventually nominate.
Prior to the COVID pandemic, GOP front-runner former President Donald Trump amassed an economic record any sane politician would envy — with low unemployment, low inflation and a rising stock market.
Trump’s chief rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, made his national name by leading the Sunshine State to a boom time in the face of COVID-19 while Democratic-dominated state governments strangled their own economies in pandemic paralysis.
In fact, just about any candidate in the increasingly crowded Republican field would do a better job than the Biden administration and the socialists who’ve taken over the modern Democratic Party simply by employing standard Republican strategies — what used to be standard American strategies — of limited regulation and free markets to ignite the country’s potential.
Harris didn’t mean to, but she all but admitted “Bidenomics” hasn’t done that, and it never will.
Like a stopped clock, she was right. And if the country is lucky, her time is running out.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
