“Something has changed, the air seems lighter,” murmured Emmanuel Macron the day after the Olympic Games, quoting Barbara. Undeniably, the American Democratic camp, gathered from August 19 to 22 in Chicago, could have belted out the verses of the song. “We could still believe in it. We just have to want it. Before it’s too late.” Too late? “No!” roared Kamala Harris, the new political rocket, the one who, just a few weeks ago, was seen as a poor vice-president.
Because not only did Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race for the White House change the equation, but it also allowed us to discover the incredible political instinct of his right-hand man, which Hillary Clinton lacked so much in 2016, beaten on the wire by Donald Trump.
“It’s the economy, stupid!” : the famous formula dropped more than thirty years ago by an advisor to Bill Clinton has lost none of its relevance, but you still have to know how to season it. But in this game, Joe Biden was on a bad slope, convinced that he had an impeccable record. “Undoubtedly, the country is doing well, with unemployment at or near its lowest and inflation now under control,” attests Anton Brender, chief economist at Candriam and author of Democracies versus capitalism (Odile Jacob, May 2024). But “if the overall picture is good, the microeconomic perception differs,” reports Anis Bensaidani, a US specialist at BNP Paribas.
The danger of impoverishment
Food prices, fuel prices, rents: many households are struggling to make ends meet, particularly among the middle classes, the big losers in the post-Covid period. The famous American “common man”, whose advent was prophesied by Vice President Henry Wallace in 1942, is now only a shadow of his former self. Not only does the middle class now represent only 51% of the population, compared to 61% in the early 1970s, but its share of income has plummeted from 62% to 43% of national income in the same period. A keen political sleuth, Joe Biden had long perceived the danger of this impoverishment. “When the middle class does better, the economy does better and everyone does better,” Barack Obama’s running mate replied to Sarah Palin during the vice-presidential debate in 2008.
Today, facing Donald Trump, Kamala Harris sings the same refrain. “Strengthening the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency because I firmly believe that when the middle class is strong, America is strong.” From Biden in the text.
But with a little something extra: the former Californian prosecutor no longer talks about inflation but about the cost of living, promises price controls on groceries and food, checks for new homeowners, tax credits for young parents… Populist gifts, some will sneer, a threat to public finances, others will add. Unless Kamala Harris has simply understood that she must play politics to make her camp win.