Republicans: Good News-Proof Your Campaigns

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, December 21, 2023

 

The polling couldn’t be clearer. Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo. The price of consumer goods is still too high. Crime rates, too. The crisis at the border is consuming states and cities far removed from it. Instability abroad is fueling unrest at home. Understandably enough, voters are taking their frustrations out on the party in control of the White House. Except for abortion rights, the Republican Party is favored over their Democratic counterparts by double-digits, according to some surveys, on the issues voters regard as most salient.

 

The GOP is riding high. But Republicans would be foolish to draw a straight-line projection into November of next year and assume the conditions that prevail today will still pertain then. The prospect of good news looms large on the horizon. Republicans would do well to hone their approach to good news-proof their campaigns.

 

Quinnipiac University’s latest national survey indicates that an unanticipated spasm of optimism is building. At the bottom of their poll, in which respondents were bombarded with undesirable circumstances — from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to the legal headaches and scandals engulfing the two likeliest presidential nominees — Quinnipiac found that most voters are not as consumed with woe as the political-commentary class seems to be.

 

Despite this year’s exercise in belt-tightening, voters believe next year will be better. Nearly half of all voters, 48 percent, said they believe the national economic outlook will improve in 2024. Only 39 percent said conditions will continue to deteriorate. Their hopefulness is even more pronounced on a personal level. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they will see their individual economic circumstances improve next year. Just 20 percent looked upon their prospects in 2024 with dread.

 

Of course, Democrats and popular economists who deride public perceptions of the economy as ill-informed — a “vibe-cession” driven by the thoughtless superstition promoted by unscrupulous rabble-rousers — are tempting fate, too. They watch with detached bemusement as their neighbors struggle financially, which risks taunting voters into demonstrating their seriousness with their votes. The public’s emerging sense of hope could curdle into contempt and despair if their optimism is not rewarded and prices — which seem to be the primary driver of the voting public’s malaise — fail to come in line with wage growth. But the macroeconomic indicators don’t suggest a false dawn is upon us.

 

Consumer confidence spiked to a five-month high in December. “The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index increased to 110.7 this month, the highest reading since July, from a downwardly revised 101.0 in November,” Reuters reported. That figure beat economists’ expectations by nearly seven points. More Americans are spending more this holiday season than they did last year. More Americans say they plan on going on vacation than they have in some time. More Americans say the effects of inflation will be less acutely felt in the coming months than they have in a while.

 

Despite the warning signs abroad, policy-makers take these cues as an indication that a long-forecast recession will not materialize next year. That could lead to looser monetary policy, which will make borrowing less expensive for credit-card debtholders, car and home buyers, and businesses seeking capital investment. Americans could retain all their concerns about the porous border, crime in America’s streets, and the deteriorating international environment in November of next year. But if their economic circumstances have significantly improved, that will intensify the already pronounced (and underappreciated) advantages associated with Joe Biden’s incumbency.

 

Republicans would do well to internalize these risks. The GOP cannot rest on its laurels in the assumption that the political landscape will persist into next year, much less that it will do all the hard work of campaigning for them. Donald Trump’s general-election message today is a strong one: Are you better off today than you were five years ago (cleverly eliding the annus horribilis 2020). But voters who are not predisposed toward existential dread do not have to be as comfortable as they were in 2019 for Biden to benefit if they believe their conditions are improving in tangible ways. The pronounced desire for change at the top today will dissolve into apathy, if not something resembling relief and gratitude.

 

“I hope that people can get over their own feelings about tweets and things he says and look at the bigger picture with where our economy is now,” said one Republican voter in a recent New York Times focus group. “We could all have great feelings and nice tweets. But when milk is $6 or $7 a gallon and when eggs are $6 for a dozen, how many feelings do you really need to have?” Sentiments like these mirror the derogatory claim that the thoughtless masses are ensorcelled by a “vibe-cession.” Republicans delude themselves if they conceive of the voting public as mere homo economicus, a single-minded animal animated entirely by its own financial interests. A failure to imagine that economic conditions may continue to improve will compound that delusion.