How Harris — not Trump — is 'playing the Reagan role': Paul Krugman

15 August 2024

Deeming the 2024 Democratic ticket the "joyful warriors" earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris proved that "Democrats are playing up their sunnier outlook, promoting the idea that voters can be inspired to support someone and not just cast their ballot against the other side," according to The Associated Press.

Immediately following President Joe Biden's decision to end his reelection campaign last month, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg noted that "a euphoric giddiness has fallen over the party."

Opinion columnist Paul Krugman explained Thursday why Harris' approach could win over the hearts of Americans.

He wrote:

G.O.P. messaging has been quite explicitly modeled on Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, when he asked, 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' Applying this approach in 2024 has always been problematic, depending as it does on voters forgetting what 2020, with its soaring unemployment and mass deaths, was really like. But it’s now looking as if this election may bear more resemblance to 1984, when Reagan won a landslide victory with the theme 'Morning in America.'

The veteran economist noted that "unemployment and inflation had come down from their peaks a few years earlier, and many Americans felt that the nation was emerging from the despondency that gripped it in 1980."

However, Krugman added that "the celebration was premature: The 1980s were a time of soaring inequality and deindustrialization, and Bill Clinton won in 1992 basically by running against the Reagan-George H.W. Bush economic legacy. But the hollowness of 'Morning in America' wouldn’t become apparent until much later."

Comparing that time to today, Krugman emphasized "the state of America in 2024 isn’t just objectively very good, particularly when compared with other wealthy nations; it has also been improving rapidly along multiple dimensions."

At the time, "voters didn’t seem to be feeling the good news," Krugman added, "and until recently Trump seemed to be running a successful campaign centered on false claims that crime is 'through the roof' and that we may be in 'the throes of a depression.'"

The 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner emphasized:

There is a real sense in which this election suddenly looks more like 1984 than like 1980, with Harris, not Trump, playing the Reagan role. Trump is running as the candidate of American carnage, insisting that things are terrible, which was sort of true in 1980 but isn’t true now; along with his ranting about crowd sizes and all that, he’s coming across as a whiner.

Meanwhile, Harris is running as the candidate of optimism and hope, declaring that we have triumphed over adversity — which we have.

Krugman's full column is available at this link (subscription required).

From Your Site Articles