Democrats aren’t ready for the Kamala Harris honeymoon to end. Monday’s stock market plunge is reminding them it can’t last forever.
The global stock market tumbles represented a dramatic reversal from the cooling inflation and steady growth economists had been heralding in recent weeks. It’s also an unnerving reminder to Democrats, on the eve of Harris’ vice presidential pick, that public gloominess over the economy could hurt the campaign.
William Owen, a Democratic National Committee member from Tennessee, called the market slide a “tremendously huge problem” for the Harris campaign. He sent campaign and party officials an email on Friday calling for President Joe Biden or Harris to urge the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, then followed up again after seeing the futures on Monday.
“This action is equally as important as who the VP is,” Owen wrote. “We cannot win if people think we’re headed into a recession.”
The stock market, of course, fluctuates under any administration. Shares plummeted much more sharply in December 2018, under President Donald Trump, and that was before even steeper declines during the pandemic.
Still, the drop on Monday could be a reminder of the Biden administration’s struggle to contain inflation, even though the U.S. fared far better than other major economies and unemployment, still at a relatively low 4.3 percent, has been lower under Biden than at any time in decades.
It’s a particular issue in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada, where Democrats acknowledge that many voters are struggling under the combined weight of rising inflation and skyrocketing housing costs and are eager to find someone to blame. Recent polling from Morning Consult found that nearly 4 in 5 voters say the economy is very important in deciding whom they vote for in November, and that while Trump’s lead over Harris on the economy is smaller than it was with Biden, the former president retains an advantage on the issue.
“We, as Democrats, need to be honest. There are still voters out there who are concerned about [the] cost of living,” said Mark Longabaugh, top strategist for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. “Prices are the challenge we’ve faced all year. That hasn’t gone away.”
Longabaugh described the challenge as “surmountable,” but added, “To a large degree, the economic elements are already baked into the feelings of the electorate.”
The risk to the campaign of an economic downturn is significant. The White House has touted its ability to engineer a soft landing for the economy tied to lower inflation, but it remains a delicate balancing act. A sudden spike in unemployment would undermine Harris’ central argument for the administration’s economic success, likely adding to voters’ long-running concerns about the nation’s trajectory.
“There’s some fault lines,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “The only thing that’s been keeping the labor market together as well as it has has been low layoffs.”
Inside the Biden administration, officials on Monday raced to figure out what was driving the sell-off and whether it threatened to expose some broader weakness in the U.S. economy.
So far, officials and others close to the administration said they have little cause for immediate alarm, concluding that much of the day’s collapse was initially driven by a complex unwinding of investments in Japanese markets tied to currency movements — and not economic conditions closer to home.
“The Nikkei should not have had its worst day since 1987 from one month of U.S. jobs data,” Ernie Tedeschi, a former chief economist for Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said of speculation that recession fears in the U.S. had sparked turmoil around the world. “This market reaction, if it’s purely based on that, is a wild overreaction.”
The Labor Department, in its U.S. jobs report on Friday, said the unemployment rate had risen more than expected, raising concerns about a slowing economy and even a possible recession.
Trump, who has struggled to refine his lines of attack against Harris and spent much of the last week questioning the vice president’s Black identity, seized on those fears on Monday by branding the market upheaval as the “Kamala crash” and warning of a “great depression of 2024.”
At the same time, Harris has signaled she plans to go on the offense on the economy. At a recent rally in Atlanta, she promised to address price gouging, bring down costs, ban hidden fees and late charges from financial institutions, limit “unfair” rent increases and cap prescription drug costs, policies she said would “lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.”
“What middle-class families need is steady economic stewardship, not chaotic ranting lies,” said Ammar Moussa, a campaign spokesperson. “Donald Trump had the worst jobs record of any modern president and oversaw some of the worst days in the stock market in history while spending his presidency lining the pockets of his wealthy friends who shipped American jobs overseas.”
Democrats’ position on the economy has coincided with a deepening frustration among some Harris allies inside and outside the White House with the Federal Reserve, which has declined to cut interest rates despite signs the economy is slowing as it seeks to contain inflation.
The Fed declined to begin easing rates during its meeting in July. That means it’s now unlikely to change its policy until September, possibly depriving Harris of any lift she may have gotten from cheaper mortgage rates and auto loans and amplifying worries about a recession.
“It’s clearer than ever that the Fed should have cut in July and that it’s getting behind the curve,” Tedeschi said. “I don’t think things are broken yet, and pretty definitively we’re not in a recession now. But why I’m torn saying that is I don’t want that to give false complacency to policymakers that they don’t have to do more.”
The White House has maintained a blanket policy against commenting on the Fed, and it also declined to comment on Monday’s sell-off.
Democrats concede that a weak jobs report and a stock market crash may contribute to perceptions of economic instability. But they argue that they also provide an opportunity for Harris to highlight her economic agenda.
“Certainly it’s creating some instability now in our understanding of where the economy is going. But I think the American economy is strong and robust and can weather this little bumpy storm,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. “Democrats should welcome the debate and be able to make the contrast between the strong performance of the economy under Biden and the weak and disastrous economy under Trump.”
Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who specializes in messaging to working-class voters, argued that Harris, unlike Biden, can try to have it both ways on the economy: As vice president, she can claim credit for the good things the administration has done — like lowering insulin prices and funding infrastructure projects — while distancing herself from the bad.
“She’s a fresh face,” Lux said. “And she’s not getting the same blame on inflation as Biden was.”