Americans are clearly better off now than they were in November of 2020, when the pandemic was raging and the unemployment rate was six percent. Harris appears to have conceded that Americans were better off during the Trump years than today, however. She is making no effort to remind the voters about Trump’s chaotic response to the pandemic, which, based on the outcome of the House and Senate races, almost certainly was the reason he lost the election. Why?
I wish I knew. I can only guess that Harris has accepted that there is no way to puncture America’s collective amnesia about the impacts of the virus, possibly because it would bring back unpleasant memories of conflicts over masks and vaccines during the Biden years. But by conceding the point, she is making it easy for Trump to argue that swing voters should support him because his economy was better, which is, for them, the only good reason to vote for him.