Republican strategist Scott Jennings said Thursday that even though Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, she would still have to answer for the economic record of the Biden administration.
Harris secured enough delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination during a virtual roll call Thursday, less than two weeks after President Joe Biden announced he would end his reelection bid and endorse Harris for the nomination. Jennings said during a discussion on “CNN Newsroom” that Harris would not succeed in using “freedom” to distract people from their concerns about the economy.
“They started with ‘Bidenomics,’ that didn’t work. Wither threat to democracy, we don‘t hear that anymore after they installed a nominee without casting a single vote for her,” Jennings told “CNN Newsroom” guest host Pamela Brown. “So now, they’re on to this freedom thing, but you hit it. At the end of the day, most people are going to vote based on their own views about how the economy is affecting them personally.”
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“The conditions in the country haven’t changed, they changed out their nominee, but they haven’t changed out the inflation, they haven’t changed out the economic anxiety that most working families are facing, and that’s something she’s still going to have to deal with because she‘s not an independent actor,” Jennings continued. “She didn’t land here six weeks ago on a spaceship and say, ‘Hey, I’ll take over.’ She’s been sitting right next to Joe Biden for the last four years, and all of what came with that was a mid-30’s approval rating and a country that most people think is wildly off on the wrong track. So, I think the economic messages will come.”
Republicans have consistently criticized Biden over inflation, with prices having climbed by over 20% since the president took office in January 2021. The consumer price index rose by 3.0% year-over-year in June, two years after inflation hit a recent high of 9.1% in June 2022.
On the economy, Biden’s average approval rating was just 38.4% in the RealClearPolitics average, while only 34.5% gave him good marks on inflation in polls taken from June 28 to July 30.
Trump leads Harris by 1.2% in a national head-to-head matchup, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls from July 22 to 31. The former president’s lead slips to 0.3% when Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein and independent presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are included in surveys.
Featured Image Credit: Kamala Harris
