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**APRIL 4, 2024**

On the Prospect website

Liberals Need to Be Radicals

The agenda for Biden's next term must go deeper to restore the
American dream. BY ROBERT KUTTNER

The Pious One, Donald Trump

The least likely embodiment of Christian virtues in American life is
practically running as an evangelical minister. BY RYAN COOPER

Mayday in Florida

The political landscape for state Democrats shifts dramatically after
another historic abortion decision. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

Meyerson on TAP

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**** The Economy Is OK. Biden's Economy, Not
So Much.

Swing-state voters say their own state's economy is humming, but the
nation's economy? Don't ask.

Just in case you were feeling unaccountably perky yesterday, the release
of

**The Wall Street Journal**'s poll

of seven swing states should have brought you suitably down. In the
seven states the

**Journal**polled, Biden trailed in six (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan,
Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania) by between six and one
percentage points, while coming in tied in Wisconsin. That these results
resemble

**The New York Times**swing-state poll of last November shows that these
grim tidings are beginning to settle into concrete.

The concrete isn't fully hardened, of course, and the increasing focus
that the Biden campaign and the media are giving to the abortion issue
and (in the case of the media, one hopes) what Trump is actually saying
still could concentrate enough minds to enable Biden to squeak through.
But the

**Journal**poll's findings on Americans' economic perceptions
provide further cause for concern. By a 20-point margin (54 percent to
34 percent), the swing-staters preferred Trump to Biden on the question
of handling the economy. Where this really becomes interesting, though,
is in their responses to their own states' economies.

Asked to assess the condition of the economy in their own state and then
in the nation as a whole, respondents in each of the seven states
replied that their own state's economy was in far better shape than
the nation's. Those who rated their own state's economy as "not so
good" or "poor" did so at rates that ranged from 11 points to 33 points
lower than their assessments of the nation's overall economy. At one
level, this shouldn't come as a surprise: It somewhat echoes other
recent polls in which Americans have rated their own families'
economic condition to be notably better than the nation's.

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Neither the swing states' actual economic conditions nor the partisan
makeup of state government seems to have had much effect on the
respondents' answers. All but one of the states (Nevada) have rates of
unemployment that differ by less than 1 percent from the national
unemployment rate. And Democratic Party policy per se doesn't seem to
be a cause of discontent: Four of the states have Democratic governors,
and in another (Nevada again), Democrats control both legislative
houses, though not the governor's office.

That, too, shouldn't come as much of a surprise. The particulars of
Biden's economic policies-higher taxes on the rich,
re-industrialization, paid sick leave, affordable child care and
college-all poll very well. It's only when the name Biden is
attached to people's assessments of economic conditions that those
assessments turn decidedly gloomy.

I don't mean to discount the widespread discontent over high prices
generally, particularly of food, and the systemic unaffordability of
housing, health care, child care, and higher ed. I don't mean to
discount the fact that the president, any president, is held more
accountable for such matters than any state-level official.

But when all that discounting is done, it's still apparent that the
association of Biden with economic conditions brings down the assessment
of those conditions. Biden may yet be able to mitigate this by stressing
his support for popular progressive economic policies, and the
continuation of the recovery (in which his actual record is nothing
short of stellar) may help some, too. But looking at this polling
suggests that if he's to defeat Trump, abortion and Trump himself are
the themes he most needs to sound.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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