Harris must personalize her economic message

The Labor Department reported last week that the U.S. had added 254,000 jobs in September, bringing the total created during the Biden-Harris administration to a whopping 16 million. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent and hourly wages grew by 4 percent.

With gas prices coming down and inflation now close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, Elise Gould of the Economy Policy Institute declared that the American economy was “very strong,” even when compared to 2019, the year before the pandemic set in.

Nonetheless, only 39 percent of Americans think the economy is in good shape, and 81 percent say the economy will play a pivotal role in how they vote in the presidential election. Fifty-five percent express more confidence in former President Donald Trump than in Vice President Kamala Harris as steward of the economy.

To address this apparent disconnect, Harris cannot rely on facts, statistics or detailed policy pronouncements. Instead, she should rely on a maxim attributed to the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges: “The future belongs to those who tell the best stories.”

By calling on working-class and middle-class Americans living in places where she is campaigning or running ads to describe their personal experiences — as Oprah Winfrey did when she appeared with the vice president this summer — Harris is more likely to persuade undecided or skeptical voters that the Biden-Harris administration’s economic policies have had, and her proposals will have, a positive impact throughout the country.

To illustrate the value of the child tax credit, passed as part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan (over Republican opposition in Congress), Harris should ask parents, many of whom had lost their jobs during the pandemic, about the advance payments they received: up to $300 per month from July to December 2021 for each child under six and $250 for children between six and 17.

Harris could then point out that the cash — used predominantly for food, clothing, utilities, transportation and pre-school expenses — lifted 3 million children out of poverty. When Republicans blocked an extension, child poverty increased by 41 percent. A 2022 Vox article  described how the end of those payments left a young woman who took out loans to attend college petrified that she would wake up one morning without enough fuel in the furnace to bathe her three daughters. Harris could then present her plan to restore the 2021 child tax credit and provide $6,000 to qualified parents of newborns for a year.

After heralding 19 million new business applications since January 2021 (a record), an unprecedented number of them filed by Blacks, Latinos and women, Harris should recruit entrepreneurs to draw on their own experiences to specify how her proposal to increase the small business start-up tax credit from $5,000 to $50,000 could make the difference between success and failure for founders who do not have the capital to cover inventory, marketing and salaries.

The Harris campaign should recruit young people to lay out, in detail and with emotion, what a $25,000 down-payment for first-time home buyers would mean to them, while the vice president emphasizes that owning a home is the best way to create intergenerational wealth in America.

Local residents should also be enlisted to describe the “real life” effect of infrastructure projects (promised by Trump, but delivered by Biden-Harris) on them and their communities.

In Arizona, for example, a light rail project, the first to be funded by the Federal Transit Administration through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, connects Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa, facilitating recreation, education and job opportunities throughout the region. A major grant to North Carolina will replace the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge in Wilmington, which carries 70,000 vehicles daily and serves as a local economic lifeline. Repairs to the dock wall of the Menominee Bridge in Michigan and improvements to rail facilities at Menominee Harbor will make it possible to ship essential products, like pulp and pig iron, to manufacturers. Airports in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania are being modernized.

And thanks to the infrastructure law, just about every state is removing lead pipes to ensure clean and safe drinking water; repairing or replacing deteriorated roads in rural towns and counties; and providing reliable, affordable high-speed internet services to virtually every community.

Many Americans don’t pay attention to politics or have little trust in politicians. That said, stories told by ordinary people with no apparent axe to grind about the effect of government policies on their families, neighbors and communities may resonate with their fellow citizens — while demonstrating that Harris does indeed have a clear, concrete and impactful “Opportunity Economy” agenda. This strategy could make a difference in an election where a very small number of votes will likely determine the outcome.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.