The Journal. - Red, White and Who? It’s Always the Economy!

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

After two big economic speeches this week, Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball discuss the candidates’ different economic strategies. Plus, voting has begun! We explore mail in voting and its impact on this election! Further Listening: - Red, White and Who? Playlist  - Red, White and Who? Why Ohio Could Decide the Senate  - Red, White and Who? A Swing-State Debate  Further Reading: - Harris Puts Government Intervention at Heart of Economic Policy  - Trump Says Plan Will Convince Foreign Companies to Shift Jobs to U.S.  - Voters Love the Policies That Economists Love to Hate  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, Molly, it feels like this week was economy week on the campaign trail because both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both gave big economic speeches. Ryan, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every week is economy week in the campaign. Oh. Because the economy is the biggest issue in the campaign. So the candidates are constantly trying to give voters the impression that they are focused on it.

So it is still true to quote the famous political consultant James Carville, who coined the phrase in the 1990s, it's the economy, stupid. You know, James Carville has gotten a little too much credit for a very obvious observation, which is that, you know, how the economy is doing is obviously always a focus of politics. And in literally every poll, I feel pretty good saying the economy writ large is people's number one issue when you ask them what's the issue that is going to inform how you decide to vote for president or really for any other office. It's the top of people's minds because it's their wellbeing, right?

It's their ability to support themselves and their families. So yes, the candidates both did give big, quote unquote, economic speeches this week. But it's not the first time either of them have done that. They just want voters to think that this is what they care the most about and that the thing that voters are concerned with is also the thing that they are paying the most attention to. So to give James Carville perhaps even more credit than he's due, it is the economy. Stupid. Why do you keep calling me stupid, Ryan?

This is really mean. Don't, it's not me, it's James. It's Carville. From the Journal, this is Red, White & Who. Our show about the road to the White House. I'm Ryan Knudsen. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, September 27th.

Coming up on the show, dueling economic visions, and we're going to talk about mail-in voting. Stay tuned. So what's it like to buy your first cryptocurrency on Kraken? Well, let's say I'm at a food truck I've never tried before. Am I gonna go all in on the loaded taco? No, sir. I'm keeping it simple. Starting small. That's trading on Kraken.

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A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. All right, so let's start by talking about Donald Trump's speech, which he gave earlier this week in Savannah, Georgia. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

And hello, Savannah, and I love Georgia. We love Georgia. He talked about some of his economic priorities, which were that he wants to slap tariffs on companies that don't manufacture things in the United States but want to sell things here. We will put a 100% tariff on every single car coming across the Mexican border. And tell them the only way they'll get rid of that tariff is if they want to build a plant right here in the United States.

He wants to lower corporate tax rates to encourage companies to move to the U.S. And he also said that he wants to set up special zones on federal lands with ultra-low taxes to encourage new industries to set up shop there. These will be ideal spots for relocating entire industries that we've taken in from other countries. They're going to come in. that we've taken in from other countries, they're going to come in. — What's your sense of what Donald Trump is trying to accomplish with not just this speech, but also all of his sort of economic messaging during this campaign? — Well, an interesting thing about Trump's economic vision is,

some of it is the traditional Republican idea that could derisively be called trickle-down economics where you cut taxes, particularly on businesses, you cut regulations, and that enables growth to flourish, companies to thrive, and therefore everybody gets richer. The rising tide lifts all boats because the economy is growing. Now traditionally Republicans would say you have to cut spending as well, balance budgets, reduce the deficit. Trump almost never talks about that. And the other thing that he loves is tariffs. He has never met an economic— Yeah, so if it sounds like we could boil Trump's economic plans down to one word, it's tariffs. Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, tariffs.

That's right. He has never met an economic problem that he didn't think could be solved by a tariff. Now, a tariff is a duty, a tax on imported goods. Trump erroneously says it's a tax on foreign countries. He makes it sound like, you know, these foreign governments are essentially paying a fee in order to enter U.S. markets and put their goods here. But what economists almost unanimously say is that actually, you know, the foreign companies are paying these tariffs and what they do is they just add that amount to the price of the goods. So it just causes prices to go up and increases inflation.

You know, my colleague Paul Kiernan, who covers economic policy for us, did this hilarious story about a week ago about the fact that voters love these policies, but economists hate them. And one of the policies that he wrote about was tariffs. And when we polled regular people, what do you think of this idea of an across the board 20% tariff? 47 to 40% the voters liked it. Economists disliked it by a 0 to 100% margin.

100% of economists say they don't like this across the board. 100% of economists said this was a bad idea, but a plurality of voters, nearly half of voters thought this was a good idea. Why do voters seem to like this idea of tariffs if economists don't? Well, people like the idea that we should manufacture things in America. People like the idea that foreign countries are going to pay for things, even if that's not true. People also love policies that seem to make other people pay for things.

So let's talk now about Kamala Harris's big economic speech. — Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Well, it's good to be back in Pittsburgh. — Thank you. — What were some of the things that stood out to you about her speech this week in Pittsburgh? — It's interesting when you think about sort of the things that stood out to you about her speech this week in Pittsburgh?

It's interesting when you think about sort of the word clouds that come out of these candidates' speeches, right? What are they emphasizing? What are the big themes that come out? And you hear Harris talking a lot about opportunity. The opportunity economy. The middle class. She's talking a lot about reducing costs for people through government subsidies.

Under my plan, more than 100 million Americans will get a middle-class tax break. That includes $6,000 for new parents during the first year of their child's life. She also talked about helping small businesses. Well, in 2024, it is almost impossible to start a business on $5,000, which is why as president I will make the startup deduction 10 times richer and we will raise it from $5,000 to $50,000. And she talks about investing in the industrial sector, which the Biden administration has done through large incentives for manufacturing companies.

She talks about reducing the cost of housing as well by cutting red tape and cracking down on what she calls corporate landlords. calls corporate landlords. So while Trump talks in sort of macro terms about the economy as a sort of institution and about making everybody richer and bringing back the factories, Harris is much more likely to talk about it on sort of an individual level about these sort of small, poor things that the government can do to help you and solve problems in your life. And we will work to reduce other big costs for middle-class families.

We will take on bad actors who exploit emergencies and drive up grocery prices by enacting the first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging. What do economists say about her plans? Well, it depends which plans you're talking about. And it depends which economists you're asking. There are some things like, you know, when she first proposed cracking down on price

gouging in the grocery market, a lot of economists heard that as a form of price controls. And this is something that economists broadly think is a terrible idea. Right. a lot of economists say that they don't like price controls because they can distort markets and possibly lead to shortages. Yes, exactly. So for example, in that same survey that we did, we asked about penalizing companies that engage in price gouging for food and groceries. 72% of people like that policy, 13% of economists like that policy, and 68% of economists dislike it. So that is another policy. It's not quite as lopsided

as tariffs, but just about in the sense that voters love it, economists hate it. So one thing that I found really interesting listening to both Trump and Harris's speeches this week was how much emphasis they both put on manufacturing when It's actually a very small Part of the economy these days. I think only about 8% of jobs in the US are Manufacturing jobs, which is down significantly from a generation ago. I Think it's nostalgia I think it's a romantic image that we have of a bygone America that was full of sort of farms and

factories, right? It's just this cherished ideal that we have, this romantic ideal of the way the economy functions that's kind of out of date. We have in large part a service economy today. But both candidates are pledging to bring back American manufacturing. And there's a real audience for that. How much do you think voters are paying attention to the actual details of either candidate's economic policies? Like how much of a difference do you think these various messages are going to make for either candidate?

I think voters are much more in tune to the vibes. It's the vibe. Should we update Carville's thing? It's the vibes, stupid. It's the economy vibes. Should we update Carville's thing? It's the vibes, stupid. It's the economy vibes. The vibes economy. Throughout most of this campaign, Trump has had a pretty big lead on the economy, according to most polls.

Do you think that lead is sustainable for him, or has Harris been able to chip away at that? One thing that is interesting is that Harris has really narrowed the gap here. You know, Biden was behind Trump by double digits in most polls when voters were asked who do you think would do a better job with the economy. Harris is still behind Trump in most polls, but she's narrowed that gap considerably. And so a big part of the reason that she's talking about an issue that is a weakness for her is she thinks she has an opportunity here to convince voters that she is not Biden, that even though she's part of this administration, she does represent what she calls a new way forward.

And she has staked out some policy terrain that is somewhat different than the Biden-Harris administration. And so at a time when voters are broadly grumpy, when voters broadly think that the country and the economy are headed in the wrong direction, she's managed to narrow that gap with Trump on the economy in large part because she's been able to convince people that she represents change in some way. Meanwhile, people are starting to vote right now because early voting has begun officially in five states.

So we're going to talk about the role that early voting and mail-in voting are going to play in this year's election right after the break. We'll be right back. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to powers your scale with no preset spending limit. More cash on hand to grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days. And the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum.

That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right. So a few weeks ago at the end of the podcast, we asked people to tell us how they feel about mail-in voting. And we got a lot of responses. And it seems like at least among our listeners, their feelings about it are pretty unequivocal.

They do it and they love it. I just want to say I do plan to vote by mail, and I think it does make a difference. I think particularly because it gives me the option to sit down and thoughtfully go through my ballot. I am planning to vote by mail and that is primarily because I have problems walking and standing for long periods of time.

Sometimes it's the only way I'm able to vote. I work full time, sometimes 48 hours or more a week. On top of that, I go to school full time. So Tuesdays are not always the day that I'm able to make it to the polls, wait in line sometimes for hours, and cast a vote. That was Carson Voss and Julie Brinkman, who are both in Maryland, and Skylar Court, who's in Arizona. But, Molly, this is a form of voting that was such a big deal in 2020 during the pandemic. A lot more people voted by mail that year than they had in the past.

And it seemed like it was pretty controversial because Trump and a lot of Republicans heavily criticized it. What has happened in the last four years? Has it become easier to vote by mail in the US and more common since then or more difficult? So you've really put your finger on the unique combination of circumstances that made mail-in voting such a flashpoint in 2020. Because of the COVID pandemic,

a lot of states, as an emergency measure, expanded people's ability to vote without leaving their home and coming in touch with other potentially infectious human beings. In 2020, actually only one third of voters actually voted in person on election day. So in addition to the pandemic, you also

had Donald Trump sowing these unwarranted doubts about mail-in voting, saying that it was uniquely susceptible to fraud. This has been studied by a lot of academic political scientists and it is not true that mail-in voting is uniquely susceptible to fraud. Rates of fraud in all types of voting actually, but including mail voting are infinitesimally low and certainly do not rise to the level of affecting election results. Does mail-in voting give either party an advantage? So there's not a partisan valence to this.

In a lot of states, it was Republicans who decades ago really drove the push for mail balloting because their voters may tend more to be elderly and Therefore it may be easier for them to vote if they can vote without leaving their houses It is not the case, you know, Utah is a pretty red state. They've had all-male elections for a while now Hasn't turned Utah into a blue state It doesn't make a difference in terms of you know, who wins elections Democrat or Republican Whether jurisdictions do or don't encourage mail voting. So help me understand what's going on in the Trump campaign then, because I hear Trump still criticizing mail-in voting.

In fact, just in a speech just the other day, he said it was stupid. You can start right away, you know that, right? Now we have this stupid stuff where you can vote 45 days early. And then, in that same speech, he also encouraged his supporters to go out and do it. — Go out and make a plan to vote early, vote absentee, or vote in person on election day, but you gotta get out and vote.

— So, what is going on here? — Well, Trump, as we all know, cannot let go of this false notion that he actually won the 2020 election, that it was rigged and stolen. But his campaign wants their voters to vote. And from a campaign strategy perspective, you want your voters to vote in any way possible. And mail voting, you know, as we heard in that montage, people really like being able to vote by mail. And from a campaign perspective, when you can

get people to turn in those ballots early, you can cross them off your get out to vote list. You know, people can track their ballots, campaigns can track those ballots and see who's voted. They can see which of the voters they're targeting have already turned in their ballots. And so it reduces the number of the voters they're targeting have already turned in their ballots. And so it reduces the number of voters that they then have to turn out on election day. So I recall in 2020 that it took several days to get the results of the election, in part because so many states were having to open up the mail-in votes, lay them out, and tabulate them that took longer than normal. Is that going to happen again this year in 2024?

It's certainly possible. So I want to zero in here on Pennsylvania, because this is a state that we know is close, that we know is a pivotal swing state, that could be the deciding state for the whole election. In Pennsylvania, there's a state law that says they cannot start counting or even processing those mail ballots until the day of the election, until election morning, essentially. Some states allow the vote counters to start doing that processing or even vote counting as the votes come in. They open the ballots, they check the signatures and other requirements, they flatten out the ballots and get them ready to feed into the machines.

That's all very laborious and time consuming and requires a lot of labor. So the fact that they couldn't start doing that with these millions of ballots until the day of the election really slowed things down and meant that we were waiting for days to find out who won Pennsylvania in 2020. Now you might think in the intervening four years they fixed this problem but the Pennsylvania legislature spent years arguing about this and could not come to agreement. It's a split legislature. The Democrats and Republicans could not agree to fix this state law. So it is still the law in Pennsylvania that they can't start opening and counting the ballots until election day. I will say it might not be as bad this time as it was four years ago.

We're not in the middle of a pandemic. They do have more funding and infrastructure for this vote count. They have a little bit more practice at it than they had when they were doing it for the first time. But we still could be waiting a while for the votes to be counted in Pennsylvania. But I do want to emphasize that just because we don't know the winner on election night does not mean anything untoward is happening. It is a normal and expected part of the process.

And because of the partisan split, where you have a lot more Democrats voting by mail and a lot more Republicans voting on election day, it very well may again be the case like it was in 2020 that the Election Day count looks better for Trump and then the votes that get counted after Election Day start to move the needle toward Harris. Again, that's not anything nefarious happening. It's just because of this partisan split on how people tend to vote,

and these are legitimate votes being legitimately counted. So I want to ask you quickly about Nebraska. We talked a few weeks ago about how it splits its electoral votes and how if the race is extremely tight, there is a scenario where that one electoral vote that comes from the area around Omaha could deliver a victory for Harris. They call this area around Omaha the Blue Dot. And there's now been some action around that. Can you fill us in about what's been going on there? So I think we should make this a recurring feature, the Nebraska update. And we should have a little jingle.

And in every show, we can tell people what's happening in that one district in Nebraska. Nebraska. Nebraska. Nebraska. Nebraska. And what is happening is, I don't know if the Trump campaign or Senator Lindsey Graham were listening to our show, but they suddenly decided that they wanted to change this Nebraska law that divides up their electoral votes, because it could be decisive. It could be the tipping point that hands the election to Kamala Harris if this one district in Nebraska, the blue dot, goes blue. So they started pressuring the Republican unicameral legislature in Nebraska

to change this law and make it winner-take-all like 48 of the other states. But it looks like they did not succeed. After about a week of heated debate among Nebraska Republicans, there were a couple of holdouts, including one former Democrat who's now a Republican legislator, but who is term-limited out, so not susceptible to being pressured with like a primary challenge and so forth and who stood firm said he did not want to change this law so nothing has changed in Nebraska we still have the potential for that blue dot to throw the election to Kamala Harris. Well so this has been such a pleasure as always. What are you gonna be watching

for over the next seven days until we talk again? Well next week is a very exciting week it is a very exciting week. It is our last debate week in this campaign, as far as we know. VEEP, yeah. It's the VEEP Debate. We're going to have the big old Vance versus Walls, real late in the alphabet face-off on Tuesday night in New York City.

I will be there. I will be very interested to see what they talk about. Great. All right, this is awesome. Thanks, Molly. in New York City, I will be there. I will be very interested to see what they talk about. Great, all right, this is awesome. Thanks, Molly. Don't forget, if you have a question for Molly you want answered on a future episode, send us an email or voice message

to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal at wsj.com. Red, White and Who is part of the Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Our senior producer is Rachel Humphries. Our producer is Pierce Singie. Our editor is Catherine Whalen. I'm Ryan Knudsen. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music this week from Peter Leonard. Fact-checking by Amelia Schoenbeck. Artwork by James Walton. Special thanks to Kate Linebaugh, Sarah Platt, Ben Pershing, and the whole journal team. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with another episode of Red, White,

and Who next Friday morning. See you then.