Stock Market Drop Likely Ends VP Harris’ ‘Honeymoon’: Reporter

Michelle Price of the Associated Press cautioned during a CNN panel discussion on Monday that the excitement surrounding Vice President Harris’ candidacy might be “coming back down to earth” following Monday’s plunge in the U.S. stock market. “They just a little bit ago this morning, posted the ‘brat’ meme with ‘the stock market is tanking’ in the font,” Price said during a panel discussion on CNN, noting that the Trump campaign was using Kamala Harris memes to mock the vice president. Also, the hashtag #KamalaCrash started going viral earlier Monday.

“That everything that has been in this honeymoon period might seem kind of silly compared to when people are looking at their 401Ks or when they’re going to start looking at gas prices, or they’re looking at what it costs at the grocery store, that the hype that is kind of coming back down to earth. We might be entering that phase that the Trump campaign has been waiting for,” Price said.

CNN’s John Berman advised that Harris should be cautious not to repeat President Biden’s errors by presenting an overly optimistic view of the economy while people might be experiencing challenges. Berman noted that Harris has been mindful of the public’s sentiments regarding economic conditions. “It gets more challenging if the numbers aren‘t so good. So that is something that the Harris team, I don‘t think, were thinking about when they began their campaign 15 days ago. But now [they] have to think about it,” Berman said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by as much as 1,300 points, with the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 also experiencing declines. Weak employment figures and reduced manufacturing activity in the U.S., combined with grim forecasts from major tech companies, pushed the Nasdaq 100 and Nasdaq Composite into correction territory last week.

None of this should bode well for Harris, who was billed as a sort of co-president shortly after Joe Biden took office under the “Biden-Harris administration.” Critics have maintained she, then, also owns the White House’s failures on everything from the economy to the porous southwest border to the chaotic situations in eastern Europe and now the Middle East.

The weak jobs data also triggered the “Sahm Rule,” a recession indicator regarded as historically accurate, according to Fox News. The rule suggests that the economy is entering a recession when the 3-month moving average of the unemployment rate is at least half a percentage point above the 12-month low. Over the past three months, the unemployment rate has averaged 4.13%, which is 0.63 percentage points above the 3.5% rate from July 2023, thus surpassing this threshold.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump’s advisers are boldly predicting a win in the upcoming election over Harris, just as they did over President Joe Biden, citing increased support from Hispanic and black voters, historically Democratic support groups. The Trump team’s polling indicates that the campaign has been testing a Trump-Harris matchup for months, and they claim that the former president has consistently performed slightly better against the vice president.

Notably, they said Harris is not more popular among black and Hispanic voters than Biden, suggesting that her minority status does not significantly help her among the top minority voting blocs. Also, they told the Washington Examiner that Harris is not driving independents or younger voters to the Democrats, either.

“President Trump will beat Kamala Harris and make inroads among African Americans, Hispanics and younger voters,” pollster John McLaughlin said. “The Trump campaign takes nothing for granted and continues to work like an underdog. Kamala Harris shares Joe Biden’s record of failure with even less likeability. In our June national poll among 1,000 likely voters Vice President Harris was losing 28% of African Americans, 41% of Hispanics, 44% of younger voters, and 51% of suburban voters. While Biden was losing to Trump in that poll by 2 points, Harris was losing by 5 points. We’ll take it.”