Democrats are making the economy a key part of their messaging against Republicans, but when it comes to talking about the possibility of a recession, they’re much more hesitant.
“Why should we talk about it?” Rep. Debbie Dingell, chair of the House Democrats’ messaging arm, told NOTUS. “Let’s just talk about the facts and how people are paying too much and the economy is not going in the right direction.”
Key economic indicators, such as the consumer confidence index, point to the country inching closer to a recession, but whether one will actually happen is still unclear. In the meantime, several Democrats told NOTUS that the focus should be on what voters are experiencing at the moment.
Rep. Jahana Hayes told NOTUS she’s being “very careful about projecting” and added that Democrats “can’t ignore what’s right in front of us to talk about what is impending doom.”
“There’s enough stuff that is happening every day that I’m helping my constituents understand the direct link between federal policy decisions and what they’re feeling right now,” Hayes told NOTUS. “There’s already so much anxiety about what will happen, so I’m just staying in the moment.”
Rep. Hillary Scholten, who represents a competitive Michigan district, was also skeptical of how worthwhile talking about a recession is right now.
“We have enough problems right now that we don’t have to borrow tomorrow’s problems,” she said when NOTUS asked her how much Democrats should emphasize recession talk in their economic messaging. “I am not in the business of fear mongering, but the reality speaks for itself.”
Still, Scholten acknowledged that “with an escalating trade war, this is the exact type of economic environment that precedes a recession.”
While Democrats said they generally want to avoid recession talk, that doesn’t mean they won’t touch the word recession. In a speech Wednesday reflecting on Trump’s first 100 days in office, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans were “driving us to a recession.” Hours earlier, the Commerce Department said that the U.S.’s gross domestic product had declined in the first months of the year.
Though at a joint press conference with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer later that day, neither Jeffries nor the senator addressed the possibility that a recession was looming. Instead they criticized Trump’s inflationary economic policies.
Rep. Steven Horsford, a front-line member from Nevada, told NOTUS on Monday that recession talk tends to hit his district early given how much of it relies on tourism, one of the sectors that could be most affected by a recession.
“I come from Nevada where already we’ve seen a 20% decline in travel tourism primarily from international travel, especially from Canada,” Horsford told NOTUS. “The largest employer in Nevada just laid off their entire concierge staff because they’re just not booking those services in their hotels anymore. The price of rent and mortgages is already going up.”
“I don’t need to wait to talk about something that is already affecting the constituents that I represent,” Horsford added.
Democrats have made a point of casting themselves as the responsible party on matters like the economy. It’s a reputation built up over the years that one senior Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill said they’re worried about compromising if Democrats look like they are rooting for a recession under Trump.
“The Democrats I am talking to are very clear they don’t want [a recession],” the staffer told NOTUS. “Obviously being calculated about a recession, you’d accuse us of wanting a recession for political purposes. I’m not aware of the political party apparatus calculating, privately, the risk assessment [of actually being in] a recession because to do so would be looking at this through the lens of craven politics.”
The Democratic National Committee and other groups, such as the House Democrats’ campaign arm, have advised Democrats to keep tying Trump to the economy’s sour outlook. They also want Democrats to focus on the backlash Trump and Republicans are receiving because of the economy’s downward spiral.
“Americans are getting fed up with Trump’s chaotic price hikes that are tanking the markets and putting livelihoods at risk,” Alex Floyd, a spokesperson for the DNC, said in a statement to NOTUS.
The other reason Democrats aren’t yet zoning in on recession talk, one Democratic strategist who works on House campaigns told NOTUS, is because it’s premature given that the economy hasn’t yet entered one and experts won’t know if the U.S. is in one until later this year.
“The word ‘recession’ ends up being more of an academic term that you can’t prove or disprove [until] six or nine months later,” they said. “On Medicaid, it is mathematically fact that if you want to cut $880 billion over 10 years, you have to go after Medicaid or you go after Medicare.”
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.