David Jolly: ‘Inflation Must Not Be the Number One Economic Metric That the American People Use to Look at the Economy Going into November’

Heilemann: “David Jolly, I ask you. The expectation setting that Claire just talked about is pretty incredible. Now, I did an interview for my podcast with Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chair of the Biden campaign, in which she was emphatic and unwavering about not only about the campaign’s likely outcome, about the fact they were going to win this race. Joe Biden is going to win this race. Jen O’Malley Dillon is very confident. But she did not — she made some — she made some comments about Trump. I’ll play one of them in a second, but she made some comments about Trump, but not trying to say, well, he’s obviously addled and he won’t be able to get through a complete sentence. And that is of course, what Republicans have done. I ask you, as someone who understands Republicans to some extent, did they not learn anything from the State of the Union? Where they they basically said, oh, this man will not be able to stand up for an hour up there and he’s going to end up with dribble on his shirt. He’s not going to be able to complete an English language sentence. They set the bar so low, Biden soared over it. But that’s not that long ago. And they got their heads handed to them on the expectations game. Why are they doing this?”

JOLLY: “Yeah, well, first of all, Donald Trump’s not Rick Scott. I mean, it is hard to play rope-a-dope with Donald Trump because he won’t take a breath. He won’t shut up, kind of. So you need those moments like you saw from Joe Biden four years ago where he says shut up, man. But he will overperform. Joe Biden does. He always does in every event, it’s unlike the State of the Union. He doesn’t control the microphones and control the entire floor. But Joe Biden is going to do just fine. And it will surprise Republicans. They’ll say, oh, we always expected him to do fine. What I’m looking for is this. If you really want to help shape this race, the most efficient use of time, I believe for Joe Biden is to talk about reproductive freedom. Talk about it as much as you can and as much as you want, because the disparity with American voters looking at Democrats and Republicans is the largest. And I expect we will hear Donald Trump’s most efficient argument be on immigration. He’ll pull a Katie Britt. He’ll throw in the xenophobia and crime and conflate it to black and brown people and try to scare the country. That’s baked in. The other thing I would like to see from Joe Biden and I don’t think we’ve had this national conversation and he can lead it, the economy is doing very well. It’s morning in America again. The stock market is at an all-time high, housing’s at all time — home ownership’s at all-time high, access to healthcare and education. More people will go to work tomorrow than ever before. But we’re measuring the economy by inflation. Now, he’s got a good story to tell on inflation. It’s coming down, it’s under control, etcetera, etcetera. But inflation must not be the number one economic metric that the American people use to look at the economy going into November. Joe Biden’s economy is a good one. Sure, make the inflation argument, but focus America’s attention on the economic growth that’s occurring right now in their neighborhood and in their town. Joe Biden’s going to have a very good night focused on that.”