President Joe Biden is weighing how hard to hammer big food companies over painfully high grocery prices in his upcoming State of the Union Address. But some some aides remain wary of focusing too much on food inflation, given how little power the president has to singlehandedly force down prices.
Biden embraced the concept of “shrinkflation” in a Super Bowl message targeting major snack food corporations — as the president framed it, there are now “fewer chips” in your bag, while companies are “still charging you just as much.”
And the White House has been aggressively testing out the messaging on the airwaves and in internal polling ahead of Biden’s speech, according to two White House officials familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak on the issue and were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Recent polling circulated within the White House has been favorable to Biden’s push to blast what he’s described on the campaign trail as “corporate greed” driving higher prices across a range of sectors.
It’s performative, designed to lull voters into a sense that he is addressing their concerns and fighting for them when in reality he’s picked the lowest hanging, least effort fruit to tackle when he could be addressing the actual issue.
It’s dangerous, because people go “Oh look he’s trying to fix things” yet things continue to get worse because those root causes are not being looked at, leading to disillusionment with the Democrats and that only benefits Republicans.