The Grocery Bills That Could Decide the Election
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They're part of the more than 300,000 jobs BP supports across the country. Learn more at BP.com slash investing in America. Hello, how are you? My name's Estep. This is Anna. We're from the New York Times. We're talking to people about how they're feeling about the economy and the election heading into this year. Do you maybe have five minutes to chat with us? Not really. I have a bunch of stuff. Oh, okay. Maybe we can walk with you? Thank you so much. Can you tell us your name? Katrina. Katrina.

it feels increasingly clear that this election, like a lot of elections before it, may come down to who voters think will be better for them economically. And that means the essential stuff, like can I afford a house? Or how much do my groceries cost? And so my colleague Anna and I decided to dedicate a day of reporting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to standing in a grocery store parking lot and asking people specifically how they're feeling about the economy, which is how we met Katrina.

Are you someone who considers yourself a Democrat, a Republican, anything like that? Yeah. Do you mind telling me which one? Republican. Republican. Do you know how you're going to vote in this election in November? Yeah. You're going to vote for Republican nominee Trump? Yep. Thank you. Tell me the reason, why, and what do you think is the issues that are most important? Well, look at the way everything is right now. It's a big shit show. You know...

Groceries are double what they were. Gas prices are double what they were. There's no job security. It's ridiculous. We have 3 million more people. What are we supposed to do with them? You know? 3 million more people, what do you mean? 3 million more people that are in this country that, who's supporting them? When you think about the issues of immigration, economy, what are the top ones for you? All of them.

You know, I'm tired of working my ass off for other people. What do you do? I work here. And this store is closing. That's part of the reason why we came here is because we heard that the store is closing. Do you know kind of how that's going to change your situation? Well, I either go to a different store or find a different job. Unfortunately, I'm 63 years old.

So I don't have a whole lot of options out there. You mentioned the prices, and I know that's come up for a lot of people. Can you just take me through how that's changed your budget, how that has affected your kind of day-to-day? Everything costs double. I have to work twice as hard. I don't get to eat steak. I don't, you know, I have to really watch what I spend. And I have a son who has eight kids. And you felt like that was not true when President Trump was in office? It wasn't as bad, but...

I mean, prices have doubled. Oh. Oh. What, you're not allowed to talk to me? Well, you were helpful. You were so helpful for us. Thank you. Katrina actually couldn't finish talking with us because her co-workers were nervous about her speaking to the press. But what Katrina mentioned about life feeling really expensive right now, we hear that all the time on the trail.

You know, I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my house. I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my car and everything. Just because things are so expensive. You go to the grocery store, you spend a hundred bucks, you get like one bag of groceries.

Anxieties about housing. There's weeks that I go that I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to pay rent. I don't know. And I work a full-time job. I make, you know, $800 to $1,000 a week. And I'm still like, how am I going to afford everything that I need to essentially afford to live life? Bills.

It's just like, I mean, I just graduated with a master's in nursing and that doesn't even feel like enough money. So that's wild to me because it probably would have been like 20, 30 years ago. But now I have to go back to school just to like make a living that I think would allow us to have a second child with the cost of diapers and just everything is so inflated, you know. How what they have doesn't feel like enough to get by.

And it's not only a thing that voters are talking about. The campaigns are, too. For most of my childhood, we were renters. My mother saved for well over a decade to buy a home. I was a teenager when that day finally came. Kamala Harris just released an ad focused on how hard it is to buy a home in America.

and an economic policy aimed at curbing prices. 15,000 Wisconsin manufacturing jobs. Everybody said that would be impossible. 121,000 Wisconsinites were lifted out of poverty and 100,000 were lifted off of food stamps because they had good jobs. And Donald Trump has been on the trail, touting his economic record. So heading into Labor Day...

as the campaigns are all economy all the time. And millions of Americans get ready to load up on hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato salad, if that's your thing. We spend time talking with people who feel the economy is not working for them. And talking to an expert about how each candidate says they'll help the poorest Americans. From the New York Times, I'm Astead Herndon. This is The Run-Up. When we wanted to talk to people about their economic reality...

and how much things cost right now. We picked, perhaps, the most classically American place possible, a Walmart in a battleground state. We were there in the spring, before Biden was out of the race. And after we talked to Katrina about how, among other things,

She missed the economy under Trump. We're also talking to people about, like, prices. We met Gail, who didn't have quite the same memory. It could be whatever you want to talk about. Okay, go ahead. Well, can you just tell me your name? Can you tell me how... I'm Gail Fiebrink, and I'm 62. You're 62. Have you been in Wisconsin for a while? All my life. All your life. Awesome. Well, can you tell me just, like...

In general, do you consider yourself a Democrat, a Republican, anything like that? You're a Democrat? I can't see how anybody could trust Trump after all he's done. I mean, who can you trust when you're supposed to trust the man running the country? Yeah, yeah. How do you feel about President Biden? He's okay. He can only do so much at certain times, but he's working on things. I am a Social Security person that I receive monthly. I'm disabled. So it's like every time...

We get the increase on an annual basis. The apartment takes it, or the prices go up. So we're still struggling. You're saying the amount that the stuff is going up is not matching the increase in Social Security. Correct. Yeah. Has that just been the last couple years? Has it gotten worse? I guess once the change overturned. The stimulus checks were given out properly, and those who really needed it, hopefully they used it right. But there was a lot of people that wasted it.

and there's people on social security and they shouldn't be. I live in a place that's low income, low housing. I can't afford to live in a regular apartment.

We're fighting cockroaches and everything else over there. So investigating these low-income housing places, HUD does come through on an annual basis, but they never seem to get the houses that need the most attention. Yeah. And you don't really hear politicians talking about those issues that much either. It feels like one of those things that falls through the cracks. Yeah.

You mentioned the prices. That's come up so much as we've talked to people today. I mean, it does feel like it's really shaped people's perception that things are harder right now. They are. And like the Dollar Tree was a great place to go. Then it went up a dollar and a quarter. So it's like the next step would be Aldi's and they don't have the fresh fruits and stuff that you need. Some of them.

But with me, I'm on a very low-fat, low-sodium diet. I have to have all organic, you know. I have to pay that extra money. And by the time I get done, I'm taking a loan out from the quick payday loan just to get by every month. Yeah. You know, Wisconsin's so close in terms of its importance. Do you have a sense, like, in the people you talk to, are they excited about this election? How do people feel about this election? I don't know if we've talked about it. I live in an inner area.

of Milwaukee, well actually the 60th and Capitol Drive area. And they don't really know politics. They just want to go get and keep Trump out. They want the Democrats in because they've seen in the past what the Democrats can do for us. So, you know, it's hard when you have to pick him because you don't want the other guy to go.

You know, I've been asking people to kind of rank their enthusiasm, one to ten, when they think about this election. I haven't voted once this year yet. That's how enthusiastic I am. And when it comes to the day, whoever I elect to choose from, I'm going to go Democrat. Because of that, I don't want Trump anywhere near what he's done before. What do you say? He may do it again.

What's your confidence level in the Democrats, though, come November? Positive. You think they'll do it? Yeah, because the right people will get out there just to make it happen. You've seen that happen before. And in my area, it's predominantly black. So they don't want Trump. They want the Democrats because they work for them.

Thank you so much. This was really helpful. We got your name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We started with your name. Thank you so much. Thank you. You have a great day. That was really great. Thank you. Gail didn't feel like the Republicans. How they spoke and the economic policies they champion were in her corner. And that with the Democrats, she and other people struggling to get by stood a better chance. Next, we caught John, who was returning his cart to the store. Oh, you're from Wisconsin? How long you been here?

55 years. 55 years. How has the state changed, you think, politically in that time? Do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, anything like that? No. Independent? I'm a slave laborer. What do you mean by that? I just work. It doesn't matter what the government does. It doesn't change my world. Do you vote? Yes. Okay. Do you vote for one party more than another or no? No. I don't have a choice. I have a whatever I see, whatever I learn, whatever I hear.

That's why I vote on that. Okay, well let me ask you about the candidates for this election. Do you think you know who you're going to vote for? Oh yeah. Can you tell me? Trump. You're going to vote for Trump. Did you vote for him last time? Yes. And 2016? Yes. Why are you going to vote for Trump again this time? Because he's done things that nobody else has done. One. Two, he makes a complaint. He makes himself an idiot on the TV. And then the problem gets fixed. The government hasn't done things for...

other people since then. What is something specifically that he's done that you think is what you're talking about, about fixing things? I don't remember since the last time he was in. But the last time he was in, every time he makes a comment about something, nobody likes it. And then they get on the ball and they fix it. Do you have an issue that's the most important to you? No. No. I'm too poor.

We're actually talking to people about economy, about the way jobs and prices are right now. How do you feel about kind of the state of the economy right now? I think things are going up a little high. I think there's a little too much lining of the order's pockets. Do you place blame on any person or party for that, or is it just kind of how the system has worked?

I think it's kind of how the system has worked. You know, you want your, you want the owners of your company, all your other people to get their money first and then whatever. And to people, we have to pay for it. Like I said, I'm, I'm so low on the income pole that I can never make enough to buy new. I'll never make enough money to buy new. Everything I have to buy would be old and used.

Because there's no income, there's no money income for it, no job payments to make that. Interesting. Because, you know, the numbers would tell us that more people are getting jobs, that inflation has come down and things like that. But it seems like you're saying none of that feels like it's tangibly reached you. No, it's not. I don't think it is, really. I think to say the unemployment's gone down, no, the unemployment didn't go down. There's still that many people unemployed. There's no more unemployment money going out. Right.

Because you've been off work for so long, you can no longer collect unemployment. That's why unemployment is down. It's not that people got jobs. There's more lazy people out there than you'll ever know. You're saying Trump did feel like something tangible was changing? Yes. But you don't remember what that was? No, because I'm old. Like I said, a lot of things don't really affect me. It doesn't really matter who's president because my world is platen.

No matter what, I don't make any more money. I don't spend any more money. I just live day to day. You know, some people say that and then they say they don't vote at all. I guess I'm asking because it's interesting that you say that, but you say, I am going to vote and I'm going to vote for Trump. I'm always, yeah. I like his opinions. I like his ideas. You have a personal connection. You like him. Yeah. Yeah.

- Well, we'll see you when you come outside. What are you picking up today? - I'm dropping the cart off. I've already been out. - Oh, you've already been out. Okay. - I'm taking the cart back because other people don't. They leave them on the yard. - It does annoy me when people leave the cart out in the parking lot. I don't like people like that. I like to do things. Like if I get something in my shopping cart that I'm not gonna buy, I take it back right to where I got it from. There's potatoes on the shelves in there. Potatoes on cereal shelves. Why are there potatoes?

Thank you for chatting with us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. Have a good day. John calling his life and his economic situation flat, regardless of who was in power, stuck with me. It's the type of political nihilism we hear regularly and used to hear more often when Biden was in the race. But now that he's out,

I wanted to know what, if anything, the candidates are saying to people like John and Gayle. People living on the margins who feel like politicians can't help. That's after the break.

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With that in mind, I called someone who has spent a lot of time looking at the ways the federal government tries to combat poverty nationwide. Can you just introduce yourself and tell me what you cover? I'm Jason DeParle. I cover poverty issues for The New York Times. Jason DeParle has been focused on covering poverty for 40 years. And recently, he's been reporting on the policies that both the Harris and Trump campaigns are pitching. And I wanted to start by zooming out.

How do we get to this current economic moment? Poverty went down by an extraordinary amount during the pandemic, which is quite counterintuitive because we lost millions of jobs and everyone expected the poverty rate to go up.

But under both President Trump and then even more so under the Biden administration, the government spent extraordinary sums to cushion people from the hardship of the pandemic. So the poverty rate actually fell to historic lows for everyone and then especially for children because we had this one-year expansion of something called the child tax credit, which is just a cash payment to families with children. So child poverty fell roughly in half during the pandemic. It was

quite unexpected in the first few months of the pandemic when all the jobs were disappearing. So with pandemic aid, the child poverty rate fell about in half. Without pandemic aid, the child poverty rate roughly doubled. That is counterintuitive considering that I don't even think that kind of success story has been talked about that clearly. But you're saying it was really an unprecedented time in terms of anti-poverty legislation.

unprecedented spending to be sure. And one of the interesting things about it is that the parties drew, I think, diametrically opposite lessons from it. I think the Democrats came away

With their faith in government's ability to ameliorate hardship reinforced, Democrats were already the party of government. They already thought government could cushion people from hardship, but they saw it play out to a larger extent than they ever had before. And I think Republicans came away thinking that this spending had been reckless, had caused inflation, had been subject to deep fraud. So they look at the same fact set with quite different interpretations.

Okay, well, that brings us up to now on the choice facing folks in the November election. How far apart are we talking about the two candidates being here? And what is the driver of that kind of ideological shift?

It was larger than I had realized. And, you know, it's my job to kind of keep track of these issues. So, you know, I knew that, um, there were differences of course, and that they were fairly substantial, but, um, the more I learned, the more, uh,

I guess I was at how far apart they were. Maybe I shouldn't have been. It's a, we're a polarized country, so we're far apart on everything. Well, can you just take me through Trump and Harris? What were their different philosophies and approaches to how they would combat poverty that you found? Well,

Trump's proudest achievement from his point of view is the 2017 tax cuts, which he credits for stimulating the economy. Not all economists would agree with that. Most Democrats would see that aid as having gone almost exclusively or heavily disproportionately to the very affluent population.

They would call it trickle-down economics, that the tax cut gave a lot of money to wealthy people and some of it, bits and pieces, trickled down to the poor. Nonetheless, poverty did fall. Trump can accurately say that poverty fell in the wake of his tax cuts. Whether they were the cause of poverty falling is quite debatable.

I think the other element of Trump's record is real hostility, animosity towards the safety net programs. Each of his budgets proposed a cut in the food stamp spending of at least 30%. And that's a

a very large reduction in nutrition programs. He sought to cut subsidized housing. He sought to reduce the number of people getting Medicaid. So consistent, deep skepticism about the value of food.

safety net programs. I think it's fair to say that's the hallmark of the Trump record. And what do we know about Harris's approach to the issue of poverty? And do we have any clues on how that might be different than even Biden's approach during the time that he was in office?

I think Harris has emphasized what she calls the care economy. She would like to expand programs that are meant to help people balance work and family, like paid family leave and subsidized child care. She has a long record of support for a child tax credit that goes to the poorest people.

The two candidates often sound the same when they say they both support the child tax credit and have both tried to expand it. I think the main difference between them is that the child tax credit that passed under Trump omitted about the poorest third or so of children from getting the full benefit. And the Republicans would say, well, that makes sense. The

Tax cuts should go to taxpayers and low-income people don't generally owe federal income tax, so they don't get the full benefit of this tax cut. And the Democrats would say that's completely upside down. If you're going to pass a measure that's supposed to help families raise children, you can't.

morally leave out the poorest third of children. So sometimes it sounds like they're supporting the same thing. They both will get up, say, I'm for an expanded child tax credit, but you really need to drill down into the details and ask who would benefit. You mentioned kind of several areas in which they differ. What do we know about what would be their legislative priorities in the next term when it came to anti-poverty legislation? Like, do we know what either of them would push for most clearly? Yeah.

Well, it doesn't present itself as a poverty issue per se, but whatever happens with the expiring Trump-era tax cuts, which are going to expire next year, involves trillions of dollars. So Trump wants to extend them at a cost of four plus trillion over 10 years. And the Democrats want to roll them back and spend a little bit more on various middle income and low income programs and

You know, it's a profound difference with one wanting to cut taxes by $4 trillion and the other wanting to get rid of that $4 trillion tax cut and perhaps raise taxes on upper income people to bring in more money that could be spent to ameliorate hardship. So what happens with poverty programs often happens downstream from those tax decisions. So I think that's going to be the first profound one.

A second, I think, would be the state of the Medicaid expansions and Obamacare expansions, you know, the whole set of policies that came out of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Trump tried hard to repeal the Affordable Care Act. For Democrats, it's a generational achievement. They take huge pride in it. So

Trump now says he's no longer trying to repeal the Obamacare Act, but Democrats are pretty sure he would repeal it by another name if he didn't do it. And by starving it of revenue, by starving it of not promoting it, would let it wither on the vine.

So I think those are two places where you would see immediate and strong differences. Yeah, I know. Those seem like really important, and particularly the question what to do about the Trump tax cuts being forced and foremost. You know, we were out in a Walmart parking lot in Wisconsin, a Walmart that was closing and talking to people about food prices and housing. Obviously, a lot has changed in the political landscape since then. But one thing that stuck with me was the voter sense of disillusion, particularly impoverished voters.

saying that, you know, nothing changes from president to president. And because of their economic situation, they really felt like a sense of distance from the political system overall. I wanted you to speak to that as someone who covers, you know, how the decisions that these administrations make affect the lowest income Americans. Like, what would you say is the tangible difference?

Go ahead. Oh, I've been hearing it. Instead, I've been hearing it for 40 years. That's always been the case. I think that there is...

a profound alienation among poor people and low-income people towards the political system. I don't think it's true. I think that many of the policies and programs that either party would pass would affect them profoundly. They may feel that it won't make any difference to them, but I think it does make a difference.

But I 100% agree with you that people often feel just such profound alienation from the system as a whole that they don't perceive it to be in their self-interest to engage. Yeah.

I think the Republicans, now that they are trying to court the working class vote, I think they are attuned to potential resentment from people who are –

lower middle class, not poor, but worry that poor people are taking advantage of programs or that their tax dollars are going to people who are taking advantage of programs. I think there is a fair amount of conscious effort on the part of the Republican Party to sort of stoke those resentments, which I think are deep and real. Mm-hmm.

I'm going to ask about two areas specifically before I ask the kind of final question, one of which is I've seen Harris and Trump now both endorse the policy of removing taxes on tips. It strikes me as one of the rare places of agreement between both of the candidates, specifically when we think about this issue. Do we know how it came to be that that policy became something that both DNR agree on? And would that have a significant effect on poverty?

Well, my suspicion is it came to be because Nevada is a swing state in play and there's a lot of people in that state that get a substantial part of their income from tips. And so Trump said it first and Harris said it second. I don't think it's a particularly serious anti-poverty plan. The concern would be that lots of smart accountants would find ways to –

count upper income people's wealth or income as large parts of it as tips. So it would sort of blow a hole, I think, in the tax code more than it would help Fort Brooklyn. That's helpful to know. The last thing I was going to ask was really about a different kind of effort we did, because we also spent some time in a Milwaukee suburb talking to people at a mall, and they had similar concerns about rising food prices and such. But

But things like housing, buying a home, down payments, considering the cost of another child, those issues came up a lot more than when we were in the city. I wanted to ask specifically about not the poverty legislation, but do we have any sense of what Harris or Trump's economic message to the middle class might be? And do we know if they differ in the same ways at this kind of sector of the economy as they do when we're thinking about anti-poverty legislation?

I think Trump has been surprisingly vague on housing for somebody who's a builder, a developer. I don't think he's really laid out a housing policy. And to the extent that some of his aligned groups like Project 2025, they have laid out policies, I think they would actually raise the price of housing because they're calling for more neighborhood control over the kinds of housing that could be built, which could

in the long run, raise housing. Harris gave a speech a couple of weeks ago where she set a goal of creating 3 million new homes over, I guess, the first term. But it was pretty thin on specifics.

As you listen to these candidates, do they talk about the economy or the way it's affecting people more or less than you've seen previously? Or is this about kind of a typical presidential campaign level of focus? You know, Astead, thank you for that question, because I realize we've left out something in our conversation that we've talked about what they would do policy-wise, which is important.

Very important. But the way in which you talk about people is also important. And I think that Trump has a long history of talking about low-income and minority people in pretty harsh ways, as he has about the homeless population. Harris,

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, my dream one day is like a presidential debate that's like focused directly on these issues or at least sometimes mentions them. I hope the September 10th debate gets closer to that and we don't just have middle class, middle class, middle class all over again because that sometimes feels like the only place this conversation goes. You're absolutely correct. In presidential politics, I think both sides work.

worry about being too closely identified with policies towards the poor because they think it'll alienate the middle class. Everybody wants to be the champion of the middle class. Thank you so much, Jason. I appreciate your time. And this should be Thursday. We'll update you if something comes up. But again, thanks so much. Thank you, Ested. So it turns out that when it comes to the economy, and specifically the issue of poverty, Trump and Harris could not be further apart.

Poverty sharply declined under President Biden's watch, and only Kamala Harris is promising to continue the trend, as Republicans and Donald Trump go in the opposite direction. So, looking back to what we heard in that Walmart parking lot, that it doesn't matter who's president, and neither party cares about the poor, it doesn't seem to line up with the facts. Because while the candidates may spend more time talking about unemployment rates or the stock market,

Their policy will affect everyone, whether they talk about it or not. Hi, I'm Robert Vinluen from New York Times Games. I'm here talking to people about Wordle and showing them this new feature. You all play Wordle? Yeah. I have something exciting to show you. Oh, okay. It's the Wordle Archive.

- So if I miss it, I can go back. - 100%. - Oh, that's sick. - So now you can play every Wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles. - Oh my god, I love it. - Actually, that's really great. - What date would you pick? - May 17th. - Okay. - That's her birthday.

What are some of your, like, habits for playing Wordle? I wake up, I make a cup of coffee, I do the Wordle, and I send it to my friends in a group chat. Amazing. Thanks so much for coming by and talking to us and playing. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle archive. Find out more at nytimes.com slash games. You don't understand how much Wordle means to us. We need to take a selfie. That's the run-up for Thursday, August 29th, 2024. ♪

And now, the rundown. In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory. Third-party candidate RFK Jr. has suspended his campaign for president. He endorsed Donald Trump. He is a great person. I've known him for so long, for the past 16 months, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And on Friday night, they appeared together at a rally in Arizona. Trump also got an endorsement this week

from former Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. I'm committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House where he can once again serve us as our commander-in-chief. Also this week, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are taking a bus tour of Georgia, making a play for a swing state where polls show Trump is leading. They're sitting for their first interview of the campaign there, and it'll air tonight on CNN.

And on Tuesday, the group Swifties for Kamala held a Zoom call aimed at mobilizing Taylor Swift fans to vote for Harris. They raised almost $140,000 for the Harris campaign. Music legend Carole King was there.

Taylor inducted me into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and she sang my song, Will You Love Me Tomorrow? So I have to go. Players gonna play, play, play, play, play, play. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. I shake it off, I shake it off. There are 12 days until the next presidential debate and 68 days till the general election. We'll see you next week.

The run-up is reported by me, Ested Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin, with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Alisha Ba'i Tu. It was mixed by Sophia Landman and fact-checked by Will Paichel.

Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnik, Larissa Anderson, David Halfinger, Maddie Maciello, Mahima Chablani, Jeffrey Miranda, and Elizabeth Bristow. Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunupatnytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the voice memo app in your phone. That email again is therunupatnytimes.com. Thanks for listening, y'all.